NOELLE’S POV,
Everyone around me is looking pale and serious as the army comes closer and closer. The grounds seem to shake from all the marching soldiers and the war drums echo in my ears. They stop marching about 50 meters from the wall. The war drums become louder and they all start to shout battle screams in a language I don’t understand. Luna nods at a soldier on the wall and he walks towards a massive horn stationed on the wall. The horn blows a strong and vibrant call through the whole city. I can see everyone take their positions and with determined faces, they seem to say that they are ready for whatever comes at them.
Then the war drums become silent and the front row of dark humans and soldiers starts running to the wall. I can now see Donna standing a few rows behind Hades. As soon as the soldiers walk into the magical shield barrier they explode into light. Everyone on the wall cheers because the spells actually worked. I hear running footsteps behind me and Faith comes running towards us. She is panting and looks like she has been running as her life depended on it. “I got it, I finally got it,” she pants with a relieved smile.
Before any of us can feel joy about it or say something to Faith we hear a strange buzzing sound. I quickly turn around to look back at the army of the Under Realm. Hades is standing there with his arms crossed over his body mumbling words. The buzzing sound seems to get louder and people start to put their hands over their ears. Then he opens up his arms and waves of darkness explode from him scattering the spell shield in a thousand pieces. The shield took most of the impact but still, a mild earthquake goes through the city. I fall to the ground next to Faith and Gabriel. Thorn puts his body over us to protect us from any falling stones. Under his wings Faith shouts, “I need to get closer to the army for the spell. Can you hold them off while I perform the spell?”
I look at Gabriel and he nods at me. I take a deep breath and realize I need to get myself together now. It is time to show them what I have learned. As soon as the earthquake stops we get on Thorn his back and he lands us in between the army and the city gate blasting anyone close enough with dragon fire. Faith quickly takes the book, sits down, and closes her eyes starting to sing an incantation. As soon as she starts singing I can see a little light starts emerging from within her. I put myself in front of her, Gabriel stands on her left side and Thorn on her right.
It takes a few seconds but then the army starts running towards us. Some of them get shot by lighted arrows from the wall or light bombs from the catapults. Most of them unfortunately keep running at us. Gabriel blasts anyone close enough with lightning and Thorn burns everyone on the right to ash. I blast row after row of demons with purple witch fire or let them explode with power outbursts of light magic. Faith starts to sing louder and louder and the light is now flowing out of her and becomes like a cloud of mist. The mist flows through us and makes its way through the army of the Under Realm. It gets much more difficult to fight now that we cannot see them coming. I just keep blasting fire in any direction as fast as I can. It doesn’t take long for me to be dripping with sweat. I look over to Gabriel and I can see he is breathing heavily as well. In the meantime, the mist has spread over the whole army and Faith stands up and puts her hands above her head. The last words she sings almost sound more like high screams.
For a minute I only hear absolute silence when the mist hangs above everyone’s heads. The moment is over when the mist dives down into the bodies. For me, it feels like a light breeze passes me but at the Under Realm army screams start to emerge. The fog clears and from different dark humans all over the army light starts to emerge and shoots into the sky. They are all screaming until the lights start to come down again back into their bodies. From that moment they seem to glow up and their faces look like they just woke up from a nightmare. When they realize where they are standing their eyes fill with panic and they start running towards the gate of Dandion. I hear Faith scream, “We have to let them pass into the city.”
“Cover me,” I shout to Gabriel and Thorn.
I make a barricade of purple witch fire that reveals a safe path for the healed dark humans to the gate. I concentrate on keeping the barricade while hundreds of dark humans run towards the gate inside the city. I feel a sparkle of hope when I realize it must be at least one-third of all the dark humans in the army. Must give it to Faith that she is the most impressive healer in all the Realms. The last dark human just ran through the gate so I slowly walk backward with a wall of fire blasting towards the army. I keep blasting fire until my back is pressed against the gate. Thorn flies over the wall as soon as he realizes I am safe for now. I can feel Gabriel his hand on my shoulder and drop my hands after the final blast of fire. I just want to walk inside the gate when I peek over my shoulder at the army. My eyes lock with Hades and he is just smiling at me calmly.
I immediately feel like I just got punched in the stomach. We just took a large chunk of his army over to our side. Why on earth would he be so calm and even smile at me? Like everything is just going as he expected. At that moment I can feel it in all my bones, something is terribly wrong.