Chapter 67: Tale 6, Ch 11: The Final Assault

The soldiers in the graves had nearly finished piling the dead in the square and started cheering for their prospective sides. Darren shot a Torin then an Ierilan unconscious and shouted, “Everyone get in your holes!”

No one moved.

“Do you think they’ll hesitate just because they see different uniforms huddling together? Get in the holes now or you will be shot and it sure won’t be by Gladys,” Darren warned.

“He’s right. If you want to live to fight another day you will take cover in those graves immediately,” Aela advised.

Lucky for the siblings, the fifty or so conscious soldiers in the square reasoned that the Prophets were right and took cover right as bullets ripped through the square from either side.

The Torin flag, brown and red colors swirling, came over the top of the debris along with a wave of soldiers. On the other side, an equal amount of Joya Union and Ierilan soldiers shouted a war-cry and poured into the square.

Rifles blared.

Grenades blasted.

Soldiers screamed.

Men died.

And all the while the Golden glow of Aela’s shield lit up the square as the crimson bursts of Darren’s pistol flared into the setting sun.

Roars of explosions signaled tanks trying to clear the paths to the square as infantry scaled over and engaged each other. At first they shot at the Prophets, their initial target. Once the soldiers actually got into the square they saw the enemy on the far side and chose them as their primary target. While bullets and explosions ripped around Aela’s invincible shield, Darren ducked down and blasted away at the soldiers rushing through.

“Gah!” Darren screamed as he fell to the ground, his knee shattered with a bullet from a high-caliber rifle.

“Darren!” Aela ducked to the ground, covering her and Darren with her shield as bullets sparked endlessly against her massive, round shield.

“To the fountain. Get cover.”

Aela concentrated on adding strength to her arm and picked up her brother.

“No wait!” Darren said.

Aela threw her screaming sibling twenty feet into the remains of the sunken fountain. The Red Prophet cursed his sister as he landed safely next to the ruined statue. The Gold Prophet ran toward him and dove into the fountain where she quickly healed the injuries Darren had sustained.

“I didn’t mean throw me!” Darren shouted.

“No time,” Aela said.

The screams and bullets didn’t cease as the Prophets ducked behind the shattering fountain for cover. With a temporary pause in the Prophets’ presence, both sides saw their chance to charge. One hundred men on either side drew out of their cover behind the debris in the square and flew at the center, shouting and cursing at each other as they fell into the open graves where the frightened captives hid.

Darren blasted away as they got close. With a shout, Aela raised her shield and sent a shockwave through the front line of the Torins, then turned to the west as Darren blasted at the soldiers knocked off their feet. The siblings repeated the process on the west side.

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East, west, east, west, the Gold shockwave knocked over the rush of troops and then the Red blasts knocked out or killed the disoriented soldiers. As darkness set in, the Prophets watched the men charge head-long into each other amidst the blinding flash of their blessed weapons.

A silvery moon rose, and smoke covered the stars.

The city had gone quiet.

The Gradennes Central Square was empty of combatants, save the exhausted panting of two.

By day’s end, over two hundred men lay on the ground in the square. Just as it had been at the beginning of the day, mud-covered soldiers filled the Gradennes Central Square. But unlike the beginning of the day, these soldiers only lay unconscious. Nearly one hundred unfortunate more had died, but over two hundred had been spared.

“Who do you think won?” Darren asked, sitting up against the fountain and using his Prophet power to fight his massive craving for a ground beef sandwich.

“Well, considering both sides attacked us equally all day, I’d say no one,” Aela replied, trying her best to not have to pant as much as her brother as she sat next to him.

The fountain looked nothing like a fountain at all, more like a circular ring of concrete indistinguishable from the many other piles of debris in the square. The only difference was the fountain wasn’t filled with soldiers of all three armies.

“What will we do when they wake up?” Darren asked.

Aela sighed and said, “Let them go I guess. I have a feeling neither side is going to be able to attack the other for awhile.”

A flash of white burst from the south-central part of the square and Darren stood, leveling his pistol. “What now?”

“Wait, wait.” Aela pushed her brother’s arm down, noticing the tell-tale white burst for what it was. “Don’t shoot.”

Two figures came into view as the siblings’ eyes adjusted through the coming darkness. They saw a woman with a white, glowing necklace and a man with a red-tinted halberd.

“This is terrible,” the halberd-wielding man said as he looked around at what he thought were dead bodies.

“Hendar,” the woman with the necklace said, “they’re not dead.”

“What?”

“Hendar! Hendar!” Darren shouted from the fountain, trying his best not to limp as he went over to his fellow Red.

Hendar squinted his eyes as he saw the two approaching Prophets through the coming darkness. “Darren? Aela?”

“Hendar,” Aela said, sighing with relief. “Bless you for coming back. What took you so long?”

“We thought all the Prophets had left. The Sept found out someone was behind and messing with the armies. I had no clue it was the two of you.” Hendar pointed at Darren. “I saw a building fall on you.” Then he pointed at Aela. “And you go into the Thelga.” He looked around at the carnage in the square. “How did you survive?”

“We didn’t take a side,” Darren said with a smile.

“Hendar,” Aela said, “we found out about the betrayal and your leaving. But when we were left behind we couldn’t just run away. We had to keep as many alive as we could.”

“Hmm,” Hendar said. “So that’s why they contacted us.”

“What?”

“The Sept didn’t fully know why, but they said the actions of the Prophets at the Gradennes Square convinced Torin, the Joya Union, and Ieral to rethink this war. Even Sai heard about this.”

“What?” Darren asked, looking around. “We only saved about two hundred. Why is that a big deal?”

Hendar looked around at the ruins of Gradennes and said, “Because eighty thousand soldiers, a huge percent of both sides, died in the fighting yesterday. They only found death outside, but in the square you two saved them.”

The siblings smiled weakly, not sure if they believed they’d done anything worth mentioning. “All we did was not kill people,” Aela said.

“Yeah, we just didn’t take a side,” Darren said.

Hendar scratched his head and said, “Well, both sides want you at the peace negotiations. They’re meeting at Pinnacle tomorrow. A few Whites are teleporting the leaders of the four major powers there and I was sent to bring the Prophets at the square. I didn’t know it’d be only two.”

“Peace talks?” both siblings asked at once.

“Yeah. So wash up. We’re going home.”

Two hundred thousand casualties for the Ierilans and the Joya Union. Two hundred and twenty-five for the Torins at the siege of Gradennes. Fifty-eight Prophets dead. It was the biggest loss for everyone in Home’s worldwide war. Both sides had fought for years, and the Prophets thought to end it by picking a side.

What ended the war, what brought both sides to a ceasefire, was when two Sevens Prophets chose neither side, only the side of peace. It became a Prophet policy that saved many lives each time the people of this planet forgot about their Home.