102 The Great Escape Part 1 (1/2)

”Dean!' Aura's voice cut through the white-hot pain lancing through my mind, allowing me a moment of clarity.

”I-I'm alright,” I answered with a little difficulty. It was hard to speak when my throat felt like I'd just poured hot lead into it. 'I'm alright… I think.”

”What happened?” Aura asked.

Although I couldn't see her, I knew she was riding alongside us. I could also feel Darah's arms holding me tight. She was most likely keeping me from toppling over.

I felt weak. My entire body was in shock like I'd just placed my hand on a live wire and got myself electrocuted. It was worse in my eyes. White-hot pain surged into them like the timed tapping of feet against the beat of some unknown song.

”Backlash, I th-think…” I answered. ”Overused Fool's Insight too many times tonight… P-pain all over…”

The next voice I heard belonged to Darah. ”Concentrate, Dean. Knowing the cause of your pain is not enough. Find the will to break through the pain and do what you need to do.”

Her words gave me a chance to focus my mind. Now was not a time for giving into pain. It was a time for action.

I sighed. ”You could make a killing selling fortune cookies, ma'am… Hold on…”

With every ounce of willpower I could muster, I forced my mind to focus on the pain in my eyes, forcing that pain back into the recesses of my mind and turning it into a dull, manageable roar.

Once the pain had receded, I took a deep breath. Then I opened my eyes.

I was a bird in flight looking over a battlefield that was the very definition of chaos.

Darah, who'd felt me relax under her embrace, whispered into my ear, ”What can you see, Dean?”

”Everything,” I answered breathlessly. ”I see everything… and we're about to drown under a deep pile of mud, ma'am.”

I described to Darah and Aura the scene beneath me to the best of my understanding, and every second I spoke I knew I was sapping the hope out of them. Things were that dire.

From my vantage point in the sky, I could see how all the forces were arrayed. Our Darah army stood in a straight line from north to south and faced off against the Magesong host which formed an opposite line to our east. The newly arrived Scarlet Moon army which had numbers that dwarfed ours had come at us from the north. Their formation was shaped like a crescent moon with its eastern tip touching the back of the Magesong clan's center army while its western tip was flanking Commander Vardoom's left army.

In my mind, I thought they were like an open maw of some wild beast threatening to devour our armies whole. It brought a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with the dull pain that still racked my body.

How such a huge army escaped anyone's noticed was beyond me, but I suspect Ardeen Spellweaver had something to do with hiding them so completely. That was another reason I had to sock that fairy hard on the face.

The tale begins with the new arrivals, the Scarlet Moon Clan's army of at least a hundred-and-fifty-thousand strong drow and their monstrous allies. That number might be larger. I couldn't accurately tell. Not with my insight feeling like it was being forced to do overtime. More than once I felt like my brain was getting fried by a combination of painful spikes and info dump.

At first, I thought that the Scarlet Moon had arrived as reinforcements to the Magesong army that had lost at least half of their original forces. But I was wrong. The Scarlet Moon wasn't there to help at all. No, their soldiers were already in the midst of slaughtering the Magesong clan's rear line.

The Magesong soldiers thought the Scarlet Moon had arrived as allies too. So they didn't stop the approaching army, and by the time they realized their mistake, their forces were already under attack from the new arrivals. It probably helped that Great General Spellweaver and his son weren't around to lead them.

This wasn't just happening in the center armies battlefield, but even our left army and the Magesong's right army were experiencing a similar struggle. Vardoom's remaining fifteen thousand forces were neck and neck against the Magesong right army's own soldiers, and so they couldn't form a defensive formation to block the attack aimed at their left flank.

I watched in horror as the left army's flank was crushed under the attack of a Scarlet Moon heavy cavalry, and I could only imagine what kind of curses were coming out of Vardoom's mouth while this was going on. However, it wasn't all doom and gloom. Vardoom's forces were slowly veering south toward our center army.

”I think Commander Vardoom got your message, General,” I deduced.

I heard Darah chuckle softly behind me.

”Yes, he's always been the reliable one despite his attitude… and appearance,” Darah commented.