Tilly crashed into the ground a few feet away from the epicenter of Doom Ducky’s blast amidst white-hot flames and glowing dragon glass. He rolled down the steep slope for a while before finally gaining control of his momentum and popping back to his feet, no worse for the fall. Falling on his face from a height of a few hundred feet still took some getting used to…but he doggedly rolled with the motion, pivoting and running back toward where he had last sensed Kindle. The flames licked hungrily at his sprinting form but found no purchase on his resistant armor and god-like tough skin.

  He wasn’t too surprised to see that apart from the flames covering the top half of the peak, the blast hadn’t actually damaged the super resilient structure, as it too seemed to be entirely made of dragon glass. The perpetual flames were more than enough of a difficulty on their own. His gear was already getting hot, and he was thankful he had taken a huge breath in before the fall, anticipating the hostile environment. Even with his super tough body, he doubted breathing in post-ignition gases would be fun. Better to be safe than sorry.

  ‘Kindle! Can you hear me?’ he sent, running up to where he had sensed her just before landing. She was lying in a broken heap, surrounded by the ashes of her opponent, missing feathers and even skin over much of her body.

  The sight sent a lance of panic through Tilly, and he fell to his knees before her, ignoring the fire blazing all around them. She did not stir at his presence, and their bond remained inactive as he fought down a hiccuping sob. It was difficult to make sense of what he was seeing; her avian bone structure and musculature had been ravaged beyond recognition by the fight to Beelzebub's center, and he just didn’t have any way of knowing how bad the damage really was.

  He didn’t even know if she needed to breathe regularly or not. He had never thought to pay attention and now her terrifying stillness ate away at him. He swallowed down his rising worry, hand fluttering over her broken body, wondering if there was anything else he could do.

  She was already surrounded by a ton of fire and…

  Then he saw it, and hope surged in his chest. The flames directly touching her body were slowly shrinking.

  ‘She is still taking in heat!’

  Hoping to somehow help, he sent whatever Mana he had managed to regain over the last few minutes shooting through his hand. A gout of flame, only slightly different in color from the fire already surrounding her, bathed her injured form as he gently laid his hand on her broken body. Their bond allowed him to pass on much more heat to her than her passive absorption, and he pushed everything he had into her.

  ‘There you go girl… it will be alright.’ He sent, gently stroking the tips of her few remaining feathers. Before his eyes, parts of her broken body began to ignite and slowly shift back into place.

  ‘Don’t worry, you are doing just fine…’ he continued watching as she healed achingly slowly.

  Then their bond suddenly thrummed to life and a sleepy voice answered his mental assurances,

  ‘Hush, bonded. I am trying to sleep.’ She sent back tiredly.

  ‘Kindle, you did incredible! I can’t believe you killed a Corrupted power!’ He gushed despite her request.

  ‘-not dead… No notification. Just badly damaged. Now let me sleep,’ she answered with a slow opening of the eye facing in Tilly’s direction before slowly blinking it back closed.

  ‘I can’t leave you here for long, no matter how much you like the environment… but I can give you a few more minutes,’ he thought, watching her continue to heal. Then he looked back up at the epicenter of the blast. There was still one last piece of the plan he had to accomplish before they could get out of there, away from the advancing armies.

  He got up slowly, almost reluctantly, scanning the area for any lingering enemies. But all he saw was a wild, burning landscape, constantly reinvigorated by some magical mechanism he did not understand. Kindle, of course, loved it, the environment was practically a buffet for her. But Tilly hoped it would be an excruciating pain for their enemy to traverse. Even he, with all his stacked elemental resistances and almost-matching Mana signature, was taking about a percentage point of damage every minute.

  Scanning the skies to make sure there was no budding reprisal from the rest of the Vanguard, he jogged back to the epicenter and reached out to the mountain with his fragile Will,

  Claimant Recognized…

  Congratulations, you have met the requirements to claim this Peak. You may stake a claim as a new axis in the conflict or lay claim as a representative of the Dawning Coalition.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Tilly silently elected to reclaim the peak for the Coalition, and a notification burst into being before his face, and probably every other creature's face in the Contested Lands.

  The Battle Continues!

  2 Peak claimed by the Dawning Coalition

  4 Peaks claimed by Corruption

  Taking another look around at the peak, which now had more in common with the surface of the sun than any mountaintop, Tilly allowed himself a smile. From what he knew of their chances, the coming battle was almost guaranteed to end in their destruction… but he wasn’t going to make it easy for the bastards.

  He jogged back to Kindle’s position and turned to look at the approaching army. They had covered almost a quarter of the distance since he had last taken a serious look, and he was shocked at the speed they were able to maintain. Then again, he doubted anything in that army was below level fifty. Tilly tried not to wallow in hopelessness as he saw the gathering of Corruption’s armies still stretching miles back and disappearing behind the bend in the horizon.

  At this point in his Corruption fighting career, he had come to realize that the power it offered did more than just penalize one stat to boost another… It slowly robbed you of your actual life force to feed its voracious growth. This was the reason every Corrupted opponent Tilly had faced had been far less resilient than they should have been for their level.

  So it's not like the Dawning Coalition didn’t stand a chance. Especially with the new arsenal of Dragon Glass-enchanted weapons and some of the strongest Light-aligned powers on the plane. In fact, Tilly would have given them a fighting chance even if they had faced twenty-to-one odds…

  But what he saw crawling toward them, surging over the land like a tide of tarry blackness, was no army. It was the full population of something like thirty factions, with more forces arriving from every corner of the endless continent every day. The Horde had felt endless… but Corruption’s main force had numbers that rendered the actual total an insignificant variable.

  Tilly blew out a long sigh, shaking out some of the heat that was collecting uncomfortably in his sleeves as he scanned the other Peaks again. The other four were still covered in clouds of the flying demonic force that Tilly had been calling Corruption’s Vanguard… But that wasn’t a very accurate summary. It would be more correct-to-scale to call the forces marching out from the Pits the Vanguard of Corruption’s forces with over ten times that number estimated still to arrive.

  The unfairness of it all almost made Tilly want to push for a mad dash to conquer the other peaks before the main force arrived. Maybe they could cheat the system-

  Kindle stirred at his feet, interrupting his train of thought. The short break had done wonders for her and her body was almost fully reknit, with new feathers poking out of freshly healed skin and little embers starting to blaze merrily along her back.

  ‘It would never be that simple. The system set us up for a big showdown, and I doubt capturing all the Peaks would stop that army from wiping us from existence,’ he thought darkly to himself, squashing his dreams of a quick sprint to rig the contest. Whatever was coming, they were going to have to bleed to see it through.

  The flames around Kindle’s area had almost been completely extinguished, and Tilly bent down to gently scoop her up, not wanting to leave any sort of easy foothold for the enemy. They needed to bleed for every inch if the coalition wanted a chance at victory, however slim that chance looked.

  ‘Nap time is over, girl, we have to go.’ Tilly sent in a mental whisper as the phoenix stirred again in his arms. He set off at a quick but not urgent pace, letting Kindle continue to absorb what she could while in the favorable environment.

  His eyes again found the approaching enemy, pouring over the distance between them, drawing closer with every step he took. They had covered enough distance that now, instead of a dark impression of an amorphous mass, Tilly was able to make out wide variants in the approaching force’s sizes and shapes. Colossal monsters painted in vague brush strokes by immense distance came into a slow, terrible clarity. They towered over thousands of other combatants, who were still too small to make out in any detail.

  Tilly didn’t have any Abilities that could help him with the specifics at this distance, but even he could see that some of the things moving his way were hundreds of feet tall. His pace started to quicken, reordering his priorities at the sight of their approach speed.

  Running downslope, he took a path that curved him around the face of the mountain until he got a better view of the central Peak, the coalition's chosen point of defense. It was taller than the other mountains by a third, and he could see more and more activity along its slopes as his people finally began to arrive.

  “Origin, you better have a plan, cause we are shit out of luck.” he grunted out, using up the last of his remaining breath to utter the plea.

  Then just as he was nearing the edge of the blast radius, a faint reverberation rolled through the mountains, followed by another several seconds later. Tilly’s eyes shot back to the horizon, briefly encouraged to see an actual end to the blackness blotting out the entire land west of the mountains. At least Corruption’s main force only filled a few hundred squared miles…

  Another reverberation hit, and then another, as something that Tilly initially thought was a giant mobile fortress peaked up over the horizon, gaining height with every terrible impact. The land itself seemed to groan under the steps as a figure emerged at the rear of the armies, dwarfing even the largest of its monsters by an order of magnitude.

  It marched with long deliberate steps eating up the distance at an incredible rate. Yet it did not gain on the army, holding back its pace at the rear of their forces, driving them on with the threat of death by colossal footprint.

  Magog Level ??? Demonic Prince

  That name and the unbelievably large figure it represented were staggering on a level Tilly had difficulty processing… He could only assume that it would be up to him or one of the coalition’s Powers to take something like that on… but even if any of them succeeded, it would mean that much less firepower to hold back the millions left in Corruption’s forces.

  Shoving down the rising anxiety, Tilly finished his flight out of the blast radius, having only lost about 12% percent of his Health in the whole endeavor, and called for Hiro.

  “I don't know how this works, but Hiro! I am good to go!” He shouted into the open air, trying not to let his eyes stray to the approaching figure that was almost as big as the mountains he was coming to conquer.

  Despite not being nearly as early as they had hoped, he had done his best…

  All he could do now was hope. Hope that there was much more to this story than what was apparent… because right now, everything looked like absolute shit.

  A second later, Hiro was next to him, grabbing his shoulder and pulling through a tumult of furious winds to land in a dark glowing chamber at the center of the mountain.