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it, I think their venom is lethal.”
    Not that it would actually kill me, with my amulet constantly healing me. But it wasn’t a lot of fun, and too many stings in a short time period might knock me out. That would be bad. I sealed off most of the openings in my force field, and conjured fire to try to fend off the swarm.
    “I see him,” Cerise announced from behind me, and leaped.
    She was in full demon form now, with her whipcord tail and long horns fully visible as she drew on her stolen reserves of demonic power. Her foot came down on an ape man’s head, knocking him down as she pushed off to sail over the crowd. She landed somewhere in the middle of the enemy, and the insects suddenly lost interest in me.
    I resumed cutting my way through the andregi formation. If I could get to that fallen golem pilot I might still be able to save him before the venom killed him.
    That was our pattern for the next half hour. We encountered one enemy force after another, enough to make it clear that there must be a thousand or more inside the wall by now. Every group had at least one or two mages and several of the guys with blood weapons, and they often found some clever way to get a hit in on me despite my layers of magical defenses. But none of them could stand up to the sheer brute force of my magic, or stop Cerise when she went darting through the press after a target. A hit or two was all they ever got before they died, and that wasn’t nearly enough to overcome my magical healing.
    Leo’s command didn’t fare as well. The war wizard was actually in better shape than I was, his enchanted armor proving impervious to everything that the enemy threw at him. But the other golem pilots in his command weren’t nearly as well protected, and the golems themselves took steady damage. By the time we came within sight of the gate he was down to two heavily damaged golems, and we’d been forced to leave all of his men behind with the garrison troops.
    The situation at the gate didn’t look promising.
    A dome of crimson energy shielded the little plaza around the broken gate, deflecting arrows and the occasional bolt of lightning from the city’s defenders. What looked like a giant mutant tyrannosaurus covered in blood armor stood guard inside the dome, surrounded by dozens of ape men with blood weapons. They had mages there too, at least twenty of them, and a handful of especially big ape men who had armor made of blood in addition to their weapons. They had obviously secured the gatehouse, as the roof and wall overlooking the plaza were packed with archers.
    Oh, and a fresh troop of triceratops cavalry was pouring in through the gates.
    Experimentally, I tried lobbing a couple of explosive rounds at the dome. They didn’t even go off. As far as I could tell the projectiles just disintegrated when they struck the barrier.
    “Any ideas?” I asked my companions.
    Cerise leaned against my back, and I could feel her panting. “Dunno, but I can’t keep this up much longer. You were right, Daniel, I’m still weak from stabilizing myself. Your amulet keeps me from running out of mana, but my head’s getting too fuzzy for a serious fight.”
    I put my hand on hers, and sent some healing her way. It wasn’t perfect, but I could banish her fatigue well enough to get her through one more fight.
    “We need something big to crack the dome,” Leo analyzed. “Then a heavy assault spell for that large beast. It will probably take a dragon slayer to put it down, and we’ll need to lay down a heavy spell barrage on the rest of the enemy at the same time. I have one decent barrage prepared, but I’m afraid the rest of that is beyond me.”
    “I don’t have anything on me that will crack the dome,” I admitted. “I don’t think we want to try walking through it, either. I’m sure it would do something nasty to us. Any chance of reinforcements?”
    He shook his head. “The High Adepts are preparing to lay down a grand bombardment on