“Last report from the front, Lord Charles.” A man in white chain mail and helmet handed a sheaf of parchments to Charles, sitting behind a desk clattered with parchments, maps, and books.
“Thank you, Robert.” Charles took the report, nodded to the man dismissing him and went back to his reading.
The dragon lady as she called herself, or the green lady as most other people called her, just finished her tenth attack to the gates of Zarzura, after a fightless siege that lasted six months, and she was pushed back as usual, yet something about her doggedness was worrying him.
He had been elected as lord ruler above the council for less than six months when she first came with her strange army.
Residents of the farmlands around the city, were the first to report her, as most escaped their residence and took refuge in the city upon seeing the advancing monsters and magical beasts coming their way.
The dragon lady sat on the back of a flying wyvern as she first came to the gates of the city, and from her high perch, she delivered one demand, “Give me a single green aura man or woman, sacrifice them for the safety of your city, and I shall leave you to your lives, unharmed. You have one day to comply.”
That first day, normal people ran to the parapets and threw rocks at her and her army.
She didn’t even give them a second glance, one whole day she stood at the gates, and by the hour her army was growing, until by the dawn of the second day, the entire mass of farmland around the city was occupied by the magical beast, as if every single magical creature in the whole of Agartha came to their doorstep.
Then the first attack came, behemoths threw themselves at the wall, one after another, attacked the west wall for hours until night came, and they stopped.
The architects of the city spent that night fortifying the west wall and assessing the damage to the structure, the wall held, and the magic barrier was activated.
Then on the next day, droves of wyvern came at the city from heavens, dropping huge rocks that were barely deflected by the magic barrier.
The third day of the attack had griffins doing the same thing only with smaller rocks.
The fourth day, harpies came with even smaller rocks.
The fifth day, phoenixes came with the smallest of rocks, and those passed through the barrier, showering the guards and the inhabitants of the city with rock hail.
On that night, one captain devised a contraption to be placed on the heads of the guards and soldiers who were called to action, extra protection from heavenly attacks.
On the sixth day, the guards discovered diggers under the city, tunneling under the gates, the whole day was spent in pouring pitch and tar around the wall from the inside then imbuing it with magical combustants which caused them to ignite on contact of any underground intruder.
The three purple mages retained in the city’s army were entirely exhausted by the end of the day, they had to sleep for the next two days.
On the seventh day, the dragon lady sent a whole contingent of howlers at the walls, the whole city’s population had to plug their ears with cotton and wax.
Then the dragon lady repeated her demands on the eighth day, then the whole cycle repeated, only with different creatures for another week.
By the end of the fifth month, she declared a non-offensive siege, saying that she will give the city time to consider her demands.
For the next six months, the dragon lady sieged the city with any new attacks, till two months ago, when she started to make massive attacks once a week.
This was the eighth month since the siege began, making it a total of thirteen months since the dragon lady first attacked the city, and two months since she started to weekly hammer the defenses of the city again.
Charles rubbed his eyes to ease their tiredness, he had to read and authorize tens of parchments daily. Reports of the stocks of the city of food and drink had to be realized and accounted for, as well as stocks of weaponry for the army added to those the letters sent to the other nations asking for their help, which were all returned with regrets, and demands for more time to debate the issue.
Scenes From Agartha.