After what seemed like an eternity the ringing dies down enough that I find myself able to function once again. My head feels like it has shrunk and become tight and pain fills my mind though probing with my hands seems to indicate that I am whole and unharmed. I realize that my connection with the scouts and my squad has broken, and I reach out with my mind to renew the connection. My squad feels shaken but uninjured, but I can not reconnect with the scouts. After trying a few times I give up. The scouts were very basic, made only to be able to move and provide eyes and ears. If the bells had almost rendered me unconscious then it had almost certainly killed the more directly exposed scouts. My squad has lost its eyes and ears.

I craw on out of of the bin before vomiting onto the street, a strange experience for someone without biological internal organs. Out of my mouth cascades a flow of fine blue powder and a few wisps of heavy smoke. It seems the bells damaged me so badly that I leaked some of my essence, that would explain why my thoughts seemed slower and less clear. I quickly scoop up what I can from the powder on the ground and shove it back into my maw, allowing myself to reintegrate some of the essence back into myself. My thoughts clear a little bit and I mentally check on my other squad members. None of the Reds have lost any essence and only one of the weaker Yellows had, though it was not a dangerous amount. Blues were certainly more fragile than their soldiers.

I used what mental power remains to me to weigh what the best next move is. Certainly my orders were to continue ambushing until no enemies remained ( or no Coptos remained). Yet without my scouts, I might as well be blind, the ambush will be almost impossible. What is more, if a host that large had gotten through the front lines then it would not be long before the primary defenses had completely collapsed and it would be time to pull back behind the secondary lines. At least that is what I reasoned, yet a small part of myself whispered that any course of action that took me further away from the source of those bells was a good action. Checking my internal clock I found that it had been half an hour since my last check.

I sent a mental message to the rest of my squad and we started moving away from the primary lines towards the headquarters that lay at the center of the defenses. I made sure to steer clear of the path the host had taken. I didn’t want to encounter them again, and the grass left behind by the host had an unhealthy look to it. I didn’t want to find what effect it would have on my squad. After a few minutes of progress through the alleys between the close-packed brick and wood of the city an enormous crash could be heard from far ahead. The host had reached the secondary defenses.

A few minutes later the ground began to rumble more than it already had as shining artillery spells from both sides began to fall around us. One of the meteor-like spells fell only a block away blinding the squad for a second. I tried to blink my eyes until my vision returned though it was a mostly useless effort, my eyelids were transparent. Once we could see again I used a yellow to glance over at where the spell had landed. A crater as wide as the street had been blasted out. For a second I switched my view to the Mundane realm, the crater was still there but looked more organic as though it had been caused by a sinkhole as the storm raged on in the Mundane.

The squad moved forward stealth forgotten as I made a beeline for the secondary defenses. More explosives landed around us but thankfully further away as the squad sprinted forwards. Finally, the secondary lines came into view. A ten-foot wall of what looked like obsidian blocked the alleyway we were moving down. I ordered my squad to clamber up the nearest building following with them as we moved up the brick walls. Once we were on top we were able to look over the wall into the defenses. Behind the wall is crawling with Reds and Yellows, a few Blues and Violets scurrying between them on different tasks. One of the Blues notices me and we make mental contact as his bronze flecked black eyes stare into my copper flecked gaze through the heat haze of magic that hung above the wall.

One of the Violets next to him makes a complicated gesture and a section of the mirage-like magical defenses above the wall melts away. I had one of my larger Reds pick me up before the whole squad launches themselves off of the roof over the wall. As we landed on the other side I felt a release of tension I didn’t know I had been feeling. I stopped the quiet muttering of my mantra that had been ongoing almost mechanically since the artillery spell landed. I was for the time being, safe.