Slayer Magic
Chapter Nine

by Jared Ornstead
aka Skysaber
aka Perfect Lionheart

OoOoO

Xander floated, surveying Sunnydale for only a moment before a ghostly red biplane dove at him from out of the sun, Baron Richthoffen, the infamous Red Baron, at the controls.

Then it was on.

OoOoO

On the ground, Giles had never seen a trailer for the anime Evangelion, because otherwise he would have compared the rate of gunfire from the emplaced city defenses to that fictional fortress city.

Rockets fired so fast it came out as a continual stream, with the launchers effectively a box shaped hose. He couldn't even begin to comprehend the feed mechanisms that implied, or the buried stocks of munitions that must exist underground to sustain that rate of fire.

All he knew was that the roar of the launching itself was intimidating enough. The devastation on the receiving end had to be unimaginable.

Someone had also taken naval five-inch guns and rigged them for full-auto fire, and they hadn't let up one instant since this madness had started. And there had to have been close to a hundred of those guns firing all at once.

The roar was enormous, a continual crash of a thousand bolts of thunder. If that was actually hitting what they aimed for, that would erase whole armies of tanks as easily and quickly as a man wiped chalk from a blackboard.

Giles could frankly not imagine a demon great enough that it would require this level of fire in response to it.

OoOoO

Baron Richthoffen was a smear of ectoplasm somewhere on the ground behind him, brought down by a burst of magical energy after being outmaneuvered. Xander didn't have the time or energy to spare to care just now, or he probably would have been geeking out that he'd just shot down the Red Baron.

Not a lot of people can say that.

They'd had an honest-to-goodness aerial dogfight. Brief, but no less real for all of that. Guy had even tagged him once in the ribs with a bullet from a 50 caliber machinegun. A slug of very real lead from the bullet was still splashed across his clothes. When he got home and realized what it was Xander would probably have it cast into a medal, or something.

Right now he had too many screaming vampire bats - the genuine, enchanted and evil variety, fluttering in his face to care. The hordes of vile creatures flew as thick as rain up here.

He'd lost sight of Willow, but knew exactly where she was and what she was doing, high and on his left engaging a pair of flying skeletons that she and Mercy had trapped between them. It was like that with everyone.

A day ago a battle like this would have been hellish, a confused melee where everybody lost track of everybody else and got isolated by smoke and monsters to do the best they could, desperate and alone in a large battle swarming with enemies, relying on nothing more than their own strength to pull them through.

Now? Each one of them just knew where the others were. It was like keeping track of your fingers, you just knew. And you knew what they were up to, as well as whether they were injured or needed help with something they were fighting.

Since reading that Flanking For Dummies book Harmony had created through the use of her enchantment-catcher, strategy and tactics came as naturally to them as counting your shoes, and though the battle was chaos, they were dancing through it as though in a choreographed ballet. One second an angel would appear to be in desperate combat with the hideous specter in front of her, then she'd wheel around to cleave in half the phantom pursuing an angel who'd passed just behind her, while the angel so pursued buried her sword to the hilt in the skull of the hideous specter, surprising the monster by this new angel appearing out of nowhere when its attention was so focused on the first.

Angels darted about dodging explosions and assisting angels. Where a black creature had an angel trapped or on the run, most often that was because she was leading the pursuer into a trap. Where always before it had been battles of 'my strength versus yours', now it was more a case where, flashing about to each other's assistance, a monster distracted by the foe before it was most often getting cleaved in two by the angel behind it, with their own efficiency and economy of motion making it seem as though they had practiced those exact maneuvers for months!

Combat, while normally hellish, brutal and ugly, was almost beautiful watching those angels do it. Case in point, a perfect example occurred when through the smoke he caught a glimpse of Harmony off in the distance battling a very yucky phantom, and lodging her sword deep between its eyes after Verity had distracted it. But the glimpse was brief before more explosions from the ground fire struck the duo.

As bad as that was, it could have been worse. Xander and his angels were all benefiting greatly from the fact that nothing could effectively target them. Radar couldn't pick them up. Computers couldn't track them. IR systems did not detect them, and basically if you wanted to find them with any modern tracking systems you were out of luck. Being impossible to target had probably saved all of their lives twice now, in this battle alone. If someone down there had a weapon, they either aimed it at the angels in person using the old-fashioned eyeball, or it got fired blindly into the air, hoping to hit something by sheer chance.

That meant most of it was missing.

Of course, that also meant that some of it was hitting.

Shrapnel splashed across Xander's face, and he was reminded that he'd lost the Protection From Artifacts ward when he'd been briefly turned to goo, as the little shards of metal drew blood from him in long scratches.

He had to ignore the blast, and let it him anyway, because he was close on the tail of a will-o'-the-wisp, and they were dodgy bastards. Any hint of a break in the pursuit and it would have gotten away.

Of course, that shrapnel cloud would have gone right through a human, but he was tougher than that now.

Anti-aircraft artillery was even heavier than over the fleet, which meant that shortly the clouds of black smoke would blot out the sun over town effectively enough that even vampires, if the Mayor had any left, could come out to play.

Which may have been part of his defensive strategy all along.

Fortunately, anti-air artillery compensated for how difficult planes were to hit by exploding in the near vicinity and just sending out clouds of shrapnel to do the job. This worked against aircraft, because their hulls were only about beer-can thick. You can't truly armor something when every ounce counts because it's got to fly. The laws of physics are against you. So they generally design towards their strengths and just work to make them faster and more agile, counting on not being hit rather than absorbing damage.

Best defense: Not be there.

The specters they were fighting up here, like the one Amy had just pursued across his field of vision, roasting with sheets of fire, were capable of absorbing a lot more damage.

There were exceptions, but even the rare 'armored' aircraft concentrated its armor around a few, key systems. And the most armored plane in existence wasn't half as well armored as even a decent-to-poor armored car.

Armored aircraft came to mind, because the Mayor had somehow acquired a good sixty or so Hind helicopters from the going out of business sales of communist countries, and those were among the first considered when armored aircraft got mentioned.

Of course, Xander was less concerned about its armor than he was about the chain guns and missile pods it was doing its level best to unleash upon him. And the will-o'-the-wisp had been doing its level best to lead him into position ahead of those guns.

Naturally, it was surprised when it turned out he'd done the reverse to it. A slash of Willow's sword from out of the smoke cut through the globe of swamp light, and the will-o'-the-wisp was no more. Things specialized in being hard to catch, not formidable once caught, and his angels had dropped about five of them apiece by now. That one Willow had just killed was, to the best of his knowledge, the last of them.

But not nearly the end of their problems.

While that Hind was trying desperately to get Xander within its sights, Cordelia came out of nowhere and slammed into the side of the copter, tore open the door, and flung the undead pilot out by the lapels on his rotting uniform jacket. Then, to his surprise, she took the pilot's seat herself and began to rain down its cargo of rockets and chain gun ammunition upon the anti-air batteries that were making it so loud and hard to see up here.

It took years to qualify to fly one of those things properly. But proper wasn't on the order of business today. She just wanted the thing pointed the right way long enough to pull some triggers, and she got that.

When the rocket pods ran on empty, the cheerleader escaped under her own power, and the anti-air fire sought it out less than a full second later, exploding the copter.

She even started a trend among the angels, who began taking over more helicopters and bombers, to rain their cargo of destruction down upon the ground troops and installations that were firing on them.

Things got marginally quieter in the air after they did that, but it was hard to notice.

The real problem they were facing in the skies over Sunnydale were not the aircraft, nor the rockets or flak artillery. No, it was the creatures. Well, the ones that could fly, really. Most of the ones on the ground, the heavy infantry battalions, the hordes of imp-like demons or the werewolf clans camped out in the hills, they could just ignore. The ones shooting at them were a bit of an annoyance, but not much, really.

No, it was that the sky was absolutely thick with flying defenders.

Xander had just assisted in the kill of the last will-o'-the-wisp. Those had been a real pain, in that you couldn't accomplish anything without one of them getting in the way and spoiling it all. So he was certainly glad they were gone. The vampire bats up here were mostly just a nuisance. Xander had noted three types. Some of the more powerful swarms rated a one-two to his magical senses, but that was rare. Most of the swarms up here were two-ones or one-ones, hostile and malignant but not very deadly when you could First Strike them, and they'd been mowing those down like grass, to the point where limp, furry bodies and cut wings had begun to settle down over Sunnydale as though a coating of black snow.

Of course, the swarms of black vultures that had been blown up early on by the defender's own artillery might have contributed something to that effect, too.

An explosion went off to his left, briefly illuminating an angel unlucky enough to get caught by the blaze. It looked like she had been fighting a ghostly pterodactyl at the time.

It had certainly been crowded up here, although with the distractions of the wisps and bats cleared out, those crowds were diminishing by the moment.

Harmony blasted some swarms with lightning. Verity drew back an arrow and shot a flaming specter through from ear to ear. Artillery explosions caught two more angels and a bat swarm actually landed claws on Mercy, tearing strips down her blouse before Hope coming up behind helped finish them.

A ghostly dragon shrieked as three angels combined to drive swords through its heart.

Xander noted a stray rocket falling on a Sunnydale gas station, igniting the storage tanks and blowing the whole thing into a ball of fire and a vapor of smoke. The only reason he noted it was, with so much else going on, he could barely hear it. The explosion was just one more among so many others.

It was just something he noted as he dove down from behind into the fray where Sophie was fighting with a dozen flying skeletons with their own, tattered and bony wings. They had to fly magically, because a boy wearing a superman cape had more lift surface.

But it was a very magical battle today.

And thinking of that, as he blocked a scythe aimed toward his face, he considered there had to be something magical about being an angel, as he didn't have a smudge or a flake of smoke anywhere on him. His clothes and feathers shone as brightly white as they did before the battle, and the same for the others.

Handy. Not particularly crucial, but handy, he thought as he slashed an undead spine in half, chopped another skull to pieces, then blocked a third scythe to the face. What was it with these undead creeps and scythes to the face?

A second ghostly dragon dissolved into ectoplasm behind him as angels finished it off.

This time he was able to dodge the rippling chain of air-burst explosives scattering shrapnel all over the place. A direct hit shattered the spine and ribcage of one of those skeletons nicely, but Xander had already lost count whether that was one of his first hundred close brushes with an artillery strike, or his fifth.

The sky was black up there for a reason, after all.

Luckily, most of the skeletons up here were three-ones, deadly on offense, which never made a difference if meeting them you had first-strike, which thankfully both he and his troops did. He cut them down, only to find himself in the clear, with no more enemies in sight, and his angels rapidly regrouping.

Then a sudden, awful silence gripped everything.

"The guns, they've stopped," Willow observed in the now thundering absence of noise.

Sophie cocked her head, "That's because what we've been fighting was all stuff they didn't care about if they hit with their own artillery or not. Ghosts, will-o'-the-wisps and specters are all immaterial. Vampire bats can only be harmed by magic or silver, which their shrapnel was not, and the Hinds probably had some serious form of Identify-Friend-or-Foe signal running. About their only mistake was sending vultures into that fray."

"The skeletons?" Charity asked, having fought a few of them.

"No flesh to damage, and the little shards of metal from shrapnel just rattle off magically hardened bone. I know. I saw," Verity confirmed.

"Well, we've taken out their small fry," Amy observed. "And they wouldn't turn their guns off without reason. So we must suppose that their big hitters are about to be rolled out."

"Here they come," Cordy, who had been watching the ground, observed massive doors open on what had been underground hangars.

OoOoO

Giles was certain he'd gone deaf. His head was splitting in the worst headache he'd ever suffered in his life, while his ears felt as though they'd had ice picks repeatedly shoved in them, and the punishment must have brought on his hangover early.

He blessed the sudden silence when it came, as that gave him enough relief to pass out, curled up in the fetal position on the floor of his Citroen.

Today had certainly not been the best choice for heavy drinking.

OoOoO

"I don't believe it," Cordelia stated bluntly.

Xander was having some difficulty himself. At first, it was most surprising to see how few things flew up to greet them. But those things included the Mayor of Sunnydale himself, and...

"On Dasher! On Dancer! On Prancer and Vixen! On Comet! On Cupid! On Donner and Blitzen!" The man was driving a copy of santa's sleigh up to meet them, on which he had nightmares serving as reindeer.

"Ok, that's just creepy," Harmony confessed.

BOOM!

Joyce Dawnbringer flew up to their side, an empty, smoking rocket launcher in her hands, an anti-tank rocket had just struck the Mayor's sleigh, sending him plummeting down like a bag of beans.

"Not funny," the woman declared to the falling politician.

Xander smirked. The rest of them smiled. Buffy's mother had become an angel, because he'd drawn a Reya Dawnbringer card, and, if you are going to empower anyone as a Dawnbringer, who better than someone who brought into being a daughter named Dawn?

Of course, that card had been a Legend, but Harmony had already proven they could overcome that with a bit of blank tape, so other mothers from the sleepover chaperons had been drafted to fill out the rest.

That was when the Mayor began to rise back into view, carried aloft by flying monkeys.

"Now fly!" The Mayor chanted, waving his arms to encourage them on. "Fly my pretties! Fly!"

"This guy is really creeping me out," Amy declared.

Then the Nightmares hit.

~Sixty-sixty.~ Xander thought to himself, blasted back by a double-kick before he'd even realized what was going on. If the sixth sense of his First Strike ability hadn't warned him, that must mean the Nightmares had it to.

When people who both had first strike fought, the abilities equaled out. And a Nightmare had power and toughness equal to the number of swamps that player controlled. So, at a guess, the Mayor controlled sixty swamps.

Xander smashed into the side of a thankfully empty building and rolled through several blocks of more before he'd bled off enough of the momentum to be able to get control and kick off into the air again.

But by then the Nightmare was already upon him, dodging past a dozen angels to follow up its first attack, smashing him down with a forehoof. It hit like the impact of a dozen trains simultaneously. Xander went and made a crater in the concrete when he impacted.

Already up again, he was treated to another double back kick and sent careering off, flying like a bullet through walls of the warehouse district, smashing through a least a dozen, piles of crates included, before he'd lost enough energy to gain control of himself again.

And the Nightmare had already evaded his angel guards and was upon him.

Magic is an unequal game. When creatures went to battle each other there were no heroics, no last second turn arounds, no Hollywood victories. The bigger creature always defeats the smaller. If they were equal, both die. This wasn't a movie where the hero gets beat up for a time, then turns it around when he gets really angry.

This wasn't a lottery, this was math. A two-two creature always defeats a one-one. Always. Magic or funky abilities might get involved, but all most of those do is change what numbers are used, and in the end, it still went number against number, and the higher still always won. It wasn't a narrow victory, either, the lesser creature got completely outclassed.

If you had enough power to equal or beat a creature's toughness, you could take it down, no problem. The only thing left to consider was if you could survive doing so, and that was the same equation in reverse. Was your toughness high enough to take on his power?

The Nightmare kicked him, quite literally, up into the stratosphere, then got there before him and kicked Xander right back down to smash into the streets of Sunnydale again. When he hit, the Nightmare was already there again, clamped his head in its jaws and reared up to bring its forehooves down on his shoulders, intending to tear his head clean off.

Of course, to every rule, there are exceptions.

The Nightmare panted, surprised to realize that its jaw had slipped, and the angel's head escaped its grasp. It's strength waning, the equine looked down to see the puny angel had stuck his sword deep into the Nightmare's own barrel chest, piercing its heart.

"I've got Protection From Black," Xander calmly informed the mare. "There's nothing you can do that could hurt me."

The Nightmare stumbled to the side, weak from loss of blood, then collapsed, revealing sword slashes along both sides, rents torn in the creatures hide by all of those angels it had felt it successfully dodged past.

It might take ten six-six creatures to kill one sixty-sixty, but they could do it.

Xander got up, not even feeling a bruise, and told the body, "We've read Banding For Dummies. *WE* decide how to distribute combat damage among us! And that means all of your rage, all of your power, got focused on me, who you couldn't hurt, while my friends dealt you enough wounds so that I could finish you off."

Around town, the other Nightmares fell out of the sky, destroyed by similar tactics.

OoOoO

"So what happened to the Mayor?" Xander asked as he rejoined the group.

"I dunno," Hope replied, brushing long hair out of her eyes. "When we took on the monkeys they dropped him."

"Did anyone see him hit?" Sophie asked.

"No," came the reply.

"Then assume he is still alive," the angel named for wisdom replied. "After all, the monkeys already caught him once. Something else might have done it again, then carried him off to safety when he saw his Nightmares failing to kill us."

"Agreed," Xander enforced Sophie's line of reasoning.

"Where would they go?" Willow, who'd just served as her own team lead on a Nightmare take down flew up to ask.

"Where is best defended?" Sophie posed the query.

"There," Xander declared, pointing to the heavily warded mayoral palace.

OoOoO

The wards around the mayoral palace had a quality in common with the walls they used to stop armies, in that they could block any number of creatures, even flying ones, and not get damaged by doing so.

His own defense felt a little less special looking at this almost exact duplicate.

"If ever there was a game for lawyers, then Magic is it," Xander mumbled, gathering power in between his hands. "Because if it says, 'doesn't take damage from creatures it blocks', then it ONLY says 'doesn't take damage from creatures it blocks'. So, if you aren't a creature or it doesn't block you, and yet you manage to do damage to it anyway..."

He let loose his ability to wipe out army units from halfway across the globe.

The wards vanished in a shuddering explosion, winking out instantly.

"It dies," he finished softly.

"And when it's already dead from an invoked ability, it can't block us," Cordy cheered, raising her fist. "Charge!"

OoOoO

The final bodyguards as they stormed the mayoral palace weren't all that tough. I mean, after everything they'd already faced, a pack of hellhounds, some succubus secretaries, weren't all that difficult or dangerous to take down.

They understood when they reached the mayor's office and found a few twelve-twelve Lords of The Pit, assorted sorceress and assassins.

"Welcome!" the Mayor got up from behind his desk and extended a hand for everyone to shake. "I admit, it isn't that often that an opponent gets this far. Congratulations! Oh, and I love the angel motif, it's very stirring, evocative imagery." He inhaled deeply. "Hmm! Yes, a good, old fashioned Christian symbol of hope and charity."

Hope and Charity perked up, almost involuntarily.

"So," the mayor clapped his hands together and gave them all a big, campaign grin. "Can I help you with something, or should we go straight to killing each other?"

"I have a question," Willow poked up from the back. "How did you know we were coming? I mean, we lived in this town for years, and you didn't do anything, but the moment we decide to attack, you are ready for us. How do you do it?"

Mayor Wilkins gave them all an easy smile. "What a fine young lady! Well, it looks like I get to give you the newbie tour. That's just swell! Come along! Let me show you the business. First I'd like to introduce you to Anastasia and Druzella, two of my assistants, they are my primary seers. No unfortunate remarks about Cinderella, please."

The two sorceresses so named nodded and got up to have their hands shaken.

"One of the first things any new participant has got to understand is the power of divination," the Mayor instructed as they shook hands. "The key to long term survival in politics, or any business, is to know your people, and keep an eye on the trends. And," he gave a soft and genial chuckle, "among Those Who Would Be Gods, mortal methods just aren't going to be enough. So you've got to invest in the best seers and oracles money can buy."

"The Watchers don't do anything like that," Amy shook her head.

"You'll forgive me for the observation," the Mayor pointed out, "But the Watcher's Council is probably the least informed of anyone in this game. In my opinion, they shouldn't even be playing. They've developed more material means of gathering data, but are light on the seers and spiritual side of things. They can detect a new or potential Slayer, but that is pretty much the extent of it. And that just shows a little league attitude that's not appropriate when you are playing big league ball!"

Wilkins made a gesture of earnest frustration. "Really, if you want to play with the majors, you've got to abide by their rules. It is through divination that any serious powers stay ahead of the game, but the Watchers are comparative novices at that. They just haven't got the attitude of someone playing to win!"

Wilkins made as if throwing a baseball pitch. "So they brought assassins to be their attack force against you, which didn't work so well for them because most assassins are generally not so hot in open field combat against a prepared enemy. What makes them effective is the ability to wait for someone to be exhausted, off guard and vulnerable, then strike by surprise. Sounds like an effective assassination creed, does it not?"

Once again the mayor showered them with that big, campaign-winning grin. "They never would have done that if they'd known you were angels, as you have just never been off-guard and vulnerable like that. So the town is crawling with assassins in the employ of the Watcher's Council, and they can't do much of anything because they simply can't find their targets due to the magic protecting your identities."

"Can't find us?" Harmony protested in disbelief. "We are being attacked all the TIME!"

Wilkins shot her a genial finger point. "Attacks require less precision. 'Enemy that way. Charge!' But to perform a proper assassination, you've just got to know more about your target than that."

After that, the mayor showed them through several rooms and and gave a quick rundown of the talking zombie heads, pools of blood, and one of his sorceresses had very helpfully shown them how she sacrificed a goat to read the entrails, while the Mayor explained that all of these were among his own major tools of scrying out information on the present or divining the future.

"Now remember, don't be afraid to call," the politician told them, concluding their quick briefing on summoning, and the various demons and devils who knew the parts of future and were willing to divulge secrets in return for a few souls.

"I really don't think your methods would work for us," Xander told him honestly. Then he looked at his watch. "Do you think this would be over soon? I don't have much free time and was hoping to use the part of today I didn't spend killing you to marry Willow, here."

"Really?" The Mayor asked with the biggest grin they'd seen on him yet.

OoOoO

"We are gathered here today," The Mayor read from behind the podium, "To join this man and this woman," he indicated Xander and Willow standing before him, Xander in a very formal version of his angel attire but Willow wearing a full on wedding gown that the Mayor's people had materialized out of nowhere, "In the bonds of holy matrimony."

"Doesn't this strike you as a bit odd?" Amy whispered aside to Harmony. Both were wearing bridesmaids gowns, and Harmony had already begun dabbing at her tearing eyes with a white lace kerchief.

"Well, he did have a point in that we did not have another justice of the peace lined up," Sophie whispered back from Harmony's other side. "And strictly speaking, this is the town we all grew up in, so it is his jurisdiction."

The crowd in the chapel was something else, as well.

From simple observation, Mayor Wilkins had learned of their identities ahead of time, and had prepared hostages. So against all expectations, their families were present. Willow's mother and father were over there in a rack and a small cage, respectively. The ghosts of Xander's parents had been raised and bound, with human guards on hand to handle all of the hostages. And, all around them, sitting in the pews, were most of their other angels.

"So, we've got the bride's side of the family," Cordy gestured to the couple affixed to torture devices that were not yet activated. "The groom's side of the family," she gestured to the angels, "and the dead side of the family." She pointed out the ghosts.

"Shhh!" Harmony hissed, quickly swiping away her tears to get ready. "It's almost time for the rings!"

OoOoO

"You may now kiss the bride," Mayor Wilkins proclaimed, and then sighed and shook his head. "And I know how eager you probably are to go on with your honeymoon, but we should probably kill each other first."

"Let me just toss this bouquet," Willow turned to fling her bouquet of flowers towards the other female angels of Xander's harem. The lucky one who caught it was, after tradition, to be the next bride, after all.

It quickly became a three dimensional game of catch as flying angels lunged for it.

"Well, shall we?" The Mayor turned a genial grin on Xander, his demon bodyguards phasing through the wall behind to join him.

Xander gave a firm nod in reply, and the rush of angels towards the bouquet turned out not to be about the bouquet at all (though Charity, the one who got it, did squeal most brightly over that fact), but instead a rush towards the Mayor, slaughtering his guards and each one giving him a slice from their swords as they passed.

Then they ran out of power.

"Well played, young man, well played." The mayor got up, straightening the lapels on his very torn and shredded jacket, and adjusting the cut-off bit of tie he was left with, scratches and gouges all over his face, chest and limbs.

Then Xander simply brought up his phasor and shot the man, who promptly disintegrated with the last words of, "Well, gosh."

"What?" Charity asked around the bouquet a s she caught everyone's astonished looks. "I spent all of last month getting my dad's company to turn out a set of batteries for that thing. It was going to be a surprise ace-in-the-hole when next we got attacked, but I think it made a better wedding present."

"They could actually do that? Make batteries for it, I mean?" Cordy stuttered.

Charity rolled her eyes. "Worse! It turns out half of them are Trekkies. They LIKED doing it! If we weren't worried about other people hiring them away from dad's company, they'd probably have dissected the thing and learned how to make their own starship enterprise by now."

"Alright," Xander turned to face the audience hall full of demons. "Let's clear this place out."

The angels flew out of that room loaded for bear, carrying all manner of man-portable arms, with an emphasis on grenades and rockets seized from the mayor's supplies.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Strictly speaking, the attack failed. Meaning that the angels ran out of power before their target ran out of life.

Of course, as they have learned by now, things don't have to exactly emulate the rules.

Oh, and the mayor referred to this ongoing war as a game, not from any awareness of the cards Xander was holding or the rules he played by, but from an old Sherlock Holmes expression, "The game's afoot!"

Other people, spies and generals among them, also are known to refer to the very serious business they conduct as a game. So, nothing more than a metaphor for the mayor.

Mechanically, Xander attacked with 193 mostly 6/6 angels all banded into one creature, relying on the Trample ability they had received (among others) from Nature's Blessing to allow them to get through whatever blockers got put in their way.

They met and blew through approximately 500 miscellaneous aircraft, 1,000 will-o'-the-wisps, 1,000 swarms of vampire bats, and another 100 flying skeletons all with toughness one. Not counting the dozen of this or handful of that also involved.

Roughly 2,800 flying defenders, or just a little over one-tenth of his overall defense force of about 25,000 creatures (many of which are units of hundred or thousands counting as a single creature, so, yes, he easily had about two and a half million individual defenders, even if those only counted as about 25,000 he could use as blockers).

Flying, they mostly skipped combat with the strictly ground forces. Flanking, which these angels now have, gives -1/-1 to every creature you fight that does not itself possess Flanking, so all they had to do was meet these creatures in combat for them to be destroyed, their toughness reduced to zero. It literally expended none of the attacking angels' power to wipe them out.

Of more concern were the 100 bat swarms that had toughness two, and the hundred or so 2/2 specters.

The accumulated anti air artillery simply did "cause 2 damage to every attacking creature with flying" for the fleet, plus another "cause 3 damage to every attacking creature with flying" over the town. This damage could not be avoided, so they simply soaked it up.

The eight 60/60 nightmares took a lot of killing. They caused four hundred and eighty damage to the attackers (a killing amount, if they hadn't had the enchanted castles backing them up) and took that much to destroy in turn.

A couple of 13/8 bodyguard Lords of the Pit (with Unholy Strength and Feast of The Unicorn up) were weenies, by comparison.

All told, the angels did something short of four hundred points of damage to the Mayor once they'd blown through all of his defenses, and, sadly, he had LOTS more life available to him than that.

There are vampires that, every time they do damage to a target, their controller gains that amount of life, and the mayor had been running some of those for hundreds of years. He had a TON of life!

Of course, most of that he'd traded away to other powers, in order to gain patrons to protect him from other powers in this game. But he still had quite a reserve accumulated.

And yet, in the end, the Mayor still only counted as a very minor player.