Minerva stared at the challenge ahead of her. Earthshaker had at least a full battalion behind him from what she could see with her magic senses. Many of their auras were powerful, indicating a higher than usual percentage of fifth and sixth-tier mages, too. Usually, there were only a handful of fifth-tier mages in a single battalion, with a fifth-tier Tribune acting as its commander, plus two more to act as logistical and bureaucratic leaders. Here, though, she could sense the presence of at least twenty fifth-tier mages, and ten sixth-tier.

Not as many high-tiered mages as she had, but to assume that gave her the advantage would be doing a grave disservice to the thousand-plus Legion soldiers in the shield wall only a few paces behind the Earthshaker Paladin. She knew as well as any Legion commander worth their salt would know that the Legion shield wall was incredibly powerful and difficult to crack, even with the power of a sixth-tier mage.

“Ahh, Dame Minerva!” Earthshaker shouted, his handsome face twisting in a crude grin. “I have to say, I was hoping you wouldn’t turn out to be a traitor, but it seems that Prince Octavius was right to have you watched! Here you are, breaking the bastard and base criminal August out of prison before his just punishment!”

Minerva knew that Earthshaker’s words were directed more toward his own soldiers than at her, and even if she were mistaken about that, she didn’t want to dignify it with a response. Instead, she glanced at Brimstone—Roland was sticking with August just behind her—and asked, “What do you think? We can’t go east or west, but we can go back north…”

To the west was the main palace complex, and to try and escape through the place with the highest concentration of powerful mages in the entire Kingdom was not something she was eager to try. Likewise, to the east were steep cliffs and rocky shores, terrible terrain to fight upon let alone try and escape through. They couldn’t even use earth mages to flatten the ground, since almost the entire shore going around the capitol island had been reinforced to prevent earth magic from tampering with it, specifically to prevent invasion or treasonous actions like what Minerva was attempting.

“We can’t go north, it would cut us off from our boats,” Brimstone said, confirming what she already knew: going south was their only real option, which meant that they had to get past Earthshaker, break through the shield wall, and reach the southern-most tip of the island, the point that they had chosen for their boats to come and pick them up.

“Put down your weapons, and your punishments will be lenient!” Earthshaker bellowed, addressing Minerva and her allies with less ambiguity, now. “By the order of the Prince-Regent, Julius Octavius Taurus, all who participated in this foolish endeavor and do not now surrender shall be labeled traitors and enemies of the Bull Kingdom!”

“Take your offer and shove it up your rancid asshole!” Brimstone bellowed back, his seventh-tier aura spiking and sending a wave of heat rolling off all those around him.

Oddly enough, Earthshaker’s grin widened in the face of this defiance, and he released his own aura in response, inundating the surroundings with a heavy, sluggish feeling as if everyone had suddenly gained a noticeable amount of weight. In between Brimstone and Earthshaker, the earth shook and trembled, suddenly cracking as their auras clashed.

“I’ll deal with this animal,” Brimstone said to Minerva, Roland, and August. “Just get past the rest.”

“Don’t fall too far behind,” Roland cautioned his colleague.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Brimstone said with a smile of anticipation as he began to calmly walk forward. Earthshaker did likewise, slowly moving to meet Brimstone between their respective groups while a handful of sixth-tier knights appeared in the gaps between the ten companies of the battalion.

Earthshaker’s battalion began to march forward, staying in perfect formation despite their relative lack of experience compared to their Eastern Territories counterparts.

With a wordless gesture, Minerva spurred her own knights on, and they formed into a rough line. They had no Legion shields, but they were well-armored and strong. In fact, it was arguable that the hundred or so knights that Minerva brought, along with the dozen that both Brimstone and Roland were accompanied by, were the strongest single unit pound-for-pound in the entire Kingdom—not that Minerva truly wanted to test that, but it seemed there was little other choice.

“Open up!” Minerva shouted, and she swung her sword in a horizontal slash, sending a razor-sharp wind blade careening toward the closest of Earthshaker’s advancing companies. All along her line, the knights did likewise, sending blasts of fire, exploding boulders, pillars of ice and water, deadly gusts of wind, and the occasional beam of light into the oncoming shield walls.

Chaos erupted upon the Legion shields. Fire and water mixed, exploding into boiling steam. Stone and ice crashed into the shield walls and shattered, sending shrapnel flying in every direction. Light hit the shields with deceptively little power, but those hit by the beams had to withstand incredible force or be knocked aside. Finally, the wind squeezed through every crack and crevice it could find, slicing and cutting as it went.

The elemental mages on Earthshaker’s side did their best to dampen the blow, raising barriers and using their own power to counter the wave of magical power crashing down upon them, but there was simply too much to block, and the majority of Minerva’s magical assault hit the Legion companies with titanic force. The sound alone of so much magic impacting the shields resounded throughout the entire city, shattering glass as far away as three miles. The ground around the Legion shields was torn to shreds, with great crevasses and pits being carved from the earth both in front of and behind them.

And through all of it, the shield walls kept advancing.

The Legion shield was the key to the power of its heavy infantry. Every shield was inscribed with a reinforcement enchantment that had been designed in a flowing fractal pattern. This meant that every shield linked together in a shield wall reinforced every other shield, making the collective enchantment bigger as more of these ‘modular’ enchantments were added to the whole.

As a result, despite the power of Minerva’s side, only a handful of Legion soldiers dropped, and none of the ten companies had their formations meaningfully disrupted.

“AGAIN!” Minerva roared, her power rushing through her bloodstream. Again, her people launched all of their most powerful magic, letting it roll over the shield walls like a wave upon the beach. When the smoke cleared, the shield walls kept coming.

Minerva scowled. She’d never been on this side of the fight before, and suddenly felt some small measure of sympathy for every enemy that had ever encountered a Legion shield wall. However, the shield walls, while powerful, were not invincible, and she had some ideas for how to pierce them.

“Target their leaders!” she shouted as she wound up another volley. Her actions were mirrored down her line, but everyone had to stop for a moment when Earthshaker and Brimstone finally met in the middle of the battlefield, their clash of earth and fire seeming to bring all the world to a momentary halt.

Fire roiled off of Brimstone as he brought his sword wreathed in flame down upon Earthshaker’s head. Earthshaker blocked with a wall of stone, but the wall crumbled in seconds, letting fire rush past. However, Earthshaker was wearing terrifically expensive plate armor, and as Brimstone’s fire wrapped around him, runes illuminated all over the armor’s surface, keeping Earthshaker relatively unscathed by Brimstone’s furious attack.

Earthshaker then responded by summoning stone jaws from beneath Brimstone’s feet, hoping to catch the other Paladin and prevent him from moving. Brimstone, in the split second before it happened, leaped into the air, letting the rocky teeth taste nothing but air as he soared twenty feet into the air and launched three successive fireballs before he began to fall back down. These fireballs were aimed around Earthshaker rather than directly at him, and when they detonated on the ground a moment later, Earthshaker was enveloped in a great torrent of fire that would’ve cooked a sixth-tier mage in a matter of seconds.

But Earthshaker stepped through it like it wasn’t even there, like it was at most an inconvenience as it blocked Brimstone from view.

The two met again in the center of the battlefield, meeting fire with earth and earth with fire. The nearest shield walls were effectively blocked from proceeding, but the rest continued on as the fight between the two Paladins showed no signs of stopping. The earth quaked beneath their feet, but they were still Legion soldiers, and they soldiered on.

“Their leaders!” Minerva repeated, silently cursing at herself for getting distracted. But, everyone else had been distracted, too, so at least her mistake was one that cost nothing.

A second later, all of her knights retargeted, launching all of their magics upon the sixth-tier mages leading the shield walls. These knights were thickly armored and powerful in their own right, but even they couldn’t stand up to such force. Most fell back as quickly as they could, letting the first rank of their shield walls cover them from the coming onslaught. One didn’t move fast enough, and another reacted so slowly or was so confident in his own abilities that he didn’t even stop walking forward.

Minerva’s knights’ magic hit them like a sack of bricks, crushing their magical defenses under the sheer weight of almost twenty fifth and sixth-tier magical attacks apiece. Both knights were killed almost immediately, while the other four who had taken shelter came out relatively unscathed thanks to their shield walls.

Unfortunately, this meant that they had time enough to prepare attacks of their own, rather than having to focus all of their power on defense. Two fireballs, one exploding boulder, and a glowing orb of light were hurled from the shield walls and slowly arced through the air toward Minerva’s people.

The boulder did what it was designed for and exploded, showering Minerva’s knights with shrapnel. The fireballs did likewise, crashing down upon her knights and detonating while the ice spikes rocketed into her line.

However, Minerva’s knights were strong as well, and just as armored as their opponents, and came through it none the worse for wear, though a few of her knights had been lightly battered. The more pressing issue was how close the shield walls were coming, having passed the point where Brimstone and Earthshaker were having their duel, and they showed little signs of stopping.

Minerva’s scowl deepened. They weren’t going to break through like this, and they had to change tactics.

“On me!” she shouted, calling all of her knights back together. They closed ranks, which under normal circumstances would allow the enemy to completely surround them. However, her knights were much faster than the shield walls, and they had no reason to try and hold the field. Their goal was to escape, not to defeat their enemy.

The Legion shield walls began to close in on their now much smaller position. The formations couldn’t turn on a silver, but they were still small enough to maneuver with relative ease. They were already starting to form a U-shape around Minerva, Roland, August, and the rest of the knights, with two companies staying on either side of the dueling Paladins to prevent that from opening a hole in their line.

“On my target!” Minerva shouted, hoping that she wouldn’t need any further explanation. Even Trajan’s training never covered defeating Legion shield walls, so she was making things up as she went.

One more time—perhaps even the last time before the shield walls closed in and her ad-hoc unit would have to rely on their personal combat skills rather than massed magic blasts—she channeled her power and concentrated it upon the arming sword she wielded. A small cyclone whipped around it as her power filled the metal, and to her sides, all the rest of the mages did likewise, illuminating the shrunken line with magical light.

Without a word, they all attacked at the same time, working in perfect unison. With their numbers, there were at least ten high-tiered mages concentrating their power upon a single Legion soldier, since the companies were operating in ten-by-ten squares. The power of Minerva’s group splashed upon the Legion shields, mixing and combining into one giant explosion of white magical power bright enough to blind just about everyone for a few seconds.

However, Minerva’s aim had been achieved, and the Legion formation was scattered with many of the soldiers dead or gravely injured.

“MOVE!” Minerva bellowed, spurring her entire unit into the gap. Her people didn’t waste time, and Roland even abandoned any sense of propriety as he lifted August off of his Royal feet and carried the Prince over his shoulder—the Prince was still weak and couldn’t move as fast as the others.

Minerva’s group charged through the breach, their fifth and sixth-tier speed too much for the Legion shield walls to stop, even as they scrambled to close the hole in their line. A few of the mages on Earthshaker’s side that were capable of elemental magic even sprang forward in an attempt to stop, or at least slow down, Minerva’s charge, but her knights weren’t going to take that lying down and fired off even more magic as they charged.

A moment later, they were through, sprinting south with the Legion shield walls behind them. Earthshaker’s more powerful knights gave chase, but a few of Minerva’s sixth-tier knights fell to the back of their rough column to cover their movement.

For the moment, at least, they were relatively clear, but they hadn’t reached their boats yet, and until they had Minerva knew full-well that they weren’t free.