No more was said after that. The hour before dawn was quiet, and pregnant with fear and anticipation. The humans were all up and about, with serious intent and quick, quiet conversations. Though it was dark, Fred couldn`t help but notice all the gryphon riders pop out and fly away, as though they`d all received the order at the same time. Fred had never seen gryphons fight, and thought that they were probably making the right decision. Still, it was an ominous event.

　　As the sky got a tiny bit lighter, and the sun began to decide whether it would bother penetrating the low clouds, the blue-cloaked mage got on top of the wall and cast her spell.

　　The wind picked up, and started to howl from the west, as though the mage was nervous and overdid it a bit. The dense mist (that was still hard to see in the dark of the night) blew away from the town, over the stream and past the three Tower Forts. Within a minute of that, horns started blowing from the Tower Forts. The humans hadn`t installed warning bells or gongs in the forts, but their horns could be heard clearly.

　　Fred looked carefully into the forts. Each one was occupied by only a few humans (skeleton crew was the term that popped into Fred`s mind), and these humans were rushing to hide themselves in the lowest sub-level of each fort. Fred thought this was a good idea. He could see that all the tower gates had been shut tight, but he hadn`t made any big door in the sublevels, and wondered if that was something he should correct.

　　Then, looking at the very top of the northern tower fort, he saw the Black Mamba. She was already hidden by her special magic, and she was standing out in the open, right on the top. To Fred, she looked like a painting of perfect focus and serious intent and bravery. She was so cool.

　　Figuring that she could take care of herself, Fred refocused on the few other humans in the forts. He waited until they`d gotten themselves as deep and secure as possible. Then he trapped them inside with layers of thick walls. He left small holes for air circulation, but otherwise he simply threw up protective rock to (hopefully) keep them safe from the demons.

　　Looking outside again, he still couldn`t see any demons, but he could see that Black Mamba could. He looked back at the town, and saw the human army moving quickly. Their leaders had apparently decided to make their stand from inside the Town Wall, so they were up and armored and moving through the east gate, leaving behind tents and flags and personal gear. With all the people already living in the town, Fred thought it was gonna get a bit crowded. But it would have been worse if Fred hadn`t created the Emergency Bunker.

　　Fred looked into that space, and saw that it was pretty well used, filled with all the humans that wouldn`t or couldn`t fight. In fact, Fred saw that they were starting to pull the five doors closed. Fred was pretty confident that those five doors would keep the demons out. But he didn`t really know. And the town was still in great danger.

　　The sky got lighter and lighter, but the low clouds continued to dominate, and drizzle upon everything. The town held its breath and waited. Finally, as the light became strong enough to let Fred assume it was daylight, the first demon appeared. Fred`s friends were right; the demons came marching right up the road, straight past the north Tower Fort that Black Mamba was in. The first demons came on the road itself, but they were the tip of a wedge-shaped wave of demons that was much wider than the road. In fact, as more demons came, the width of the demon wave seemed to never stop expanding. It wasn`t a line of demons, it was a blanket.

　　The demons were varied, and Fred was glad they had discussed it, because otherwise Fred would have been surprised and disheartened by the variety of demons. The army was mostly the demons that Fred had already seen; short, red, horned, and mean. But there were plenty of other types. There were demons that looked like big red dogs. With horns. There were big demons, like oxen, carrying stuff on their backs. They also had horns. There were tall, skinny demons carrying long spears. They had horns too. Apparently every demon had horns.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

　　A few of the demons were oversized bruisers just like the one that was living in Fred`s Cave Zone. Only a few, compared to the rest of the host, but Fred could already see dozens of the bruisers.

　　And the demons didn`t stop coming. Fred had been told that this army was supposed to have twenty thousand demons in it. That simple number didn`t prepare Fred for the seemingly unending carpet of demons that relentlessly advanced towards his town.

　　They will sweep right up to your walls, Fred. It`s an intimidation tactic. I`ve seen it before.

　　Jim`s sudden interjection was surprising to Fred, but welcome. "I guess I`ve really gotten used to him only talking in the morning and evening," Fred thought to himself. To Jim, he said, "Well, I`ve got pits to drop them into. Should I start now?"

　　Are the demons over many of your pits?

　　"Yeah, more than half of them, I think."

　　Then do it, before the demon blood starts giving you problems.

　　"Okay," Fred replied. To Martin and Kumbanaka, he said, "Here I go."

　　Then he started opening the trenches.

　　The pre-prepared trenches all had thin covers; Fred removed them as quickly as possible. He tried to focus on trenches that were already covered by demons. This worked great. Hundreds of demons dropped into the trenches, shrieking. At first this was disconcerting to Fred; the demon army had been relatively silent until now. But then he began to relish their screams. "Die, monsters!" he said to himself as he pulled the covers away.

　　He planned to crush the demons within the trenches, but first he had to get the covers off and drop the demons in. One after another, he kept going, until every trench that had some demons on it, now had demons in it. Now he could commence with the squishing. It was easy to grab the sides of each trench, and bring them together. It was like two hands crushing grapes. Before, he`d crushed one demon very deep underground. Now that he was crushing many in an open-topped trench, he could see the blood burning and vaporizing, and rising from the trench like steam. He was sure it stunk.

　　Of course, as soon as the demon blood flowed, the trench became numb to Fred. After the initial crushing, that trench became useless to him. So he moved to the next trench, and the next, and the next. After only a few crushings, the first trench blew up. All the crushed demon bodies exploded (as Fred knew they would) like a string of firecrackers. The blood and dirt and mud flew upward, and rained back down on the ranks of the demons. Fred kept crushing, and the demons kept shrieking and exploding, and before Fred knew it, over a thousand demons were crushed, and almost the entire outer field was numb to him.

　　The outer part of the east field (beyond the stream) was now a wasteland, full of deep pits and ruts, and covered in demon blood and parts. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were still dark and low. And despite all the demon death, the army kept coming. Fred still could see no end to it.

　　"Quickly, you fool!" Martin shouted. "Remove the bridges!"

　　Fred thought this was a good idea, and erased all three bridges in a blink, even as the first demons were walking across them. This dumped a few demons into the stream, but the water didn`t seem to affect them. They didn`t melt, or anything.

　　The mist was returning, and mixing with the blood vapor from the trench carnage, to form an obscuring pall across the field. The blue-robed mage (wisely standing behind the wall this time) cast her spell again, and the whipping west wind once again swept it all away. This did reveal more of the demon army to the humans on the wall, and Fred saw them quail. There were a lot of demons, and they kept coming, marching over the blasted outer fields, and through the streambed, and coming closer to the Town Wall itself.

　　Fred saw something new, approaching from along the road. It was a lot to take in. First, it was a wheeled wooden contraption, though it looked like it could have been built from black bone, or even charcoal, as far as Fred could see. It was very tall, with a single tall beam swinging on a crossbar, with a big bucket below it. Fred was sure he`d never seen anything like it.

　　"Trebuchet," said Martin. "One of those siege engines we told you about."

　　"Sounds like a dumb name to me," said Fred. "Why didn`t they call it a Turbo Master 3000 or something?"

　　"Oh, I agree, Sainted Spirit," Martin retorted, so sarcastically that Fred could practically see his eye-roll from across the field. "YOUR nonsense name is so much better." Fred smiled, and that felt good. Because nothing else about this did.

　　Many demons were dragging or pushing the siege engine along the ground. Other demons, moving in front of the device, were busy hacking each other to bits, and spraying their blood across the ground. Fred could see that they were purposely making the trebuchet roll along ground painted with demon blood. "They said this would happen, but I don`t think I believed it," Fred muttered to himself. But his eyes weren`t deceiving him.

　　The cruelty of the demons was doing the trick, though. Fred felt the numbness of the ground around the trebuchet, and knew he wasn`t` gonna be able to bury the device. Curiously, Fred noticed that the demons killed in this way didn`t explode. He wondered about that. As he thought about what he needed to do, he heard singing. It was morning, and he`d grown accustomed to the singing that the acolytes did every morning. But looking back at the town, he saw no acolytes above ground.