Chapter 85: The Battle Outside Part 3

Chapter 85: The Battle Outside Part 3Lyra adjusted the bow slung across her back, her quiver already half-empty from her earlier skirmishes. Her auburn hair was tied in a messy braid, streaked with soot. Despite the chaos, her eyes were sharp and focused. "I’ve been covering the western flank," she said. "Barely held it. The mist there wasn’t as thick, but people were still going mad." Inigo grunted. "Same thing here. But I found the source. Some sort of illusion demon. I shattered its throne, broke the spell. Mist’s thinning, but it’s not over yet." A nearby explosion rocked the earth. They both turned toward the breach, where the battle still raged. Demons howled, their cries a mix of beast and nightmare, while defenders pushed back with every ounce of strength they had left. "Come on," Inigo said, hoisting the minigun. "Let’s clean up the rest." They moved together down the street—Inigo on the ground, Lyra leaping between rubble piles and carts, gaining elevation wherever possible. She knocked three arrows at once, her fingers glowing faintly with wind magic. Inigo took point. His minigun screamed again, tearing through a group of spider-like demons crawling up the barricade. The steel cordon was broken in places, manned by only a few bloodied adventurers. "Reinforcements, incoming!" someone shouted. From the southern alley, a large figure charged forward—Guildmaster Thorne. The man looked like a walking wall of steel, clad in spiked plate armor with a massive tower shield strapped to his back and a greathammer in one hand. His beard was caked with ash, his chest heaving from the sprint. "Inigo! Lyra!" he barked, voice like thunder. "You’re both alive. Good. We’ve still got a damn city to save." "Thorne!" Lyra called from a rooftop. "We’ve got a partial breach ahead. The central line needs shoring up." "Already saw it," Thorne said, slamming his hammer into the ground. "Brought some muscle." Behind him, a dozen adventurers followed. Warriors, mages, and rogues—most scraped up, some limping, but all armed and ready. "Push up with me," Thorne growled. "Inigo, take the right flank. Lyra, get high ground and clear the backline. Their casters are summoning reinforcements!" "Got it," Inigo said. Lyra nodded and launched herself up a broken building, vaulting windowsills with feline grace. The next few minutes were a blur of movement and violence. Inigo advanced alongside Thorne’s squad, sweeping the minigun in arcs. Demons burst apart with each volley. A flying one dove from the sky, jaws wide—Thorne met it mid-air with his hammer, crushing it into the earth with a single blow. Lyra, above, loosed arrow after arrow. Her enchanted shots exploded on impact, disrupting formations and burning through demonic flesh. A scream rang out—one of the mages behind them was caught by a leech-like creature, its body wrapped around his chest. Inigo spun and shredded it before it could drain him dry. "Eyes open!" he shouted. "They’re getting clever!" "Their commander’s still alive somewhere," Thorne growled. "This isn’t just berserk fury. They’re coordinated. Like they’re buying time." "For what?" Lyra called, already preparing her next volley. No one had an answer. Then the sky above shifted. Dark clouds that had once simply churned with smoke and ash began to swirl with color. A vortex formed—purple, green, and black—like a bruise torn in the heavens. From its center, something descended. A massive winged demon, nearly the size of a house, slammed into the plaza at the edge of the city’s center. Its wings were bone and shadow. Its arms, twisted blades. Its face—a mask with six empty eye sockets. "The hell is that?" one warrior gasped. Thorne grunted. "That’s their real vanguard." The demon didn’t roar. It simply pointed. And from every alley, from every shadow—the remaining demons surged. "Hold the line!" Thorne bellowed. "Form up on me!" Shields clanked. Spears bristled. Inigo fell back to a more defensible position near a broken statue, where he could anchor the minigun. Lyra shifted positions, taking a perch above the plaza’s edge. The battle began anew. The demon commander moved like lightning—blades slicing through stone and steel alike. Two warriors went down instantly, their torsos cleaved in half. "Get it down!" Thorne ordered. "Range focus it! Range!" Lyra’s arrows flew first—one after another—each enchanted with wind, fire, or binding runes. They slammed into the commander’s wings and chest, staggering it for only a heartbeat. Then Inigo opened fire. The minigun roared to life, bullets hammering against the creature’s mask and limbs. Chunks of shadowy armor broke apart, revealing raw crimson underneath. The demon shrieked—a high-pitched psychic screech that made a few defenders drop to their knees. Thorne barreled in during the pause, swinging his hammer like a battering ram. It connected with the demon’s chest and sent it flying back into a fountain, which shattered into pieces. "NOW!" he yelled. Mages unleashed their spells in unison—ice, fire, lightning, even gravity wells—all slamming into the downed demon. It struggled to rise. Inigo sprinted forward, dragging the minigun on a sling and switching to pistols. He flipped a rune switch—silver runes lit across the slide—and fired. The bullets exploded with light as they struck the demon’s face. More cracks. Lyra, from above, loosed one final shot. An arrow glowing with violet energy—her ultimate skill. It pierced the demon’s mask and pinned it to the rubble. The commander spasmed. Then, with a final roar of defiance, it exploded into ash and smoke. The street went still. For a moment, there was only the crackling of flames and the panting of the living. Then—the mist began to retreat. It slithered back like a wounded beast, dragging its remnants with it. Demons left behind began to vanish. Some exploded. Others simply collapsed, like puppets with cut strings. "They’re retreating," Lyra breathed. "Finally," Inigo said, shoulders sagging. Thorne stood among the wreckage, armor dented, shield gone, but still breathing. He looked to the sky, where the vortex was shrinking. "They know we’re not going to fall easily," he said grimly. "That was a test. A probe. Maybe even a distraction." Inigo looked around at the corpses, the wounded, the buildings scorched and broken. "If that was a test," he said quietly, "I don’t want to see the real thing." They gathered the wounded and pulled the dead from the rubble. Clerics and support teams began moving in from the rear guard, casting healing spells and erecting barriers in case of ambush. The plaza was secured. For now. Later, as the defenders regrouped near the breach, Inigo sat on the edge of a broken wall, his minigun resting across his lap. Lyra sat beside him, cleaning her bowstrings with a cloth, her hands trembling slightly. "That illusion demon... it messed with my head," Inigo admitted. "Showed me things that are hard to comprehend." Lyra glanced at him but didn’t press. She simply nodded and said, "I see." They sat in silence for a while, the air heavy with the aftermath. Then Thorne approached, a grim smile on his face. "You both did good," he said. "The whole guild owes you. And the city." Inigo looked up. "Is it over?" Thorne replied. "They are retreating, so I believe that’s the end." *** Far beyond the realm of men, past the veil of reality where light and shadow fused into a sea of endless shimmer, the Lady of Illusion stood atop her palace of mirrors. The glass beneath her feet rippled—not from motion, but from thought. Her form was fluid, ever-shifting. Today, she wore the face of a noblewoman—graceful, cold, and ageless—though her eyes still glowed with galaxy-stained light. All around her, fragments of the recent battle hovered like memories caught in crystal. Scenes replayed in silence—the shriek of the vanguard, the minigun’s fury, the shattered mask. She watched it all unfold again and again, her lips a thin line. Behind her, the chamber darkened as three generals materialized from swirling mist. Each one knelt. The first to speak was Krell, a beast of muscle and bone whose voice grated like metal over stone. "Lady, why did we retreat? The breach was holding. Their lines were broken. Had we pushed, the city would be ours." The second, Maelis, a warlock of seething shadows, echoed the sentiment. "We had summoned the Vanguard. His mask was cracked, but he still lived. Your presence alone unsettled the defenders. They were breaking." The Lady turned slowly, her eyes like twin nebulae. "And yet, one of them stood." The generals paused. "The man with the weapon," she continued, gesturing with a single finger. A shard of memory spun into the air between them, showing Inigo’s final volley. The bullets tore through her throne—not her body—and disrupted the very foundation of her illusion. "He fought with a thing I do not understand," the Lady said. "Not steel. Not spell. Something else. His will pierced my domain, and his weapon..." She lifted her hand and summoned the phantom of the minigun. It hovered, spinning slowly. "No enchantment. No incantation. But it shattered my construct. It burned the Vanguard. It broke the spell on hundreds." Maelis frowned. "An artifact? A relic of the Ancients?" "No," the Lady said, voice low. "It is foreign. Alien. The power of a world that should not exist. And the man wielding it—he is not bound by the rules of this plane." "An unbound soul," Krell repeated. The Lady of Illusion nodded. "Then we must kill him now," said the third general, a pale-skinned assassin known only as Vurn. "Strike before he grows." "You think I retreated out of fear?" the Lady asked, voice cold. "No, Lady," Vurn said, bowing. "I withdrew to watch," she continued. "To confirm. Now I have. He is dangerous. He must be studied. Understood. Broken carefully." The palace dimmed. Reflections of Inigo in battle replayed again—the desperation in his eyes, the precision of his aim, the impossible refusal to bend. "He stood in my domain and denied me," she whispered. "I have never seen that. Not even from kings." The chamber was silent. "We will not rush this," she said. "If we strike again without preparation, we risk losing more than troops. We risk exposing our hand." S~eaʀᴄh the NôvelFire(.)net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. "What do you command?" Krell asked. "We observe." The Lady turned back toward her mirror throne, and slowly, it began to reassemble. "And when the time comes... we make him suffer in his reality, as he shattered mine." Far below, on the mortal plane, the mist had faded—but not forever. And above, in the mirrored dominion of illusion, the Lady watched... and waited.