The Order of the Polar Duelists was much smaller than the building for the Bleaks Moons. What was a tight fit before became uncomfortably cramped as Lancecain directed his charges inside. No one was happy but they understood.

Once they were settled, Lancecain climbed onto the roof to watch what he could of the battle taking place in the distance. He couldn’t make out many details. Perhaps that was a blessing. With the horror hidden from him, the deadly magic on display could be described as beautiful, the cries of the doomhawks no different than the cries of harmless birds that woke southerners.

He wouldn’t deceive himself about the truth of the situation but keeping it far from his mind, not seeing his comrades being torn apart or dropped from great heights, allowed him to keep his calm and follow his orders.

He watched and he waited. Whether for the end of the battle or a call to join it, he didn’t know. He’d already determined there was no place for him in the epic struggle taking place. He could take down several doomhawks, even the elder variants, but the light affinity, as he used it, wasn’t good against armies. Five or six extra corpses wouldn’t make much of a difference.

On the contrary, if a small force broke away, his presence could be the difference between struggle and tragedy. Better to leave the bulk of the fighting to knights with affinities better suited for the task, who’d spent years perfecting the art of taking down the most enemies with the least amount of mana.

He'd be better off turning away and finding something useful to do but the storm of violence held him transfixed. He wasn’t the only one. Despite many warnings, civilians stood in doorways and peered out of narrow windows at the eye-catching displays of destruction.

The people of Victory lived alongside violence. It supported them. Defined them. Normally, a fight on the scale of a small war would have the people’s blood boiling…but this was different. Their knights weren’t fighting on the battlefield inherited by their ancestors. They were desperately defending their homes from invaders.

Not even their bloodthirsty culture could see such a battle as anything other than worrying. Perhaps it was childish, but the potential consequences took the “fun” out of the latest chapter in their eternal war. The northern people had learned to live with their children not coming home but the thought of their homes being destroyed by stray spells and crushed under monster corpses filled them with trepidation.

Victory took great pride in its walls and its traditions. Beyond their walls was a frozen hellscape but they felt safe in their home. Now, their home hung in the balance. It was being destroyed with each passing moment. It was a serious blow, one Lancecain wasn’t sure they would ever recover from.

If it were any other year, he wouldn’t be nearly as worried. The insult would ignite their fighting spirit. The worse consequence would be more young men and women taking up arms the next year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t any other year. It was the worst year the north had experienced in generations.

The betrayal of Khan had cracked the people’s faith. Not only because a member of the James, their idols, had been turned against them but it showed that there were worse faiths than death awaiting them. They were accustomed to death but the possibility of having one’s mind probed and twisted would give pause to even the bravest knight.

They had also suffered the worst casualty rates from the campaign since the founding of the fort. The armies had been devastated and the current catastrophe would only cut deeper into their numbers. He was confident that they would take down a dozen birds for each knight that fell. With thousands of enemies circling over their home, the math didn’t add up in their favor. The way things looked, they wouldn’t have enough abled bodies to launch the campaigns next year. Maybe not for a few years, something Victory couldn’t afford.

The battle raged for hours. Eventually, the grand displays of magic relented. Lancecain could easily imagine the flow of battle as the diving birds switched from primarily targeting the western wall to striking all over the fort. Without their magic, the knights had to result to melee and would spread out to use buildings as cover.

In an empty field where the hawks could swarm a fighter, even a senior knight would be overwhelmed in minutes. However, a trainee could take down a dozen or two if they fought in the shadow of proper cover, the large monsters awkward when trying to fight around larger obstacles.

If they fought well, Lancecain figured they could fight for hours but he dreaded the battle carrying on into the night. Even the impressive stamina of northern warriors would flag after hours of swinging swords and spears. Swinging said weapons also got a lot more difficult without proper vision. Worse, the longer they fought, the less likely the buildings giving them an advantageous battlefield would remain intact.

The moment the sun set, the battle was as good as over.

As the gloomy sky grew darker, signaling the onset of a long night, a familiar screech reached his ears. He was contemplating the logistics of moving the civilians further away under the cover of night when he heard it. He jumped to his feet, eyes widening as he saw the majestic figure of the Lord flying over Victory, unmistakable despite the distance.

The battle came to an immediate halt, no creature daring to disturb the wild majesty as it hovered over the tall walls. Each beat of its powerful wings stirred the snow around it. The white powder swirled into a funnel that slowly reached toward it, as if the land itself was under the creature’s sway.

Lancecain felt a crushing dread in his chest as he imagined being in the middle of, what the knights must have thought to be, a sudden storm that stole their vision and pelted them with debris as they waited for an unimaginably powerful enemy to launch an attack.

But the Lord didn’t attack. With one last powerful beat of its wings, it soared into the sky, heading for the mountain it had descended from. As it disappeared beyond the clouds, the funnel of snow fell, the storm quelled before it could truly begin.

The circling doomhawks, that had waited in silence, resumed their shrieks. However, they followed the path of their ruler. The cloud of death shrouding the fort disappeared as they flew back to their nests.

Lancecain watched with wide eyes as the monsters retreated. He had just been contemplating the end of Victory and now it was over. They hadn’t even needed to fight their way out of the crisis.

Lancecain thought that the Lord would be the most amazing thing he’d see in his life. Every child was taught about the monsters that lived at the peak of the mountains no man had ever climbed but they hadn’t been spotted since the founding of the kingdom. Many scholars had suggested the original manabeasts that had beaten the first northerners had already died and been replaced by weaker descendants, usually when someone wanted to send an expeditionary force up the Peaks. They were legends and Lancecain had seen one.

And in the same day, he had seen something even more incredible. Something impossible. The Lord, the enemy of humanity according to his ancestors, hadn’t thrown a single spell. He had no doubts it could have annihilated them all but it returned to its home peacefully. It spared them.

The impossible had happened. The north had shown mercy.