The fighting inside Berlin was as fierce as can be. Mortals both young and old, male and female and ill and healthy fought desperately to defend the last stronghold of the Teutonian Knightly Junta from the insurmountable assault that had been leveled against it. Children as young as ten years of age fought alongside elderly widows, throwing stones and even bum-rushing the oncoming forces of Darksol with kitchen cutlery. It was a sad sight indeed, and one that need not have happened.

After the walls had fallen, the actual soldiers of the Knightly Junta had retreated deeper into the city. This meant that the only resistance that Darksol and its ‘allies’ had faced were civilians who had made piss poor attempts at being militia. At least some of the elderly men had been part of the military at some point in their lives, but they proved only slightly more of a challenge than the children and pre-teens that made up the bulk of the defense force.

As per Erwin Krueger’s final request, most of the children and pre-teens were spared and were merely captured. Kain and Alexis may have been cold, cruel and monstrous monarchs, but the fact that they now were parents had ever so slightly thawed their frozen hearts. It was a good Public Relations move to spare as many members of the militia as possible, and it was not like they needed to worry about the undead being killed by rebellious prisoners. With this policy in place, the twenty armies advance slower than usual through the cramped and maze-like buildings and piles of rubble.

It was only after surrounding the center of the city that the might of Darksol and its allies came into conflict with the elites of the Teutonian Knightly Junta. They were the elite bodyguard of the Leader himself, Dietrich Edelweiss, and they had been groomed from birth to be fanatically loyal to a fault. There was no going back for them, and there was no word for surrender in their vocabulary unless it referred to the surrender of their foes. Every single one of them would fight to the death to defend their beloved Leader, and they made sure everyone knew it.

Their position was, for the most part, unassailable by normal means. The defenders had collapsed the nine bridges that separated the heart of the city from the rest of the festung. This meant that there were only two main ways to reach the last line of defense. One was to make a set of bridges and use them to connect the sections together, but this would create bottlenecks that the Knights could use to slow and possibly even halt progress. Another option was to try and ford the canals that separated the center from the rest of the city, but that too would be costly and time consuming as it would require boats to be made and would give the Knights time to prepare.

Kain and Alexis were of the same mind as Alistaira and Erwin. They unanimously rejected either one of the two options available and decided to forge their own path. The already dark sky quickly became even darker as Fel Bats and Hell Bats, their much larger cousins from the second Tier, swarmed down from the clouds and began to harass the Knights of the Teutonian Knightly Junta. As the massive winged beasts slammed into the heavy infantry from the front, another group would circle around and impact them from behind.

Gnashing teeth and minor Blood Magic quickly dropped the numbers of the defending Knights, but the Bats were eventually beaten back. This initial assault had cost the defenders roughly 10% of their forces but had cost the bats roughly 67% of their own number. The knights here were certainly a cut above the rabble elsewhere.

Unfortunately for the Knights, the bats could be easily replaced, unlike their own number. But while the bats now made feints and fluttered just out of reach, the second prong of the attack was underway. The Naga that had caused such havoc near the waterways began to slink up from the murky waters and go on the offensive. While they were less armored than the Knights, they had tougher bodies than them and had greater strength and magical potential. Their job was, like the Fel Bats and Hell Bats, to buy time, lower the enemy’s numbers and divert attention from the third and final prong of the attack.

The undead of Alistaira’s armies marched forwards and began to lay down a series makeshift bridges for the rest of the armies to use. There were still just enough Knights available for the Knightly Junta to deploy on the far side of the ruined bridges, but their numbers were now far fewer than what they were before. The other forces were doing their job and stalling the Knights quite well. On the side of the canals controlled by Darksol, Crypt Guard Riflemen and Skeletal Mages let loose volley after volley into the forces defending the side controlled by the Knightly Junta. Their fire found its mark and the Knights began to drop in numbers even faster than before.

As time passed it soon became clear that the forces of the Knightly Junta were doomed, but the fanatical zeal and extreme loyalty of the Knights prevented any of them from turning tail or yielding to their enemy. Even as casualties reached 58%, they still held strong and endured the assaults from the Bats, Naga and Undead. After three long and grueling hours of work, the makeshift bridges were complete and the forces of Darksol, Neo Albion and the Greater Teutonian Union State began the march across the newly constructed paths.

As was expected, the bridges became bottlenecks, allowing the defenders to hold back the combined forces of the Darksol Empire for considerably longer than would normally be possible. However, not all crossings were being made by mere Crypt Guard, some were instead being made by the midnight aristocracy. To be fair, those vampires who were participating in this war were not the older generation, but instead were the younger vampires who had not yet reached three hundred years of age. They were considered teenagers and children by the older generation, and like aristocratic teenager and childrens they had a powerful drive to prove themselves and earn glory not just for themselves but for their House.

The ones most prevalent on the field were those of House Dracones, the most militant of the Five Great Houses, but there were more adventurous members of the other Houses participating in their own way. With the vampires pushing through one of the bottlenecks by the merits of pure power and magic, they quickly began to spill into the last line of defense for the Knightly Junta. When the first breach was made by the vampires it sent ripples through both the Darksol Imperial Military, its allies and the Knights of the Knightly Junta.

The Knights knew that they now had a good chance of being outflanked, and thus made the wisest choice they were willing to make. The Knights did not retreat from the other skirmishes and instead made a ‘Tactical Withdrawal’ from their current engagements. Darksol and its allies began to give chase, but after Erwin Krueger had a flash of inspiration, they halted their pursuit.

…

The Knights prepared to defend the final stronghold to the last man. They were not particularly religious, mostly due to the Teutonian Knightly Junta’s ever-increasing shift away from faith and towards secularism, but for the first time since they were inducted into the ranks of the Leader’s bodyguard, they sought out the guidance of one of the few clergy hiding in the citadel. The priest did his best to comfort and inspire them, however he would only do so much for the ranks of godless fools who only sought the grace of the goddess when in a difficult situation.

The priest gave a sermon to the collective mass of Knights who, to their credit, stopped themselves from killing him when he called their Leader and their nation a, “Land of godlessness and sin, where the grace of the goddess has been lost.” The sermon was more a condemnation of their secularism than it was a uplifting experience, as the priest proclaimed that the state their nation was in was due to their own godlessness and lack of devotion to the goddess.

It took all they had to keep from committing a murder, but eventually the sermon ended as the priest realized that he was not going to get any repentance from the Knights, only anger and rage. The Knights barricaded doors and windows and tried to create as many bottlenecks as possible. They waited for the attack from the undead and traitors to come as they sung aloud the national anthem of the Teutonian Knightly Junta, only to hear the sound of singing from outside as well. The two sides sung their national anthems and the final assault began.