The smoke slowly dispersed, revealing one of the worst horrors Sergeant Roydon E. Spencer had seen in his entire military career. The scene was as bad as any of the memories he held of the wars during the first years in the Era of the Wave.

  “Prepare to fire!” Gordon’s voice thundered above the general uproar. “That scum from the North will not get into London.”

  “May God forgive me for this,” Spencer whispered regretfully as he aimed the tank’s cannon, his hand trembling.

  His partner put another shell in the chamber, his heart aching as he looked at the refugees clambering to get into the city amidst the clouds of black smoke from the initial bombardment by Major Gordon’s twenty tanks. The human targets were pushing and shoving one another in a desperate attempt to get to the safety they hoped London would provide. With the storm of shelling that was devastating the surrounding area, if the refugees did not succeed in getting to cover they would undoubtedly die. So they surged frantically forward with the glimmer of hope they found in the form of a breach in the wall.

  Their desperate situation had them crawling over bloodied piles of rubble and body parts spread over the ground. Spurred on by their own panic in their mad dash toward salvation, they trampled over it without thinking twice.

  The city had been shaken like a rug through the opening of a gigantic front door. A section of the wall had collapsed due to the destructive power of the tremors that had so severely shaken it. The immense sheets of iron had swayed precariously and then had finally given way, taking with them a small, narrow building that had been part of the wall’s layout. A one-hundred-fifty-foot section of the tumbledown barrier had disappeared.

  When Gordon got the first reports, it didn’t take him long to claim it was all the work of their neighbors from the Secure Zone of the North. The negotiations that had been taking place with their ambassador had been a disaster. They had not been able to reach an agreement and Gordon had suspected the entire time that his adversary was sizing up the situation. Now he could see it all too clearly. Somehow that arrogant ambassador and his escorts had gotten a bomb into the heart of the city. Their plan was obvious. They had distracted him with that spectacular silver cannon—that luckily had ended up buried in the sewers—so he wouldn’t notice the bomb-making components they were sneaking in. It wasn’t that complicated, after all. There were a thousand different ways to dismantle a bomb into a million small pieces to be reassembled later.

  But he wouldn’t be making any more mistakes. The entire city was depending on him and he wasn’t about to let them down. He reacted with the speed the situation demanded. He identified the breach in the wall as the main threat and ordered the heavy detachment located close by to help reestablish order. As soon as the detachment arrived, he had not hesitated to give the order to open fire on the invaders from the North who were flooding the city via the breach.

  “Sergeant!” he shouted. “Fire another round. If that doesn’t stop them, we’ll launch yet another attack.”

  It was a complete aberration. Spencer closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see it. It didn’t help at all, though; the image of all those poor people blowing up between the piles of rubble was fresh in his mind. Closing his eyes could not erase their wild, terrified expressions.

  “Stop! Hold your fire!” someone shouted.

  Spencer did not hesitate to follow the order. He looked around him and saw Nathan’s chubby face running toward Gordon. The man was sweating so much he looked like he’d fallen into a swimming pool.

  “What do you want now, Nathan?” he grumpily rebuked. “This is a military situation. Your authority is revoked.”

  “Don’t do it, Gordon,” he begged, his voice broken up by his panting. “It wasn’t the Northerners. It’s not an attack.”

  “You are out of your mind,” he huffed, disgusted. Nathan’s interruption was causing a delay, which infuriated Gordon. “I don’t have time for your bullshit ideas about diplomacy. You wouldn’t approve of military action if they were pointing a gun at your face.”

  “That’s not what this is about,” Nathan insisted. “This is tied to the portal, Gordon. I saw them with my own eyes, I swear to you.”

  “What did you see?” he snapped, his patience wearing thin. For each second he did not take action, the situation was worsening.

  “Winged men,” answered Nathan, compelled to make Gordon understand. His only hope of avoiding this massacre was to make him see reason. “They’re coming out of the underground. They have enormous black wings, and they’re going into the Fog with these really strange poles that light—”

  “Go get your head checked out, Nathan,” Gordon interrupted. He’d put up with enough of his nonsense. That hippie pacifist was not going to rob him of another second. The security of London was his responsibility and he could not ignore his duty any longer. “These are difficult times. We cannot tolerate weak leaders like you. Sergeant! Shoot the intruders!”

  “No!” screamed Nathan. “Don’t anyone open fire on—”

  A shot cut off his plea. Gordon watched with no emotion as the threads of smoke emerged from the barrel of his gun. He slipped it back into its holster, satisfied. Nathan collapsed, the hole in his head streaming blood.

  He should have done it a long time ago. Now he wouldn’t have to share the power with anyone, and he could make the Secure Zone the strongest of all.

  “I didn’t hear the tank firing at the intruders, Sergeant!” he roared.

  Spencer again put himself in God’s hands, seeing there was no way to avoid the carnage. He knew his options were to open fire or to join Nathan with a bullet in his skull. He dedicated one last thought to the refugees, and cursed himself for being a coward and doing nothing to help them. He inescapably brought his hand to the cannon’s firing pin . . . but then something completely unexpected happened.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  The temperature suddenly dropped. At once, Spencer felt chilled to the bone and his teeth began to chatter. He could see his breath now, and a light layer of frost was starting to coat the inside of the tank. He and his partner hurried to get out. What they saw on the outside left them frozen, much more so than the sudden drop in temperature.

  The front part of the twenty tanks was covered by a dense coating of ice. The cannons looked like a row of long icicles from which small stalactites were hanging. Spencer had no idea how such a thing could be possible, but he thanked God he hadn’t had to fire at those poor people again.

  Gordon was nearly foaming at the mouth. He was bellowing incomprehensible orders and demanding an immediate explanation. Spencer heard him say something about a new “super weapon” the Northerners must have that was capable of freezing everything.

  The true explanation, however, presented itself in the most unexpected way imaginable. A tall man with long red hair was walking toward Gordon. He looked gravely serious and his step was firm and secure. In his hand he held an impressive sword that appeared to Spencer to be made of pure ice. Its blade was an amazing shade of blue and was covered with frost. All eyes were trained on the unidentified man. Just before passing in front of each of the frozen cannons, the redheaded stranger shattered them with a single blow of his spectacular sword.

  He was dressed in rather odd clothing; in fact, Spencer had not seen anyone dressed like this since before the Wave when, in London, the climate had been much warmer. Four other people who were dressed similarly had just caught up with the redhead.

  “Who are you?” demanded Gordon, not the least bit intimidated by them. Rather, he was enraged. “You are with those cowards from the North; am I right?”

  “I told you the Minors are idiots,” casually quipped one of the new arrivals. “I’ve been watching them for too long. Nothing about them surprises me anymore.” One of the others elbowed him, but he didn’t seem to care. “Only they would let a brainless retard like that be in charge.”

  “Quiet, Vyns!” ordered the redhead. He then spoke to Gordon. “We are not from the North. And no one will be shooting at these people again.”

  “I don’t know who you are,” admitted Gordon in a more restrained tone of voice, “but no one is going to tell me what I should do in my—”

  “The wall won’t withstand much more, Asius,” another of the strangers informed the redhead. “Both sides are wobbling and it’s going to fall. My advice is to knock it down. We can’t do anything with it and, if it falls, it will kill a lot of Minors.”

  “Give me a couple seconds alone with Gordon, Asius,” pleaded Vyns. “I guarantee you he’ll be much gentler when I teach him to value—”

  “Stop harassing him, Vyns,” interjected the one who’d elbowed him before. “You are so impatient with the Minors. Asius, I’ll take care of the wounded if that’s all right with you.”

  “That’s enough, all of you!” protested Asius. Everyone got quiet. “Vyns, stay with me and be quiet; I don’t trust you. Lyam, go ahead and do whatever you can for the wounded but don’t tire yourself out. Diago, we are not knocking down the wall. Tell Yala about it; he can fix it.”

  “I really doubt that,” Diago dissented. “There is a ton of rubble. It will take him way too long to repair it.”

  “Tell him about it,” Asius replied sharply.

  People began to gather around these strange newcomers. The soldiers lost all interest in their supposed war as soon as they saw Lyam healing several people who were injured. Diago ran off toward the breach followed by Zaedon, a quiet man who had not said anything and who seemed, by far, to be the oldest one of the group.

  In less than a minute, Asius had organized the chaos that had taken over the area. Following his instructions, the mysterious strangers set everything in motion to clear the area where the breach was and to move the injured.

  “Who do you think you are to come in here and start giving orders?” demanded Gordon. “I have the authority here.”

  “And we’ve seen how you exercise your authority, you fool,” challenged Vyns. “You killed Nathan in cold blood. Asius, please, let me teach this clown some manners. If we oust him, the Minors will be better off.”

  “Don’t ever remind me of this, but I almost agree with Vyns,” declared Lyam. “We can’t leave these people under this guy’s command.”

  “No,” declared Asius. “We are not going to interfere any more than necessary. You’re forgetting it could be worse to deny these people a leader at a time like this than to leave them with one you consider to be inappropriate. Besides, he might just be the right man to help them survive what’s coming. Maybe not the best one in the long run, but at least for the time being. Do you really want to make a decision like that in haste?”

  Gordon was speechless. Never in his life had he felt more scorned. These intruders were deciding whether or not they would allow him to remain in command right under his nose, as if he were some worthless slug who had no say in the matter. Nonetheless, he was incapable of protesting. There was something unique about these men—especially the redhead. The two the leader called Vyns and Lyam obviously didn’t dare talk back to him, though Gordon did notice that Vyns had to work to contain himself.

  Still, he did not know how to handle this unexpected situation. As Gordon looked around to see what his men were doing his eyes landed on a very tall man who was on top of the wall. The wind blew through his long blond mane as he stood there, perfectly balanced, just at the edge of one of the steel sheets that was threatening to collapse and widen the breach. Gordon followed the unidentified man’s gaze and saw there a perfect clone of the man. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision, but nothing about the scene changed. Two blond men who were exactly the same were looking at each other from both sides of the gap in the wall.

  They moved with such faultless synchronization that it seemed one of them was just a reflection of the other. The two blonds took out fiery swords and then sliced vertically through the air with them, from top to bottom, drawing a semicircle of flames that hung suspended in the air. Then they jumped off the wall, and from each of their backs sprouted a pair of immense wings. They soared toward one another, cutting through the air with their weapons and leaving behind two angled lines of fire. Gordon watched in fascination as they met at midpoint, joined their free arms at the elbow and descended together, spinning around, their swords leaving a trail of flames in the air. When they landed on the ground, the angels separated and went to opposite sides of the breach where they drew more lines of fire.

  A little while later, satisfied with their creation, they went back together to meet with Asius. People stood staring in bewilderment at the gigantic symbol of fire they had attached to the wall. None of the steel sheets was moving now. Whoever these men were, they had just turned a pile of rubble and a gaping hole into the sturdiest, most indestructible section of the entire London Wall.

  “Good work,” said Asius. Yala nodded his heads slightly in a gesture of acknowledgement. “We can’t lose any more time. We have to go right now.”

  “Wait a minute,” asked Gordon in an atypically meek voice. Everything was happening so quickly; he felt confused—lost, even—but the idea of who these men might be was slowly taking shape in his mind. What he knew for sure was that they’d come from the portal. “You are . . . it doesn’t matter. Explain to us, please, what all this is. Is it another Wave?”

  “No. It has nothing to do with the Wave,” Asius clarified. “It is a war that does not concern you. Pray that we can contain it so that it never makes it here.”

  “We’re used to war,” Gordon declared. “We aren’t cowards. If necessary, we’ll fight. We’ve been through plenty of wars since the Wave.”

  “Not like this one, I assure you,” said Asius. “Believe me when I say you cannot possibly imagine a war like the one that’s coming.”