Stampede in the heights

The body of the great whale began to slowly descend to the ground, and with each passing second a large shadow began to cover a large part of the outskirts.

Nathan could only stay on his knees as he watched the Behemoth begin to approach the ground, then finally, to the disbelief of everyone, the whale crashed into the outskirts of the city.

Its large body simply swept away everything in its path without anyone or anything escaping the destruction.

Nathan was far away, so he could not see or hear the terror and the screams of the people who only saw a large mountain coming deadly close to crush them.

For a couple of seconds, the whale slid along the ground until it finally stopped, leaving a trail of debris and death.

'Shit...' Nathan couldn't help but curse as he saw the disaster he had just witnessed with his own eyes.

Even the explosion caused by the rift as it appeared could not compare to the damage caused by the body of the great whale.

The whale was not dead as the beam of light only wounded one of its fins, but because of its large body it could not move quietly on the ground without causing even more damage around it.

While he watched the whale writhe in an attempt to get up, Nathan stood up as soon as he could no longer feel the pressure of the essence coming from the castle.

At the same time as he did, the mercenaries also stood up, but some of them lost their composure when they saw the whale fall and without a second thought went to the stairs to leave.

Seeing the mess, Jean quickly acted and stood in front of the stairs stopping the group of mercenaries who were about to leave.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

The mercenaries stopped as they saw her standing in front of them, but compared to before, now they didn't care about her status.

"Get out of the way, Jean, we didn't come here for this!" shouted one of the mercenaries in front.

Gritting his teeth in fury, Jean growled in annoyance and then moved out of the mercenary's way.

"Know that I'll remember---!"

Interrupting her, a great shriek echoed in everyone's ears, forcing them to look in the direction of the castle.

Then, the shriek began to multiply and in less than half a minute hundreds of high-pitched shrieks could be heard echoing from inside the castle.

Finally, part of the castle roof and most of the upper windows exploded.

Nathan's mouth dropped open as he watched the black cloud of calamity erupt from the windows and the castle roof.

'What the fuck is going on?'

The mercenaries who had earlier tried to climb down now looked with frightened expressions at the cloud of calamities flying in all directions, including towards them.

"Damn it!"

Another mercenary shouted and quickly started down the stairs trying to escape as fast as possible from the rapidly approaching stampede of calamities.

Nathan simply drew his katana and held it pointed at the cloud approaching the building.

'How am I going to deal with that?'

It was then that Nathan saw someone overtaking him and followed by several more mercenaries.

"Do not hesitate! If we let the calamities pass from here, the next ones will be our families!" shouted the mercenary at the front of the group.

The other mercenaries raised their weapons from a distance and aimed at the cloud.

Nathan focused mainly on the mercenary at the front. He looked older than everyone else, perhaps in his fifties or sixties, his brown hair was graying, and his beard hid several scars on his face.

The mercenary himself raised his large wooden bow and pulled the string taut while holding a silver arrow.

Everyone was silent for a few seconds, then the man finally shouted.

"Fire!"

Arrows and shots flew into the cloud of calamities sweeping them away.

A single arrow from each mercenary was enough to take down a couple of calamities, but there were still hundreds left.

"Don't stop!"

At the man's command, the mercenaries continued to shoot down calamities, but no matter when they fired, the calamities continued their advance.

Nathan tightened his grip on his sword and closed his eyes slightly to get a better look at the approaching calamities.

The calamities were the size of a pigeon but resembled a pterodactyl.

Their screeching was still annoying, but Nathan had stopped paying attention to the irritating sound and was questioning something more important inside his head.

'How the fuck do I deal with this?'

Several mercenaries frowned as their ammunition began to dwindle and the man didn't overlook this.

"Draw your weapons!"

Those who were running out of bullets like arrows put their bows aside and drew their melee weapons, which were mostly knives and daggers.

The man took a deep breath and Nathan noticed an increase in the essence within him.

A small brown aura began to surround the silver arrow, then the man pulled the string to its maximum, to the point where Nathan began to doubt the strength of the bow to withstand such a tension.

At Nathan's watchful eye, the man released the air he was holding in his lungs and with it his grip on the string.

His arrow flew out into the cloud of calamities, then killing a couple of calamities, the arrow entered the cloud, and nothing happened.

'That was it?'

For a few seconds nothing happened, but Nathan knew that couldn't be all, then the man raised his hand.

Everyone was silent and finally the man snapped his fingers.

From inside the cloud a brown light began to expand, then Nathan saw how one by one several calamities began to fall dead.

Still, that was nowhere near enough to end all the calamities, so Jean stepped forward and raised his sword.

"Raise your weapons and live, don't let them pass"

Nathan already had his sword raised, but he wasn't so sure it was possible to stop all the pterodactyls from getting through.

He slowly turned the grip on his sword leaving the blade horizontally at the level of his face then he took a deep breath and began to flow the essence into his katana.