How had everything gone so wrong, Frances had no idea. She wanted to break down crying, and curse Amura and Rathon that everything had gone to shit.

But something thudded in her heart. Knowledge. The knowledge that Igraine and her rangers were going to die if they didn’t do something pounded in her very being. Despite her hands shivering, her eyes wild, Frances moved.

“Someone give me a boost to the wall.” Frances stammered. The teenagers stared at her uncomprehendingly, until she took a deep breath and bellowed. “Jim, levitate me to the walltop! Hurry! Nicole, get Elizabeth! Martin, after they finish, start coordinating the rest of our mages!”

The pair acted, casting levitation spells. Frances soared into the sky, as if on a cushion. She landed and immediately took cover behind the wall’s parapet, glancing over her shoulder to try to get a glimpse of what was happening.

The second courtyard was empty, but beyond, at the third and fourth, past the narrow stone bridge that spanned the abyss, she could see climbing lines draped down against the cliffside. Nobody was on them, but she could hear the main forces’ panicked cries

She could also see what was blocking the gate to the second courtyard, a mammoth pile of dirt that even magicians would need a day to shift.

Elizabeth pressed herself beside the parapet beside her friend. “They want to destroy the main force. They waited and lured us down here, delaying us with traps and blocking the gallery and the wall gate.”

“But we can still cross the bridge!” Frances exclaimed, turning to Elizabeth.

“No, we can’t. They’ll have booby-trapped the bridge. That must be where all the gunpowder went to.” Elizabeth grimaced. “That and the Great Tower. I’m pretty sure the trap there is rigged to explode.”

Frances’s fist tightened and she bit back the temptation to swear. “Let’s get everybody up here first.” She turned, ready to shout instructions, but found that all their mages were already on the walls, levitating the rest of their fighters. Martin slid down beside her and lifted his visor.

“We’re nearly done. What’s the plan?”

“No idea.” But they had to do something. Frances broke from her cover and began to run to the northern wall of the second courtyard. “Follow me!”

She ran the way there, eyes scanning ahead of her, but there were no triplines or anything that looked like a trap.

However, when Frances slid behind the battlements and looked over the edge, she frowned.

The bridge didn’t look booby trapped. It was a wooden bridge, with sturdy triangle-shaped frames holding up a wooden walkway wide enough to let a cart cross. It stretched across a hundred-meter long abyss, connecting two small landings. Frances expected to see wires or some trigger mechanisms. At the minimum she expected to see a barrel of gunpowder somewhere on the bridge, but there were none.

“Elizabeth, that doesn’t look booby-trapped.”

Her friend narrowed her eyes at the structure. “Well, they’re going to use the gunpowder as we cross the bridge. It’s the only thing that makes sense if they’re saving it.”

“Perhaps they hid it? Maybe with magic?” Martin inquired.

“That’s a possibility, wait—” Frances remembered something from the initial assessment she’d done on her classmates and turned around, looking for a hispanic boy with a bit of a moustache. “Warren! We need your magesight on the bridge, quickly!”

The hispanic boy looked over the merlon and whispered a few words of power, his brown eyes glowing gold as he examined the bridge. “Yeah I see the barrels and tripwires. They’re rigged to blow the second we step on the thing.”

“Damnit.” Frances closed her eyes. She needed to think up a solution. Everybody was depending on her—Hold on. It wasn’t just her. Frances quickly found her fellow classmates. “If anybody has any suggestions I’m all ears. We need to get across, quickly.”

The boys and girls started to mutter amongst themselves.

“Teleport over?”

“Run across anyway?”

“Can we levitate across?”

“Does anybody have any rope?”

“A zipline maybe?”

“Can’t we just throw someone across?”

“But there’s nobody to catch them, if we had someone on the other side then that’ll be possible.”

“That’s it!” Frances turned to George, who had voiced the throwing idea. “I know how to teleport. I’ll teleport across. Our mages can throw others to me and I can catch them. Martin, I’ll leave the organisation to you.”

“Wait Frances you’ll be alone—”

“There’s no time! Nobody else knows how to teleport!” Frances focused her eyes on a point just to the side of the gate, where nobody should be able to see her and began to break into a song. She shut out Martin’s hurriedly yelled out orders, focused everything on visualizing herself across the abyss, standing by the gate.

She’d done it a few times, but nowhere near this far. Her song nearing a feverish pitch, she cast the spell.

It was an instantaneous occurrence. No squeezing of her body, no zap, she just appeared across the chasm, an empty, hungry feeling in her stomach at the strain on her magic. Gasping, Frances managed to steady herself against the wall and raise her wand, ready to catch her classmates.

Nicole was the second one across. She was tossed by George, Jim and some other mages. Frances caught her with her magic and set her down gently. She took place beside Frances, and the pair caught another two mages. The shouts and screams of the fighting lent speed to their actions and soon, there were ten mages and five fighters, including Elizabeth, Nicole and Jim on the other side.

The first sign that the orcs had finally noticed was a gruff shout that all of the heroes and heroines understood.

“What in Galena’s high heavens—they’re crossing the abyss!”

“We need cover.” Frances spun around, trying to find cover on the landing, but there was none to be found.

Elizabeth pointed up at the battlements. “No, we need to get up there, stop them from shooting down on us! Frances, hurry!”

“Nicole! Get everybody over here and send them up!” Frances turned and pointed to Elizabeth, Jim, and two other fighters. “You with me! Let’s go!” She raised Ivy’s Sting, sang, and the five rose.

The orcs were just pointing muskets over the walls when they cleared the battlements. With her estoc still in her scabbard, Frances could only scream a note from her lips and slam the orc in front of her against the parapet on the other side. Elizabeth, her hammer bloody from the orc she’d brained when she’d landed, leapt over to the stunned orc and smashed him in the chest. He died with a gurgle, clutching his torso.

Biting back the temptation to retch, Frances threw herself behind the parapet, grabbing Elizabeth beside her, taking in the situation. Beside her were her four other companions. They had two mages, three fighters, all who had taken cover.

The southern wall of Freeburg’s Third Courtyard was thankfully not packed full of orcs. There were however, five orcs, the remainder of what had to be a patrol squad, charging at them. More concerning to Frances was how the northern wall of the courtyard was filled with orcs, all of whom were firing down or the humans who were trapped in the Fourth Courtyard.

She could also see the flash of magic firing into the courtyard, a definitive proof the orcs had a number of shamans.

But first, the orcs on the southern wall. Frances was about to fire a spell, but Elizabeth and the fighters raced past her.

Orcs, both male and female, were huge, muscular, and could easily overwhelm normal humans with sheer brute force.

Against Otherworlders? They were too slow. They swung at the Otherworlder heroes, but thanks to them dodging at superhuman speeds, the blows didn’t come close. They were all slain before Frances and Jim could fire off their spells.

But the orcs on the opposing wall had caught on. Bellowed orders led to many spinning around, bringing musket barrels pointing at Frances and her comrades. For a moment, Frances froze, unsure what to do but to leap for cover.

At this very moment, Jim managed to snap off a fireball. It was small, but his spellcasting was extraordinarily quick and he’d aimed at the orc officer, marked by the bird-skull ornament on her head. She was blasted off the wall, leading to cries of alarm and a momentary pause by the confused orc musketeers.

Frances didn’t know what spell she was thinking of doing. She was reacting by instinct, in communion with her wand, and by the first notes she could cry out that seemed to fit. The image of lightning fixed in her mind, a sharp plunging scale of notes escaping her lips were followed by a scything slash of her arm.

Lightning sparked across the parapet, springing from Ivy’s Sting and moving rapidly among the orcs. It jumped from one to another, dancing across flesh and musket barrels, hitting helmets and spearheads. The orcs crumpled to the ground, writhing, most not dead, but completely out of action.

Before Frances could shout a command, Elizabeth screamed, “Take the tower!” and pointed at the tower connecting the Third Courtyard’s west wall, with the southern wall of the Second Courtyard. It was one of the linchpins holding the fortress and if they were to save their friends, they had to seize it.

“Jim! Open the gate! Elizabeth, go!”

Her friend was already kicking open the door and charging in. Frances followed, and found the room thankfully empty.

“Frances, you should head up and get a vantage point,” Elizabeth said.

“Alright, but what about you?” Frances asked, glancing between the three fighters.

“We’ll clear the south wall. Don’t worry. Just send us some reinforcements.”

“Alright.” Frances raced up the stairs, wand ready as she cleared the top hatch. There was nobody on the tower, but Frances stayed behind the parapet, and took a brief look.

Frances’s first thought was that Freeburg’s Fourth Courtyard looked similar to the black and white photos of the Western Front in the First World War. Backed against the cliffs, were Igraine’s Rangers and the rest of their classmates, huddled behind magic-erected earth shelters. Most of these walls were pockmarked or had edges blasted off.

The musketeers atop of a courtyard’s walls, and the brick-tile building on the western side of the courtyard were the source of most of these pockmarks. They fired in regular volleys, but Frances could also see some sniping from positions behind merlons.

Dressed in distinctive cloaks of fur, the shamans, escorted by groups of shield-carrying orcs, were even better protected. Frances watched as one threw a fireball at a human shelter, blasting it apart.

The two rangers and three Otherworlders huddling behind scattered. However, bullets found their mark into one of the ranger’s arms. The screaming woman was magically dragged into cover, making Frances wince.

Rushing over to the other side of the tower, Frances looked down to find Elizabeth and her two fellows fighting the recovered musketeers on the south wall. Although they were sluggish, some still sprawled on the ground, there were too many of them, and so Frances raised her wand and began to sing a familiar song.

She didn’t know it, but Elizabeth was already grinning, recognizing her friend’s spell from the many times she had practiced it.

Lightning spat out from the top of the tower, hitting the orcs on the walls, blasting them back. Unable to spare a second glance, Frances rushed back to the south of the tower and yelled at the Otherworlders who had just entered the Third Courtyard, led by George and Nicole.

“Nicole! Take Jim, some fighters and some mages and clear the western building and wall! George, take five fighters and reinforce Elizabeth, then go west too!”

“Roger! We have more coming!” Nicole yelled back. Barking out orders, the tomboyish mage rushed into the tower.

Frances was already returning to her original spot to survey the battlefield and immediately ducked. A bolt of magic shot over her head. Standing back up, Frances fired a fireball in the general direction, singing a note, before rolling away from the parapet.

It was a good thing she did. The stone merlons exploded as the section of the wall she’d just been hiding behind disappeared. Screaming as stone shards plinked off of her helmet, Frances dived for the hatch.

She tumbled down the stairs and smashed her head straight onto the floor. If she didn’t have her helmet, she’d been quite badly hurt.

As it was, Frances had enough time to sit upright, just as the door to the Fourth Courtyard’s building opened and orcs poured into the room.

Frances screamed a note and just willed the orcs to stay back. She was too dazed for anything else. The orcs flew back into the walls, sliding down them, stunned. Before Frances could summon up the strength to kill them, Nicole and her group came up the stairs and charged the distracted enemy.

By the time Martin pulled Frances up, all the orcs were dead.

“Need a moment?” Martin asked. Frances shook her head and tried to take a step, but the knight pressed a hand to her shoulder. “That’s a yes.”

“We need to clear the building on the west side of the Fourth Courtyard—”

“We got that, take a moment, Frances,” Nicole snapped. She turned to her group. “Come on! Let’s go!”

“You don’t have to do everything by yourself, remember?” Martin quipped, shooting Frances a meaningful smile.

Frances still wanted to go, but her friend’s words elicited a deep sigh, and she nodded. Though she didn’t completely relax, Frances grabbed her flask filled with honey sweetened water and herbs and took a deep draw. She flinched as Nicole and the other heroes charged through the door, but Martin was right. Her throat felt like sandpaper and her hands were trembling from the magic she’d expended. After a moment’s thought, Frances grabbed a lemon candy from her belt pouch. She needed the sugar.

The door to the southern wall opened and Elizabeth, along with the other two fighters that had accompanied her ran in. They were panting from exertion, but otherwise unharmed. They sat down, exhausted, as more Otherworlders entered the tower from the stairs. Martin directed them to follow Nicole.

A minute later, when the world had stopped feeling like it was tilting, Frances took a deep breath and nodded.

“I’m good. Elizabeth?”

“I’m good too,” Elizabeth said, hefting her shield and hammer. Martin raised his sword, and the group ran out of the tower door and back into the war.