She didn’t have to wait long to find out.

All the sands below shot forward, a tide of shifting gold, brown, and dull. They expanded and increased as if Eirikr was making more of them. They gravitated towards the man. Tons and tons of sand floated up, and more were joining all across the battlefield.

The sheer force carrying the sands upward made gale-force winds blow. Helena narrowed her eyes as the sound drowned out the raging battle on the other side of the wall.

Once again, their small battle had been disturbed. Everyone paused to look at what the Akatsuki Clan leader was doing with the storm of sand that gently floated around him.

Nobody said anything, but the battlefield began to shift. Those with Eirikr began to move towards him, and Helena found herself moving toward Vale and the others.

The wind began to pick up as the sands whirled like a sea in a storm.

"That isn’t looking good," Valtor muttered. His left eye was swallowed, but the big guy still carried his giant hammer with ease and confidence. "What is the lunatic planning now?"

"I don’t think we’ll have to wait long to find out," Terrix said with a muted frown. His back was hunched, his face savage, and his whole body was lit up by tattoos. Two glowing hands that ended in blades jutted from his back.

The others remained silent, mostly because there really was nothing more to add and because the roar of the sand sea and the wind was now high enough to drown out everything else.

Vale looked at Eirikr as the man stood at the eye of the storm. His stomach clenched. Things had progressed so fast that he had been on one leg and continuously sliding since the war began—from the Grandmaster’s appearance and the immediate attacks from the Akatsuki.

Everything felt rushed and urgent. And he felt as if he couldn’t keep up. Worse, he didn’t know if he could keep up. Briefly, he wondered what his men, his subordinates—all of them—thought of the war.

Did they think he would lose? Did they follow him because they had no choice and had already made peace with their own death?

The truth... the truth was that if they didn’t pull out a miracle, then they wouldn’t be winning. They would lose, and it would be brutal.

"Vale..."

The voice snapped him back, and he realized that everyone was looking at him. Tiber must have been calling him for some time.

"Clan leader Vale, what is the next plan?" Tiber asked.

What is the next plan?

Vale’s face was calm and composed, even if his thoughts were anything but. He raised his sword, the red thing shimmering so brightly it might as well have been liquid. "We fight. We defend, and we wait for the good news."

Only Slya could save them now.

’Maybe I should have gone with her,’ Vale thought. ’Maybe I should be the one to even go with the demon Enchanter. Eirikr will kill us all at this point, and there’s nothing we can do about it! Nothing I can do about it! I thought I’ve grown stronger at the borderland. I thought I tempered myself, but it was only an illusion, isn’t it? Here, right here, is strength and power.’

Vale’s mood grew dark and very ugly in an instant, and the sword he was holding spat and sizzled in response. But then it passed, and his eyes calmed. ’I’ll do what I always do. My best. I’ll give everything my best and not regret a thing.’

The mood around the group was dark and gloomy, but it was also filled with a kind of acceptance and determination. They all knew what happened to defeated Clans in the Hinterlands. It’s better they fight with all they have.

The raging sands gained more quality, more weight somehow. They moved more uniformly. The sands picked up speed, and more speed.

The winds from the storm began to ripple with force, drawing everything and anything in with jerking motions.

The group braced themselves as the force slammed into them.

A voice suddenly filled the storm. "Let me show you, Vale. Let me show you weak Athrimir what true storm devils look like!"

Before they could even know what was coming, they saw it. Chunks of hardened sand the size of twenty cows spun with the storm at the same deadly speed, so fast they became a blur and disappeared within the storm. Worse, they were coated with essence, enhancing their speed to the highest level of strength—higher than the majority of Master Knights could make them.

There were about fifteen of such stones.

Vale swore. Because no matter if you were a Master Knight or not, if you got hit with that stone at such speed, then you might not be getting up anytime soon.

"Don’t get hit!" Vale shouted, mixing essence with his voice to empower it.

But he didn’t need to warn them. Everyone could see and understand.

Without waiting, Vale absorbed Tiber and himself into his tower, since there was absolutely nothing else he could do but get out of the way of his Master Knights.

But Vale was Vale, and so he still did something. "Sandstorm is weakened in the area!" 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

The command tore through the air in a ripple of shockwave, and it felt as if he was trying to use his finger to direct the sea for all the help it did.

Eirikr seemed to think so as well and seemed disgusted at the fact, because the next instant, he tore the storm loose.

Of course, Vale had seen incredible feats of power before, especially from terrifying monsters, and maybe it was even because of that that he felt a chill run down his spine as he heard the howl and the sandstorm collapsing towards them with all the grace of a falling mountain.

The Master Knights all reacted.

Eryndor’s tattoos glowed so brightly he turned into a figure of light. His extra hands turned into wings, and he leaped behind and over Vale’s tower, standing on the tip.

All the tattoos on him shuddered and crawled swiftly across his body and pooled into the air, expanding into a bubble shield that covered him together with the tower.

Takoda made a curving stone shield big enough to cover Valtor and Terrix, and then he enhanced the shield so strongly with his essence and artifact that brown light flickered around it.

Only Helena Varrow didn’t create a shield. She simply planted her feet into the ground and leaned forward, her two hands brought together in front of her.

All of this happened in mere seconds.

Seconds before the storm hit.

It wasn’t pretty.

Vale could hear the ground trembling and breaking, tearing. The shield that covered the tower and the tower itself provided them with some semblance of protection against the storm. Under the hardened sand stones, two of them at once hit the bubble shield...

.....and shattered against it! The bubble shuddered, disfigured and twisted from the vibration and shock. It almost seemed as if it would snap.

"Don’t worry, my Lord! Every last bit of my power is inside that shield. There’s no way it’s going to be destroyed. Not by this, and certainly not by.....!!"

Eryndor did not have the time to gloat, and Vale did not find the time to feel relief, because even though the space around the bubble shield was dark and filled with the furious roar of the storm,

they could feel something coming for them.

Eirikr.

He came with the storm, letting the angry thing carry him forward as if he weighed nothing. He was so fast that Vale couldn’t keep track and could only tell by the way the pressure was at a distance one moment and then near the next.

"Brace yourself, my lord, he’s swinging...."

Eirikr swung his throne like a hammer.

And it hit like something else, something with so much power. The force of the attack created a counter shockwave that left their area temporarily calm of the raging storm.

The bubble shield twisted into itself and then popped.

For a terrible moment, Vale heard the painful scream from Eryndor. He heard the triumphant bark from Eirikr. He heard the distant sandstorm.

Then everything snapped, and the storm hit the tower. It almost felt as if the command he declared earlier would hold, but it was wishful thinking.

The tower was carried and flung away. Eryndor was ripped out and thrown away.

Vale grunted as he felt tiny blades of sand cut into the tower. His sense of direction was thrown aside. The tower, the artifact, seemed like grass about to be snapped by the wind when he felt something hard and terribly strong hit the tower.

Vale shouted out in pain. His consciousness, which was merged with the tower, was instantly cut away. He floated in painful darkness before the tower shuddered and spat out him and Tiber.

And the storm claimed them.