Forged Destiny [Book 5: Ch. 14]

It was technically the second siege I had been a part of, and yet this felt very different to Mistral, larger both in the scale of the fortifications and the army of Grimm attacking us. Magnis' walls were giant, requiring either ladders or siege towers to scale, and there were far more of them winding off to the left and right, wrapping around the houses with an inner-wall surrounding the keep itself. We were all of us spread out and I'd not seen a familiar face for a good hour or two. I did hear their voices occasionally, and since none were raised in screams of agony or grief, had to assume everyone was okay.

[...]

My eyes continued to glow a faint blue with no discernible effects to me or my fighting as I methodically chopped through a Grimm that had mounted the wall before me, ramming my shoulder into its body so that it would die off the wall and not be a tripping hazard as it dissolved into nothingness. In a rare moment of calm, I stopped to catch my breath, panting harshly as I looked over the situation.

Though the Grimm had neither siege towers nor ladders and couldn't have hoped to scale the sheer walls, they had their own methods, and it was both simply brutal and foolish at the same time. The first waves of Grimm had hit the wall and started to attack it – not that their claws could do anything. The second and third had been the same, piling up at the base uselessly and doing more damage to themselves than to us.

But they had formed a foundation. As more tried to push in against the walls, they inevitably stood on the shoulders and bodies of their fellows, cutting a little higher, and this continued on and on until the Grimm had somehow formed a ramp of their own bodies, each fighting to clamber over the other until they'd actually reached the top of the walls.

[...]

Ren caught me fifteen minutes of Grimm-killing later

[...]


Ren and I split up again a moment later, our moment of rest broken by cries of fright from further down the walls in both directions. I reached mine in time to dispatch a lizard-like Grimm and provide six Soldiers some much needed relief, but I was called further on for some more Grimm within seconds. The tide never stopped.

[...]

The question of how we'd retreat while the Grimm were trying to eat us alive went unexplained. Some would fall during it, I knew.

A messenger caught me not twenty minutes later, basically to pass on what I already knew about the evacuation.

[...]

My attention turned back to the Grimm.

/-/

Keeping accurate track of time was impossible, but it was somewhere between my second and third wind, when I wasn't even sure what dredges of energy I was running on, that the horns sounded.

[...]

"Thanks," I gasped, nodding to Ren. "You saved me."

"Looked like you needed it," the Monk quipped. "Watch out!" He slipped over my shoulder to engage some Grimm, while I turned and did the same to his back, the two of us creating a pocket of resistance in a storm of black flesh and bone masks. "We'll never hold," Ren yelled over the growls and roars.

"We have to," I returned.

—Forged Destiny [Book 5: Ch. 14]