[The First Day of Destruction, 21:15] [The Aerial View]
Above the slaughter, the sky wept light.
To view the battlefield from the heavens was to witness a horrifying reality. It was a masterful, terrifying portrait of absolute futility.
The Inner Wall, a majestic ring of white granite that had protected the capital for centuries, was completely overrun. From a macroscopic perspective, the defenders were nothing more than tiny, flickering islands of golden light.
They desperately tried to hold back an infinite, suffocating ocean of viridian green.
The Outer and Middle Districts were leveled. They were reduced to a sprawling grid of smoking ash and glowing embers. Moving through those ruins was the true horror: an uninterrupted, undulating carpet of the undead.
It stretched perfectly from the broken walls of the city all the way to the distant, bruised horizon.
There were no gaps in their formation. There was no end to their numbers. The human forces had killed tens of thousands in the last hour, but looking down from the clouds, the frantic, bloody efforts of the mortals had not even scratched the surface of the Sorcerer Kingdom's vanguard.
High in the toxic smog, the surviving Archangel Flames drifted aimlessly. Bereft of Elena's guidance and rapidly losing their tether to the material plane, they did not flee. They possessed no concept of fear. They held only an uncompromising, divine directive to eradicate the dark.
They initiated the Final Verse.
In perfect, geometric unison, the remaining celestial beings folded their wings of hard light tightly against their backs. They ceased fighting the gravity of the world. They let go.
They dropped from the sky like a volley of kinetic bombardments.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Every impact was a localized hammer blow of concentrated holy energy. They struck the helms of the towering Death Knights. They shattered the spines of the galloping Soul Eaters. They vaporized dense clusters of skeletal archers.
The angels did not survive their own impacts. Their physical forms shattered like glass upon contact, willingly trading their existence for raw, destructive damage. Thousands of glowing, incandescent feathers drifted softly down through the thick, choking smoke. They gently touched the soot-stained faces of the freshly dead.
The green fog swirled and churned, agitated by the violent divine turbulence. But it was a fleeting beauty. The Principality Peace squadron was completely gone.
The lesser angels were reduced to sparkling dust on the wind.
As the last angel detonated against the cobblestones, the light of the Heavenly Host flickered one final time and died. The sky went completely dark, leaving only the sickly green fires of the burning city to illuminate the endless, marching dead.
[The Commander]
Commander Vane stood on a massive pile of shattered masonry that had once been the forward barricade.
He was not alone yet. A half-dozen surviving men of the vanguard, including his young, bleeding adjutant lieutenant, formed a desperate, ragged circle around him. They stood back-to-back, their boots slipping in the gore of their fallen comrades.
"Hold the line!" Vane roared. His voice tore his ruined throat. "Do not let them flank!"
A feral ghoul vaulted the rubble. Vane met it in mid-air, driving his broadsword through its ribcage and kicking the rotting corpse off his blade.
Beside him, a heavy infantryman screamed as a skeletal spearman drove a rusted pike through his thigh. The young lieutenant stepped in, cleanly decapitating the skeleton with his longsword and hauling the wounded man back to his feet.
They fought with the frantic, breathtaking desperation of drowning men.
Vane parried a heavy downward strike from a Death Warrior. The kinetic shock vibrated up his arm, threatening to dislocate his shoulder. He pivoted, smashing his heavy steel gauntlet into the creature's unarmored face, shattering its jaw before driving his blade into its throat.
He bought himself a fraction of a second. He looked slowly over his right shoulder.
Across the plaza, the heavy iron doors of the subterranean tunnel were shut. The shimmering, translucent blue light of Father Oryn's ward hummed solidly over the stone archway. It held firm against the frantic scratching of a dozen ghouls.
Closed, Vane thought. A hollow, devastating relief washed over his exhausted mind. The heavy knot of anxiety in his chest finally loosened. The throat is closed. The children are safe.
He turned back to the plaza.
The enemy was re-forming. The green fog grew exponentially thicker, rolling like a heavy, liquid carpet over the trampled bodies of Kaelthas, Valerius, and Horgus.
Then, the rhythm of the battle shifted. The mindless zombies and skeletal warriors that had served as the initial battering ram stopped. They parted seamlessly to the sides, creating a wide, clear avenue through the center of the carnage.
From deep within the emerald mist, Vane heard it.
THOOM. THOOM.
Heavier steps. Larger, far more terrifying shapes.
The towering Death Knights, the obsidian monsters that had butchered his finest Paladins stepped aside. They bowed their horned heads in silent deference.
From the fog emerged the true elite of the Sorcerer King's army.