Rayes looked out across the rows of trenches carved into the valley floor. He ducked back down quickly.

"How is it out there?" Taicha asked him.

A negative headshake. "It's not looking good," he told her.

She leaned into him, somehow managing to smell nice despite the walls of dirt surrounding them and clinging to her Guard uniform. An echo of her worry moved him to return her hug.

"There's too many to count out there. "

"And this is just the vanguard," Taicha added. Her closed eyes said everything that she didn't state out loud. There would be many who would not live past this day. And if they didn't stop the zombies here, no one would.

"Oi, you two lovebirds, pay attention!" the yell came from further along the trench.

Rayes stepped away guiltily, noting the grins on his squadmates' faces. "Yes, lieutenant," he saluted awkwardly. Right hand to the left shoulder with fingers held straight. He missed a little.

"I'm a sergeant," grunted the big gruff man, "lieutenant is one rank too high. "

Rayes bowed in apology. All these new ranks and saluting was weird and they had barely a week to get used to the changes before being asked to perform an impossible march to a border fort.

And now to face what must be every zombie north of the Snow Wall coming at them.

"We're expecting the zombies to begin the charge soon," the sergeant said to the entire squad, looking over the row of men and women standing in a long hole in the ground. He let his gaze linger on the group of nervous knights, a relatively new party, attached to them. "What lies behind us is every man, woman and child in the Central Territory! Past Fort Yang, it's all flat plains and open ground. If we fail here, we all die. Everyone behind us will die. Everyone you care about in Minmay will die. Those monsters have to be stopped here. "

The older man's gaze swept over them. Rayes gulped. They all knew the stakes, but hearing it stated out loud stiffened his resolve.

"This is just the first round, you have your positions. Get to it," the sergeant dismissed them.

A cold hand slipped into his. Taicha's palm was sweaty with nervousness. Squeezing her hand, he wished he could reassure her more.

"After we get back to Minmay, will you marry me?"

Rayes jerked his head around to look at the woman clinging to his side. She stared into his eyes seriously.

"I will. " If they got out of this alive.

The first salvo of pure light arrowed in. And plowed into the high earthen berms. The flashes of energy threw sand into the air with little puffs of exploding soil. Here and there, panicked yells echoed as the humans ducked into their trenches. Rare lucky hits sent people screaming to the floor.

"Fire back! Fire!"

"Deploy mist screen!"

Immediately, a curtain of blurry air appeared just in front of the trenches. Sharp reports blasted back at the zombies as Guards and knights manning the defense line returned fire. The glowing curtain hanging in front of them cut visibility drastically, the salvoes of light beams scattering into blinding glares that flashed over and over.

Through the tiny gaps in the mist screen, the spotters looked through binoculars. All of them reported the same thing.

The zombies were lining up into semicircle formations, blocking sight of the shooters. The light beams came from the center of each group. With agonizing slowness, the individual groups of zombies began to walk forwards through the battlefield. The few hits the humans scored caused holes to appear, knocking down a zombie here and there. But the zombies packed around the shooters simply shuffled to fill in the holes, sacrificing themselves like armour. The wave of zombies following behind swallowed up the bodies, no doubt to reanimate them.

"Aim sector 10-3!" "- sector 11-4!"

As the marker flags were passed, the observers began to call the shots. The few witnesses to the Hero's great victory in the Silvan Gap had reported the principle and the Minmay Guards had appropriated it.

Magic began to build as crystals and charged staffs were fed to the cannons. Immediately, the light beams changed targets. Instead of pounding indiscriminately, they all focused onto a single spell cannon near the center.

The concentrated blast shone brighter than the sun for a single instant. Then the magic in the spell cannon exploded out as the entire device began to melt. Screams filled the air as entire bodies flashed into flame. Fusing sand popped and fizzled as it cooled in the open air.

Despite the shock that ran through the trenches, the waterfall of mist closed back after being rudely torn open. The other spell cannons up and down the line still built their charges and still slammed out the massive bolts of pure disruption magic. The soldiers turned their eyes back towards the blurry black line marching towards them with renewed grimness.

Blasts from the spell cannons tore through the zombies, knocking them down like puppets with cut strings. The oppressive haze of hostile magic around the battlefield lifted a little before returning with a vengeance.

Another exchange played out like the previous one. The spell cannons charged again, and again the zombies poured their combined fire onto a single point, blasting the curtain of mist aside.

"Spell cannons stand down!"

The order was shouted across the line.

Erin, the commander of Fort Yang and therefore the overall commander of this defence, glared out at the zombies from her little command post. A small artificial hill with sloping piles of earth on three sides just in front of the stone walls of the Fort Yang itself.

"How are they doing that?" Erin asked the advisor standing with her. The Minmay Guard commander shrugged.

"They're targeting our spell cannons," Curasym stated. Uselessly. After two exchanges, everyone had figured that out and the crews were understandably nervous. If the zombies had learned that spell cannons were dangerous and also how to concentrate fire to get through the mist curtain...

"They're not targeting spell cannons," said the man standing at the back of the dugout.

The two commanders looked at him, and immediately noticed the weird armour he had. Thin leather everywhere except for an iron helm. That was beyond strange. Erin glanced at her counterpart. "Who is this?" she asked the Minmay commander.

"I'm with the Special Effects team," the mystery man said, not waiting for his superior. He saluted her crisply, "my name is Denno. "

That salute meant he was from the Guard too. Erin was about to ask what he was doing in the commanders' post but recalled a more important matter. "Why do you think they're not targeting our spell cannons?" she asked.

"The zombies probably sense the magic from the spell cannons. We know they have a magic sense from the University experiments, it makes sense," Denno said with a shrug, "we should test that before we start relying on it. "

Testing the enemy capability sounded like a good idea. Erin needed every edge she could get. Then the second part of his sentence caught up with her. "What do you mean relying on it?"

"If they like to shoot powerful sources, we just give them a target. The earthworks are doing well against the light beams even without mist protection. I have a shield projector that creates a magic mist wall, if my people make it create multiple layers of mist, that should survive a test and serve as bait," Denno said.

"Take one of the spell cannon pits and let's test that theory," Erin said. Denno saluted again and left.

The two commanders looked out over the battlefield once more. The snaps and cracks of guns and bowguns echoed between the walls of the valley, straining against a tide of light, both sides not achieving much.

"An odd man," Erin noted lightly.

"Please don't ask me what goes on in his head, I wouldn't know either," Curasym said, "but I do know that his company of ex-knights has direct authority from Minmay to operate independently to test new magical weapons. Cato gave him a small wagon train. "

"Ah, so that's why they're called Special Effects. I was wondering. "

"They say that name comes from Cato," Curasym winced, "they also say he was slightly drunk when he said it and the name stuck. Apparently Denno likes it. "

"That's not funny," she said mildly.

Curasym just shrugged apologetically, "Cato likes the crazy ones. What can I say?"

Erin stared out at the... not so bloody battlefield. She could already see the trenches were the right thing to do, despite her initial reservations. Cato had good ideas, she had to admit. That didn't mean she was about to forgive him if he pushed crazy staff on her. One mad alchemist was bad enough, she didn't need more of them.

Denno chewed on a half-eaten loaf of bread as he watched his company set up the equipment for the bait.

Frankly, he was quite sure of his theory so he was just going to go ahead with creating a berm right in the center of the line. He nodded at the two summoners waiting behind him and the stones on their arms lit up to spawn ghostly Swords.

The Swords flashed forwards into the front wall of the trench and began to shovel the dirt outwards. The flat planes of force had both cutting power and lifting strength, which made them perfect shovels. He ignored the slightly scandalized gazes from the trench to his left and right.

The mist wall in front of him died suddenly and a trio of beams flashed overhead. More puffs of soil from above indicated that the zombies were targeting them.

That was probably the Swords, Denno mused.

He hummed a catchy bar song as the summoners continued to shovel dirt with their four Swords. In a few minutes, the trench had been widened sufficiently for the diagram to be laid out over the thorndown canvas.

Ah, a work of beauty if he had ever seen one. One of the soldiers carried a power box in and sat it in the center.

This magic circle ran from the inside out. Rather than focusing the power into the center to enchant an object, this circle created a spell that created magical mist in a ring around the outside of the circle. By shifting the points supplied with magic, one controlled the distance and angles that were protected.

A portable shield if you would. One that you could just roll up and walk away with. Despite the extremely unorthodox nature, this wasn't one of the things Special Effects had been asked to test. The principles were solid enough.

Denno nodded at the two men standing in the center of the circle, power box and shovel at the ready. In a moment, the magical power flashed out along the circle, deploying into a wall of mist. Most of the power was held back, building up as if a spell cannon was charging for a shot.

A heartbeat or two later, the very air above them was filled with a coruscating brilliance. The thick layered mist scattered and refracted the light beams across a huge area, filling the sky above their little section of trench and leaving black spots dancing in their eyes.

They didn't die, which was always a good thing.

Denno blinked back the spots only for the sky to light up again. And again. The flashes were less than a second apart, rendering vision completely useless. Denno gave up trying to squint and tied a handkerchief around his helm's eye slit, the light was still bright enough to see through his eyelids and impromptu blindfold. But not blinding anymore. The lines of the circle was still visible in his magic sense of course, the box in the center shining with power.

"Blindfolds! Everyone enchant the ground below you!" Denno bellowed over the panicked yelling from the neighbouring trenches.

He bent down to follow his own advice and soon enough, patches of ground began to appear, little clouds of weak magic bound to the soil. It was fuzzy but better than nothing. That said, all his tools were slightly enchanted with a different pattern to differentiate them, so he could still work blind. How wonderful. His backup plan to keep working after burning his eyebrows off was actually useful. And they called him paranoid!

"All right, listen up!" Denno called, watching the enchanted helms of the team turn to face him. In magic sense, the leather armours of the team glowed with a clear number for each person in the team. The smaller the number, the higher in the chain of command they were.

"We're probably drawing most of the fire from those zombies so I don't think we'll get much seeing done today. On the bright side, nothing's going to survive upstairs so we probably don't have to worry about zombies falling on our heads," Denno rapped his helm for emphasis. That got a round of laughter.

"So since the zombies have so kindly agreed not to attack us, I say this is the perfect spot for us to set up our Special Effects. "

The team ignored the screaming that was still coming from their neighbours. Okay, not funny. But he was being serious.

"Summoners, the dirt up there is going to get really hot and I'd much prefer to stay cool down here, which won't happen if the zombies blast it all away. Dig two trenches backwards and dump the soil in front. Try not to pour burning sand on anyone," Denno said, shooing them off.

They turned and began to tear into the back wall of the trench, enchanting bits of soil as they went.

"The rest of us are going to set up our catapults. Oh, the two of you keep the mist generator fat and happy," Denno waved a hand and the team began to run along the trenches, finding places to exit the trench to the supply line where they wouldn't exit into a canopy of burning air.

Rayes peeked through the observation tubes. Hollow wooden tubes that ran from their trench out through the shield of mist, they let the observer see through the hazy protection.

This of course carried some risk. It was a terminally bad idea to look through one if you could see the glow of a charging shooter in it, but of course, the people looking wouldn't stick around in case the tube got hit. Now though, the vast majority of the light beams concentrated on the center of the trench line where a multilayered mist shield was continually regenerated by a spell cannon level power source.

"Two hits!" he called, after the squad fired another salvo. "They're still walking to us!"

"Reload!" the sergeant shouted from behind them.

He gave Taicha a look he hoped was reassuring. She smiled back at him and reloaded her gun. A new model, that enchanted the bullet with a powerful shield penetrating spell, it also came with a bayonet fixed below the barrel. The bullets it fired flew so fast and was so heavily enchanted with Resist that they could blow apart stone walls. The hits from the new model gun was obvious by the way the zombie simply exploded.

All the power made little difference when hits were hard to score through the mist.

Taicha slid the bullet into the back of the firing groove and levered down the catch that held the bullet in place. It also triggered the gun to enchant the bullet, a process that completed in a second or two. She stepped up and put her gun back over the top of the trench.

"Fire!"

A salvo of cracks sent the bullets hurtling at the black blob in front of them. Rayes, through the front tube, saw the zombies in the front of the pack explode. "Three!" he shouted.

The commander's voice was even and calm, as if they were at drill. He didn't get to use the voice this time, the flare of magic began to build behind the lines distracted everyone. The light beams also seemed to be distracted, a few playing out over the trench line and lighting up the mist with bright spots.

Then all at once, the magic building up in the pits behind the trenches were flung upwards and over their heads. With simple wooden devices called catapults, the enchanted stone loads sailed over the trenches and into the zombie army. Each line of trenches had their own, the devices twice the size of a man didn't have sufficient range to fire from the back. Rayes hurriedly ducked down to peer into his observation tubes.

The stones exploded upon contact with the black mist, shattering into a shower of shards that shredded zombies and mowed down great holes in the shuffling mass. The waves of searing light heading their way faltered for a moment before renewing itself. The zombies shuffled around to close the holes before resuming their march.

Rayes relayed what he saw and the commander passed it up the chain.

The next wave of catapult launches came after two more rounds of plinking away with guns. This one was much more accurate, since Rayes and other observers had relayed the locations of the first salvo. There were more than twenty catapults and this was joined by a mystery three from under the bombardment of light that was the bait team.

The effect was immediate and devastating. Overlapping circles of shrapnel obliterated the entire front rank of the zombie army. The squads of zombies protecting the shooters that were impossible for inaccurate guns to pierce were swept away in an orgy of destruction that churned the soil to mud. The three from the bait team were even worse. They were clusters of much smaller balls, lit with a cloying sticky fire that rained down from the sky. The shower of balls hit the zombies on their section of front, leaving burning trails and flaming bodies behind them. Then the balls bounced, flung back into the sky by the imbued magic only to land on another section and spreading the burning liquid further. The center of the zombie formation disappeared into a flaming nightmare.

The line of zombies behind rippled. If Rayes hadn't known better, he would have sworn the zombies were shocked.

Then the zombies began to charge.

Rayes stabbed upwards with his bayonet, skewering the paka zombie in the front leg. He slashed outwards and ripped the blade clear, tearing through what should have been the muscle and crippling the animal.

The zombie didn't seem to care that it shouldn't be able to move. The big animal kicked at him and reached down towards him with its mouth. Rayes barely managed to fend off the strikes of the hooves when there was a loud crack of a gun firing beside him and the front half of the paka exploded into rotten gore.

Rayes nodded his thanks at Taicha, then immediately leveled his gun to shoot at the human zombie dropping into the trench behind her. She spun around, her hands still loading automatically, just in time to spring aside from the falling body.

The zombie charge had simply ridden over the minefield they had planted. Exploding boulders and those strange casks handled only by that special team. The explosions had torn great craters into the ground, throwing chunks of zombies high into the sky, to rain back down on the battlefield like a macabre festival. Much reduced, the zombies charged past the mist shield and reached the front lines.

With the shooters so heavily destroyed by the catapult strike, the zombies seemed to have changed back to their mass attack tactics.

Rayes didn't have the time to appreciate that though. The zombies were pouring in and his entire world was turning into cut, stab, shoot, reload. With constant panic. And screaming. Lots of screaming. Another zombie appeared, he cut it down with a practiced slash that powered through the ribcage. A tiny piyo zombie was crushed underfoot. Another human one was exploded by the sergeant.

The zombies above their trench were swept away as someone behind them fired a spell cannon at point blank range. The entire front of their trench disappeared, blown away by the massive forcebolt. The zombies now had a clear line down to them and they charged over the steep slope, tumbling and flailing all the way down.

The zombies were blurring into each other. Rayes floated amidst the carnage, as if he was watching a play or a story of his own body cutting zombies into chunks, not even hearing the screams of dying soldiers next to him.

He stepped on a piyo zombie and smashed the butt of his gun into the thing, squashing out a rotten pulp onto the trench floor. The trigger clicked as he tried to fire. The shortened steel staff on his back was dry.

He kicked the body away and glanced upwards.

And there were no more zombies.

Rayes immediately looked around and found Taicha. Not caring about the bits of zombie on him, or the shards of bone sticking on her sleeve, he ran over and hugged her. She squeezed him back, both of them wordless out of sheer relief.

"Forwards, check the bodies, kill any that move," the sergeant ordered and they broke up.

Taicha smiled at him, and Rayes could feel it echoed on his face. "You're safe?" he asked.

"Some scratches, and my arm's a bit sore," Taicha shrugged, "you?"

"Nothing, maybe a twisted ankle," Rayes said.

They grinned, still awash with relief. Taicha almost casually stabbed down with her bayonet, piercing a zombie struggling to get out of a pile of still bodies and limbs. Rayes helped her hack it apart and they moved forwards with the rest of the squad, climbing out of their trench. He noted dully how they were much fewer than before. Less than half were still standing, although others were dragging casualties to the back lines.

He crested the top of the steep slope that was now the front of their trench and gaped out at the battlefield.

What was once a grassy lakeside valley floor was now a blasted landscape. Deep holes from the mines dotted the ground, interspersed between the shallower ones caused by the exploding catapult balls. Pulped masses of zombies built into small hills where the final charge had suffered heavily against the close range slaughter of their guns. The fires caused by those three special catapults were still burning in their own pits, a cloud of oily smoke climbing into the sky. The lake itself was getting a coating of floating zombie bits.

In the center was a huge glassy crater, the fused sand at the center still glowing with heat. That had to be the Tempest Bolt ritual summon from the crowd of spell storms behind them. Funny how Rayes had barely even noticed it going off in his frenzy to just reload and reload and reload, trying to keep the swarms of zombies reaching their trench.

The trench line stood out in sharp relief. On one side, lines of orderly holes, with strategically placed pits, piled walls of soil and sand. Bits of grass where the ground hadn't been disturbed too much still existed. On the other side, utter chaos and destruction. There wasn't even anything recognizable remaining of the original valley.

Taicha was crying beside him and Rayes put an arm around her shoulder, still feeling numb at the sight.

"It's only going to get worse," their sergeant said, standing beside them.

Rayes looked at him and noted mutely how even the sergeant's steel-like toughness seemed to be disturbed.

"Come on, we need to bury more mines and burn the bodies. We're going to be putting more holes in this ground again, come six hours time, if the commanders are right. "

Erin looked up at the artificial star. The fuming glowing spark in the sky shed a glare over the twilight ground, illuminating the zombies for all to see. The cracks, screams and slaughter seemed far off, insulated from the two commanders by the lines of trenches. But to turn night into day with these artificial stars, Erin was seeing firsthand how the University was changing warfare just as much as it was changing industry.

She had expected disaster when the main army hit their lines at night. Night battles used to be melee scrums. Formations, fancy tactics and most ranged magic, none of that worked without being able to see your opponent. Hence attacking under cover of darkness was one of the few areas in which the Minmay Guards were weak in. Not anymore it seemed.

"Just how many tricks do they have?" she asked Curasym.

The Minmay commander shrugged, "most of them are very new and limited in number. "

"I'd say the non-magical mines are the worst," Erin grumbled. Those things were hard to see, unlike magical ones, and just as dangerous. That explosive powder was still a secret formulation but Erin already wanted it.

Ominously, Curasym shook his head. "Then you haven't seen what they can do," he said grimly.

"What can they do?"

"... Let's hope you don't have to find out," Curasym said.

Erin glanced at him again but didn't find any words to say.

A new wave of artificial stars were flung upwards from the special catapults, the last of the trio got caught when the zombies poured light into the depressed mist creating magic circle. It exploded into a fireball that rose into the sky and exploded. The remaining two were enough to light the front line of the zombies however.

To think that so few people, barely thirty, could tilt the battlefield in their favour. What would happen when all of these innovations spread out into the rest of the Guard? Erin shuddered and made a mental note never to join up with Ektal.

"Are we going to run out of ammunition?" Erin asked as the glowing green serpent climbed into the sky yet again.

Curasym waited for the echoing roar of the thunder to die away before answering. "We had enough for a hundred Tempest Bolts," Curasym said, "so I thought that would be enough but I'm not so sure anymore. The compression engines are running full tilt behind us, we're even burning our food to squeeze out every last drop of magic we can. "

Both of them looked at the twisting cloud of magic hovering just outside their frontlines. Erin wondered if that cloud was what the Minmay Firestorm had looked like.

"The zombies have started charging, we'll have to give the retreat signal soon," Curasym said.

Erin nodded.

The notes of the trumpet barely registered on Taicha as she blasted the head off another zombie reki. The harsh white glare of the flares above threw sharp shadows across the broken ground, Rayes's right leg was barely visible from under the deep shadow of the fallen reki. His leg twitched and the guardswoman let out a sigh of relief.

"Come on!" she shouted, tugging on his arm and stabbing a zombie human with her bayonet.

Taicha screamed as another reki climbed over the bodies in front of them, "get up you fat oaf! Or I swear I'm going to die here next to you!"

Groaning, her partner struggled out from under the body and flailed wildly at the reki. His bayonet caught on its body, the gun fired and blew out its chest.

"Help," he grunted, choking down his pain, "my leg's broken. "

"Taicha! Didn't you hear the retreat!" the sergeant shouted at her, firing into the squirming mass on the other side of their trench.

"Rayes has a broken leg!" she shouted back, "I'm not leaving him!"

The sergeant looked at her, reloading without even looking at his gun. "Good luck," turning to leave, he left them there alone.

A spell cannon blast zoomed past them and blew back the zombies, flattening the deadly glowing shooter. Somewhere ahead, there was a crashing shatter announcing another wave of the exploding balls. She stabbed and shredded another zombie in front of her and saw a chance.

Taicha hunched over, walling out the noise, focusing on a bubble of their immediate surroundings. The zombies were thinned by the last salvo. She had to get him out of here now.

With a shove, she pushed the body of the reki off Rayes. Draping one of his arms around her shoulder, Taicha dragged him up into a standing position.

"Let's go. " Her voice was not as determined as she would like it to be.

Rayes grinned weakly at her. His gun swung up under her chin, holding the barrel with his hand on her shoulder. Looping the conduit wire around his free arm... he was actually reloading it!

Taicha growled back at him and hobbled forwards, ignoring his hiss of pain as his broken foot dragged over the ground. Left, right, one more step, and yet another. The ground ahead of them lit up brightly as the second line's flares began to light up the area around the first trench. The zombies were already coming back.

The crazy Guard leaning on her shoulder turned his head and fired his gun backwards. More than one crack sounded, the others from ahead of her. Taicha hoped they wouldn't be mistaken for a zombie and shot in this chaos. Fortunately, this salvo didn't hit them.

She stepped forwards as Rayes fumbled with his gun again, trying to reload it one handed. Two shots later, he shook his head, "I'm out of bullets and magic power. "

Taicha wanted to scream at him to shut up. His leg was broken and he was still trying to fight the zombies! But she blinked away her tears and said through clenched teeth, "take mine. I still have a few. "

He didn't get to. Rayes hissed again and pointed ahead of them. "Watch it! That's the minefield!"

Taicha gulped, almost missing the little red flags making the safe path. Hefting Rayes into a better position, she nodded as they moved between the flags that would take them past the danger zone.

A patter of dead feet behind them and a spell cannon blast zooming just overhead reminded her that the zombies were catching up. "We're not going to make it at this rate," she muttered, more to herself than to Rayes.

"No, we will make it!" Rayes growled, "you, and me! Let's run, call it!"

On a broken leg?! Taicha glanced worriedly at him then pushed it out of the way. "Let me carry the weight. Go! Left! Right!"

Rayes hissed and spat as they performed an awkward three legged run through a minefield with zombies at their back and speeding bullets from the front. Taicha had no space to worry about that however. The world had turned into a blur of confusing shadows, red warning flags and explosions. The sound beat down on her, almost palpable in its intensity, making her stiffen her shoulders unconsciously, as if pushing her way through a heavy storm.

Then the ground dissolved into a unrecognizable blur. Their sharp shadows from the flares were replaced by grey blobs. Even the noise of the battlefield seemed distant. Her foot twisted on an unseen rock. Rayes yelled in pain as they almost fell. Taicha shook her head and tried to brush at her eyes but that didn't help.

No wait, they had reached the mist shield!

Taicha renewed her energy and made her way forwards more carefully through the murk. Without warning, they burst out of the curtain right into the face of ten barrels of guns.

"Hold!"

The sergeant's voice was the sweetest thing she had ever heard that day. And his open mouth of surprise the best she had seen. Taicha gritted her teeth and dragged this troublesome lovable lump the rest of way, the disbelieving faces watching them. She just had to reach the trench!

"Medic!" someone called as they spotted Rayes' condition.

Rayes. Taicha looked to her right and saw him hanging limply on her. Rayes! "Wake up!" she snapped, slapping his cheek lightly.

"Calm down!" the sergeant shouted at her, "he's just unconscious. You, go help her!"

One of the soldiers climbed out and grabbed Rayes' other side and helped her haul him into the safety of the trench. Taicha set him down gently, holding his arm. Pulse, okay. She relaxed a little but her hands refused to let him go. The condition of his leg was not something she wanted to look at. It wasn't long before two young boys came running up with two boxes of bullets and a stretcher. They gave the boxes to the waiting soldiers in the half empty trench and bent down to tend to the unconscious soldier.

"Bring him to the back lines," the sergeant said sadly, "You two are the only ones of our company left. "

No wonder all the faces in the trench here were unknown to her.

Taicha looked at the boys settling Rayes onto the cloth, who looked back questioningly, waiting for her.

She hesitated. Her heart screamed to stay with him. Her body ached and protested every time she moved. But the weight of the gun dragged on her hip, the bayonet sticking into the mud of the trench. But she could still move. But her stamina was not yet depleted. Taicha shook her head. "No, give me more bullets and a new staff. I can still shoot. "

She held the sergeant's gaze for a moment before he nodded. The boys lifted Rayes up and began to climb out of the trench.

Rayes looked nervously up at the medic bending over his leg. Cutting away the ruined flesh and putting the cleaning spirits on was painful enough but he had been offered ether for the next part, and that made Rayes worry.

"Don't be afraid, this won't hurt a bit," the man said sarcastically.

As a Guard, Rayes was not unused to pain. He had just come out of a battlefield after running on a broken leg until the shard of bone was poking out of his shin. But that didn't mean he liked pain.

"You were the one who said you wanted to be awake, this numbing is best we can do if you don't want ether," the medic admonished him with a stern finger.

Point.

Rayes gritted his teeth as the medic pulled the bone back into alignment. The pain was blinding but he would give his leg to know if Taicha was safe. He would never consent to be asleep when the battle still wasn't decided.

"There we go, you're very lucky you got this now," the medic said after an eternity of torture.

"I know, my grandfather lost a leg after a bad fall, and that was just three years ago," Rayes panted, wiping the sweat from his forehead, "are you sure the wound will not suffer rot?"

"One never knows but you will need curse breaker twice a day and the wound will have to be cleaned every day until it's healed. We'll wrap this up and splint your leg but you better not be walking anywhere for the next month, at least two months to be safe," the medic told him, "the leg will be weak for years, you'll have to retire temporarily from the Guard for at least one. Well, the Guard will pay for your cursebreaker. "

The ex-guard couldn't help but wince. He would have to find some other way to earn money, but it was still better than losing his leg.

Rayes nodded his thanks and leaned back onto the thin bed once the medic left. He pulled his gun back by the power line and checked his ammo. He wouldn't be going anywhere on one leg, if the battle was lost, Rayes would go down shooting.

Denno stood next to the magic circle, a different one from the mist design. That one had outlived its usefulness when the zombies had abandoned their coordinated firing of light beams. No, this one was another of Landar's experiments.

One of his summoners stood in the center of the semicircle, one hand on a shard of green stone that shone with magic power. From all around the circle, power ran down towards him through lines of steel woven into the canvas.

It was a simple design. Channelling at range had always been a problem, costing too much magic. Unless you used a Ritual Stone which covered a large area so that anyone could contribute, normal summoning stones couldn't be used by more than a few people at the same time. With a circle however, anyone standing at the supply points could contribute their magic, or connect a power box or even a steel staff. All that was missing was a method of controlling it, which still required a trained summoner to stand there to direct the stone.

The simple Sword stone didn't glow with power, unlike the Ritual Stones during charging. Instead, the power instead flashed up and down chaotically as blades of force lashed out the front, flying over the top of trench and heading towards the zombies. Each of them hovered at knee height and were simply set to fly down the gentle slope. Without bothering to maintain their power, avoiding the penalty to send magic over such a long distance. The flat planes of force cut down a short line of zombies before the aura of magic crushed it out of existence.

But the stone was being charged by spellstorms, steel staffs and magic crystals. The endless tide of force blades spun outwards, mowing down zombies and pushing them back. There were so many Swords that they were actually pushing back the zombies on their section of frontline!

Denno watched quietly, eyeing the ebb and flow of zombies trying to charge at their massive magical signature. They were definitely responding to the magic. Every time the spell cannons behind him charged up, some of the zombies would change direction.

And if he was estimating it right, this storm of Swords was actually more efficient at destroying or disabling zombies than Tempest Bolt, power unit for power unit. Maybe twice or more.

Forwards and backwards, the line of zombies moved. Bits of zombies were beginning to pile up, most of them still moving. And the oppressive power of their magical aura was beginning to weaken a little.

Denno was watching them so intently that he almost missed the change. He could see the back end of the zombies now!

Others had seen and reported it though. The commanders had made a decision and a different horn signal sounded. They were going to take a chance.

Immediately, from the final third line, the arrays of linked wands lit up with magic as their enchanted activated. Row upon row of little wooden sticks slotted into a simple cheap frame. The alchemists of Ektal, and not a few commoners, had given their magic for months. The less skilled, or perhaps unskilled, Denno thought uncharitably; they preferred simple assignments and a disruption bolt wand was a simple as they came.

The University however, made a magic circle that produced a linked battery. A timer or the firing trigger could set off wands in the slots in sequence or all at once. The wands could be built elsewhere and the contraption assembled on the field with ease. Anyone, not just mages or trained Guard, could set them off with a touch.

These batteries had been set to fire in sequence for maximum effect. A raw contest of power between the accumulated magical might of the humans and the dark magic of the zombie army. The knights manning the batteries unleashed disruption bolts, arrowing down on the remaining zombie army, still a formidable mass pushing its way through the churned mix of soil, blood and zombie parts.

The glittering lights in the magic sense flew overhead, an awe inspiring tidal wave of magic that kept flying out of the assembled batteries of wands. The zombie aura absorbed the bolts at first but the salvo was ceaseless, each disruption bolt digging in a little further than the last.

Before the aura was exhausted however, the bolts petered out as the wands were exhausted. But it was wounded, Denno felt, a mere fraction of its vast terrible power. He jumped up and waved for the attention of the spellstorms waiting to continue summoning Swords.

"Fire! Everything you've got! Fire disruption!" he shouted.

Like him, others had similar ideas. All up and down the trench line, the surviving knights channeled their magic. Battlemages with singular powerful strikes, the battery salvo mimics of the spellstorms, and the sledgehammers of the Iris summoners. They formed the familiar bolts and threw it at the zombies. The spell cannons started up again, those few that still had remaining power. The Guards joined in, those with the rare new model guns switching to spell firing mode.

Then like a popping of a bubble, the aura collapsed. Immediately, Denno felt a change in the air. The unseen pressure of magic, pressing down on his lifeforce, had lifted.

The zombies wavered and started forwards again. But without the aura to protect them, the disruption bolts tore into the zombies with impunity, sweeping aside their foul magic and turning them back into lifeless bodies. There was a rattle of reports as the guns started firing again, Resist bullets from the older Hero's Gun model and even the relatively ancient bowguns pouring on ammunition. Then someone called a change and disruption bolts were replaced with firebolts, torching zombies and turning the battlefield into a sea of fire.

There were no more light beams, Denno noted, even if there were still enough zombies here to form an army with them.

Like the evapourating of a nightmare, the zombies toppled with hardly any resistance. Crumbling to ashes or blasted apart, or simply extinguished, they continued their hopeless charge and were destroyed.

Denno also noted that these zombies didn't retreat, unlike reports of all the recent attacks retreating once enough zombies had been destroyed. He nodded to himself, there were going to be a lot of things going into his after action report.

The Guard picked her way through the camp, her body aching from exhaustion and countless small wounds. She had drank her dose of cursebreaker and been ordered to sleep. But before that, there was someone she had to find.

The familiar figure sitting at the edge of a tent caught her eye.

"Rayes!" she shouted, breaking into a run.

He looked up and smiled at her. The smile in the early dawn light was as radiant as the time she first fell in love. Taicha bounded over and threw her gun aside. Settling down beside his stool, careful not to touch his splint, Taicha grinned wordlessly at him.

"You're safe? Not broken anywhere?" he asked.

Taicha shook her head. She couldn't wipe the crazy grin on her face, it was taking all her effort not to hang off his shoulder like when they were children.

"We made it, both of us," Rayes said.

She nodded. The rest of them hadn't, apart from sergeant. Their company's camp was forlorn and empty but even that couldn't suppress her sheer relief and happiness at seeing Rayes again.

"Then let me ask this time, will you marry me?"

Taicha nodded again, harder. She was crying now, half out of happiness and half for their lost company mates, but he understood. He drew an arm around her and pulled her close. And that was all that mattered for now.

Curasym surveyed the battlefield. Fires still smoldered in the mid-morning light as knights and Guards burned piles of zombie limbs, or in the worst portions in front of the trenches, set fire to the ground itself. The sun had risen enough to cast light into the steep valley and the full extent of the carnage was made clear despite the best efforts of the grey smoke settling everywhere to conceal it.

No trace of the river valley remained. All that was there was a slaughterhouse. They had lost a full third of their defenders, nearly a thousand soldiers. The zombies were estimated at a hundred thousand or more. Thirty to one odds was hopeless by all conventional wisdom, even accounting for the usual zombie ineptitude. A grand victory by the numbers, miraculous even.

It didn't look very grand to the commander of the Guard, and there were certainly no miracles here today.

"If this is what war will look like in the future," Erin whispered, "no one will ever fight again. "

A vision of the burning zombies in the field replaced with humans, blood turning the soil to mud- Curasym brushed the image aside. It was too horrible to contemplate. But the vision sulked in the corners of his mind, whispering conclusions he didn't like. A war fought like this could destroy entire countries.

Curasym sighed, "I certainly hope so. "