Part of the Craft To Rebel series by Sad.
There is no last chapter.
From a turret at the top of a wall, a horn sounded.
Its blaring sound carried across the town within the walls. Other turrets began sounding as well, echoing the horn through the whole village. Everyone froze and looked at each other for a second.
A girl dropped a wooden bucket filled with water and ran for her home. The clatter of the bucket against the wet streets broke the people's trance, and everyone began to flee to their houses as the heavy rain spattered against the grass and concrete. The formerly orderly fashion of the working townspeople was immediately disrupted by the frantic scamper to homes. Some people jumped into secret piston-activated compartments, some climbed down into storm shelters. Within two minutes few were left on the street. However, some were gathering their arms.
A guard climbed to one of the two turrets that split the wall into segments with a gate in the middle. His bow gleamed purple in the falling rain. An arrow sprung from his bow at the seven horseback riders. Initially off-course, it curved to the right and struck one of the riders in the shoulder. It glanced off the man's shining silvery armor, and the rider's only response was to look up through the eyeholes in his thick iron mask and shoot an effortless arrow in the direction of the guard. The arrow struck low, and where it hit flame blossomed forth, a magnificent explosion rocking the turret. The guard stayed unfazed and shot another arrow, which struck again to no avail against one of the riders' armor. This time the central rider, surrounded by others, wearing no armor on his pitch-black mottled skin, looked up, and the guard saw his full-red eyes gleam. The first rider shot an arrow directly into the gate as they approached. The pieces flew, and before either the guard or his counterpart on the other turret could shoot again, they were inside the town.
The dark man dismounted, his black horse's blue armor a stark contrast to the others' gray-on-white metalled steeds. He looked up to the turret across from the guard's. In one hand he summoned a fireball, and the other he reached out to the tower. The fence posts connecting the turret top's floor to its protective wooden ceiling snapped, and the roof rose to the air. The man moved it in the air away from him with gestures of his hand, turning it so that the ceiling, instead of facing down, faced him. He then violently threw the fireball, which collided flagrantly with the wood that was facing him. The other guard was blown off the roof, burning inside his chainmail. The man of dark magic made a jerking gesture towards himself and down, bringing the flaming roof past the turret, the strong cobblestones of which wrenched the roof in two. The two halves went past the man on both sides, crashing into the ground. Despite the heavy rain the fire continued on the dry wood of what had been on the opposite side of the drops.
By this time the first guard had thrown himself to the hard cobblestones beneath his feet in order to avoid detection. He had witnessed the sheer power of the dark magician firsthand and watched his compatriot horrifically killed. He crawled up to a lowering in the turret wall and looked through it at the man.
The dark magician made a sweeping motion with his arm, and commanded in an impossibly deep voice, "Raze their farms, burn their houses, destroy their structures." He paused for a second, and continued, "And kill them all."
The riders, who had been stationary, thrashed the reins on their horses to move again. Some pulled out flaming torches and hurled them through the house windows, shattering them and setting the floors afire. Some of the people screamed, and were shot.
From turrets arrows flew, and to turrets arrows flew, but the latter arrows did more damage, their stronger bows being more effective against the weaker armor of the guards. More torches were thrown, and fires spread through the rest of the town. Slowly but surely ironclad home warriors emerged into the streets, and then quickly attacked the riders with their even strength. The riders dismounted, clashing iron swords of different styles together. The fighters defended their city with all their strength, and gradually began winning the battle. The sixth rider clattered to the ground dead, and the band of around fifteen fighters focused their attention on the figure who had been steadily approaching the battle at a walking pace.
One of them yelled "Hey, who are you?" at the man, brandishing his sword. In response, the char-skinned man raised his arm slowly up like a zombie, then quickly swung to his right. The man who yelled flew quickly through a thick window headfirst sideways, breaking his neck. The other fighters looked for a split second and began running for the man. He stood still in the street as they approached him quickly. One of them as he was running up to the man realized something else was going on, but before he could vocalize it the man spun in the street, loosing two fireballs from his hands into two of the fighters. The third swung, but the magician dodged with a duck and backflipped, kicking the fighter's sword into his face. The backflip carried him high into the air, and as he reached a position where he was laying in the air he shot two more fireballs, which hit more fighters. He landed on the ground, and from his feet the earth rose, moving outwards from his landing position in all directions and creating a wave of earth, which laid waste to every house, well, workplace, and structure in the whole town.
The guard watched in horror as the land rose up ever closer to him. He jumped from the tower, landing outside the town walls, and sprinted for his life as he watched lines of blocks rise up behind him that once comprised his home. The rising earth gained quickly behind him as the spruce trees he ran under flew up from above his head. He hurled himself into a pool of water and, horribly, felt it rise to meet him before he fell into it. He held his breath and grabbed onto the stone at the bottom of the pool, hoping that the liquid would negate his otherwise imminent doom. As he was pushed down by the pressure of the rise, holding the air in his lungs was even harder. Suddenly he felt the pressure let up and he was forced from the water. For a terrifying second he thought he had been captured by the magic-casting man, but he realized the land wave was reaching its peak and inertia had pushed him up further. The earth fell from below him, and he followed suit, landing in the pool unharmed. He climbed from the water and gazed in awe upon the land wave still continuing outward, lessening in pressure as it went and felling every spruce tree in the taiga.
He remembered that the magician was still in the town, and resolved to run for the only other noncomplying town he knew. He deviated from the cobblestone road, as he'd be sure to be found, and ran for his life and memory amongst the fallen pines.