Through The Storm

“Last report from the front, Lord Charles.” A man in white chainmail and helmet handed a sheaf of parchments to Charles, who was sitting behind a desk cluttered with parchments, maps, and books.

“Thank you, Robert.” Charles took the report, nodded to the man dismissing him, and went back to his reading.

The dragon lady as she called herself, or the green lady as most other people called her, just finished her tenth attack to the gates of Zarzura, after the stagnant siege she laid on the city for the last six months. And she was pushed back as usual, yet something about her doggedness was worrying him.

He had been elected as lord ruler above the council for less than six months when she first came with her strange army. Residents of the farmlands around the city, were the first to report her, as most escaped their residence and took refuge in the city upon seeing the advancing monsters and magical beasts coming their way.

The dragon lady sat on the back of a flying wyvern as she first came to the gates of the city, and from her high perch, she delivered one demand, “Give me a single green aura man or woman, sacrifice them for the safety of your city, and I shall leave you to your lives, unharmed. You have one day to comply.”

That first day, normal people ran to the parapets and threw rocks at her and her army.

She didn’t even give them a second glance. For a whole day, she stood at the gates, and by the hour, her army grew, until, by the dawn of the second day, the entire mass of farmland around the city was occupied by the magical beasts, as if every single magical creature in the whole of Agartha came to their doorstep.

Then the first attack came, behemoths threw themselves at the wall, one after another, attacked the west wall for hours until night came, and then they just stopped, and fell back in their ranks.

The architects of the city spent that night fortifying the west wall and assessing the damage to the structure, the wall held, and the magic barrier was activated.

Then on the next day, droves of wyvern came at the city from heavens, dropping huge rocks that were barely deflected by the magic barrier.

The third day of the attack had griffins doing the same thing only with smaller rocks.

The fourth day, harpies came with even smaller rocks.

The fifth day, phoenixes came with the smallest of rocks, and those passed through the barrier, showering the guards and the inhabitants of the city with rock hail. On that night, one captain devised a contraption to be placed on the heads of the guards and soldiers who were called to action, extra protection from heavenly attacks.

On the sixth day, the guards discovered diggers under the city, tunneling under the gates. The entire day was spent in pouring pitch and tar around the wall from the inside, then imbuing it with magical combustants, which caused them to ignite on contact with any underground intruder. The three purple mages retained in the city’s army were exhausted by the end of the day, they had to sleep for the next two days.

On the seventh day, the dragon lady sent a contingent of howlers at the walls, the whole city’s population had to plug their ears with cotton and wax, some of the more fragile of the populace had to have their heads wrapped in wet linen to counter the auditory pain. Then the dragon lady repeated her demands on the eighth day, then the cycle repeated, only with different creatures, for another week.

By the end of the fifth month, she declared a non-offensive siege, saying that she would give the city time to consider her demands.

For the next six months, the dragon lady sieged the city with new attacks, till two months ago, when she started to make massive attacks once a week. This was the eighth month since the siege began, making it a total of thirteen months since the dragon lady first attacked the city and two months since she started to weekly hammer the defenses of the city again.

Charles rubbed his eyes to ease their tiredness, he had to read and authorize tens of parchments daily. Reports of the city’s food and drink stocks had to be realized and accounted for, as well as stocks of weaponry for the army added to those, the letters sent to the other nations asking for their help, which were all returned with regrets, and demands for more time to debate the issue.

Nobody ever had to contend with fighting an entire army of monsters before, no army leader ever considered it to formulate a strategy of how to defeat such an army, and no council of any of the cities was willing to take the risk of destroying their armies in pitting them against unbeatable opponents to test new strategies.

Charles sighed, after the last attack, some of the council members started to debate the dragon lady’s demand, pushing the old argument for the welfare of one against the welfare of the entire nation. Charles had to tell them that the one had to be picked at random, it could be a spouse, a loved one, or a friend, and if they were willing to cast a vote, he would still oppose it.

He was also very angry of late. He tried to pass a motion to the council for going on the offense instead of just hiding behind the gates of the city, it was refused, and the reason was, as councilwoman Clara said, “We have the resources to sustain ten more years of siege, our orchards, and gardens are providing enough food to replenish whatever is consumed, and our metal workers are producing new weapons each day, why should we risk opening our gates and lowering the magic barrier for an uncalculated risk?”

This argument was not just mounted by councilwoman Clara, but by almost every member of the council of Zarzura, and Charles couldn’t deny the logic behind it. But of late, he started to get reports from the purples to be on the watch for a new order rising among the ranks of the reds, a group of zealots who called themselves the Order of Purification.

Charles knew how fanatical the reds could be about the whole pure colored auras, and he knew of their disdain of the secondary or mixed colored auras like his nation’s, the oranges, and the purples. What worried him the most was the possibility this new racist order would grow enough in power to join forces with the dragon lady, then nobody could calculate the outcome of such an assault on the city.

He was going through his twentieth report when a woman came in with a tray of food, it must be lunchtime.

“Thank you, Martha, for bringing me lunch.” He kissed the woman’s hand.

“Actually, it is dinner time, my love.” She sighed and kissed his forehead. “Eat and come home as hastily as possible.”

Charles looked at her with wide eyes, and his mouth was agape for a moment before he shook his head and said, “Yes, my love, I will finish these reports and come soon.”

She caressed his head tenderly, then kissed him and left the room.

Charles didn’t eat till the food congealed, but he was at least content the reports were ready to be distributed on all the parts of the city, which ran the siege, and tomorrow would be a new day.