This time, the communications channel did not immediately ring out with the usual unified chant. Instead, there was silence.
From their commanding vantage point, the knights saw it more clearly than anyone-the pale blue barrier that had sheltered the fortress had shattered into crystalline fragments filling the sky, like a smashed eggshell.
Below, black constructs and red-clad madmen were spreading into the city like a festering wound, and the lord who had given them all their glory and strength was inside that meat grinder!
None of them dared imagine what would happen to Lord Veylin if those mindless mad dogs broke through the defenses.
[Don't let those bastards hurt the Count!]
[Smash those cannons! For Lord Veylin!!]
[Kill!!!]
The communications channel erupted with roars of shock, rage, desperation, and murderous frenzy.
[Stay on me! Stuka Squadron, dive!]
[Caw! Now that's more like it!]
Stuka's grating voice exploded inside Ola's head, brimming with the excitement of finally being unleashed.
[You kept circling up there like a headless fly. I thought you were finally going to lay an egg in the clouds! Now you're acting like a real air commander, not some spineless wimp who only knows how to shout "keep your distance"!]
Ola's face alternated between red and white. The damned feathered beast just wanted a fight, yet he made their earlier tactical circling sound so pathetic, as though Ola had actually been scared.
[Shut up, you stupid bird with nothing but fries in your head! That was a holding maneuver!]
Ola cursed with a laugh. [Now take me down there!]
The massive creature beneath him gave a delighted cry, answering this long-overdue call to punishment.
He abruptly folded his wings and plunged straight toward the Magic Cannon emplacement over a thousand meters below.
Behind Ola, more than a hundred knights