“Fire again!” he told Senay. Henok himself was a bit taken aback, but he did not show it.
The general ordered another assault. As before, Sinto’s men set the boulders on fire, and the soldiers hurled them into the air. Henok’s eyes stayed dutifully on their trajectory until they were over Tonar, about to land into the city...
Then the same thing happened again. The balls stopped as if they had hit something and scattered. Their pieces tumbling off the air and falling to the land around the city. But there was another extra piece of detail that Henok picked up this time around. The shield blazed into visibility the moment the projectiles touched them. He had not seen this before because of the size of the explosion, but he saw it now, the way the shield shimmered and revealing the extent of its coverage. It spread over entirety of Tonar from wall to wall. Henok gazed at General Senay, and they had the same thing on their minds. This was one thing gone wrong with their plan already, and they had barely started the attack. It was not presumptuous at this point to accept that the entirety of their plan was now in shambles. Sinto and Lord Taboon drew close to the king.
“My lord,” Lord Taboon said, “they have a magic shield!”
“I have eyes, Lord Taboon,” Henok replied dryly.
“What we don’t know is if it’s the work their mages or the technology that the Technocons had shipped to them.”
“I don’t know the specificities either,” Henok replied. “But Technocon or not, the both of them are still magic, and we have a sturdy shield over Tonar that’s stopping us from reaching our…”
Just then General Senay yelled:
“Incoming! Everybody take cover!”
Henok’s eyes flew to the sky, and then he saw them, little bright things like stars, speeding out from within the walls of the city towards them. Henok had not seen such things before, and it was the puzzlement and the speed at which they came that made him too slow to react.
The ground erupted in plumes of dust and chunks of stone as the little starry things hit the ground all around them. The force of the explosion knocked Henok off his horse, throwing him high into the air, and casting him to the ground.
Sinto could hear very little. It was like the entire environment was covered with a heavy blanket of wool. Everything was muffled except for the ringing sound in his ears.
What had just happened? He asked himself as he struggled to get to his feet. His arms gave and he fell back to the ground. Suddenly someone hurried to his side and grabbed him by the shoulders.
“Sinto! Sinto? Can you hear me?”
“What?” Sinto said, straining to ascertain who was calling him.
He turned and stared at the face of the person. It took him a while before he realized who it was.
“Tabeli?” he asked.
“Praise be to Camin and Lowus,” Tabeli exclaimed.
“What is going on?”
“I don’t have the answer to that right now,” Tabeli said pulling Sinto up to his feet. “All I know is, the humans had fired explosives at us. Much like what we tried to hurl at them, but much prettier.”
Sinto groaned.
“I think I may have a few broken bones,” he said.
Tabeli looked at his leader. His eyes took at the end of broken bones sticking out of his arm, and the blood all over his side. While the robes they wore protected them to a certain degree from lethal magic, it did not protect them from natural reactions that the magic had kicked up. Like the impact of its explosion, and the debris.
“It’s nothing that a healer can’t fix,” Tabeli replied.
As Sinto moved along with Tabeli, his senses began to get clearer, and he began to feel his body liven with pain.
“How bad do I look?” he gasped.
Tabeli simply stared back at him and he got the message. Sinto closed his eyes about to mutter an energy spell, but Tabeli stopped him.
“You don’t have enough strength as it is. You need all you’ve got to be able to go through the healing process, which is going to be very hurried so you can join us on the battlefield. Skimming off the little you have could turn out ugly.”
Sinto sighed. Everywhere was enshrouded in a cloud of dust. He could hear voices of the soldiers scampering about trying to rally help for some people. It seemed that those who were at the front had it worse. It was then that Sinto remembered the King.
“What about the King?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about him,” Tabeli said. “He’s way better off than you. Thanks to that crazy dark mage, Lord Taboon.”
Sinto sighed with relief. No one could be trusted more with Henok’s protection than Lord Taboon, Henok was his special responsibility.
Then from nowhere another thought dropped into his head. If the Tonarians had been able to scatter us with their explosions, then why weren’t they attacking?
Then it hit him.
“Mages on me!” he yelled suddenly. “Take positions and make a shield spell!”
Already in the sky, more of the little stary things were flying towards them.
Mosael stood on the rampart and watched with scrutiny as the forward formation of the Middle Kingdom‘s army was demolished.
Fools, he thought.
As general of Tonar’s armed forces, Mosael had seen to it that everything had been planned to the slightest detail, way before he had gotten wind of the Middle Kingdom’s movements. He had gone up to his king and asked for the security around the city to be tightened. Toas was falling apart. Chaos was coming. The human magicians at the court where the being of Balance and Chaos was trained had sent word that the being of Balance and Chaos had escaped, plunging the entire Toas into inevitable doom. Mosael, having spent thirty years of his life defending Tonar and the throne, was determined to see Tonar through these perilous times.
The king of Tonar was old,
