Happy Mammoth Monday!
In case you have not noticed it yet, the names of the chapters so far have had a...shall we say, musical undercurrent to them, but alas, the song is swiftly nearing its end.
Enjoy the verse!

All shall fade

Evandar POV(2 months into the invasion)
Evandar had a queasy feeling churning around in his stomach. It was not one that he often had, hardly ever actually, but every time that he had had it, it had been because something had either gone horribly wrong or was just about to.

Sure, he could try to calm this feeling by constantly reminding himself of the same encouraging arguments that his fellow generals from their grand army constantly spouted, but somehow, those arguments just made the churning worse.

Somehow, the more times he heard that there simply was no chance that the enemy's force, which had been estimated to be just above 30.000 strong, would be able to beat their own grand army of just under a quarter of a million, not counting in the 123 dragon riders and 36 wild dragons that had agreed to participate in the fight, the less the argument seemed to hold any significance.

Logically, Evandar knew that even if the enemy somehow managed to fight ferociously and somehow avoid being surrounded and crushed by his side's much larger cavalry force, their ground troops still had to beat more than eight of his own ground troops, each, and among those ground troops was an elven force of 20.000 strong-willed veterans, where most had centuries of practice to fall back on.

The stout-hearted dwarves had supplied an army of just over 45.000 heavily armoured and short-tempered fighters, while the less populous urgal race had managed to gather 35.000 rams to the cause, which was an impressive force when you considered the urgal population as a whole, and the remaining 150.000 men were the mostly conscripted force of the Empire.

The enemy force on the other hand seemed to be made up of a mixture of regular humans and the hybrids that Loivissa had mentioned, which supposedly should not be as strong, fast or as good with magic as modern elves were, so if it had been a one-on-one fight between the two armies, then Evandar was fully convinced that the elven force alone would have been enough to wipe the floor with their enemies.

But it would not be a one-on-one fight between the soldiers in each army, and Evandar knew from his experience in the Second Ra'zac War that the elves' superior talents could not be fully utilized when they had to fight in formations, but even so, there still should not be a question as to whom would be the victor today.

And that was exactly what worried Evandar, because the odds were just too much in their favour for his liking, which had been a fairly strange concept to try and explain to the other generals and he had ultimately failed in doing so.

However much Mercury might have lost his sense of right and wrong, Evandar still knew that the bastard's wit was as sharp as ever. The carefully prepared and executed start of this war had been more than enough proof of that.

Originally, he and the rest of the generals had ascribed the sudden invasions of old Surda and Du Weldenvarden as his master plan, as the two other invasion forces, which reportedly were both smaller than the force standing before them right now, had been able to swoop in with hardly any resistance and take considerable amounts of land while all of the races' armies had gathered too far away to do something about them.

He could not allow their grand army to disband to take care of the other two invasion forces, as doing so would allow for the main one in front of them to take most of the heartland of the Empire with hardly any fight.

No, firstly, they had to defeat this force that blocked the only major pass through the Spine, before they could even consider splitting up and dealing with the smaller ones, and that was exactly as far as the other generals had been willing to admit that Mercury had played them from the start by using his early landing force as bait to lure them away from their homelands.

What they never seemed to be willing to take into consideration was that according to the last reports, Mercury was actively commanding THIS portion of his overall forces, which would be strange for him to do if he considered them, and, by default, himself, as nothing more than disposable bait.

Something was up, and it bothered Evandar to no end to not know what it was. He could vaguely remember that his sister had told him that during the end of their campaign together, Mercury had supposedly held off an enemy force that outnumbered his own even more so than Evandar's did, for almost an entire month, but if he remembered correctly, then that had been under completely different circumstances in regards to terrain and preparations.

If contact had not been lost with Estildirin, then Evandar could have asked for the report that had been stored there to be summarized to him, but since it had, he had to make do with what little he did remember.

It was not easy being the overall leader of such a grand army.

"Today shall be the day that we finally rid our homeland of this scourge", one of the human generals that stood inside Evandar's command tent and around the table with a map of their and their enemies' forces' positions on it, boasted in the early hours of the morning, "we have tried diplomacy, but it had no effect, so now, we must use the sword instead".

It was true, for the last two days, the two sides had been camped opposite of one another and had exchanged attempts, though feeble ones, at diplomacy via messengers in the no-man's land between the two, until all negotiations, if they could even be called that, had ceased last night when the Alliance's final ultimatum had arrived.

'Surrender and be spared, continue to oppose us and your lives shall be forfeit. Give us your answer tomorrow at dawn', it had said.

Evandar did not like the confidence behind the message, but neither could he deny the possibility that all of this could be one big bluff on Mercury's part. It certainly would not be the first time that he had managed to make a much larger force surrender simply by being so confident that his enemies believed it to be a trap.

"But we need to be careful as to how we approach this, as our opponent is known for keeping tricks up in his sleeve", Islanzadi argued from her position at the table, with Blödhgarm standing beside her as the silent but watchful bodyguard that Evandar had known him as for the past few centuries.

"The dragon rider scouts report that our infantry outnumbers his with almost nine to one, six to one in cavalry and three to one in siege engines, not to mention that we have total air superiority with the dragon riders and the wild dragons on our side", the same human general argued, "I do not care what trick he comes up with. There simply is no way for him to beat a force that vast. At worst, he will inflict heavy casualties on our side, but even if he does, we will still have cut off the head of the snake by capturing him".

No one could argue against the logical arguments, but Evandar still wanted to be cautious about how to approach this, "even so, let us not rush into battle headstrong by relying on numbers alone. As the overall commander of the grand army, I have the final say in how we fight, and I say that it is better to be cautious when facing a possible trap, if nothing else, then to minimize casualties".

"Then what is your battle-plan, lad?", King Olaf asked as he rested his hands on Volund's handle.

"We shall place our main infantry in a line opposing the enemy's, with our heaviest troops in the middle and our lighter ones at the flanks", Evandar started to explain as he moved pieces around on the table, "the Surdan cavalry will be split between guarding each flank, while our siege engines will be distributed in three groups, with the largest one in the centre and two smaller ones at our flanks. At first, the elves will join the archers as skirmish troops, but they should be ready to change into melee mode at a moment's notice. The dragons and their riders will be kept in reserve behind our lines for now".

The grand army's entire cavalry force consisted of the Surdan cavalry regiments that had long been prided on their excellent horsemanship and the Empire had therefore concentrated virtually all of its forces in that direction in old Surda, though the rams that Evandar placed in the middle would certainly count as heavy cavalry as well when they trampled forward on the battlefield.

"Does anyone have any quarrel with this arrangement?", Evandar asked as he finished setting up what he expected to be the starting position of both forces, and after a general murmur of consent from all involved, he continued, "then the battle will begin at noon. You are all dismissed".

As the monarchs and their generals filed out of his command tent to begin preparing the troops for battle, Evandar began on the arduous task that was crafting an inspirational speech that would transcend the racial boundaries and give extra courage to all of his men.

By the time that noon finally came and both sides stood opposite of one another, Evandar had finished it to a somewhat satisfactory degree, though it would be too late to change it now, when he was sitting atop Delvaria on the flat green pastures in front of the grand army.

The enemy on the other side of the flat grassland had deployed their infantry force in a straight line that was thinner and shorter than Evandar's was, while they had seemingly copied Evandar's choice of having their cavalry spread out on their two flanks, but to his surprise, they had gathered their onagers behind the centre of their formation and had nothing to defend their flanks with, except for their cavalry and some odd large black hollowed-out tubes on wheels with equally black ball-looking things stacked beside them.

"Elves, humans, dwarves, urgals and dragons, I stand before today not because we wanted this war, but because our enemies on the other side of this stretch of green soil, Alagaësian soil, have brought the war to us!", Evandar began his speech in a magically amplified voice, so that all could hear him, "through trickery and deceit, they have invaded our homes and killed our friends, families and fellow Alagaësians, and now they stand before us to lay claim to the rest of Alagaësia. Make no mistake in that they will not stop until the entire world falls to them, but I say that we stop them, right here and now! I say that we will send them a message that shall ring for eons to come; that this is OUR homes, OUR soil! No foreign powers have ever managed to conquer Alagaësia, to crush the spirit of its people, and today shall not be the day that that changes! For Alagaësia!"

"For Alagaësia!", the entire grand army chorused with such volume that it might be heard all the way back in Ilirea.

It was an astonishing and fearsome sight to behold as so many people of different races all joined in on the warcries, while the dragons roared challenges and spit tongues of fires from behind the front. Even the usually stoic elves joined in as well, which Evandar attributed to them being rather upset about having their eternal home of Du Weldenvarden invaded and desecrated while they were away.

If Evandar had been on the other side, he knew that he would have thought twice about what he was doing when such a challenge was being roared out by a vastly superior foe, and yet, the enemy remained eerily quiet as they simply stood still in their formation, like statues waiting for their master to give them life.

Their master, being the bastard himself, waited for the Alagaësians to quiet down before he chose to ride out before them on a white steel-armoured horse and in his own full steel-plate armour that glinted in the sun like it was newly polished silver.

Once out there, he rode up and down his line with his sword held high as he no doubt said words of encouragement that were too faint for Evandar to hear, but once he had finished his speech, his army did not break into a collective warcry, like Evandar's had, but rather did the far more ominous warning of banging their weapons against their shields in such a perfect rhythm that it made the very air vibrate each time.

The air vibrated exactly 26 times before everything went deadly silent and Mercury rode back behind his front line again. Evandar did not know why that specific number of times had been chosen, nor did he honestly care at the moment, as he himself also chose this moment to return back behind the front line in order to direct the battle.

With both leaders ready to begin, the battle had officially begun.

Mercury's side made the opening move, as their siege engines surprised Evandar and his generals by having a far larger range than they had expected, and therefore were fully capable of raining death down upon Evandar's front line from the safety behind their own lines.

"Push the centre siege engines forward until they have the enemy ones in range and tell the ones at our flanks to move forward to begin bombardment of the enemy flanks", Evandar instructed and watched as messengers ran from where he and the other generals and monarchs stood, "also, have our skirmisher troops advance slightly ahead of the siege engines in preparation to lay down cover fire to any enemy skirmishers that might advance".

As the men that manned his side's siege engines, toiled with towing the heavy machinery forward, while the centre ones were under constant bombardment from the enemy siege engines, the more nimble archers moved ahead of them and took up their positions.

Despite the early bombardment that Mercury's force was able to carry out, very little damage was actually done to Evandar's troops, as the elves used their magic and stored up energy to deflect the deadly enemy rain.

No sooner had Evandar's archery divisions placed themselves at their designated position before the enemy also sent out their own division to skirmish with them, though theirs was hardly a tenth of Evandar's force.

Despite their small numbers, the enemy skirmishers fared quite well against Evandar's numerically superior force, which Evandar discovered was because they used a combination of a two man team, where one would fire and another would cover them both from enemy fire with a heavy tower shield while his partner reloaded, and then there was the unmistakable fact that every single one of the enemy skirmishers seemed to carry a crossbow that could shoot just as long as the elven bows, which was quite a bit longer than their human counterparts' bows, and since the amount of crossbows in the imperial army was restricted to the ones that had been in use before war broke out, all but a few hundred of Evandar's human skirmishers were out of range and had to move closer to be able to fire, as most of them only carried their regular hunting bows with them.

It was the difference between a conscript army and a professional one, Evandar realized as he could only watch countless humans die as they attempted to close the distance that would enable them to fire back at the enemy, but he would not recall his skirmishers now, as despite the human losses, the elves hardly lost anyone, thanks to their wards, and if the skirmish line broke, then there would be no stopping the enemy skirmishers from pommeling the crews of his forward siege engines full of bolts.

"My lord, should we not close to melee with them?", one of the human generals asked Evandar.

"No, for now, we will continue to skirmish", Evandar denied the request, "I will not risk sending the majority of the army into a trap before I absolutely have to".

"I…understand", the general mumbled, and Evandar knew that the man was not happy with sitting idly by, but he would have to swallow his pride, because Evandar was still wary of what Mercury could have up in his sleeve.

It seemed to take an eternity for the siege engines to move into range, while Evandar's human skirmishers got pummelled by the enemy's, but still managed to hold out for now. If it continued on like this, then Evandar realized that he would likely lose all of the human skirmishers that he had sent out without any damage of importance having been done upon the enemy skirmishers that hardly ever took any losses because of their partner that shielded them while they reloaded. Evandar now wished that he had thought of doing that.

The elven skirmishers still protected the centre siege engines with wards, as they slowly but surely made their way forward, though Evandar knew that warding against the heavy rock projectiles took a lot of spare energy from his elven spellcasters.

Just as the siege engines finally rolled into position, the air shook with the sound of loud bangs that shocked everyone enough for them to momentarily stop what they were doing. The origin of the bangs was no mystery to be solved, as large clouds of smoke suddenly appeared around the black tubes that had been stationed on the enemy's flanks, but it was only after hearing the panicked screams of men and the splintering of wood that Evandar realized that the black tubes had done more than just make a loud noise and a cloud of smoke.

Evandar's entire army, command staff included, watched in a stupor as some of the other black tubes loosened another salvo of equally loud bangs with an equally loud cloud of smoke, but now that he was focused on them, Evandar realized that the black balls that had been stacked in piles next to black tubes were actually being shot out of the tubes with a seemingly impossible speed.

It was not many of the balls that hit the siege engines on Evandar's flanks, but those that did managed to cut straight through even the thickest of the wooden beams that made up his siege engines, which were quickly being abandoned by their panicking crews in their desperate attempt to flee this completely unheard of new threat.

"What is this devilry?", King Aldoran asked as he openly gaped in shock, while more of Evandar's siege crews began to flee as a third salvo was released.

"I truly have no idea", Evandar could only answer as he watched the rest of the crews abandon their mostly untouched siege engines in terror as they fled behind friendly lines again.

As soon as all of Evandar's flanking siege engines had been abandoned, the black tubes turned around to begin firing on his centre ones, which given the more direct angle of their shots meant that any skirmishers caught between the black balls and their destination was mangled in a truly grizzly way without it even seeming to slow down the black balls even the slightest bit.

Had this been it? Had these black tubes been what Mercury had hoped to win the battle with? Evandar could not deny that he was more than a little afraid of them at the moment, and he was not even in the firing range of them.

"Oy, lad, no time to gape if you want to salvage what is left of our siege engines and skirmish forces before they rout", King Olaf managed to shake Evandar out of his stupor.

"The dwarf is right", Islanzadi agreed, "the men look to you for guidance, and if they see you like this, then they will dishearten and despair. A leader must always remain strong".

"Yes...yes, uhm, pull the forward forces back behind our lines again", Evandar began to recollect himself again, "the enemy…things…do not seem to have quite as long range as their regular siege engines, so we should be safe for now".

"But the enemy's regular siege engines' ability to fire on our troops here was why we pulled them out in the first place", the same human general that had boasted with their assured victory earlier this very morning, exclaimed, "I say that it is time to meet the enemy in one-on-one battle".

"No, not yet", Evandar reclaimed some of his former confidence and authority, "we have to get rid of those tubes first, or the men might panic. Have the elves begin searching for the mages responsible for the enemy wards, and tell the Surdan cavalry to charge out and meet the enemy cavalry head on as fast as they can, so that the enemy cannot fire on them without hitting their own forces, while I will lead the dragon riders and the wild dragons in an assault to dispose of those tubes".

"Are you sure about this? What if the tubes begins to target the riders instead?", Islanzadi asked with an uncommon concerned tone.

"From what we have seen so far, they do not look to be able to tilt their barrels upwards and they are too slow to adjust to be able to present a danger to our faster dragons", Evandar argued as he strapped his feet in, before he brandished his sword and shouted to his fellows, "now, dragons and riders, show them what we are made of! For Alagaësia!"

The ground trembled as the cavalry began their charge and the air reverberated as a thunder of dragons, the size of which had likely never been recorded before in Alagaësian history, took to the skies with mighty roars of challenge and riders brandishing their coloured swords for all to see, and leading the charge were Evandar and Delvaria.

They had just reached an appropriate altitude out of range from any crossbow bolts, when the unmistakeable screeches of the lethrblaka cut through the air, like frosty winds that caused a shiver to run down the back of all that had ever met a lethrblaka before.

Figures that he would have allied himself with those beasts, Evandar mused to the agreement of Delvaria over their bond as he watched at least a hundred lethrblaka rise up from behind the mountain slopes of the Spine, where they had remained out of sight until now, he truly is depraved to even allow them to live, let alone populate as much as they have.

Evandar could feel a cold burning hatred burn inside of him for the evil beasts that had stolen his mate from him, caused countless deaths and a plethora of suffering, and it was with a dark pleasure that he let his thoughts flow freely to his fellow riders and dragons, forget about the black tubes, target the lethrblaka beasts instead! Kill them! Kill them all! Leave none alive!

In the skies directly above the green grass plains that separated the two opposing armies, the two archenemies clashed for another round in their long and bloody history.

Delvaria let loose a torrent of golden flames upon the first lethrblaka that came within reach, but the flames separated before the beast with no damage done to it, and in their surprise at not being able to burn them, or at the very least blind them, Delvaria and Evandar only barely had time to dodge the claws of the lethrblaka that they had tried to burn.

Immediately after having dodged the first and with the intent to circle back and engage it again, Delvaria and Evandar were attacked by another lethrblaka, which was only stopped from tearing out a sizeable portion of Delvaria's hind by a huge drain on Evandar's wards.

Evandar quickly uttered a combination of four of the twelve words of death to dispose of the beast that had dared to try and attack Delvaria, but to his surprise, the spell had no effect on the beast whatsoever. It was only then that Evandar spotted the human riding lethrblaka, and he immediately knew that this perverse emulation of a majestic dragon and its rider had to be one of Mercury's twisted ideas.

The heart of the human riding such a dark beast had to be equally dark, as there was no way that any good sane human would ever willingly ride the very same beast that ate his own kind. Unfortunately, before Evandar had a chance to focus on this new threat, the lethrblaka from before clashed into him from above and caused another heavy drain on his wards.

He knew that he had to get away from the two of them, as their combined efforts were too much for him in his current state, so as he cast a spell to tear open the wing of the first lethrblaka, hoping that its rider had not considered warding against that, Delvaria began a full on dive to escape the renewed attack of the second one.

This spell also had no effect, and as Delvaria increased the distance even more rapidly than before, Evandar had to let it go to avoid wasting energy unnecessarily. The two lethrblaka quickly set after the pair, but through a complex series of manoeuvres, Delvaria was able to escape their clutches and begin a renewed ascent with only a minor drain on Evandar's wards.

As Delvaria began the climb back up into the sky with the two lethrblaka pairs on her tail, Evandar was able to take stock of the situation up there.

It was not going particularly well at all.

Though the dragons had started with numerical superiority, the advantage had begun to shrink in on itself as more and more dragon riders fell victim to the ambush tactics that had nearly killed Evandar and Delvaria as well.

It made no sense to Evandar how they were losing, even if the riders could not attack with magic, as dragons were the ultimate masters of the sky. In a one-on-one match, a dragon would almost always beat a lethrblaka, and his side had started out with more dragons the enemy had had lethrblaka.

Though it had not made sense at first, Evandar slowly began to understand why the lethrblaka seemed to be winning, as he was able to study the battles in the relative peace of his ascent. The lethrblaka pairs seemed to use underhanded tactics of always attacking in pairs, and oftentimes having the dragon attacking one of them as the other swooped up and attacked from a blind spot, and whenever there was an equal or greater amount of dragons to lethrblaka, they would flee like cowards and have another pair disengage from their own fight to ambush the pursuing dragons.

Many a mighty dragon fell to these underhanded tactics that the lethrblaka beasts and their dark riders were using, but almost none of the riders or their dragons seemed to grasp that it was their side that was losing because they were either too busy hunting lethrblaka or being hunted themselves to pay attention to such details.

Just as Evandar was about to try and reach as many riders as he could with his mind in order to try and salvage this mess, the clear trumpet of horns blared from below, and as he looked down to the ground directly below him, it was to his shock that he saw that the enemy's previous straight line formation had turned into a outwards going crescent moon formation, while his own army had for some reason turned into a wedge formation that was in the midst of storming across the battlefield and directly in between the two outgoing arms of the enemy's crescent moon formation, so that they would soon clash into the enemy's weakened centre and break through it.

I did not order this!, Evandar thought with fury at his troops neglecting to even consult their leader before they did something like this.

Look forward to Before Friday Thursday for how Mercury views what has happened(as well as minor unimportant things, such as the conclusion of the battle and so on).

Also, did anyone see the lethrblaka coming in advance?