Haelith walked from one wounded man to the next. Her hands were stained with blood, her gown covered in viscera, and her tools barely hung on her belt, ready to be taken back off at a moment's notice. She was readying to kneel down next to another man when she saw bright blue hair out of the corner of her eye. Turning, she began to smile, but gasped as she saw who Trace was dragging behind him. Running over, she knelt down next to Barret, who was unconscious and still had a dagger embedded in his chest. Slowly, Trace and Natani set him down. "What happened? Who do I have to kill?"

"You don't have to kill anyone." Trace said, wiping the sweat off his brow. "We're not sure when it happened, but he fell down after the battle. He is alive, but we're not sure how long he was wounded."

"If only you could have seen him." Natani said somberly. "It was like watching a hurricane incarnate. Powerful and unmatched fury."

"I'd rather he not be bleeding out." Her eyes were focused and her hands were steady as she reached for the leather hilt sticking out of Barret's chest.

"You can help him, right?" Trace asked, unable to hide the fear in his voice.

She gave him a side eye, as though it was a dumb question, but turned back to the blade. "I can. Hold him still while I pull this out. I don't want to hit any nerves and make him twitch." As they laid on top of him, she slowly pulled the blade out, causing a fresh torrent of blood to spill forth. Though he did indeed twitch, the blade was removed safely from his flesh, and she began weaving her magic to seal the wound. Several agonizingly slow minutes passed, and Barret's breathing became steady.

"Will he be alright?" Natani released him, but put pressure on her own wounds, which were small, but many.

"He had better. He promised that he would challenge death itself if it meant coming back to me." Her scales shifted as the magic continued to flow through her arm. "I'm not great at healing with magic yet, but it certainly helps. I closed the under the surface first, now I can work on the surface wounds without risk of infection. Hand me my bag, will you?"

"Here." Trace reached over and handed her the bag, but not before taking some bandages, and starting to wrap his left arm where an arrow sliced him. "Flora would kill me if he didn't make it."

"She still might kill you." Keith hobbled over, his wounds already bandaged. King Adelaide followed behind him, and, despite being literally the biggest target, had barely suffered any wounds that battle, and the blood that had covered her was apparently not hers. For what was not the first time today, Trace was really glad she wasn't their enemy. "I don't suppose you know what happened at the end there? All the Templars retreated, and even they didn't seem to know why."

"Really? I was too busy fighting for my life and trying to help Barret to notice."

"Someone must have ambushed their back lines. The siege tower collapsed, and there's fire spreading across the ground still." Trace was silent, listening. Yes, he could hear it faintly in the distance; the sounds of battle raged on.

"Who attacked them?"

"We have no idea. Keiren suspects that it was the Tiger clans, but we have no way of knowing right now. We don't have enough people to go out there."

Natani frowned. "I dunno, something doesn't seem right. Sure, the Tiger clans are vicious, but they have a sense of honor and pride. Ambushes are certainly something they would do, but they would make it known who is doing the ambushing."

"Perhaps the Wolf clans then?" King Jade leaned on her sword, which still had blood caked on the steel. "They certainly have enough reasons to attack the Templars."

"Whoever they are, I'm glad they struck when they did." Haelith pulled out a pair of scissors and some gauze. "There's enough injured here already." Silence fell on everyone as they could do nothing more than take wild guesses. Without going out, there was truly no way of knowing what was actually happening. Still, smoke and ash rose from beyond the walls. Their attention was turned inward as Barret groaned and began to stir. "Welcome back to the world of the living. How do you feel?"

Barret's eyes were unfocused as he opened them. The world was a blur, but he could clearly see that there were four people standing over him. "Wh- what happened?" he grunted as he closed his eyes tightly, wishing the dull aching would go away.

"You got stabbed. I'm not sure when or how long you kept fighting after that, but after things started to calm down, you went down like a bag of bricks. Trace and I had to drag you all the way back here from the gatehouse."

Haelith slowly helped him sit up, groaning as he did. Everything was still blurry, and he fell over forwards a bit as he got upright. "They brought you here with a dagger still in your gut. I closed the wounds and accelerated the healing process like I normally do, but you lost a lot of blood. Don't push yourself too hard for a while, and stay sitting."

Barret nodded, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. "H… how did we win? What happened to make them run away? I remember the gate being broken, then I got rushed down, dropped my bow and… then everything is a blur after that."

To this, Trace frowned. "We're not sure what happened either. Someone ambushed the back lines of the Templar ranks, and are still fighting right now."

"Someone? We don't know who?"

"I'm afraid not." Keiren said as he walked over, blood still clinging to his sword and armor. "But the fighting seems to be starting to die down. I have yet to see anyone come back toward the city, and am growing worried that there's more going on here than meets the eye. Anyone here feeling up to walk out there with me? We can't afford to be in the dark anymore."

Trace and Natani stood up, and Barret tried, but could barely even sit upright. "You stay down." Haelith barely had to put any pressure on him to keep him on the ground.

"She's right. Stay here." It was a shock to everyone that King Adelaide was the one who was speaking. The way she spoke was not like a leader, however, but like a mother. "You have done enough. Stay here and rest. It would put our minds at ease." Still half in a daze, he nodded, before leaning heavily on Haelith, who blushed.

"I'll go find some others, but we shouldn't take too long." Keiren said, wiping his sword with his cloak.

"We shall wait for you by the gate." King Adelaide shifted to be professional, hefting her blade over her shoulder.

…

It was a short while later when Keiren finally made his way back to the gate. King Adelaide, Trace, Natani, Keith, and about forty soldiers were already waiting for him, and he brought over a few dozen more, as well as Richard and Raine, who had shifted back to her human form. "It sounds quiet." Trace grumbled. "Far, far too quiet. There's really been no sign of what's going on?"

"None. No flags, no commanders, no songs of victory." Keiren could barely hide his uneasiness.

"All I can smell is smoke and blood. All I can hear is the cries of the wounded and dying. All I can feel is hatred, malice, and pain." Jade's voice was filled with dread, and her hand trembled as it gripped her blade. It did not fill anyone with confidence. Seeing the great warrior king so shaken brought fear, apprehension, and uncertainty.

"We have to know more. We can only learn so much from here. Stay on your guard, and let's hope our presence goes unnoticed by any would be adversaries." Keiren took point as he spoke, leading the group of about seventy. They passed through the broken down gate and into the field that lay beyond, and the bloody spectacle of the battlefield made stomachs churn. The dead lay uncounted, the ground littered with bodies, blades, bolts, shields, swords, pikes, and other weapons of war. They did not intend to stop, but Keith stopped as he glanced down.

"What's this?" He knelt down next to a fallen Templar dressed in chain mail armor, a strange weapon still gripped in his hands. The contraption looked like a crossbow, but there were other parts fixed to the top; a box, some gears, a lever, and several springs made up a chamber of some sort.

"I don't know. But there's tons of them." Natani gestured to the crossbowmen that lay scattered across the field. Sure enough, almost half of them held these strange weapons.

"Bring that one with you, but leave the rest. We'll figure it out later, once we know what's going on." Keiren hadn't stopped, pressing through the carnage and ruin. Beyond the reach of their ballista towers, beyond the reach of their muskets, beyond the reach of their strongest archer, the battlefield shifted. The men were no longer facing toward Edinmire, but away, and the way they fell across each other was sickening. Their faces were stricken with fear, their dying screams still fresh on their lips, their pain still so great that even in death some twitched. Further in they pressed, into the smoke and fire. So thick was the inferno that the magicians and spellcasters had to hold their hands out to cast light in the oppressive darkness that now enveloped them.

And within they beheld the massacre.

The siege tower lay in a crumbled heap of burning wood and metal, the trebuchets collapsed and broken, and the unnumbered bodies of the dead lay strewn about as far as they could see. Dirt, ash, and blood covered every surface, and the sound of crackling fire filled their ears. It was like stepping into a nightmare. Slowly, they spread out, unsure of what to even look for or look at, as all they could see was death. Men and horse, knight and wizard, swordsman and archer, commander and private, it mattered not. It was awful. It was dreadful. Horrid. Monstrous. They were slaughtered without mercy or remorse.

Trace walked near Keith and Natani, hoping that they would protect each other, trusting that their courage would not fail. Through the piles of bodies they trudged, trying not too look too hard at the faces that stared up at them. They saw fear and agony frozen in time here, even as blood poured from wounds and seeped into the ground. Many lay strewn about almost randomly, but there were a lot of piles, and Trace had the realization that those on top must have tried to flee from whatever had attacked them. It was hard not to step on anything, but it was inevitable, as there were so many swords and shields on the ground. But then a sudden crunch drew his eyes down.

And his heart stopped. "Keith… Natani…"

They both looked over, and the horror was too real. The fear was too real. The clay pike that he had just stepped on and broken was too real. And now that he knew what he was looking at, he could see it everywhere: pikes through bodies, scorch marks on armor, hardened clay pieces lay strewn about across the mayhem, the orange brown chunks that looked like pieces of arms and legs, fragments of what looked like masks with dim orange eyes. "This can't be." Natani gasped. "This can't be. No. No, no, no!" She began to panic, the fear and trauma resurfacing, her eyes darting around and her fur standing on end. Keith's blade practically flew into the ready position as he crouched down, ready to fight for his life.

Trace whirled around. Everyone else was still searching through the bodies and blood. They hadn't noticed yet. "We're in danger! Shields up!" Heads turned as he shouted, and suddenly everyone was ready to fight.

"What's going on?"

"Sentinels! They did this!" Confusion spread across the faces of many, but Keiren knew exactly what they were capable of, and he hunched down, drawing close to King Adelaide, who gripped her blade tightly.

"Everyone back to the city. Everyone fall back to Edinmire!" Running over, they all began to regroup, but a sound made Trace stop. Groaning. He turned around, looking for the source of the noise, looking for someone who could have impossibly somehow survived this slaughter. Soon, his eyes fell on a man who was barely moving, laying face down on top of a pile of bodies, halfway crawled over, blood pouring from his side.

"There's a survivor! Help me!" Trace rushed to the man's side with Keith and Natani, and soon King Adelaide waded her way through the bodies to them as well. "He's alive! I don't know how, but he's alive!"

"He could tell us what happened. Let's get him back to the city, and quickly. I don't want to stay here any longer than we need to." Jade said, handing her sword to Keith. Kneeling down, she picked the man up gently with one arm, and turned to walk back to the city. The anxiety was overwhelming, and the fear was immense, and while he didn't want to believe it, Trace could swear that he saw a Sentinel in the smoke, standing there, watching him. But it must have been his mind playing tricks on him, as when he blinked, the shadow was gone. Unnerved by this nightmare, they turned back to the city, back to safety.