Corvayne hefted Bell up onto his hover-cycle, grabbing a bit of her wrist with muddy gloves to make sure she could get aboard. The woman was getting used to riding around now, and considering that she looked dead on her feet and was covered in dirt and sand, Corvayne expected a quiet ride back to the keep. It was probably noon, and they had been working all through the previous day and well into the night to get the battlefield prepared, only taking a short break when it got too dark for everyone aside from Corvayne.

Behind them the ground was a muddy mess with a sprinkling of rocks for good measure. Terrible to march through, worthless for building on, and depending on if more rain came impossible to even mount siege weapons on. To a random observer, it might look like the patches were just willy-nilly mud spots, with some burnt fields and deforestation near the walls to prevent foraging from the oncoming army. Corvayne knew well that what he had seen at the farming village was what many of the locations along the way would face and that starving the attacking army was unlikely, so that wasn't why some areas were burnt to a crisp and churned mud, and a few key points were untouched fields.

He took his place on the inner wall, checking the multitude of weapons Mosh had prepared for them. Three guns, including his trusty standard assault rifle and over a thousand bullets, a 'hunting rifle' with a hundred high powered rounds and a scope that looked like it had been made out of a spare headlight, as well as an over-under machine gun with a grenade launcher with sixteen grenades and sixteen hundred rounds... he wasn't sure how the goblin could mass produce them in a day or if Grunt had stockpiled more ammo than Corvayne had assumed... they also gave him a rocket launcher with twenty rockets, and a nice collection of grenades and three magic items called 'Blood-Seeker Javelins' which Spears had found and thought Corvayne might like.

Bell was on the inner wall as well. She had wanted to go down and lead near the front, which Corvayne strongly urged her was something that one didn't do in wars you wanted to be alive to win. So instead she had been set up with a pair of assault rifles, five hundred shots or so in clips strapped to her, and instructions to wait until the first walls were breached to start firing.

Spears had a pistol and a chamber loaded rifle that had a bandana wrapped around it. Corvayne saw her putting bullets inside her self, making a sort of squelching sound as they entered her clear fluid body, then pulling them out and putting them into a clip. He wasn't sure why, but he also hadn't fought along side her since they pulled her out.

“Are you sure you want to be here, Spears?”

The slime woman nodded. “I scouted while you were sleeping. There's fires along the coast north, towns burning.”

Corvayne frowned and nodded. “I have my doubts, but when in error? Side with the guy not starting farms on fire.”

The gates had been shut and he could see a few riders in black coming up to the open ground outside of arrow range. The riders were not yet willing to risk getting too close to the village left hugging the walls, instead ranging to see about going around town, staying well out of the way of bow-shot and moving past leafless trees that grew between fields.

Ignoring them, Corvayne watched the irregulars stream into the clearing, with only a few foolish members of the horde running ahead to try to check the outer town for loot, or perhaps to look for cover there. Spears looked like she was thinking about pegging one, but pulled her rifle back as archers on the first wall caused most of the would-be attackers to fall back.

Corvayne went back to watching troops assemble. There were some wagons here and there, but it looked like The Ravens army was out-ranging it's supplies. If they couldn't bulldoze the town, they'd have to set up a long line of materials coming from wherever they hadn't killed all the farmers. That or they had Tower entrances they knew of, but Corvayne had a hunch from his fight at the village that only a handful of the soldiers had any levels worth mentioning. Lord Kerrington hadn't heard of a Tower entrance in town, even when Corvayne explained what they were checking for.

Which was good if there were none, and bad if they didn't know about it. Corvayne wasn't eager to be the first person to get flanked in another dimension by a whole army. Magic space warping panthers or dogs? Perfectly fine. A bunch of criminals? No thanks.

He perked to attention as the growing army parted to let someone through. A sort of cart pulled by black horses, flanked by troopers on what looked like small drakes with eyeless mantis faces, and some sort of tether running between them covered in cloth. Given the wings and sturdy harnesses, Corvayne assumed that the army had airborne troops, which was an annoyance or possibly a crippling problem for the defenders, depending on how bullet-resistant the monsters were.

Looking at the cart with his binoculars, Corvayne saw a man sitting on a throne in a pose particular pose; one hand supporting his chin, the other tapping the arm rest, legs crossed. A way to project boredom, dominance, and impatience. Corvayne thought the only thing missing was a wine glass to swirl... ah there was someone bringing him one. He saw the fellow with the wine glass hesitate about ten feet from the man, and so the leader gestured and Corvayne saw the fellow set the glass down and The Raven walked over to it and picked it up, then toasted his army with a gleaming white smile. All of it done with a sort of self assurance that this was a party, and he was having fun.

Corvayne tried to not degrade his enemies but he got the sense that he'd hate this person even if they were not leading an army to destroy innocent lives.

A giant black banner hung behind the man, and while guiding his binoculars up Corvayne's mind snapped on a detail that he found very odd. The black banner was three letters under a red raven with a bloody beak. N.V.G. He put his gun down a moment and walked over to Bell.

“Bell, can you read?”

She set her gun down and put her hands away from it, then turned and slapped his arm. “What sort of knavish question are you asking me when I am about to enter a life and death struggle? Is this some sort of stupid mental training? I've been doing COUNTING exercises to-”

She got quiet when he held a hand up, and took a deep breath. Corvayne used the moment to hand her the binoculars. “I want you to look at his banner, and tell me what you see.”

Bell then got a 10 second crash course in the basics of binoculars, after which she got a 20 second crash course on how to actually find something when correctly using binoculars. She pulled them down. “I see a man on a throne, one that looks like some sort of tacky sword throne with ravens and swords. No class, what kind of idiot wants to put their ass on blades? They have a banner with geometric patterns under a raven chewing blood, which is imposing but ravens don't really kill things, they are scavengers.”

“You said a pattern, and not letters, correct?”

She looked again, then handed him the binoculars.

“The middle one might be a U, but it would be a backwards Ghlu, sharp U, then a poorly drawn Cheh.”

Corvayne frowned. “That, or The Raven is from the same place I am.”

He pulled his binoculars up and looked at the army. If they had guns or cannons, this was going to go south very fast, even with his own surprises primed.

The man gestured, and two donkey driven carts with a patchwork set of huge batteries and two big speakers rolled up in front of him. If Corvayne had questions about The Raven being from a higher techo society, the man pulling a microphone out and tapping it, and the accompanying burst of sound answered them.

“A freaking outworlder?” Corvayne groaned.

He started looking at the man with more attention to detail as a projected voice was audible at his spot on the wall. “Attention!”

The speakers caused a few of the bandits he had as his army to fall over, Corvayne suspecting that he hadn't bothered to give the men holding their heads ear protection. He could hear a bit of an accent to his speech, and he stopped and stumbled picking Nel'Ferral words.

“Greetings, men, and fewtreur subjects! I have come to offe, offer you... ma- mercy! Lay down your alms, open zah gate, and surreif, sureeif... Give up, and my men will stay the hands! That, or have me crush...” He stopped and Corvanye guessed made a crushing gesture, then said the next part very smoothly. “Crush your walls, burn your keep, break your women and pretty men into corpses, and reduce your life and entire world to a layer of ash.”

He let the mic fall to about chest height as the man looked up, then Corvayne saw him think for a moment.

“I will give you an hour to wave a white flag, otter vice... otter wise die.”

Spears looked over at Corvayne. “Do you want me to just pin-point kill him?”

Corvayne shook his head. “Zoom in on him. He's got a shield belt, impulsors, and a-grav anklets. Can't rocket him, snipe him, or drown him in mud... easily.”

“What's your plan?” Spears asked, frowning. “I see fliers too.”

“Let him advance. I hope he does.” Corvayne shrugged. “If he has modern artillery, we run. From what I heard though, he used regular siege weapons on the wall north of here, the magic one that could have wiped his entire cohort out. If it doesn't work or we run out of tricks, we run.”

“What's your plan for the next hour?” Spears turned and wiggled her slime eyebrows at him.

Corvayne sighed and looked at the army. “Waiting to see if he's going to set up a siege weapon.”

The man on the throne made a gesture and a woman came out and sat on his lap. For some reason, this annoyed Corvayne and he suspected it was because it reminded him that Wick had flipped on him, and that Hari was weirdly sticking by Wick. It wasn't just that either... Corvayne felt was something off putting about the way they were flirting, both theatrical and a little manic, and Corvayne went back to looking for where the trick was, or for artillery to show up, or to see a bomber coming in, or a stealth glider.

After fifty minutes of waiting, it was clear that he wasn't going to bother with catapults, and Corvayne had been scanning for signs of artillery, such as spotters, radios, or even places that they could be set up without being seen from the wall, and he was stumped. At the very least, if they had guns and were placing them in the woods that Corvayne had visited, they'd only get a few shots off.

The man picked up his microphone. “Fine Minutes. Five. Five minutes! Tick Tock!”

Spears twitched. “I want to shoot this guy.”

Lord Kerrington was on his balcony, and a robed figure cast a spell on a horn and handed it to the lord. “We have unanimously agreed... to reject you and your terms. We know what you've done north of the wall.”

Corvayne was watching The Raven. The man rolled his eyes, and bit the girl on his lap's ear, causing her to panic and run off the throne. The man spit something out and wiped his chin, then grabbed a parcel out of what Corvayne swore was a cooler. He unwrapped something red, then shoved it to his mouth and chewed. Then he reached over beside the throne and pulled out what looked like a giant crystal sex toy.

Corvayne snorted, and almost missed as the device grew a bright white, then realized what was happening and dove over Bell. He saw Spears melt herself down behind a parapet, then he covered his own head.

Through his eyelids he saw bright light and there was a burning sensation, and when Corvayne blinked his eyes back to seeing and looked, the keep and Lord Kerrington were just gone, as was a huge circular section of wall both coming and going through town.

The air was shimmering with not heat, but something like gaseous sunburn that glittered with a rainbow of colors and hurt to breath tremendously. It was starting to dissipate as Corvayne got off The Princess.

She stood and looked, and her look wasn't fear, or anger, but a sort of helpless confusion. “How, what...”

Bell was blinking, looking totally lost. “Corvayne, that... that was one of the Imperial Arms! He has the royal power!”

He looked at his rocket launcher and put it back in his storage ring. “We're going to need a bigger gun.” Corvayne said, watching as a horde of men started charging for the gap.