Alfred's Diary

Chapter x+y+1 - The Enemy Arrives

On top of the gateway, I couldn't see much. The lorries that had arrived with Allagahan were trundling across the bottom of the canyon, and Allagahan himself had flown off some minutes ago.

I could see that a group of flying demons was attacking something, but not what. My intention was to strike the flying demons with lightning. There didn't seem to be as many of them and I'd feel safer with nothing flying through the air. Unfortunately it was going to take a while to raise the storm necessary to do this.

After a few minutes the flying demons left and after that the troops turned up at the ramparts. It appears that they had been attacked. The main (land) force hadn't continued and so where still at the top of the ravine on the other side. My spell preparation hadn't been as much use as I'd expected. Still, I didn't want to waste it and so let the storm build up and strike the enemy. Perhaps it will have done some damage, even if I could not see it.

Cordelia turned up at this point. Typically she hadn't lent any assistance and was very selfish about the whole thing. So selfish in fact that she'd been drinking and had a hang-over. I wasn't sympathetic.

Our next thought was what to do next. This boiled down to getting more troops and supplies (I could equip the workshops for example and use those workshops), which would take time, or we could go to the Fount of Power and raise the Phoenix.

We decided on the later. The tower was surrounded by four elements - fire, earth, air and ice, and was guarded by demons. The very top of the tower seemed easiest. Only six demons were there, although there was a guard room underneath.

So our plan was to strike them quickly. I was in favour of a shield spell to defend us, but a silence spell sounded sensible (or rather didn't sound at all! Sorry, gnomish humour). The other three would strike the demons mentally. I would come through and cast the silence spell, and then we would attack the guard room below. With luck our rail rifles would work and the silence spell would avoid alerting the rest of the tower.