The deafening sound and Xi's understanding that the wall could no longer stand unsupported hit him at the same moment.

The monster machinery tossed boulders at the defenders for two days non-stop, supplied by a caravan carrying stones from the nearby quarry. There was no rest anymore, for either side. The final assault was coming.

The first crack in the wall opened up. The stressed stones expelled one from the midst to whistle through the air towards the enemy, but it was not enough to restore the balance.

"Run!" Xi screamed for anyone within the earshot, and lead by example. The structure took one shattering breath and gave in, roaring like a dying beast. A cloud of dust rose into the sky.

Thrown off his feet, Xi struggled for breath, a hailstorm of debris raining down. Shielding his head, he rolled over to his back, looking for the golden bird in the sky.

She sped to the Eastern quarter, to get Sayewa. "I will buy you time, my enigma," Xi vowed and climbed laboriously back to his feet.

His next thought was not nearly as altruistic: They are coming for me!

The qi flows lashed out from the breach and tightened around his neck with a pull of a thousand whips.

The white jade pin in hand, Xi staggered up the pile of debris to face his attackers.

Like a man who grabs at the tightening noose, Xi's hsin clawed to understand the qi, its flow and its laws. Yu said he could do it, so he let his mind struggle with the inscrutable force. It would have been a challenging task at the best of times, hopeless in the smoking madness of the battlefield.

He stumbled to the top of the stone pile ahead of his comrades and stood there alone, playing a deadly version of the children's game. At his feet, the demons massed to overthrow him, the King of the Mountain. A thousand lashes was not that much of a poetic exaggeration: there must have been at least a hundred advancing on him.

In the rearguard of her troops came a demoness riding a golden chariot drawn by two great lizards, the High Commander of the Horde. She looked straight into Xi's eyes across the rockfall separating them. The meager contents of his stomach raced upward, followed by the bitter bile. He retched, but before she could shatter his shield, Xi suppressed the physical discomfort and the disgusting aftertaste of heaving.

"Your bubble will burst, Mage," the demoness howled.

Ancestors help me! Xi lunged backwards, ready to take off screaming, but the long years of training reasserted themselves.

Think! He commanded himself, think, curse you! The sheer number of demons was terrifying, yes, but it also provided him with plenty of examples, variables, observations. Xi synthesized the knowledge while the demon riders dismounted to climb up and rip him into shreds.

To his sides, the battered archers and pikemen made the top, forming the quivering ranks. Their training was re-asserting itself too.

On the other side, humans and demons of the Horde drew towards the breech like metal shavings are drawn to an iron rock.

The arrows and bolts whistled through the air in both directions.

The demoness laughed at the puny shafts. "Mage, do you have the last words? The Blood will remember."

Xi obliged, "Die."

The qi that was crushing him - he pushed it further towards his shield. It freed his mind to get one last moment of clarity.

The white jade crumbled to dust as he squeezed his precious pin.

He understood: a wave sent the broken up wall shooting from under the feet of its defenders. It crashed into the assailants, stoning them to death.

"Sorry!" Xi yelled to his own tumbling head over heels for the second time.

"Idiot," captain Shang grunted. "On your feet! All of you! Chong Xi bought us a chance!"

He did not listen to the captain as the two sides clashed. All he could see were humans versus humans, but qi was still probing him for weakness. What magic he had left had to go to patching up his threadbare shield.

The demoness loomed over him from nowhere. "I will do you a favour. You will not die a virgin, Mage, you will die buggered to death."

She made a grab for him with claws like daggers.

"Ancestors!" Xi rolled to the side, losing his shirt to the claws. The shards of stone cut long bleeding gashes through his skin. "Why, why this universal interest?!"

The demoness laughed. "You are asking for it, you tender morsel, with those pouty lips."

She was not just talking. His heartbeat, already elevated, raced up throwing a crimson curtain over his eyes.

Shield, Xi's mind teetered on the brink of collapse just like the wall did, shield... modest yet cruel...

He had no strength left to dodge the incoming claws this time. She advanced on him growing larger and larger. "I want everything, Mage, every ounce of you."

The first boom of thunder rolled over the battle.

The demoness toppled watching a red bloom open in her chest. Xi thanked the Heavens that he was still upslope, and she rolled down, away from him, not collapsed on top of him. The last of his shield evaporated, leaving him nearly naked in every possible sense on the pile of stones, in the middle of a raging battle.

"Die," Tien Lyn said, and aimed the Gracious Judgment at someone further away and took another short. The weapon glowed angry crimson.

Echoing the shot, then drowning it out, drowning out every other sound, the thunder of the Imperial drums filled the mountain air.

"Reinforcements, Xi, the reinforcements!" Tien Lyn shouted over the cacophony.

He knew what it was, but was too busy to answer, basking in the calm of his mother's presence. She was always easy to focus on when his thoughts were in disarray. His understanding was coming back--

"Don't faint!" she ordered, scanning the surrounding, her pistol at the ready.

Xi suppressed a hysterical giggle, because laughter would carry him into madness as surely as losing his consciousness would. Being told what to do by my mother... the shield, focus on the shield.

The demoness stirred, setting off an avalanche of smaller pebbles from under his back.

Xi sat up, digging his heels into the debris, snapping the shield into place, afraid of slipping down towards the horror with the flow of the rocks. "Mothe--"

"Don't think you won. The Blood..." Dark blood gushed out of the demoness snarling maw. Apparently, she was unwilling to die without saying her last words.

"The Blood will be back," Xi finished the thought in a hoarse whisper.

"Not today," Tien Lyn responded and shot another demon.