The sun hung in the sky like a molten, heavy circle of gold. Never had its light seemed so beautiful, and never had its heat felt so much like a benediction.
For three months, the Great Gate of the Bastion had been the maw between heaven and hell. It groaned now as it began to rattle upward, its heavy timbers scarred by the memory of a hundred desperate hours.
The princely cunts outside had thrown every nightmare they possessed at that wood. They had battered it with rams until the iron hinges shrieked; they had hacked at it with axes until the air was thick with splinters; they had even set it ablaze, and on fire it indeed took for it was only of wood.
The enemy had laughed when the outer layer finally crumbled into ash. They had rushed forward through a hail of arrows and stones, weaving through the white-hot spray of boiling sand and the oily dragon-breath flames of the defenders' pots.
