When the demon came to a stop at the bottom of the hole, its overly-horned head was thirty spans deep into the ground, far below the point where the rest of the demons could reasonably help the boss get out. The hole wasn`t much bigger than the boss itself, so it was rather trapped, unable to move much.

　　"Brilliant, Fred! Now. Bury it as deep as you can!" Kumbanaka yelled.

　　Fred tried, but the boss demon wasn`t passive. It flexed its magic, and the numb zone around it expanded, doubled, even tripled. Fred`s magic was driven away from it, and Fred knew that he couldn`t dig out from underneath the boss; at least, not in a way that would force the boss downward.

　　Meanwhile, the demon army above the boss began a horrible frenzy of blood. They all slashed and struck at each other, a whirlwind of fratricide, all to counter Fred`s magic with their blood and flesh. The humans regained the wall, and began shooting arrows again, but many of them just stopped and marveled at the demons causing more demon deaths than the humans could. Within sixty seconds, the area all around the boss`s hole was covered in demon blood and demon parts.

　　Thousands more demons had just died, but the damage was done, and Fred simply had no control over the ground, no way to affect the area near the boss. It was even hard for Fred to see the boss. He knew that his sight was magically tied to the earth he controlled, so his blindness made sense. It didn`t make him less afraid.

　　Then the boss demon started digging its way out. It just used its gigantic arms to power through the earth, pulling the earth down into the hole, earth that it could stand on. In this way it started slowly bringing itself out of the hole. Fred knew it was a matter of time. His allies could see this too.

　　Fred, get back to lifting the wall. It`s the best idea right now.

　　Fred agreed, and got back to work. He and the demon raced each other. The demon had only one hole to dig out of. Fred had an entire ring of wall to raise. But Fred moved as fast as he could. By the time the demon`s head poked up out of the hole, Fred had raised a little over half the Town Wall to twenty spans. By the time the boss was able to step out of the hole, Fred had finished lifting the entire wall, even the western part, farthest away from the demon army.

　　"Man, if someone had told me the demons grew this big, I`d have made the walls bigger long ago," Fred groused.

　　I`ve never seen a demon like this. In a way, you should be proud, Fred. I`m sure the demon armies don`t have many such leaders.

　　After the demon finished crawling out of the hole, it carefully retrieved its whip, and then it stood up. Being that the boss was thirty spans tall, even this took a while. But when the demon was ready, it strode straight towards the wall again. Every step it took was on ground saturated with demon blood, so Fred was helpless to stop it. As it got closer to the wall, it started swishing the whip around. Fred also noticed that its wings were lopsided; the injured wing was held higher and farther back.

　　Oh, another gate has been closed! We can do this, Fred.

　　There were humans on the wall, still shooting arrows at the demons below. They saw the boss coming, and started to run off the wall, but the boss lashed out with its gigantic whip, and began knocking humans off the top of the wall. Most flew backwards, falling inside the wall. A couple fell forward off the wall, into the midst of the demon army. Fred saw them get torn apart, and knew that even with the golden glow, they had little chance of surviving.

　　"Is it a leader?" Fred asked. He spoke up to Kumbanaka and Martin. "Is this big guy the leader?"

　　"If so, my opinion of these demons has only gotten lower. This demon is all muscle, and little visible brain power," Martin replied.

　　"There may not be a leader, at least not here, in this army," contributed Kumbanaka. "Many have speculated that the demons have a sort of hive mind, like the bees or the ants. Perhaps a queen, far back in the nest."

　　The boss demon reached the wall, and slapped its whip over the top. The end of the whip came crashing down on the other side, hurting and scattering the humans. The demon army continued to move forward, and gathered against the wall, and around the feet of the boss. Fred looked out beyond the wall, all the way out to the Tower Forts, and finally saw the end of the demon army. No more came into his domain; the entire army was laid out before him, and it was still huge. The carpet of demons had spread to either side of the road, and had advanced until the entire army was wrapped around about half of the Town Wall. Some demons were still walking through the stream, but Fred`s town was now truly under siege.The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

　　The boss lashed its whip over the wall a couple more times. Each time shook the earth. Then it dropped the whip, and began simply punching the wall in front of it. The wall was only two thirds as tall as the boss, so it could peer over the wall at all the human defenders, and they could only glare back. Some humans shot arrows at it, or fireballs, but the boss demon seemed impervious.

　　The wall was four spans thick, which everyone thought was absurdly thick, until now. Each impact of the huge fist sent rocks spalling off, and cracks in the wall got bigger and bigger. The worst thing, Fred thought, was that he was helpless to repair the wall, or shore it up, or otherwise stop the demon. The demon boss`s aura, plus all the demon blood at its feet, utterly nullified Fred`s magic around the boss.

　　Then Martin swooped in.

　　He moved fast and silent, and every human and demon and Earth Spirit was taken by surprise. He flashed past the big boss, and grabbed its damaged wing, yanking it hard, then flying away.

　　Once again the boss screamed in pain, a howl that commanded everyone to stop and cower and cover their ears. The boss was pulled off balance by Martin`s move, and it very lazily toppled over, falling flat on the normal-sized demons clustered around it. The humans gave a great cheer, and many of them regained the top of the wall. They stayed away from the part near where the boss was, but there were still many demons at the base of the wall that they could rain arrows and spells upon. The demon blood continued to flow.

　　For a moment, Fred felt sorry for the boss demon. I mean (he thought to himself), what if you had a broken arm, and someone came along and yanked on it as hard as they could? You`d have to be pretty upset about it, sure. The sympathy only lasted a moment. Fred clearly saw the evil before him, and couldn`t muster any more gentle feelings for the demons. They didn`t have to come here. They`d made their choice, or someone had made it for them.

　　Fred could also see something happening to the clouds. All morning they had become less angry and dense, but that was reversing, and the clouds were getting more swirly, and Fred even saw some lightning. He heard some chanting, so he looked down into the town. There he saw four mages waving hands and chanting together. They were clearly magicing up a new storm. Fred was grateful, but there was just so much blood, that he wondered how any of it could be washed away. Plus, the rain wouldn`t wash away the big boss, and that guy was anti-Fred-magic all by himself.

　　As the boss picked itself up, the rain started falling on everyone. Visibility dropped, and Fred worried that Martin wouldn`t be able to see enough to fly. As the big boss stepped up to the wall again, the rain really started to come down. Now, as each of the demon`s huge fists smashed into the wall, the water sprayed off the entire length of the wall, showing the shockwave as it traveled through the stone. The cracks continued to grow, and the breaching of the Town Wall was near.

　　Smash. Smash. Smash. The demon patiently hit the wall over and over again, while the rain ran in torrents off the demon and the wall. The humans weren`t anywhere near the boss, either on the wall or on the ground below the wall. And despite the rain, Fred was still powerless to stop the demon. So it took about ten minutes, but finally the demon had fully broken through. Well, it hadn`t made a perfect doorway. Instead, the wall now had a big gap in it, about as wide as the boss was tall. This gap was filled with a giant pile of rubble, so big and unstable that even the boss couldn`t step over it.

　　So the demon started kicking the rubble out of its way. Stubbing your toes on big rocks didn`t seem like a good time to Fred, but the demon`s feet seemed to be made of iron, and it showed no discomfort as it kicked. The rubble it moved flew inside the wall, throughout the town, smashing down on everything. Some of the stones the boss kicked even bounced off the Inner Wall.

　　"The Inner Wall!" Fred thought. Why hadn`t he been raising and strengthening that too? He immediately started raising the Inner Wall just as he had the Town Wall. This would go quicker since the Inner Wall wasn`t nearly as long, and had only one gate to preserve.

　　The big demon kept kicking rocks, until the giant pile became small enough that it could step over and through the pile, to finally step into Fred`s town. What it left behind was much less easy for the rest of the demon army, but they were determined. Some demons stood on each other to scramble up the rock pile and get into the town. Many others worked together to move the rocks out of the breach, clearing the path for the army. This meant that, while the boss demon was first to walk into the town, the rest of the demon army followed, first in ones and twos, but soon after, the demons were coming into town by the hundreds.

　　Fred, you have a short period of time before the demons start to bleed and deny you control of the ground inside the wall.

　　"I know. I`m trying to raise up the Inner Wall while I can."

　　The humans could use help, though. This is where they make their stand.

　　"What do I do?!?"

　　Deep breath, Fred. We just have to hold on. I think you should make walls throughout the town. This will frustrate the demons and support the human fighters. How fast can you make walls, Fred? Oh, and another gate has been closed! We`re getting close now, Fred. I have complete faith in you!

　　Put like that, as a challenge, Fred`s energy surged. It was trivial for him to raise a rock wall from the ground, and he could do it in a heartbeat. So he did so, all over the town, in random places. Each wall was a hundred spans long, and four spans tall, just enough to block the sight line of every demon. By the time the boss had reached the closest tower, Fred had made fifty of these walls.

　　"That`s enough," Fred told Jim. "Now I gotta go back and fix up the Inner Wall."

　　I agree. Go.

　　Now the boss busied itself with smashing the tower in front of it. While it was stone, Fred had never designed it to withstand a giant demon, so it went down quickly and messily. Broken stone scattered everywhere, and so did all the furniture, clothing, and other bits of human habitation that the tower had accumulated. The top half of the tower was broken quickly, but the boss didn`t stop until this particular tower was fully destroyed and scattered.

　　"Why is the big demon fighting that tower?" Fred asked.

　　"I cannot fathom such a mind, Fred," Martin replied. "But towers you can easily rebuild. The demon is wasting time, which is fine with us."

　　"And for me it`s time, my friends," Kumbanaka interjected. "Here I go!"

　　With that, Kumbanaka jumped off the Town Wall, right into the demon army.

　　As Fred watched him fall upon the densely packed demon host, he heard Martin say, "Stupid cat."