Spells and bullets filled the air, a chorus of angry mosquitos regularly punctuated by the crack of guns. Keeping their heads low, Frances and her friends made their way across the roof of the Fourth Courtyard’s building.

The Fourth Courtyard’s main building was pinned to Freeburg’s western wall and had a tent-like red brick roof. From where she was, Frances could see Nicole’s company fighting the orc forces on the Fourth Courtyard’s northern wall.

George, commander of the Bravo group of fighters, ran up to Frances as she approached. “We’re clearing that wall, but there are still orcs in the building. We need you to get in there and start clearing it.”

Frances glanced around. She had Martin, Elizabeth and three fighters. She recognized them as Annabeth, a lanky redhead very handy with her spear. Jack, a dark and bored-looking, though very collected, swordsman, and Sam, who always had a winning smile, even while whacking people with her glaive. Frances considered asking George to pull some Otherworlders from those attacking the Northern wall. However, a quick glance at the situation made her realize that her command was fully engaged.

There was some good news. Enough orcs had been killed that some rangers and Otherworlders trapped against the cliff could now force their way toward the building behind shimmering magic shields. But most were still pinned by the musket balls and spells that spat from the structure.

“Okay, George. Just be sure to reinforce us after you clear the walls,” Frances said.

Frances, Martin, and by extension their study partner Elizabeth, had made sure to study the layout of the buildings. This was how they knew about a rooftop doorway into the building and also why they entered it with caution. The orcs had had a week to occupy Freeburg, they might know about the entrance.

The orcs had indeed guarded the entrance with a squad, but a combination of Frances’s magic and the speed and skill of the Otherworlders had allowed them to breach through the wooden door and cut down the orcs guarding it without anybody getting hurt.

A few escaped however, and so, immediately after the breach, things got tricky.

The orcs seemed to have anticipated at least the possibility of losing the walls. Frances reached the side windows, only to find the shooting galleries empty. They’d pulled away. That left Frances and her team cautiously roaming the fortress, searching for their opponents. They were quickly joined by a bloody and sweaty Baroness Igraine. She was followed by the rest of her assault force, who had been able to finally enter the building. Upon the sight of Frances, Igriane rather uncharacteristically hugged her tightly, before demanding a report.

Blushing, Frances gave a run down of what had happened and Igraine nodded frowning. “Good. Now the only question is where the hell is the rest of them?”

A ranger ran up to Igraine, “Ma’m, we found them. They barricaded themselves in the main barracks and are refusing to surrender.”

Igraine blinked and followed her man, and so did Frances. They all arrived at a long corridor that ended at two double doors, open to reveal orcs kneeling with muskets, ready to fire once they stepped into range.

“Frances, Jessica, cover me,” Igraine ordered as she stepped forward.

Frances froze as Jessica also stepped in behind Igraine. She looked tired, and a bandage had been wrapped around her head. It was at that moment that Frances realized that she and her former bully looked just as nervous of each other.

“Are you alright?” Frances asked the awkward silence.

“I’m fine. Just a cut.” Jessica swallowed and turned away, following Igraine.

The three walked down the corridor. Although they remained far out of effective musket range, Frances was ready to fire back if necessary. She wasn’t sure why Igraine had called out Jessica, though.

“Warchief Helias, your orcs are outnumbered and have no way to escape. Surrender or be killed where you stand!” Igraine ordered.

Frances flinched at the threat and the dreadful possibility. She didn’t want to kill all the orcs. But what if they refused. They’d have to be crazy to refuse—

“Then we will die where we stand!” retorted a voice from behind the wall of musketeers.

Frances groaned, but oddly enough, Igraine frowned, turned on her heel and moved back toward the rest of their group.

“Frances, did you or your forces notice anything else odd or out of place when you attacked?” Igraine inquired.

“Aside from the whole fortress being booby-trapped and our way blocked? No.”

Igraine groaned and steepled her fingers. “There’s something off about this whole thing. Helias brought down Freeburg by treachery. He somehow managed to get the garrison to give the fortress to him. That requires a certain degree of intelligence and cunning, so why not surrender now? His plan to kill us has completely fallen apart.”

Nearby, Elizabeth coughed, “Um, Master Igraine, we never actually found the garrison.”

The baroness sighed. “Damn, they must have disposed of them. I know not all of the thousand soldiers here were traitors, but if they booby trapped the fortress they probably didn't want anybody alive to find out how extensively they did.”

“Why do we think the garrison betrayed us anyway?” Jessica asked. Frances glanced at her former bully, finding it very odd that she had such a respectful tone.

“Because there’s no possible way a fortress this well-defended with a garrison of over five hundred simply fell without warning,” Igraine said matter-of-factly. “That and they knew our plan somehow so they must have a way to insert traitors into our ranks.”

“Also, they only seem to have two or three hundred orcs here,” Martin guessed. “If they had more orcs they would have garrisoned the other Courtyards and prevented us from reinforcing Baroness Igraine. With such a small force they needed a traitor to take Freeburg.”

“Could they even hold Freeburg with such a small force, though?” Elizabeth asked.

Igraine blinked. “Oh motherfucking hell. Rangers, stay here and guard the barracks! You—” the baroness gestured to Martin, Frances, Elizabeth and the Otherworlders, “—to the northern wall! NOW!”

The Fourth Courtyard’s walls were substantially taller than the Fifth Courtyard’s walls, and that let everybody see what was approaching Freeburg.

Orcs, far as the eye can see, were marching down the pass. A tide of dark green, banners waving, clad in armor, engulfed the stone-cut road. The air was filled with the crunch of boots on gravel.

“Oh God,” Elizabeth whispered, eyes wide.

Jessica swallowed. “We need to get out of here.”

Frances glared at her former bully, but there was no time. “Martin, any suggestions?”

“On how to get out—”

“No, for holding Freeburg.” Frances turned to her knight friend, wondering why he sounded so frail and nervous. “We can’t get out, Martin. The bridge is booby-trapped. We can perhaps go back up the cliffs but there are too many of us.”

Igraine nodded. “Frances is right. Our only chance is to hold Freeburg, though, I don’t like our odds.” The baroness began to bark out orders, her voice ringing over the clamour. Slowly, the rangers and the Otherworlder heroes began to move, taking positions on the walls of the Fourth and Fifth Courtyards.

Yet, there was an undercurrent of fear that ran through the ranks. Frances could even see it in her friends. Martin tried to hide it with a forced smile. Elizabeth tried to conceal it behind a forced smile. But years of trying to conceal her own sorrow and pain allowed Frances to see it all too easily.

What she didn’t get was why was everybody so scared. Or to be more exact, she didn’t understand why she felt so calm in the face of the orc horde. But there was no time to wonder that.

“Frances!”

She jumped and spun to see Igraine standing beside her by the parapet. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Do you have any ideas? I can see they have siege ladders and way too many bows for my liking.”

Frances stared at the baroness for a moment, hearing the only somewhat-disguised desperation in her voice. Although unsettled by Igraine’s tone, Frances had been thinking about the problem they were facing.

“Can we get a few mages up to the clifftop?”

Igraine nodded. “To shoot down at them?”

“No. I want to collapse part of that cliff onto them.” With the cliff face so sheer, carved through by some waterfall that once cut its way through the mountains, Frances suspected enough magicians could collapse part of the cliff face onto the road, blocking it.

Igraine frowned. “We’ll block off this road.”

“We’ll lose Freeburg if we don’t.”

“Very true.” Igraine paused and grimaced. “Frances, the two of the most powerful mages I have are Jessica and Leila. Can you command them?”

Frances shut her eyes and forced herself to slowly exhale. “I think so.”

“Don’t worry. It won’t be just you and them. Now get to the ropes! Martin, you’re in command.”

“Yes ma’am!” he exclaimed. Igraine was already leaving, shouting more orders. The knight turned to Frances. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“I’ll be fine. I have to be.” Frances glanced between her friends. “Please… stay safe.”

“We will,” Elizabeth said, and while her smile was forced, Frances nevertheless felt a bit comforted by it. Impulsively, she grabbed both Elizabeth and Martin in a tight hug. For she knew that if she failed she might not see her friends again. They both returned the embrace.

The sound of arrows whistling through the air cut it short, and they began to run. There was no time to waste.

The Rangers and Otherworlders that had attacked the Fourth Courtyard had used several long ropes to descend down the cliff face. There didn’t seem any easy way to get up the cliff face, however. Frances was contemplating trying to climb up the ropes when Igraine, Jessica, Leila and three other mages arrived.

“Right, Frances is in charge of this mission. You need to collapse the cliffside onto the orc army. Secure yourselves tightly please and once you’re done, tug on the ropes three times when you’re ready to be pulled up.” And like that Igraine was gone, running back to the walls.

“You heard her. Let’s go.” Frances recognized Leila and Jessica of course, but she also noticed Nicole, the commander of her other mage group, with them.

Thankfully, one of the things Igraine had taught Frances was how to tie good knots, so she managed to fashion a secure harness that went around her arms and legs. She used that extra time to check on the harnesses of her fellow heroes. This was a good thing because Nicole, as it turned out, had no clue how to make one.

To her annoyance, Jessica and Leila had already given their ropes a yank and were being pulled up, albeit, slowly. Frances and the rest of her group soon followed them, but it reminded Frances of how self-centered her former bullies were.

When they reached the top, the Erisdalian Rangers left behind pulled them over the ledge. Jessica and Leila were nowhere to be seen.

“They ran over there,” said the rangers, pointing along the cliffside. Frances thanked them, undid her harness and ran over.

Jessica and Leila were pointing their wands in the ground and reciting Words of Power. Frances waited until they finished their casting, watching as bolts of energy slammed into the ground, creating a hole. There were several more forming a line running from the cliff edge.

“What’s your plan, and how can we help?” Frances inquired.

Jessica’s expression was full of wariness, but she didn’t brush the question off. “My dad was an industrial engineer. We need to drill holes into the cliff at an angle so they come out of the face. We’ll then slam down with our magic to break it off.”

Frances nodded. She didn’t know if that would work. Her original idea was to pry rocks from the side and just throw them down until they were a pile high enough to block the road. Still, this seemed like a faster idea.

“Alright, let’s do it then.”

Martin parried his opponent’s spear and turned it into a cut at the orc’s hand. His sword severed fingers and as the orc howled, the knight hacked into his enemy’s neck.

Behind him, Elizabeth was smashing an orc trying to come over the walls with her shield. He went flying back screaming, but another one soon quickly came to replace him.

The knight grimaced as he engaged another orc. Under normal circumstances, they’d be able to hold Freeburg’s walls quite easily. They did have almost a hundred and fifty Otherworlder heroes and two companies of Erisdalian Rangers.

Except, while a miraculous many of them had survived the initial assault on Freeburg, the Rangers were completely exhausted from the earlier fighting and most of the Otherworlder mages were too.

A spear flew into the orc Martin was fighting, dropping her. Turning, the knight found Elizabeth shooting him a weak smile.

“Fall back to the Fourth Courtyard!” Igraine bellowed over the clangour.

Cursing, Martin bellowed. “You heard her! Everybody fall back!”

“Mages, archers! Covering fire and smoke! HURRY!” Elizabeth added. Martin wasn’t sure when she’d become his de-facto second in command, but he didn’t mind. Elizabeth seemed to have good instincts.

But good instincts weren’t going to save them from the impending disaster. If they lost the Fourth Courtyard, all they had was the Third Courtyard. There, they’ll be backed up against a bridge they couldn’t cross, and the enemy would be reinforced by the surviving orcs they’d bottled up in the barracks.

Martin glanced up at the cliffside. Frances had to come through, and he was pretty sure she would.

But the increasing possibility of her failing scared him.

Frances stepped back and wiped her brow. All the holes were drilled and they were on the right side of the weakened section of the cliff. It formed this rough semi-circle more than a hundred meters in radius.

“What’s next?” she asked.

Jessica narrowed her eyes at Frances. “We hit the top with everything we got, all at once.”

“Would it not be better to try to lever it out? Go for a more controlled break?” Frances asked. She rubbed the ground with one boot. “The cliff isn’t entirely solid rock. There’s dirt and boulders intermixed in here and so it’s not so stable.”

At this suggestion, Jessica frowned in thought. Leila however, scoffed, “We don’t have time. Come on!” She started to yell out words of power, her wand glowing as she formed a spell.

Frances wanted to order Leila to wait, but she didn’t want to interrupt her in the middle of her casting. Instead, she barked out an order for everybody else to back away a little more and start casting themselves.

“When everybody is ready, hit the cliff section on my mark!” Frances exclaimed, making sure she was a good few feet away from the weakened section. She noticed Jessica moving her friend a bit farther away before she started casting.

Soon, the air was humming with power, imbued by word and song, as the six mages prepared their spells.

“Now!” Frances called out. She ended her song, the visual of a hammer of force smashing down onto the entire cliff section, making the ground shake. More spells activated, with varying effects. She saw a purple fist, the colour of Nicole’s magic, slamming into the ground. She saw a fireball like conflagration erupt atop the section. She saw no more because the ground underneath her heaved with the impacts and Frances fell backward. She pulled herself up and immediately began to scramble backward.

The cliff section was breaking off, sliding down like a massive anvil, but, it wasn’t only the rocks and dirt isolated by the drilled holes that slid down. As in slow motion, the ground at the edge was crumbling away, falling into the abyss.

Frances didn’t even need to scream an order to run, everybody was trying to get away as quickly as possible. Still, the edge of the abyss chased them, cracks forming in the dirt snaking toward them, pieces of rock and boulder crumbling away.

When the dust settled, Frances sprang to her feet and looked around. One, three, five… there was someone missing.

Elizabeth heard the crack-boom of the cliff face going, but didn’t look up, unlike her startled opponent. She took the opportunity to down the orc with a brutal strike from her hammer. Only then did she look up.

Just in time to see a wave of rock, dirt and scree strike the roadway before the entrance to Freeburg. Orcs who were once waiting to storm into the fortress disappeared, buried by rock. Others were swept off into the abyss by the tide of thundering rock. It continued to rain grey rock and tan dirt for what seemed like forever. And even when the rumbling clatter stopped, a cloud of dust continued to rise.

The road was thoroughly blocked off by a pile of scree and debris taller than the highest wall on the fortress.

“By Amura and Rathron, she did it!” Elizabeth heard Martin gasp. She could hear similar cheers from the humans in Freeburg. The orcs on the other hand, stood stunned silent.

Elizabeth took that silence as an opportunity. Running up to the nearest orc, she raised her hammer and yelled, “Surrender now! Drop your weapons!”

The orc stared at her, and she glared back, unblinking. She knew her hammer was coated with a thin sheen of blood. She didn’t want to keep soaking it.

The orc, who Elizabeth suddenly realized was her height, and couldn’t be older than she was, shut his eyes and dropped his two axes to the ground.

“Thank you,” she rasped, as more demands for surrender rang out through the fortress.

Frances ran to the edge but didn’t put her foot on it. She had no idea how stable the cliff was. Instead, she lay down on the ground and crawled to the edge.

The section that had fallen sloped down toward the road, which Frances could see was now blocked. On this slope of dirt and rock, hung Leila, clinging desperately to a too-small white-grey rock.

“Help!” Leila screamed. Frances raised her wand, pointed at her former bully, and paused.

There was nobody here with them. At least for this brief second. With a whisper, she could make Leila slip.

Frances immediately shook her head and began to sing, pulling Leila up and towards safety. A desperate looking Jessica quickly added her magic to Frances’s efforts and soon all three were sprawled on the cliff’s edge.

“Thanks,” Leila gasped, sounding oddly sincere.

“You’re welcome.” Frances swallowed and hesitated, but she knew if she didn’t say it now, there would be no other time. “And I’m sorry. About… snapping on you and trying to get you banished home.”

There was no reply and as Frances watched her two former bullies, she saw two very different expressions form on their faces.

Leila’s expression darkened. She rose to her feet and strode away from the cliff, not looking back.

Jessica looked helpless at her friend’s back, before sighing and standing up to leave. Frances felt her shoulders slump, though, she didn’t know why. This was what she expected after all. She grimaced, bitter resentment rising from the fact that Jessica and Leila still hadn’t apologized for what they did to her—

“I’m sorry.”

Frances looked up and stared. Jessica’s moist eyes met hers. It felt like the pair were far away, an impossible chasm between them. A weight, a cloying pressure of pain and awkwardness choked out any further attempts at speaking.

Yet, for a moment, Frances felt like Jessica had seen her and she’d seen something change in her former bully’s anguished features. For the apology her former bully had said was sincere. Woefully inadequate for all the abuse she’d inflicted, but it was an apology.

And just like that, it was over. Jessica had turned to follow Leila. Frances was left alone, exhausted.

Still, somehow Frances felt… good, like another burden that had weighed her down for so long, had fallen off her shoulders.