The clerics were more than aggressive, charging through the city like maniacs. The gattling guns tore into them from several sides at once, and the people gained in confidence, some appearing on the ledges of nearby buildings to fire their rifles at the clerics from the upper floors. Some threw grenades that exploded, scattering cleric bodies in all directions.
Still the clerics flowed into the city, driven by their relentless fear of the crenolites. A huge explosion cleared a patch of street below. The clerics had reached a mine that Preya had planted only thirty minutes ago. The sound of it shook her to the core, waking her from a dream of eternal death and destruction.
She couldn't believe what was happening. She had experienced trouble before but never anything on such a horrific scale. Most of their fighting had been under Eleanor's command and that had been several years ago. Preya had never been involved in active combat - until now. Raising a hand to her mouth, she tried to hold onto her fraying nerves.
She could see the clerics pouring into the base of the opposite tower. They had broken through the barricade and were now fighting the minotaurs, trying to break through to the upper levels.
Another explosion shook the ground beneath her feet. A mine had gone off at the other end of the street. Preya turned and saw more mayhem as body parts splattered across the ground. The clerics were advancing, spreading throughout the city. The people threw grenades, and fired down from their high vantage points, but one by one the towers were penetrated and the fighting spread inside.
The people had deliberately stayed off the streets, taking to the higher floors of the towers where the clerics wouldn't be able to reach them without climbing narrow stairwells that could easily be defended. Minotaurs manned the lower levels, using the confined space to their advantage but they were heavily outnumbered.
Preya could hear fighting on the stairs below. The minotaurs were driving the clerics back towards the ground floor but how long could they hold against such huge numbers?
She started when she heard someone shouting from the opposite tower. She couldn't hear what they were saying over the clamour of fighting, but she glanced down to where they were pointing and saw a massive cleric strolling down the middle of the street with his wide belly wobbling before him. He carried a long staff in each hand and the other clerics dashed out of his way as he bulldozed a path between them.
The cleric raised one arm, pointing his staff at the tower opposite and white lightning erupted from its tip, striking it with a loud bang. The man who had been shouting tumbled over the ledge with a large hole in his blackened, chest, and parts of the building collapsed behind him. Another strike hit a gun emplacement on the floor above and a wall collapsed on top of it.
The gun fell silent, but others turned their barrels upon the senior cleric below, filling him with so many holes that he toppled sideways, bleeding across the street.
More clerics grabbed the staffs from his slack, lifeless hands, using them as weapons against the towers. They were less skilled with the staffs than their master, but they still managed to hit a couple of gattling gun emplacements with smaller blasts before they were cut down.
Each dead cleric was replaced by a hundred others as the sprawling mass surged through the city, causing mayhem and disaster. More senior clerics arrived too, each one bigger and more ugly than the last. They hit the towers with white lightning, silencing the gattling guns and blowing huge chunks out of the walls. Little by little, they forced the people to retreat further and further into the towers. The minotaurs fought with ceaseless courage, forced to defend against an endless tide of frenzied clerics. Preya couldn't help worrying. They were vastly outnumbered. How long could they go on?
A few gattling guns still streamed hot death upon the cleric army below. There was still hope, but it was then that Preya saw the first lord arrive.
He teleported into the middle of the street, shifting twice to avoid a stream of munitions that honed in on him, before appearing on the upper level of one of the nearby towers. It wasn't long before he unleashed a wave of air, throwing another gattling gun over the side. Minotaurs charged towards him, swinging their halberds but he had already teleported to the next tower.
Shouts rang out. Another gattling gun fell silent. Preya clasped her face in both hands. It was what she had feared might happen. They had made their preparations. The minotaurs were standing guard, but the lord moved so quickly, skipping from tower to tower.
A dozen more lords appeared below, shifting back and forth in a blur of dark robes. Screams rang out, coming from every direction at once as people were thrown from the towers all around her.
The minotaurs attacked them and the fighting intensified. Everything around her had become an epic, violent struggle. The people fired their weapons from above, focussing their efforts on killing the clerics who were attacking the minotaurs. The minotaurs towered over the clerics, cutting them down with savage halberds but they had to defend on multiple fronts at once as the clerics surrounded them.
The lords preferred to fight in the towers. They fought with air, and black spears. Some held burning green spheres in their hands. The minotaurs fought like demons, using their halberds and short axes to great effect, but many died when the lords set upon them.
Some of the minotaurs possessed artefacts that could prevent the lords from teleporting away. They restricted the lords' movements, allowing other minotaurs to gather around them and outnumber them. Still it took half a dozen minotaurs to corner a single lord and cut him down with their halberds. They often took heavy losses in the process.
Gable fought one of the lords in the street below, having resumed his human form. He used a long scimitar while the lord fought with his spear, evading Gable's attacks with a graceful skill that the guardian matched with his own blade. Preya wondered what the hell he was doing. Was there some kind of honour involved in using a physical weapon?
The minotaurs gathered nearby, blocking the lord's ability to teleport, and Gable got close enough to land his first strike, severing the lord's arm at the elbow. The lord cried out, dropping his spear onto the ground and Gable changed form, becoming a powerful, rotating wind. He wrapped himself around the lord, spinning faster and faster until his body was torn apart and splattered across the ground as a sea of red sludge. The wind stopped suddenly and Gable resumed his human form.
'Gable Hon-Lewick,' a clear voice rang out in the chaos below. 'I have come to challenge you.'
Preya saw a figure approaching through the crowds of clerics below. Gable's mirror image stood before him - a druro who fought on Malkor's side. The sight of him put fear deep into Preya's heart. She had seen for herself what Gable was capable of. She couldn't imagine for one minute how they would ever be able to defend against enemies who shared his abilities.
The two druros sped towards each other, first striking with blades and then turning into matching tornados that tore each other apart. They spun in a rising spiral of debris before repeatedly spreading out and reforming like a swarm of angry bees. The tower walls crumbled wherever they touched them, falling to the ground in a hail of shattered stone.
They crashed through one side of a tower block, shaking its foundations before emerging a moment later from the opposite side of the tower, taking a large section of wall with them.
The unnatural wind intensified, becoming a mass of spinning particles that crackled with an intense, yellow light. They rose several stories above the ground before plunging towards the street like a giant falling hammer. The ground cracked open, swallowing them up as a loud thunderclap sent a shock wave through the fighting crowds around them. Clerics tumbled, rolling across the street. Minotaurs stumbled and fell. Even parts of the nearby towers collapsed on top of them.
Gable disappeared underground, circling his foe in an indistinguishable cloud of spinning multicoloured particles. The ground rumbled before collapsing in on top of them, taking a hundred clerics and several minotaurs with them.
Preya blinked, unsure of what she had just seen. There was so much going on around her. She could see more senior clerics striding along the street below, their long staffs raised in their hands. The gattling guns had fallen silent now, destroyed by the lords or thrown down onto the street below. The minotaurs fought bravely, always vastly outnumbered but never giving up. She could hear shouts and fighting on the stairs below. The clerics were climbing through the tower towards her. With such odds stacked against them, it wouldn't be long before they all fell.