An uncountable hoard of undead surrounded the city in groups. The cities army fortified the walls focusing most of their attention on the weaker gates. If the undead were going to break through something it would be the gates.

Meanwhile the priests worked on figuring out what to do. The smarter ones immediately found their superiors for orders and tested out their magic now that the cathedral was lost, they soon found out that most of their abilities were significantly stunted, once they could cast complex magics with only a few chants and little knowledge of the spell itself, but now they found it impossible to cast those spells without their god helping guide and weave their spells.

Fires continued to spread throughout the throughout the residence districts while the army stood at the walls prepared for battle. The only fires they were interested in putting out were on grain stores and army utilities.

Shortly afterward when it settled down it became obviously apparent that the undead weren’t attacking, they were just surrounding the city, doing who knows what.

A man wearing only white with a large hat on his head, holding a staff made of some type of translucent golden crystal stepped onto the walls surrounded by other people wearing simpler white robes.

This man was the ‘pope’ for this particular religion, a well loved man that supposedly practiced dark magics, but then saw the light in a vision of god and changed his ways.

His face barely showing the first signs of wrinkles scrunched up upon sight of the undead. Whether this was from remembering his past deeds or just the offense to life these undead posed even his close followers didn’t know.

The pope turned around, looked to the burning city then to his people, he gave off a heavenly residence and projected his voice, “Listen well my children, The darkness of old has come back--”

Immediately explosions of discussion broke out in the infantry ranks interrupting him.

An archbishop standing closest to the pope noticed the popes face twitching for a moment, but wisely chose to pretend he never saw it. The pope raised his hands and increased his brightness and volume, “WORRY not my children, for I have been preparing you for this, our darkest hour. Our house of god may be temporarily destroyed and your connection to god severed, BUT, remember god doesn’t challenge us in ways we cannot overcome with FAITH. GOD IS STILL WITH US WEATHER WE CAN FEEL HIM INTIMATELY OR NOT. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR FOR DEATH IS ALSO TEMPORARY FOR THOSE WHO GIVE THEIR UNDYING FAITH TO GOD!! IF THEY REFUSE TO COME TO US THAN WE WILL BRING GODS WRAITH TO THEM, OPEN THE GATES AND SHOW YOUR LOVE AND DEVOTION FOR THE ONLY TRUE GOD!!”

he was met with a roar of approval from the masses below as they struggled to open the gates and show their devotion. The pope turned around to his subordinates, “I’m off to do gods work” he said as usual before starting down the steps.

An archbishop quickly called out to him before the pope was out of view, “Your holiness were can we find you if the nee--”

an elbow sharply jabbed him in the side interrupting him, he looked to his side and saw the meaningful stare of another archbishop and promptly shut up. Another whispered to him, I’m sure all the saintess’ are worried about their family's in the slums so he’s just going to comfort them”, earning that man a pointed glare.

Someone asked, “how many of them did we save”

“sadly not many, there were more important things the water mages had to do”

“that's unacceptable, who was in charge of bringing their families into the noble wards”

“s-sir many of those people had the slums stench ingrained so deeply into their bones that they could never pass off as a noble even if their lives depended on it”

“then what is his holiness supposed to say to appease his saintess’ now”

One of the men looked around and saw nobody nearby, he leaned in and with a smile that wasn’t a smile and said, “it was gods plan”

On the open field.

Soldiers and knights alike half marched half ran towards the undead, their priest commanders tried to get the army into order, however, the popes earlier speech had the men riled up and practically frothing at the mouth. With little luck getting the soldiers into a proper formation they instead focused on buffing the front-line.

This is where the problems started, without the gods aid most of their spells either didn’t work or were painfully underpowered. The soldiers themselves had a basic grasp of light magic, but that grasp was so flimsy that it wasn’t worth mentioning without any buffs.

Suddenly the previously still undead acted, the front line dropped face first into the ground revealing a firing line of crossbows behind. The charging soldiers didn’t have time to react before bolts tore through their ranks.

Then those undead that had fired kneel-ed down allowing another revealed line to fire. The first volley was demoralizing for a moment before they realized the enemy had to reload, the second volley crushed any second wind, turning a rush to be first into the throng of enemies into a desperate dash to close the distance before more bolts came flying.

Luckily there wasn’t another line ready to fire, but the first line were loaded and released a third volley into the oncoming army.

People tripping over soldiers cut down by bolts slowed the charge considerably, and the still prone front-line slowed down the charge even more, however, it wasn’t enough as more than half the second line didn’t get to let loose another shot before being overrun.

A mild cheer rose after they managed to crush the undead from the might of sheer numbers, shouting from behind caught the leaders attention and they saw that several such undead groups were coming from the other side of the city, orders were immediately set out to get to the city walls. Even if they couldn’t fight from them they could still have a safe wall to their backs to stop themselves from being surrounded. Several of the leading priests were worried the men would still ignore orders, but the high casualty rate for killing such a small force had calmed the men down.

Just as the soldiers prepared for a swift march back to the gates holes opened up around the army. Most were only a meter or so wide, but there were hundreds of them. Ants holding crystals and flasks flooded out onto the flat plane along with a few other creatures which flew into the air.

Priests cursed with their path of retreat now cut off and gave orders for a desperate push to the city before they were completely overrun.

The priests were the first to die, their attention was on the approaching swarm rather than the inconsequential birds that killed them. With wingspan of only a foot across the crystal carrying birds were easily able to infiltrate the enemy ranks, they just simply flew down next to the white robed priests and crushed their tiny mana crystals with enhanced talons.

The explosions from the smaller mana crystals wasn’t as devastating. They only killed things within a couple feet, but that was enough when they were practically sitting on their targets head.

Before anyone could figure out what happened another wave of birds flew overhead, higher this time. Then dropped capsules that soon spewed out billowing smoke in all directions. Soldiers hastily grabbed for their antidotes and downed them. Meanwhile, the few surviving priests voices were drowned out by the first explosions as they tried to tell everyone that the gas wasn’t poisonous.

No-one could see anything more than a few feet in front of them. Explosions caused the earth to violently tremor making it harder to stand straight and impossible to hear. Panic ensued and any semblance of order vanished as people scattered into whatever direction they thought the city was in.

Even still they were still a considerably large force so they were quickly pushing the ants back faster than they could come out of their holes. Vials of poison were broken in an attempt to slow down the army further, but in an open field most of the poison dispersed or wasn’t in contact with the soldiers long enough to overpower their antidotes.

Gradually the smoke cleared and the soldiers who had run in the wrong direction corrected course. Although most of these men were picked off by the faster ants. The explosions slowly decreased in frequency until they were practically not existent. And the poison was all but used and or useless.

The army was going to make it to the gates before the other undead groups could surround them.

Earlier in an underground tunnel.

Lucifer focused on his domain and after several seconds summoned a large bird. How this brown giant hawk counted as a demon that he could summon Lucifer didn’t know, but he couldn’t care either. He was more focused on the effort required to summon the beast.

He could feel the lag between when he tried to activate a magic and when it would come into effect. He rightly assumed it had something to do with the distance involved between the spell and his core.

After casting a strange magic on the bird he sighed and his body slumped onto the cold floor dead. He would have needed a new one soon anyway because it was slowly degrading and he couldn’t figure out how to stop it, but that didn’t stop him from finding it annoying that he would have to find and reconfigure a new body.

With that in mind he stretched his new wings and got a feel for flying like a bird. It was instinctual for his new feathery body and only took him ten minutes to get into the air. By 30 minutes he was quite proficient although he wouldn’t be a very successful hunter yet, but all he needed was the birds eye view.

Presently above the battlefield.

Lucifer saw the retreating army and it was fairly obvious that most of them would make it inside the gates before the undead caught up. He didn’t have many cards left to play because he thought the initial barrage would be more effective, especially the poison in particular.

With only a few birds left in reserve in case the man with the big hat showed up Lucifer forced to think quickly, this many soldiers cannot be allowed to leave the battlefield alive.

Suddenly an idea struck him and he quickly sent a telepathic message to his birds, they got the message in changed direction towards the gate along with Lucifer much higher above.

“OPEN THE GATES!!” yelled someone manning the walls. Lucifer made a few adjustments to the birds orders and had them fly directly into the gate mechanism building.

The wooden building shook violently and the boards acting as windows were blasted out.

“WHAT IN GODS NAME HAPPENED IN THERE” yelled the same man from earlier, he then sent someone to check. Even from hundreds of meters up Lucifer could see the palatable nervousness exhibited by the man as the army got closer and the gates weren’t opening.

“the gate mechanism is broken sir” reported the soldier that entered the gate mechanism building.

“THEN OPEN IT MANUALLY” he roared.

Every able body was sent to the gate to push it open from the inside, however, the gate was made long ago and then refitted with heavy armor which even the recently installed mechanisms had trouble moving, so the few men left to defend the walls were painfully slow in opening the gates.