The caravan continued forward, undaunted by the oppressive atmosphere given by the army besieging the city. Heider's army actually looked to be around fifteen thousand men strong! That is a huge number, but not nearly enough to entirely surround a city and blockade it. That is, if the city did not have walls. The city before them did and all Heider's troops had to do was blockade the gates and starve the city to break enemy morale and then ram the gate to the ground!

The caravan was headed to an encampment that was littered full of tents. It was far enough back from the city that no bows or war machines could hit it. After the caravan made it to the encampment, Emery and his guard departed and headed for the tallest tents that could be found. It was in these tents that the commanders of this army would reside. Wherever they passed, soldiers would find themselves uncomfortable as Emery's heavy presence of death essence emanated out, uncontrollably. Emery had already tried to contain the death essence as much as he could, but this was the limit. Emery and Defoy went into one of the tents while everyone else, including Adam and Silber, waited outside. The tents were not very thick and with Adam's exceptional hearing he easily overheard the talk going on inside.

After Emery walked in, he started out with an almost arrogant air: “General Waycrest, why haven't you taken Aldvind city yet?”

An unfamiliar voice responded: “Ah, Emery, you have arrived! No wonder I started feeling... Anyway, I know you would prefer not to stay in the same place for so long while there is the possibility of assassins being sent out for you, but I can't just attack the city with reckless abandon. Even if the plan works, it will be useless if I don't have the men to continue forward! Don't worry, just give me two more days and Aldvind's defenses will fall!”

Emery replied with a simple: “Fine”

Emery then walked out of the tent. He gave a worried look around before heading off to the area were officer tents were pitched. This area had a bit more security than other places in the camp so Emery and the rest would be staying here until things could proceed. When Adam saw the worry in Emery's soul as he glanced at his surroundings, Adam felt sympathy for his plight. Whatever the plan was that Emery needed to execute, it seemed to be pivotal and Luxom would surely do everything they could to stop it, if they found out. With how well Adam had gotten to know Emery, he detested Luxom for targeting his friend.

Over the course of the next two days, they did not move away from the officer tents. All of Emery's guards, including Adam, took rounds of watching the area for anything suspicious. They were no longer inside Heider's official borders and Luxom spies or troops could be anywhere, even in their own camp! Silber was a little discontent about being relegated to simple guard duty, though.

During that time, enormous booms would sound out at regular intervals as the army constantly bombarded Aldvind's gates with rams while archers fired arrows up at the battlements and into the city. Waycrest wanted to leave the walls intact to keep a good defense after he took Aldvind, so he decided not to use trebuchets here. At noon during the second day, a tremendous crash and the sound of splintering wood could be heard! The gates were finally broken and a tremendous war cry was issued as nearly eight thousand troops stormed the city!

Adam's elemental sight did not enable him to see far away enough to watch the scene, but the sound of that war cry was humbling. Such an enormous sound created by eight thousand people could make you feel like you are just a single water drop in the ocean. Compared to that, just what could Adam do on his own that would help end the war faster?

Battle raged throughout the rest of that day all the way into the next! Fighting in a city was in some ways harder than taking the walls of the city. There were so many buildings that could hide soldiers and even some citizens might randomly take up arms against the attackers! Finally, on the afternoon of the third day, the rest of the army started to move. Instead of occupying positions to confine Aldvind, they now took positions to protect it. While there were still pockets of resistance inside the city, it could now be considered theirs! Waycrest started to move command and the officers' tents to a secure spot in Aldvind. Emery and the rest had no choice but to follow as wherever Waycrest would set up his command would be the safest place, even if there were still enemy troops hiding in the city. Emery decided to move separately from the rest of the commanders in hopes that fewer people would pick him out. The less who saw him, the less likely news of his arrival would spread to Luxom.

Adam and Silber followed along into Aldvind. Silber was suppressing some of the spiritual essence that would normally flow through his body so his fur coat did not glow and attract attention. It was still a brilliant silver and white color but didn't stand out nearly as much. Silber thought this was quite troubling to keep up, though, as this reduced the strength of his body. As they approached the gate, Adam could see dead soldiers all over the ground! Some had been there for days, maybe weeks. Others seemed rather fresh, as though they had just died yesterday. They all had various wounds ranging from arrows to skin that was burnt from hot oil that Aldvind's soldiers poured over the battlements to try and protect the gate. All in all, it was a ghastly sight that consisted of hundred of littered bodies that the army was only now starting to retrieve.

The area by the gate was probably the most secure spot in the entire city at this point. While there were signs of fighting and destruction everywhere, only Heider troops occupied the area and it was well organized. There was a sturdy large building around a quarter of the way into the city that Waycrest was going to set up as his command post here. While he would have liked to use the military office or the governmental buildings located in the center of Aldvind, enemy soldiers may have set up traps or some such in those buildings in case Waycrest did decide to try and use them. A few of the military offices even still had Aldvind soldiers holed up in them!

As they walked along, Adam spread his elemental sight out to look into buildings on both sides of the road. Inside the buildings were citizens of Aldvind who were cowering in fear. They appeared malnourished and extremely fearful for their lives. No matter where Adam looked he saw much of the same sight. These were normal people you could find anywhere. Even though they were Luxom citizens, or at least previously were, Adam didn't see any of the fanatic madness he expected from Luxom. No one was holding dark thoughts of poisoning or banding together to kill Heider troops or to commit suicide together. Just where was that madness that Adam expected to see in the people of Luxom? Adam thought back to a few words that Clayton had said long ago: “War happens when the leaders of two kingdoms disagree with each other. The citizens themselves are innocent. War only serves to warp and twist their lives into one of misery until they too come to the conclusion that it is the enemy kingdom's fault for everything.”

Looking around, this appeared to be true. Even Adam's life had been twisted to the point where he believed all Luxom citizens were evil and conniving. Now that he could actually see them, he realized it couldn't be even further from the truth. He could no longer hold the citizens of Luxom in ill regard. Still, he felt that he could fully blame the government of Luxom for giving the orders for what happened at Fort Erich, to disturb that dragon, and trying to turn Buck into a demonic beast. Adam believed that such twisted and evil people that could do such things should not exist!

Off at the far fringes of Adam's sight, he suddenly found a couple of Heider soldiers harassing a family in their home. You would not be able to see this from the road, but Adam could. It appeared that the soldiers were trying to rob them! Adam could see the fear and distraught in the souls of the family that the soldiers were victimizing. One of the soldiers then started pulling on a fifteen year old girl to take her away! Adam's heart plummeted as he realized what the soldiers were intending to do. With a grim look Adam prepared to run over and stop them! Just when he was going to move, Defoy caught Adam by the collar and asked with a severe look: “What are you doing, Adam?!”

And pointed into the distance: “There are soldiers over there robbing a family they... they even are taking their daughter away!”

Defoy looked in the direction Adam pointed, he couldn't see anything but knew Adam probably could see it. Emery had confidence in this elemental sight Adam had so Defoy also believed in it. Defoy could only shake his head with a heavy sigh: “That isn't the only place where such things are happening in this city. Do you think you can stop them all? Luxom also does the same to our own cities! We have a job and that is to protect Emery! You can't just run off to play hero, this is a war!”

The soldiers had already dragged the daughter out of Adam's sight, but if he was fast he might be able to catch up. He tried to shake Defoy off as he shouted: “Just because Luxom does it to our cities doesn't make it right!”

Adam had been so concentrated on what was happening with that family that he had forgotten to concentrate on the other building around them. Even Emery and the others were distracted by the sudden shouting between Adam and Defoy. At this point, a few Luxom soldiers suddenly burst out of an alley while shouting war cries and tried to ambush Emery and the others! Emery fell back while the guards moved ahead to block the Luxom soldiers. At this point, Defoy let go of Adam and ran off at an incredible speed to join the fray. Defoy was one of the few martial artists in the group but did not seem to be nearly as strong as Clayton. Still, he was more than a match for normal soldiers.

While that was all happening, Adam became torn between joining the defense for his friend Emery and helping the daughter of that family. Silber looked attentively at Adam. He had heard what Adam had said and it did not matter what Adam decided to do, he would follow. “What are we to do, Beta?”

Just as Silber said that, Adam noticed another group of soldiers approaching from an opposite alleyway, they too were Luxom soldiers. From where they were they could easily get to and kill Emery since most of the guard was concentrated on the other side of the road. Adam pointed as he yelled: “Silber, down that alley!”

Silber's coat suddenly emitted a brilliant glow as his color returned to normal. He immediately accelerated to a speed similar to Defoy's as Adam ran behind. Just as one of the Luxom soldiers left the alley, Emery turned around as he noticed something was off. He was shocked to see this other group of Luxom Soldiers before him! Just as he noticed the soldier, Silber immediately appeared and bit the soldier's leg as he continued speeding to the side. An excruciating popping noise sounded as the soldier's leg became dislocated! The soldier cried out in pain as he fell to the ground. This noise attracted the attention of Emery's guard as they finally realized they were being attacked from both sides! Defoy and the others were nearly done mopping up the first batch of ambushing soldiers but were still a little far from Emery. Adam then appeared as another soldier stepped out of the alley with confusion as to what just happened to his friend that stepped out beforehand. Adam stuck out with his blade to distract and hold the soldier back as Silber quickly slipped back to the soldier that fell on the ground and bit his throat out! When Adam stepped in front of the soldier, it prevented Emery from trying to utilize a spirit formation to attack the soldier, but it was doubtful that Emery would have actually had enough time to create a formation before the soldier was on top of him. When three more Luxom soldiers were trying to get out of the alley to help their comrade who was fighting Adam, the rest of Emery's guard appeared by Adam's side to help finish this side off! After a brief scuffle, the Luxom soldiers were killed off quickly since they were suppressed by overwhelming numbers.

After the Luxom soldiers were all dead, the guard formed a protective circle around Emery as they proceeded with haste. Adam gritted his teeth as he joined the circle and moved on. He wanted to help the daughter of that family out but he also had to protect Emery! He was already too far away to do anything more to help as well. Adam could only hope the Heider soldiers weren't really going to rape her and that nothing else bad would happen to her.

After that ambush, they did not encounter any other obstacles on their way to the new command center. Emery was settled into his own room and the guards started to discuss the ambush, guessing at whether it was a random encounter with remnants of the city's forces or whether it was an actual assassin attempt on Emery. Adam sat off to the side deep in his own thoughts. He was torn between wanting to take the fight to Luxom and preventing anything bad from happening to the innocent civilians. The way Adam saw it, the army was no better than bandits if they pillaged and raped wherever they went! Adam wanted to fight with Luxom, but not at this cost. Seeing Adam like this, Silber started to wish they hadn't gone on this adventure. While he liked a good fight, he was far more concerned about Adam.

They stayed in Aldvind for another week before whatever the plan was could proceed. Adam was left in the dark since he was not an official member of the military and he was fine with that. Emery was a little displeased that continuing with the plan was taking far longer than anticipated. During that week, Adam stayed torn between his two desires of fighting Luxom and helping innocent people. During one of his talks with Emery, Adam vented his frustrations out and explained it to Emery. Emery himself had similar thoughts, but they were not quite the same. He was under the military's direct command and, in his sense of duty, the consequences were secondary. Emery would go out and use his abilities if he was required to and that was it. While Emery felt it sad that innocents could potentially get caught in the crossfire, he was not torn about it like Adam was.

Finally, a force of five thousand soldiers appeared to officially take command of the city. General Waycrest and his nearly fifteen thousand soldiers were going to move on to the next step of the plan. Emery was glad to finally move out and finish things up. The sooner he got back to Heider, the better, in his opinion.

The army followed a road that ran alongside a river, towards the north for another week before they finally reached their destination. Before them was a chain of mountains, known as the Sagan Mountains, that isolated this part of Luxom from its inner regions. It would be incredibly difficult to move an army across these mountains except for one spot. Between two mountains was a gorge large enough for an army to pass through. However, Luxom had long ago built a huge wall across the gorge that would bar Heider's troops access to it. This wall was known as the Sagan Wall and was a fort itself and would be incredibly difficult to take in a frontal assault. The river they had been following also went through the gorge and was actually one of the major methods for transporting goods to this side of the mountains. There was a place in the wall that spanned the gorge for the river to pass, however a giant portcullis was currently dropped down preventing anyone from passing through the river.

Waycrest and his army started setting up camp a fair distance from the Sagan Wall. Waycrest looked over to Emery and simply said: “Good luck.”

Emery nodded as he and his guard took a path off the road and into a forest as they continued on their own without looking back. Adam had no choice but to put his torn thoughts about the war to the side. They were now entering enemy territory and he needed to fully concentrate on the task at hand. Adam still did not know what they were doing, but he could easily guess they were going to use some method to undermine Sagan Wall's defenses to help Heider's side out.

While they could have hiked through some steep trails to get to the other side of the mountains, those trails would surely have scouts to watch them since they were so close to Sagan Wall. Instead, Emery and his guard were going to climb up and over the mountains! They approached one of the mountains by Sagan Wall in a roundabout method to try and prevent themselves from being seen by anyone on the wall at all. They then pulled climbing gear out of packs they were carrying. They formed a few groups and tied rope around themselves to stay together. The few martial artists in the group took the lead positions to start the climb and make it easier for everyone else to follow. They had the ability to jump higher, climb faster, and generally more strength to help pull everyone else up.

As they were tying themselves together, Adam found himself in the same group as Emery and Defoy. After Adam finished securing himself, he turned to Silber with a curious look. It would be much harder to find a good place to tie Silber together with everyone else. In addition to that; Silber, of course, did not have hands so he would not be able to utilize any hand holds... Silber took this time to tell Adam: “Beta, I will find my own path across the mountains!”

Adam was a little surprised: “Are you sure Silber?”

“It'll be fine! I can sniff any of those scouts out ahead of time and even if they see me, I can suppress my body again and they will only see a white wolf! They shouldn't guess I am with the army. It would also be far too undignified for me to just be dragged up that mountain!”

With that, Silber bounded off on his own. The guard were surprised to see Silber suddenly take off like that and looked to Adam for an explanation. They had no choice but accept it as Silber had already left and there was no way to get him back. They could only trust that Silber would not compromise their plan. They all then proceeded to climb the cliff. They climbed for three whole days before they finally found a safe spot where they could move across the mountain and descend down the other side, which took another three days. Adam had initially found climbing to be quite difficult but eventually got used to it. During the whole time, they would occasionally hear loud bangs and shouts as Waycrest assaulted Sagan Wall. If he just sat there waiting for Emery to do whatever it was that he was going to do, it was possible for Luxom to catch on, so he put up a token effort to distract them.

When they finally reached the bottom of the mountain, they found Silber already waiting for them! He gave a grin as he playfully wagged his tail and asked: “What took you so long?”

At the bottom of the mountain was another forested area that spread all the way to the gorge. Emery and the rest swiftly moved along the forest, using it as cover. They didn't rest as they needed to accomplish their task as swiftly as possible. They moved on until Sagan wall could be easily seen. They were still a fair distance away from the wall, but they were closer than the Heider army encampment was. Here they finally stopped as Emery said: “This should be close enough.”

Defoy then started issuing orders for the guards to spread out and ensure that no one approached, though he had Adam stay with Emery. Emery pulled a small black box out from his own pack and carefully opened it. Adam was shocked to find that his elemental sight could not see into the box, but when it opened a fast swath of death essence emanated out from the box! Adam took a step back from the sudden shock of all this death essence exploding out from the box. Inside the box was a twisted looking totem that all this death essence was emanating out from. Emery placed the totem on the ground and started to create formations with the totem as the center.

Silber really did not like the feeling of this death essence and there was something nagging him that he wanted to check out. He suddenly told Adam: “Beta, I'll be back!” as he took off before Adam could say a word.

Silber was running too fast for Adam to follow so he could only stay here by Emery wondering what both Emery and Silber were each doing. Over the course of the next few minutes, the formations Emery had created, which gave of eerie sounds only Adam could hear, started to suck in the surrounding spirit essence, seemingly to power the totem. Finally, Emery let out a heavy sigh as he finished his task. He looked more pale then usually as he said: “It is now under its own power, let's get out of here!”

The rest of the guards started to collect around Emery before they started to head back the way the came. Adam said: “Wait, what about Silber?”

Emery replied: “Silber should be able to take care of himself. Knowing how fast he is, I am sure he will escape what's next. If you go out to find him, though, you might get caught up in it! Don't worry, wherever he ran off to, I am sure he will be back.”

Adam looked off in the direction Silber ran as he thought: “Come back quick!”

Adam trusted Emery's words. He had set up the formation and knew what it entailed, so he believed Silber would be able to come back safe and sound. As Adam was leaving with the other guards, he started to notice those eerie sounds coming from the death formation started to form a complete song. The eerie song they formed almost seemed familiar to Adam, though he couldn't quite put his finer on it. Even as they left the area, the song of the totem grew as it became stronger from sucking in all the spirit essence around the area. Adam could continue to hear the song even thirty minutes after they left the area. At this time, Adam finally saw Silber running back towards them! Adam was excited to see him, but then saw the panic in Silber's soul! Adam thought: “What was going on?”

Silber had felt something was off since he couldn't smell as much of the metallic smell in the distance as he expected, for an encampment of soldiers. Given, they were still far from Sagan Wall, but to set up the formation there would mean that they were close to the edges of where the soldiers would reside. Silber went to check it out and what he found astonished him. He had to tell Adam since he knew Adam would feel regret after he found everything out. As he ran to Adam he shouted: “Beta, it's a city, an undefended city!”

Suddenly there was a sharp FWISH! As though air was being sucked somewhere. At that time Adam suddenly remembered back at Fort Erich he had heard an eerie tune very similar to the one he was hearing now! A huge BOOM! issued out as a gigantic black fire appeared where Emery had placed the totem!

[AN: Thank you for all the additional reviews, follows, and comments in general! I don't know that I can keep up this fast update period I have been having, but we will see =D]