[Ouroboros' End]
Frantically ducking out of the way as an ogre catapulted three of his colleagues through the air, Kessen scrambled onward on hands and knees until he managed to push himself back onto his feet. Glancing behind himself, he watched a spear shatter against the ogre's forearm, its wielder collapsing a heartbeat later as a backhanded blow sent him to the ground. Simultaneously, the ogre swung its heavy maul, the weapon already stained red with blood, and disintegrated an unfortunate soldier with a blow that shook the earth.
Their commanders had said to use their numbers to bring down the ogres. As he watched the creatures rampage through their ranks, Kessen would've laughed at how ridiculous that order was if he weren't caught in their path. Certainly, the mana users could bring down the occasional ogre. But when it so happened that they were occupied with different foes, they were out of luck. Forget their original mission of holding the line, their commander could be happy if they still had an army at the end of the day.
Overhead, a shadow passed, and Kessen's whole body locked up before his mind had even registered what it was. He had learned quickly what that particular flicker of darkness sliding across the grass meant, and by the time the rumbling roar reached his ears a heartbeat later, he was already throwing himself flat.
Luckily, the dragon hadn't aimed at his vicinity. Kessen knew that if he had, he'd already be burning with nothing that could save him. Still, the heat of the flames washed over him. With it, the screaming of soldiers undoubtedly caught in the flames reached his ears, assaulting his mind with brief cries he doubted he could ever forget.
That was the worst part, he thought as he lay there, skin blistering from the flames that raged far too close for comfort. While minuscule, against the ogres they still had a chance. He could see them, react to them, and, if necessary, run away. Not with the dragons.
He had heard the stories of soldiers that survived their attacks, tales of creatures impervious to everything they did and whose attacks were inescapable. Only now did he understand what that meant as he opened his eyes and saw the inferno raging just behind their frontline troops. Usually, the sight of their healers and their second line would've greeted him from there. Now, red flames flickered on the grassy plain, slowly spreading in all directions as they raged uncontrollably.
This was the worst-case scenario, though not necessarily due to the lost soldiers. The loss of the second line was bad but manageable. While he estimated that the quarter hour mark at which they would've switched with his unit and bought them some minutes to rest should've been soon, they could endure staying in the fight long enough for a new second line to be mobilized from the reserves. The healers were already worse. Still, neither dragons nor the ogres left many wounded in their wake, making it a manageable loss. What was instead the worst part was that the flames had seemingly cut a semi-circle around their unit, trapping them between the ogres and an impassible flaming barrier.
With his path of retreat cut off, Kessen begrudgingly turned back toward the ogres. By then, they had already pressed on another twenty or thirty meters, likely having made good use of the distraction the dragon's attack provided. Kessen and his fellow soldiers were now forced to huddle in a stretch of the battlefield just fifty meters wide and maybe twenty meters deep at its largest. In that space, around a thousand soldiers that remained from his unit were packed densely, their backs slowly being pushed closer toward the raging flames as the ogres kept pushing onward.
Desperation quickly started to set in among the soldiers. Having recognized that the flames blocked reinforcements from arriving, the ogres had immediately turned their entire focus onto the few remaining mana users in the semi-circle. Within a minute, all but one of them had fallen under the onslaught, leaving the remaining soldiers in a hopeless situation.
To his side, Kessen soon saw the first few soldiers try their luck with the flames. For most, it started with nervous glances backward. Thus, when he saw the soldier immediately to his left turn his head for a brief moment, he was ready for what followed. Just as the man turned his body, Kessen grabbed him by the shoulder and tugged him back.
"You want to die that bad, do it here. That way you might at least buy the rest of us some time."
With that, Kessen pushed the man forward. The ranks ahead of them naturally didn't object to an additional person standing ahead of them and quickly made way as he stumbled into them.
'It might just be a second, but he'll buy the rest of us time to think of something.' Kessen thought. Though admittedly, he himself had no ideas on how they could have just a chance to survive the situation. Instead, he hoped a nearby soldier had a plan which he could either copy or join in on.
However, it never got to that as the fighting was interrupted by the sky ripping open. Unsure what he was watching for the brief moments that the strange distortions hung in the air, Kessen's confusion vanished when he watched numerous distant figures appear above the battlefield.
What followed happened in the blink of an eye. After a brief moment where both armies just looked up in surprise, cheers started to spread among his colleagues. With it, recognition also started to set in for Kessen as he recognized the clothing some of the figures were wearing, prompting him to join the cheers with a breath of relief.
Then, while the cheers were still spreading, fire ripped through the sky. Instinctively ducking and closing his eyes, Kessen took a moment to realize that they, for once, didn't present a danger to him. When he then looked back up, he seemed to have already missed an exchange as he only saw the closest dragon burst through a bluish-white fog and slam into one of the mythic ranks. The impact alone caused a shockwave to erupt around them, shortly followed by sparks erupting from the contact area as a defensive lightning spell struck the dragon's scales and scattered.
Moments later, flames lit up amid the raging lightning. Wreathing the dragon's form, they surged forward whenever a lightning bolt approached, causing a rapid exchange of magical attacks as the two combatants grappled each other. Or rather, as the dragon pushed his foe around, with Kessen not seeing whether the latter even managed to land hits in turn and doubting that they'd be particularly effective even if he did.
When he then watched the dragon's maw seemingly strike his side's mythic rank, Kessen's excitement died as quickly as it had appeared, fearing that even their reinforcements would be outclassed by the dragons. But a second or two later, the dragon's maw was forced open as millions of lightning bolts surged out of it and soon reconstituted themselves into the mythic rank a few dozen meters away.
And just as the mythic rank escaped, the surrounding ones unleashed their attack on the dragon. Spells of nearly every element rained down onto the creature from all sides, battering its body with repeated explosions. Within moments, these sent it reeling, forcing the dragon to expand the flames covering its body into a temporary shield before diving to escape the encirclement the mythic ranks had formed around it.
Only then did Kessen remember that even if the dragon was stronger than his side's mythic ranks, they outnumbered it. The realization and the sight that had inspired it brought no small amount of relief.
However, that only lasted a few seconds. When the first spells from their allied mythic ranks started raining down onto the troops below, the rollercoaster of emotions Kessen had experienced took another downturn. Even from such a distance, these stray attacks tore into the army with devastating consequences, indiscriminately killing ogres and their allies alike. So even though this finally halted the onslaught they had been under, Kessen and his unit still weren't out of danger, the source had just changed.
What was worse is that they now couldn't do anything to defend themselves. Just like the dragon attacks before, the stray attacks from the mythic rank fight above were so far above even the fourth ranks among them that blocking them was impossible for any one of them. Kessen suspected that the ritual spells could've done so, but considering that he had seen one of the high ranking aura users walk out of the aftermath of one such attack alive, if visibly wounded, he doubted they'd spend their time doing so.
His suspicions were confirmed when a few seconds later, two of the ritual formations opened fire on the dragon he was occasionally glancing toward. Two comets of condensed elemental might shot towards its flying figure, though even Kessen knew that the flaming one was a futile attempt before it struck. But while the dragon burst out of the flaming explosions without a scratch on them, the solid stone that shattered against its scales a few moments later did its job.
With multiple tons hitting it in the side just as the dragon had turned to avoid an attack from the mythic ranks above, the impact threw the creature back and sent it plummeting toward the ground. Again, neither ritual mages nor mythic ranks made an effort to shield the soldiers below as its falling form flattened hundreds of soldiers at the least.
Despite the fall, the dragon wasn't defeated. Just as two bright flashes preceded another two ritual spells flying toward it, the creature moved with a speed that should've been impossible for its size and dashed across the battlefield. Faster than Kessen could track, it moved toward the ritual formations, somehow weaving through in between the spells flying at it on the way, only slowing down enough for his mind to again register its presence when its claw struck a barrier that had sprung up just ahead of the mages.
In contrast to the attacks that flew toward the soldiers on the frontline, when the dragon attacked the ritual formation, the mythic ranks quickly moved to stop it. Two individuals rushed down from the general cluster that hovered above, their bodies already ignited with elemental magic which they unleashed on their approach.
This forced the dragon to stop his attack. Flying back to dodge the two spells, it turned and dashed toward the two mythic ranks.
The exchange that followed happened too fast for Kessen to properly follow. One moment, the dragon's claws raked toward the nearer of the two figures, only to be met by a blade of condensed wind that diverted the strike before scratching across its scaled skin without effect. In the next moment, the dragon spun around with an agility impossible for such a large creature, almost instantly completing a full roll and striking one of the two mythic ranks with a downward slam of its tail. The impact sent the man in question rocketing downward easily a dozen meters before he caught himself.
A burst of spatial magic came as an answer to this. Slamming frontally into the dragon, this torrent of energy forced its massive form backward as raw concussive force slammed into its chest. From below then came the other mythic rank. Shooting upward in a cloak of raging winds, he drew out the air from the space ahead of his palm, creating a vacuum that then collapsed when he slammed it into the dragon's side.
As the vacuum imploded, the wind mage abruptly changed course. Ducking down just as the dragon's massive form was flung in his direction, he twisted in mid-air and raised his hand while gathering mana and air for another attack toward his palm.
However, he wouldn't get a chance to fire this attack. Instead, a bolt of lightning tore the sky in two and struck the wind mage's chest before he even sensed it coming.
For a fraction of a second, nobody moved. Slowly, the wind mage's spell unraveled amid this pause, the raging currents of air escaping from around his body and causing his form to first lean forward before plummeting toward the ground in free-fall.
Only then did the other mythic rank spin around toward the source of the attack, with Kessen letting his gaze follow with a second delay.
Hovering not all that far away was a beastwoman, her right hand holding a staff that was still pointed in the direction of the dead wind mage. Displayed on the chest of her lightly armored robes was the motif of a draconic head that glowed bright blue, while lightning crackled around the left arm that lazily hung at her side.
Even with not just Kessen's and the mythic rank's attention but also undoubtedly the eyes of thousands of other soldiers on her, the woman was in no hurry as she then raised her staff. Pointing it skyward, she unleashed a brief burst of lightning from it into the clouds.
Immediately after, Kessen saw the skies darken. Almost pitch-black clouds formed from nowhere, spreading across the entire battlefield within a second. Amid them, he could see lightning of different colors flash, ranging from the natural blue to crimson red and bright golden arcs that jumped around between the clouds.
Entranced by the strange thunderstorm hanging overhead, Kessen only realized a few seconds later that his side's mythic ranks were no longer alone. At least just as many others undoubtedly belonging to the town's forces formed up opposite them, sometimes by hovering at the same height and other times by virtue of both sides slowly descending onto the ground.
Watching one of the latter happen barely two hundred meters away from him, Kessen could only look on nervously as the mythic ranks of both sides rushed forward and clashed a moment later.