Inside the Healing Complex, in the original temple, Fred saw Priestess Sharfroen and all her acolytes gathered. There didn`t seem to be any patients there (Fred assumed they`d been moved to the bunker), just priests and priestesses and birds. Who all began singing together.

　　"Priestess Sharfroen hasn`t sung along with the birds since&" Kumbanaka said.

　　The singing grew louder, and just like before, began to ring more and more throughout Fred`s domain. "Oh boy, here we go again," thought Fred. The singing matched a white glow that sprang from the temple room, and shined throughout the town and the domain. The sound and light grew and grew, culminating in a single perfect holy chord, and a town full of temporarily blinded and deafened people.

　　Like that time before, Fred felt something gigantic and powerful and weirdly oppressive looking at him. This time, he was sure it was the attention of Sharfroen`s god, and wondered how the god would feel about the demon army. Looking out onto the field, he could see that the demons were very much not happy about being seen. All of the demons had stopped. Many of them were crying out, or crouching down to hide as best they could. As the light touched them, their skin began to smoke and burn, which caused more screaming and overall demon discomfort.

　　But then the light and sound receded, and the demons got back up on their feet and resumed marching.

　　You told me about it, but I wasn`t here the first time. I`m so lucky to have seen it in person.

　　"What did it look like to you, Jim?" Fred asked.

　　It looked like the attention of a god, as you surmised, Fred. We can hope that the god is on our side, but as I`ve said before, the gods aren`t really on anyone`s side, and in almost every case, they are bound not to intervene in our affairs.

　　"It sure seemed to scare the demons, though."

　　Are people glowing, Fred?

　　Fred looking into town. Yes, the humans all had that golden glow about them. And they all looked ecstatic about it. They were all flexing, and slapping hands, and bumping fists, waving weapons, and every other expression of martial delight they could think of. But looking a bit deeper, Fred could see that all of his creatures had the same golden glow. "That`s new!" he thought.

　　"I think the holy magic has affected me," said Kumbanaka.

　　"I as well," replied Martin.

　　"This will make my deaths more challenging," Kumbanaka continued. "Ah well, we don`t always get what we want."

　　"Stop with your nonsense, you crazy cat," Martin retorted. "I haven`t& Oh, here they come."

　　Martin was talking about the fliers, which had broken out of the low clouds and were flying across the east field, straight toward the town. They looked a bit like dragons, but were much smaller and seemed emaciated, almost like skeletons with a thin coating of membrane. But they all had wicked claws. And they had horns, of course.

　　As the fliers moved in untidy flocks, Fred could see that they weren`t all the same size; some were big and some were small. But they all looked vicious. And as Fred watched, Martin stretched his glowing, muscular body, and leapt off his tower to meet them.

　　Look out, Fred! Bombs!

　　Fred turned from the imminent sky battle, and watched as one of the demon bombs arced high overhead, and fell against his Town Wall with a thump. Without a thought, Fred manifested a big stone hand, and threw the bomb back towards the demon army. As he did, he saw that the trebuchet was now one of four that had trundled close enough to his town, and was now being used.

　　Two more bombs flew towards the town, as the one Fred threw back impacted in the middle of the demon army. It blew up, with a monstrous explosion that would have stunned everyone if they hadn`t already experienced it. As it was, the humans all shouted in triumph, even as the two new bombs landed inside the town. Almost instantly, Fred had picked up the bombs in two more stone hands, and thrown them back.

　　This started a pattern. The demons would fire a bomb. Fred would create a new hand, grab the bomb, and throw it back. The bomb would explode, sometimes in the air, and sometimes on the ground, killing hundreds, perhaps thousands of the demons. The explosions were deafening and terrifying. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

　　Meanwhile, Martin was dancing.

　　The dragon screamed through the air, a huge blur of green scales, surrounded by a golden glow, and the demon fliers were helpless. His claws and tail lashed out to shred their wings, and despite (or perhaps because of) his greater size, he was much faster.

　　The fliers shot fireballs at him, which he dodged easily. The few fireballs that did hit him left a scorch mark, but no real wound. Some of the fliers succeeded in colliding with him, but they couldn`t grab on to him, and slid off. Their sharp claws only scrabbled at his tough scales.

　　He would occasionally fly up into the clouds, hiding from the fliers, only to surprise them again with a lightning swoop that knocked them out of the air. True to his plan, he only crippled wings, leaving the fliers to plummet to earth. This rarely killed the demons, but if they landed inside the city, the humans quickly fell upon them and killed them. Fred could see that all the human fighters fought smart. They wore masks to protect their lungs, and would quickly stab the demons to death, then run away to avoid the resulting explosion.

　　If the demon fliers fell outside the city, Fred could take care of it. He would quickly grab the demon, drag it underground, and squish it. He tried to drag it deep enough so that its numbing effect wouldn`t inhibit Fred`s control of the ground above it.

　　"Can you see the big one, Fred?" Martin called out.

　　"Uh, no, what big one?" Fred replied.

　　"You`ll see him soon."

　　As the sky battle continued, the demon fliers were wiped out one by one. As the artillery duel continued, the bombs killed no humans and ripped apart thousands of densely-packed demons. Finally the trebuchets stopped firing, and the last flier was ripped from the sky.

　　As Martin flew back to his tower, he couldn`t help crowing. "I must say, that was very satisfying. The human healer`s magic was a bit of a boost, of course. But did you see how they couldn`t find purchase upon my perfect hide? I`m using a lovely spell for that. And there`s so much magic everywhere today. I feel like I could cast forever."

　　"Couldn`t you breathe fire, like you did to that poor king?" Kumbanaka asked.

　　"I could, but fire doesn`t affect these things, remember? I doubt my normal poisonous breath would do these things any harm, either. It would only choke the humans. That`s why I didn`t bother using it."

　　Another demon gate has been closed!

　　"Yay! Two down, Five to go," Fred replied. He repeated Jim`s news to Martin and Kumbanaka.

　　"Look at that, Fred," Kumbanaka replied. Fred turned to look out at the far end of the road.

　　There he saw the biggest demon he`d ever seen. It was huge. It was bigger than Martin, and stood upright on two giant chunky hooves. It held a huge whip. It had big red wings on its back. And it had way too many horns. Seriously, they were all over its face and head, like the excessive piercings of someone who`d made all the wrong decisions in life.

　　More than big, Fred quickly realized that the boss demon wasn`t standing on bloody ground, yet Fred was numb to the entire area around it. The boss strode forward, and Fred felt the numb area move with it. "Um, guys, I think this giant has some magic. I mean, I don`t think my magic can affect it at all," he said.

　　"It can still fall into a pit. So make some!" said Martin.

　　Fred tried. Now that the demon was walking up the road, it was stepping on more demon blood, which inhibited Fred`s magic. He saw that the demon would have to walk a great deal closer to the Town Wall to be standing on clean ground, but if that was all Fred could do, he`d do it. He counted on the massive weight of the boss, and made a deep pit with a cover that would support the lesser weight of regular demons. While he was excavating that, the boss demon spoke.

　　Fred couldn`t understand it, but it was gravelly, and gothic, and loud. "What`s he saying, Martin?"

　　"Holy Tiamat, he is such a fucking cliche. How tedious. He`s telling us how badly he`s going to torture and kill us. Every pedantic detail. I can`t understand how this is supposed to help him. I mean, none of the humans speak this language. Oh, now he`s addressing me specifically. Oh, he thinks I`m somehow in control of you and these humans. How droll."

　　"Can you talk back? Can you get him to leave?" Fred asked.

　　"Speaking of droll. No, I`m certain I can`t get this demon to leave. It would be like asking you not to dig. A fool`s request."

　　Does Martin know what the demon is saying?

　　"Yes," Fred replied to Jim. "Ya know, it`s frustrating that you and Martin can`t hear each other. We shoulda worked on that more. Anyway, the demon is talking all the ways he`s gonna chop us all up. Martin thinks he`s a stupid joke."

　　How is that helpful to anyone?

　　"That`s what Martin said!"

　　Oh, a third demon gate has closed! Fred, we must hang on!

　　Fred didn`t bother to reply to Jim, but passed on the news to Kumbanaka and Martin. As he did so, the front edge of the demon army reached the Town wall, and began piling up against it. The humans were waiting and ready, and started firing arrows down into the demon mass. The demons responded by throwing their fireballs back up at the humans.

　　The humans seemed to have many magical ways to protect themselves from the demon fire, and none of them seemed to get hurt. Down among the demons, Fred saw an occasional explosion, when a demon died from an arrow wound. And the boss demon strode closer and closer.

　　Fred looked again at the boss, and his Town Wall, and thought that there was a possibility that the demon could climb the wall. After all, the wall was eight spans tall, but the boss demon was close to thirty spans tall, as far as Fred could tell. This worried him, and he knew of a simple, brute-force counter for the threat. He started making the Town Wall taller. He`d created stone, and pushed things up from underneath before. And Martin was right; there was somehow loads of magic in everything right now, and Fred felt extra powerful.

　　Fred took the Town Wall, and simply grew it, almost like a tree, pushing more rock into it from its base, careful not to fracture it. He wasn`t able to lift the entire circle of the wall at once, but he could lift a section in such a way that it didn`t fracture or crack. He knew stone wasn`t normally that flexible, but once again his magic was making the impossible possible. The wall closest to the demons grew to twenty spans high. The humans upon it scrambled to get off as quickly as possible.

　　Fred would have kept uplifting sections of the wall, but the demon boss saw what he was doing, and started moving faster. Now it was very close to the pit that Fred had dug for it, but it wasn`t going to step directly onto the pit. Fred moved fast. He dug the pit sideways, to make sure the demon went down into it. He also dug the pit a bit deeper; it was sixty spans deep when the demon stepped upon it.

　　As Fred hoped, the massive weight of the boss caused the roof of the pit to cave in suddenly, and the boss pitched into the hole like a& well, it was so big and heavy that it fell like nothing anyone had ever seen before. It seemed to fall very slowly and yet was swallowed by the hole in an instant. The noise was incredible. Its massively muscled arms scrabbled at the lip of the hole, but the earth just broke off, and the demon couldn`t stop itself. On the way down the big wings tried to fold up, but they didn`t really fold like that, so one of them cracked and broke as the hole caught it and twisted it. The boss screamed in pain, a deep howl that shocked everyone, as the boss slid completely out of sight.