Some of the army's excitement waned as we stumbled our way through the twisting forest paths of Lesser Nah’Ke’tzin: now tame Surfacer forests of beech and oak. Scouts like myself had chosen a path that took us in a circuitous route around Rising Heath, and we could let our guard down for the first time since we had come in from the ships. We marched in single file along deer trails, stepping in each others’ footsteps, moving only like the akor’mari can with complete silence, as if we were all playing Stalk-the-Nekru in the close tunnels of our homeland. I wondered then if we had only been taught those games to prepare us for something like this, not just our own childish amusement.

Our nerves and the excitement came back all at once when we finally found ourselves up on the gray cliffs overlooking Sun-On-The-Lake. It was just past dawn, and we could see the waters of the city’s namesake, Lake Ta’hiki, through the mist.

I have been to that city in the years since the war, and it is now not nearly so magnificent, I am genuinely sorry to say... On both sides of the caldera lake, the grand structures of the wuyon’mari reached right up to the feet of the protective ring of mountains. Their dwellings did not yet spill past that ring as they do now, and there were no ramshackle huts of refugees and outcasts lined up on those slopes like shells dropped in the bottom of a barrel – I would see the advent of those in my time there.

Instead, the tips of the city's spires glinted golden in the light, their white walls stained red with the rising sun’s light, like an omen of what was to come the following night. Their guards patrolled their streets more out of pride than necessity, and I swear I could see one that had fallen asleep above the palace gate -- although in reality I was too far away to be able to tell.

Our units retreated down off the cliffs to hide and take a quick nap; they were ordered in ranks and ready to fight before the first stars began to appear that dusk. I was among them, my use as a scout depleted now that we had reached the city. It was like the quieting of a crowd before a bard takes the stage, where everything seems silent for all of one minute. Then the play began.

I had been in many battles before, but there was something different about that one. Our plans had worked in-as-far-as the wuyon’mari were unprepared. Some of them were still having their supper in lavish dining rooms with their family. Our officers waited until they could hear the changing of the guard: little musical bells chiming throughout the city, marking the hour. Guards stamped their feet lazily to bring the blood flowing back into them, exchanging half-hearted little greetings as they returned home or came on duty. In the middle of that sleepy bustle, we charged.

My unit leapt forward as one when the call came, and I went along with them, not being able to break away, even if I wanted to in the press of bodies. A shudder like an impact went all the way down the ranks as our front lines reached the wall. Some akor’mari up on the cliff behind us were calling for the archers to ready their bows. There was a whistle of arrows above my head, and then booming and bursts of multi-colored light up front of as the magi began their own assault on the wall’s foundation.

Assaulting a city on the Surface is different than attacking one that lies in the Reaches, and our subterranean tactics might have been our downfall if we did not have the numbers that we did. In the Reaches, our troops will gather in ranks all around our target, packed tight against each other like fish in a barrel, waiting for our sappers to do their work and knock in a hole between ourselves and our quarry. We specialize in melting stone and cracking rock, and none of us expected the walls of Sun-On-The-Lake to last long. What we were not expecting was the many arrows and fireballs the defenders could fling at us until then.

Like cockroaches fleeing from the light, we crept behind trees, up against cliffs, and dove under knots of shrubbery to get out of line of fire. There was lots of screaming and shouting; my ears were one long ring. Color sprang back up in my surroundings as my eyes adjusted to the flashing light of the spell blasts, then went dark again, blinding me in between. The intermittent sight of red blood splattered everywhere was somehow more terrifying than all the times I had seen it in the colorless twilight of Bataklik. Perhaps you Surfacers are used to it, but to a little akor’mar, the counterattack seemed like the very heavens were caving in on us, but with fire and lightning instead of stone.

That part of the battle only lasted minutes, even though it felt like hours. As I said, we specialized in destroying walls. Somewhere close to me, the walls broke, and our soldiers poured through it as if there was a void portal on the other side drawing them in. I was pulled with the crowd, again, suddenly surrounded by white walls and golden arches instead of trees; there were cobblestones under my feet instead of trampled mud. The memories come back to me like it was a mere cycle ago. Here the cobbles were veined with ice, the handiwork of a mage who had been killed only seconds ago. Over there it was slippery with blood, two fighters only feet away, locked in a death struggle.

The akor’mari sang and hooted. I might have been, too. This is what we all had dreamed of; the city of our sworn enemies wiped away in one night of fire and blood. The army rode down the main street, trampling anything in its path. It went up across the long bridge that spanned into Yohon’nai, the center island, leading right up to the King’s Palace. The rukh-sham sentinels that guarded it were tossed aside into the lake like a child's building blocks, barely a hindrance. We all cheered as the front line burst through the double bronzed doors; in no time they were up on the walls of the Palace itself, holding the wuyon’mar King and what I guess were either his family or servants high for everyone to see. The terror of the wuyon’mari seemed like a separate animal inside of them, spilling out of their bloodshot eyes and their howls of desperation. The wail of the army -- of us – drowned them out, roaring louder and louder, like a rumble across the entire city, until the King and his kin were cast down onto the pavement, breaking like porcelain dolls. We hooted and cheered and screamed ourselves hoarse. I did not see what happened to the bodies afterward. I did not care. They would be ground beneath our feet like sand and rotten dirt.

Yes, I think that is enough for you to understand. There were other horrors like it going on throughout the city that night, and I will spare you from what I saw. What I did...

The next cycle, there was a great parade down the main street. Akor’mari lined the roads, some on nekru and some on stolen horses, and all of them holding a weapon of some kind. Behind them the last remaining buildings loomedlike broken mountains, the golden spires tarnished by smoke, the white walls no longer white. Except for where the akor’mari had cleared them, the streets lay buried in rubble like flotsam from a shipwreck. There were no wuyon’mari anywhere to be seen, no life past the road we marched along.

Sun-On-The-Lake had fallen.