Riser sat amongst blood and dirt, surveying the crumbling city around him. Eventually the streets fell silent as the last of the clerics fled north, chased away by the minotaurs.
Dead clerics littered the ground, their bodies mingling with those of minotaurs, jeckos and so many people. The streets ran red with blood, the ground strewn with arrows and stones that had been thrown down from the towers. Black smears marked the sites of explosions, and rubble lay strewn across the ground between piles of corpses with disfigured features and missing limbs. The city of Los Verion was more ruined than it had been.
The people sat gasping, their faces covered in a mixture of sweat, blood and dust. The jeckos paced about, looking restless and agitated, and the minotaurs panted heavily with steam rising from their wide black backs as they started to brush themselves down, scraping thick white sweat from their fur. Everyone was exhausted. Everyone had pushed themselves to their limits and beyond.
'We won,' Riser said, finding it hard to believe his own voice.
He realised now that he had expected to die in these streets, and many others had too. The battle had been overwhelming, something that none of them had expected to survive. Now that their enemies had fled, they stared at each other in wonder, amazed to be still alive.
Not everyone had been so lucky. So many had fallen during the prolonged fighting. The smell of death was thick in the air. They had won a great victory this day but nobody was in the mood for celebration. They lacked the energy to do anything but breathe and sit staring at the black sky above them. Even the stars had fled behind thick clouds to escape the awful sight.
Preya approached him, carrying a longbow by her side. What had once been a simple white dress was now torn and smeared in blood and dirt.
'We won,' Riser said in a quiet voice. Maybe if he said it often enough he might start to believe it himself.
'The clerics have withdrawn for now,' Preya said, 'but they'll be back with more lords. We've won a moment of peace - nothing more.'
Riser stared blankly at the devastation around him. Whatever hope he had managed to hold onto blew away in the wind at the sound of Preya's words.
'Thank you,' Preya said.
Riser blinked, unsure of what to say.
'You fought hard on our behalf. Without you we may have lost this battle.'
Riser shook his head. 'Thank the minotaurs. I've never known such warriors. They never gave up. They fought when they were outnumbered. They fought when they were exhausted. Is there nothing that can stop them? Their courage carried us through this night.'
'I will thank them,' Preya said with a nod. 'We owe so much to so many this day.'
A group of minotaurs stood panting nearby with steam rising from their backs. Many had ugly, open wounds that leaked blood down their arms and thighs. They tied vines around their limbs to stop the bleeding and applied strange-smelling poultices from pouches attached to their belts. They were powerful beasts, quick to recover from even the most terrible of wounds. Many still walked around despite having deep cuts or burns.
The people weren't so robust. Their injured would be out of action for a long time. Many lay gasping on the ground with broken limbs or ghastly wounds that made them look pale and forlorn. Riser doubted many of them would recover. Most wouldn't make it through the night.
Those who were still hale took rest while others brought them food and water. Several druros kept watch while the people set fires in the street. Riser helped the minotaurs load bodies onto the hot fires, their flesh charring quickly as thick smoke rose up into the sky.