“Come on, I’ve already lost time because of you,” he said.

Karina jumped up quickly. Lis ordered her to always stay one step behind him, not dare to look at anyone and be silent. She tried to fulfill everything.

5

The Fort

Help the weak, be confident and strong, and don't put up with evil.

This section of the wall was just some kind of curse: the reds didn’t calm down for a minute and hammered the dilapidated wall near the menagerie.

Kors was tired, but the attacks didn’t stop, and his hand no longer felt the sword. From endless explosions, stone chips flew off the wall and peeled off the skin from his face, sparks scorched his eyebrows, acrid smoke burned his lungs. Kors fought, already just defending himself, without any hope, realizing that even if he managed to fight back and stay alive, too little time would pass and everything would start all over again. The reds pressed, and there was nothing to breathe from their “lighters”. Kors suffocated in this fiery hell, he lost Nikto and Arel, bumping only into the corpses of his own soldiers and others, and fighting off the attackers purely on instinct. After killing another red, Kors fell to his knees with no strength, next to the prostrate body, bowing his head to the ground and breathing heavily, everything around was covered with blood and he himself was covered in blood, no longer understanding who was the ally and who the enemy.

“Vitor! Vitor!” As in a fog he heard a gentle voice, which seemed to be coming from afar and from somewhere above, Kors raised his head in shock. In the thick smoke, he saw in front of him the silhouette of his dead wife Iness, she seemed to float in the air, her beautiful and gentle face turned to him was framed by long blond hair, they fluttered as if from the wind, and beautiful white wings shone behind her:

“Vitor! Get up!”

But he could not and did not want to, indifference seized his consciousness: “if everything is so, let it be so.”

“Get up!” Iness screamed and suddenly her eyes became black as well as hair and wings behind her back. Kors felt that someone roughly grabbed his forearm, pulled him up:

“Get up!” Nikto shouted, helping him to get up, dragged him to the wall, sitting him in the destroyed arch. “Stay here,” he said and disappeared into the smoke, Kors bent over choking on a cough.

When, closer to the afternoon, exploding lighters and red warriors stopped pouring into the breaches, Kors no longer believed in good things. Noticing movement near the stable, without hesitation, he immediately jumped up, drawing his sword.

“Hey! Hush! That’s we!” They heard the voice of Lis, and he with several mercenaries of Kors, as if nothing had happened, entered the break of the wall from the side of the enemy. Unclean and soldiers from the training school of Daniel Crassus looked at them with wide eyes.

“Where are you from?!”

Lis laughed.

“We went down from the wall along their own assault tower and just drove the reds across the field.”

“Are you crazy?!”

“Why are you taking such a risk?!” Kors couldn’t resist. He lifted his head up and looked at the wall, seeing that his mercenaries were also looking at them from above. Kors didn’t see his daughter among them: dressed as a man and with a closed face, she merged with the rest of the warriors. But she was probably there and worried about Lis, hoping that he returned to the fortress safe and sound.

“Alis, why are you leaving the outer perimeter?!”

“We wanted to help you, to distract the reds…”

Lis didn’t have time to finish, at that moment, drowning out his words, quite close by, there was a deafening roar, and the ground trembled under their feet.