Two days later two of the scouts that had been sent to the south were the first to return and they had grim news to report.
Inside the command building the officers were listening to King Fross read the report out loud.
“Two forces are gathering at the nearby frozen lake…” said King Fross as he read the note given to him.
“So our worst fears are true… but who are they and why are they attacking now?”
King Fross looked at the note again.
“There were several groups camped at the lake. One group was a decent-sized gathering of Ice elemental humanoids while the other was a medium-sized group of Draconians.”
“What!? Those underlings are attacking? Did Father order that?” asked Fleur as she looked at Alhants who immediately shook his head.
“Even though we sent messengers to all our allies, with the enemy secretly gathering and so close there is not enough time for our allies deep in the north or south to respond!”
“We will just have to fight along with the Armored Bears, Ice Mammoth tooters, and the few warriors that the young princesses have offered to help defend the city.”
Cough… “You all are forgetting that there was another group of Ice lamia that attacked us as well.” said the armored bear officer who was still healing from the attacks.
Everything inside the city was chaotic as the city guards and army prepared for the coming siege while the businesses were ordered to close early and the civilians were told to stay inside their homes or root cellars for protection.
While that was all happening the city walls and towers were strengthened with several more layers of ice.
***
Burrruuu!
A few days later the southern watchtower inside the city sounded the alarm as the guards spotted several enemy scouts coming from the south where the enemy army was supposed to be.
Several of the patrolling guards on the city walls were pointing at the approaching enemy scouts and watching them closely.
As everyone’s attention was on the approaching enemy scouts the watchtower in the north rang out.
Burrruuu!
Everyone’s worries about more enemies showing up were quickly swept away when they saw the army marching in from the north was the combined force of Armored bears and Ice tooter Mammoths.
With the allied army marching toward them the enemy scouts stopped in their tracks and began a full retreat not stopping to look behind them in case they were surrounded and captured.
With the allied army entering the city the officers were trying to figure out if they were strong enough to go out and hunt down the enemy force or if they should let them come and deal with them from the safety of the city walls.
Baruuuu! Baruuu!
The decision was made for them later in the day as the enemy army arrived outside the capital and hastily created a defensive encampment well out of the range of the city before they marched forward and began sending harassing ice and arrow attacks at the city guards on the walls.
Yuki and the two young princesses were standing on the roof of the central tower that was well behind the main defensive wall. They watched as the incoming ice and arrow attacks slammed into the wall and blew up in the sky.
The guards defending the southern city wall and its towers also returned fire with their own arrows, ballista bolts, and ice attacks. The Ice Tooter mammoths were too large to stand on the ice walls so they stood behind them and blindly shot ice attacks over the wall with the help of spotters on the wall.
None of the ranged attacks managed to enter the city thanks to the guards and soldiers that were using ice skills to block them.
“It really is those underlings! Why are they here attacking your city? Don’t they have enough work to keep busy?” asked Borra.
Yuki also pulled out a large long bow and froze the arrow as she nocked it in place.
Peetuuu! When the arrow shot into the sky ice blade fins sprouted out to help stabilize the flight and also had the benefit of being sharp enough to cause extra damage to anyone they struck.
“Ohhh! You’re so good at using ice attacks! You should teach me how to do such a cool skill!” said Borra.
“Big sis Yuki is strong. She is way better than you Borra,” said Fleur.
“It’s because she is older than me!” said Borra.
Yuki, hearing this, jerked a bit and had a twitching smile on her face as she remembered the two girls’ actual ages which were far older than hers. Even though they were still considered kids in their race, they had lived far longer than she had been alive!
“I’m not that good with a bow. But I can’t do anything so I decided to try this out,” said Yuki as she shot another ice arrow toward the harassing ranged units.
“I want to fight as well! We can show them our Superpowers that we have been practicing!” said Fleur.
“OH HO HO HO! That’s a great idea. As expected of my best rival friend! We should go out there and see which superpower they like eating best,” said Borra loudly.
“WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING IN MY EAR!” Shouted Fleur.
Yuki has seen them practicing their ‘Superpowers’ before. They were… very lackluster. Half the time they failed to do anything, the other half… chaos.
“No. Absolutely not. You two can not go out onto the battlefield!” said Alhants firmly.
“What would your fathers say if we let you go out there and you got hurt!?” said Alpants.
“Hmph you guys are no fun,” said Borra.
“Fine. I didn’t even want to use my Superpower because all the ash and smoke from burned things always gets into my scales and it’s smelly, gross, and hard to keep clean,” said Fleur pouting.
The back-and-forth ranged attacks lasted for several hours as the enemy did not show any intention to do anything to break the stalemate that had set in.
Screeee! A loud whistling sound screamed through the air from high above as a fast-moving object approached the battlefield. It was a large Blue bird that was covered in Ice!
Several of the officers and city guards shouted out in worry when they saw a new threat that was circling high above.
“It’s an [Blue Ice Birb]!” “Didn’t they go extinct!?” “How are we going to handle something like that if it attacks?” “We just managed to gather all the materials to once again use our trump card… we can only use it as a last resort.”
The [Blue Ice Birb] did not waste any time in showing who it was here to support. With a flap of its wings a shower of ice feathers as thick as spears shot toward the ice walls as well as the guards and soldiers who were using ice skills to block the ranged attacks.
Several of the unprepared guards and soldiers were cut down in the first wave of attacks. It was a rather unpleasant sight to see. To survive such attacks they were forced to work together to block each wave of attacks from the [Blue Ice Birb].
Their hopes of being able to defend the city until stronger allied forces could arrive were quickly dwindling as the stalemate started to shift. After a half hour of using all their power to try and block the constant attacks from both the [Blue Ice Birb] and the ranged attacks from the ground forces, several of the guards and soldiers began fainting.
Several of the more unlucky ones were pierced by the attacks which managed to break through their defenses. Even though they tried with all their might to retaliate against the [Blue Ice Birb], they were unable to do any real damage because it would only swoop down for a few seconds to attack before escaping high into the sky.
“With the number of skill attacks the enemy has been sending over here they should be exhausted soon,” said Yuki.
But as time passed by the waves of attacks did not lessen which caused the officers on the walls confusion. The enemy should be just as worn out as them with many soldiers dropping from exhaustion. But nothing like that was happening.
With many holes in their defense showing up the ice walls started to have several large cracks and holes pierced through them. It was looking weaker and weaker as time went on.
Screeeee! The [Blue Ice Birb] seeing all this let out a happy cry. The morale of the enemy army was sky-high. Their main army was gathering into a formation reading for a charge on the weakened wall.
“Gather the items!” ordered King Fross who was commanding from the top of the ice wall and was staring at the army formation taking shape.
All they could do now was use their trump card and hope that it was enough to batter the enemy into retreat.
“Soldiers! Prepare to push the enemy back!”
As King Fross was rallying the soldiers to repel the attackers…
ROAR!
Everyone inside the city looked to the south, and their jaws dropped. A decent-sized group of a mixed enemy demon race soldiers was running for their lives trying to join the main army as they looked over their shoulders in fear. They were the last of the soldiers who had been part of the rear guard that was supposed to be protecting the main army from surprise attacks.
“Ah! Father has come. For some reason he seems to be mad,” said Borra as she quickly hid behind Fleur.
High in the sky a large dragon with glimmering blue scales was flapping its wings as it gathered a massive fiery blue ball in front of its wide-open maw revealing its razor-sharp teeth.
Kaboom! The large icy fire shot out from the dragon’s mouth and slammed into the ground in between the fleeing enemy soldiers.
In a wave of blue light, the icy fire expanded out covering them while simultaneously freezing the land all around them and also burning the soldiers into ash.
“Yep, he’s mad. I hope he didn’t find out about the few treasures that I broke,” said Borra.
“I don’t think that’s why he’s mad,” said Yuki.
“I’m sure he won’t care about a few broken things. My dad never cares about the junk room treasure that has all the broken stuff in it,” said Fleur patting Borra on the back to comfort her.
“That’s a relief. I guess I don’t have to continue hiding the cave that has a few hundred broken treasures,” said Borra.
Yuki’s mouth was slightly open in amazement. A few hundred? Wasn’t it only 2 or 3 just a moment ago?
The large blue dragon in the sky was at least two times larger than the [Blue Ice Birb].
When the [Blue Ice Birb] noticed the flashy arrival of the large dragon it let out an angry ‘SCREEE!’ and dived down at a high speed to attack.
A blurry icy wind covered the [Blue Ice Birb] as it dived.
The large blue dragon did not shy away from the fast approaching [Blue Ice Birb] and opened his mouth sending a jet of icy flame gushing out to cover the sky in front of him. At the last second, the [Blue Ice Birb] rolled out of its dive and tried to curve around to attack from the rear.
Each time it tried to approach it was forced to abort its attack and try another angle. The [Blue Ice Birb] was extremely fast and very nimble.
With the fierce attacks of the two constantly clashing a fierce blizzard started to form around them in the sky. The ground troops of the enemy were running around in chaos as large ice chunks were falling from the sky or exploding like shrapnel and being scattered everywhere by the fierce wind.
More and more soldiers were being wounded or crushed to death.
After several failed dive attacks [Blue Ice Birb] managed to land a claw attack, but the only results it had to show were a few white scratches on the shiny blue scales.
Screee! The [Blue Ice Birb] in its frustration did not run away and launched a point-blank attack with its spear-like ice feathers.
ROAR!
Blue blood spurted out from the fresh wounds where the spears had pierced its scales.
Yuki quickly reacted and placed her hands over the two girls’ eyes.
“I’m not a kid anymore, I can see adult stuff!” shouted Borra as she peeked through Yuki’s fingers.
Screeee! The [Blue Ice Birb] let out a happy cry.
Although the blue dragon was wounded, its long neck shot forward and bit down on the leg of the [Blue Ice Birb] before it could roll away and escape.
“Chirp! Let go of my leg, you oaf! I will have my revenge! Chirp,” screeched the [Blue Ice Birb].
Fwooosh!
Ice fire shot out from the dragon’s mouth burning off both of the [Blue Ice Birb’s] legs and scorching its underbelly.
Even with such damage done to its body the [Blue Ice Birb] still somehow cheated death. Now legless, it tried to fly away at a high speed with smoke trailing behind its charred underbelly.
But the dragon was forming another large ice fireball that quickly formed and shot out heading right at the fleeing [Blue Ice Birb].
POOF! A large ice and snow explosion covered the entire [Blue Ice Birb] and the air around it in a cloud of snowy fire.
Out of the cloud, a charred body fell from the sky and crashed into several large snow banks leaving a long skid mark before coming to a stop.
The blue Dragon swooped down and smashed the head of the [Blue Ice Birb] making sure it was really dead.
“ROAR!”
The Blue Dragon was not done yet and flew back into the sky where he continued to rain down terror on the enemy army of rebelling demon races.
Gushes of icy fire rushed out of his mouth in long lines slamming into the ground and exterminating tens of enemies as streams of fire passed over them.
The battlefield had turned into complete chaos as the enemy soldiers tried to flee. It was useless as those that were the farthest away were targeted first.
Their situation was hopeless! Many of the soldiers started to break down and cry with their tears freezing moments before they were killed.
Of the army that had come to attack the capital… no one survived the icy fire.
“On second thought, I don’t think I should tell him about the few broken treasures…” said Borra as she watched her father rampage around the battlefield.
“Yep, I agree,” said Fleur, nodding her head.
