Desperation In Barbatos
Prince Stolas had no idea what was happening. One moment it was a giant creature being summoned disabling their air forces, then quickly disappearing. Then a series of barrages had incidentally damaged the safe zone shields, costing the lives of several mages due to the strain of shielding the wide area.
Subsequently, another barrage ensured the destruction of nearly half the siege weapons deployed. Stolas was very sure that the mages had calibrated sufficiently to reduce the artillery attacks into a mere nudge on the shields.
Yet, reality showed that they had been mistaken.
Before him, he saw the broken shield with a large hole in the middle and the surviving mages were scrambling to fix it. Unfortunately, they did not realise that amongst this barrage, one of the shells had not detonated yet.