The Academy gates were opening, slowly revealing the hordes of heroes behind them. Mary shuddered at the thought that she'd have to fight people she once knew. They weren't her friends, not really, but they weren't an entirely nameless mass either...

“Steady...” Arthur called.

At least some of the students were by her side instead - she could only hope the remnants of her last team would know better and stay away. She'd almost forgotten about them, which made her feel even worse.

“Steady...”

A dark cloud was forming in the sky to Mary'right. At first, it was so small that she wasn't sure if it was real. But no, it was definitely there - and it was growing.

“Steady..., I said steady!”

“Chaaarge!” One of the rebels, a six-foot-tall man with a two-handed axe, ran off the platform and shot toward the Academy's gates. He didn't even make it halfway there until the abomination on one of the towers turned on him - a flaming-red eye with an iris black as death.

The man collapsed mid-stride, and streaks of black smoke started lifting from his unmoving body.

“Nobody else move before I tell you to!” Arthur yelled so loudly and so anciently that even Mary winced.

She looked up at the cloud again. It was forming a circle, with darkness on the edges, and in the middle... were those stars?

An array of white and black rays shot out from the hole in the sky and struck the walls. Most hit the atrocities pinned on top, which started convulsing and twisting even more chaotically. A few missed and struck the walls, covering them in webs of cracks, but they weren't enough to cause any real damage to the structure.

“NOW!”

People started to rush - the first two dozen immediately dashed hundreds of yards forward, each adding their little share to the overall chaos. Some flew with wings of both feathery and leathery texture, and someone even used a jetpack. One man in bland-orange armour jumped twenty feet up in the air and changed into an enormous sandworm on his way down - and he bit through the dunes so fast that if not for the bulge skidding on the surface, Mary would have thought she'd imagined the whole thing. And those were among the more normal ones.

The Academy defenders made their move as well - whatever the sky-hole thingy was, it didn't do its job perfectly. Some of the defence towers were still active, and the rebels had to swerve, zigzag or slow down to block incoming projectiles, beams, and magics.

Most did well.

Some were vaporised instantly. Others wished they had been too.

Mary was still standing, anxiously counting seconds - she'd be going among the last ones. The next few rows moved. Then the next.

The heroes defending the Academy charged too, and the dry air was filled with death.

And then Mary's turn came. Her legs carried her forward at a speed matching Margaret - both Hans' whatever-it-was armour and Paolo's blood armour had higher top speeds, and to her surprise, Mary wasn't getting behind. She didn't feel any fatigue from the dash either. She wasn't even sure if she should have been feeling the scorching sun, or if the shadows swirling around her would protect her from that too, had she still been alive-

She barely reacted in time to block a phantom blazing skull trying to bite her face off with half-rotten teeth. Right. Focus.

By the time she reached the frontline, the entire battlefield was a chaotic bloodbath. Heroes from both sides were stabbing each other to death, burning each other alive and tearing each other apart. The diversity of powers used was overwhelming.

Mary kept running alongside her friends, occasionally throwing a fireball or blocking incoming projectiles with her shadows. She felt the power coursing through her still heart, a feeling simultaneously sickening and exhilarating. Paolo must have felt similarly as he absorbed more and more blood into his growing creation - the entire construction was now at least ten feet tall.

Margaret and Hans were left with catching any strays trying to sneak past the main assault.

Somewhere to the right, Mary saw an explosion of silvery light as a massive silvery dear breathed an inferno of incandescent flames at a red-skinned, horned giant coming out of a portal of some kind. Its pained roar shook the earth as it wildly whipped a fiery whip over the heads of the soldiers.

Somewhere to the left, an actual blue dragon was fighting with an overgrown white wolf, who spat blizzard with each breath. They danced around, not caring about trampling unfortunate humans unlucky enough to find themselves there.

And there were almost regular humans, fighting each other with regular weapons - and regularly dying.

There was no time to think about that. Mary had one job in this battle, and she intended to deliver. If she failed, all this would have gone for naught.

Fortunately, the rebels were delivering - Mary now saw a clear corridor leading right to the gate, now guarded by two knights with oversized halberds.

Five hundred yards left.

Two hundred yards. Mary barely deflected a red energy projectile that flew randomly from some clustered melee.

A hundred yards. Two assassins with flowing dark capes jumped over the other soldiers and opened with a volley of daggers. Paolo's blood recoiled from some invisible shield around them, and Hans threw himself at them before they could reach Mary.

“Go! We'll take them on!” Margaret yelled, casting multiple shield domes around herself and Hans.

They did.

Fifty yards. Mary and Paolo picked up the pace. They needn't worry about simple human limitations.

Ten. Mary threw a screaming fireball at one guard while Paolo swung a bloodily-armoured hand at the other. Neither got up.

They passed the gate.

#

The grounds inside the walls were surprisingly empty - Mary could count all the taken sunbeds and observers eating their hotdogs on the fingers of one hand. She looked around, searching for the cathedral - it was quite elusive from time to time.

Not this time.

It stood just there, right behind the Tanuor statue. A gargantuan, golden statue, currently digging in the ground and focusing its red eyes on Mary and Paolo. There was something large, dark and malformed poured over the bull's neck.

Within seconds, Mary saw a swarm of rockets erupting from its behind, flying toward her on arced trajectories. She focused on the shadows surrounding her and pushed her power outwards, feeling other puddles of darkness. She grabbed them with her mind, or maybe her unmoving heart, and flung them on intercepting courses. Beside her, Paolo started shooting thin javelins made of blood in similar manner.

The projectiles swerved randomly, but most were still caught in the heroes' first salvo and exploded in multi-coloured fireworks. One of them managed to get way too close and only got hit twenty feet away - the shockwave threw Mary back a few steps, but she managed to stay upright. She gritted her teeth. It would take long.

Half an hour later, they were exactly where they started. There were just too many rockets. Time and time again, after moving just a few feet forward, something slipped through a counter-salvo, the shockwave would reach too far, some rocket had a stealth system and seemingly appeared out of thin air...

In short, it was bad.

“This isn't working,” Paolo wheezed through clenched teeth. “All that matters is for you to get to that cathedral. I'll try to do something a bit crazy, and you need to take the opening. Just trust me that I'll be ok and run forward. Ok?”

Mary looked at him and nodded. She understood.

The boy closed his eyes, and his blood-armour reformed, sprouting two large wings. He flapped them without losing a single drop of their material and slowly rose to the air - this shouldn't have worked, it was absurd, but... it just did.

“Come at me,” Paolo yelled.

And so the bull did - new swarms of rockets erupted from launchers hidden below its tail, but now they had come from below - and the shockwaves only made it easier for the boy to go higher and higher.

And it left the ground unattended.

Mary broke into a run, grateful again for the lack of feeling. She was almost past the bull's head when it suddenly lowered its eyes and flared them like terrible red lanterns threatening to burn right through the puny human who dared to oppose the Academy's might.

The shadows rose in front of her in an improvised shield, holding the pressing doom at bay - but only barely. Mary's feet started sinking into the ground from the sheer crimson pressure.

There was no way she could move against such force.

“Mary!” Came a voice from high-up. Too high-up. Paolo wouldn't be able to help her, as he was barely surviving himself.

She gritted her teeth. The darkness within and around her pulsed, but all it did was keep her alive, or undead, or whatever - it wouldn't help her move.

“Bip. Goodbye. Bip.” Mary heard Mossie speak by her side, and she looked at the little robot, confused.

It flew off at full speed. Or more than full speed - Mary never saw it flying so fast. It flew outside the cover of her shield, then up in an arc, gaining more momentum with every second. She realised what was happening and tried to shout, but it was too late - there was a little explosion around the Tanuor's left eye, and the golden beast reared, breaking the eye contact.

“No!” Mary finally managed to cry, but it was already over.

“Mary! What the heck are you doing. Run!” Paolo said as he dived at the furious statue, desperately trying to buy a bit more of the time Mary was just wasting.

And so, she ran.