"Quickly!" the Ohpa yelled. "Gather with me and send out a mental missile!"
They did as the Ohpa asked, and the other clerics felt some minor relief as the missile struck home in the minds of their Fairy enemies.
Somewhere, several Fairies fell into fits of agony, and they shifted some of their magic forces toward defense.
Outside, the Ogres had begun to make headway against the shadow beasts. Apparently, something that the Ministry had done had caused them to stay in a solid form. Now, when the Ogres struck, the beasts were actually cut. The shadow monsters could not fight as well as the Ogres could. Without their ability to fold around the weapons, they were easy targets.
However, the advantage did not stay with the Ogres for long. Earthen pillars bigger than any tree began to erupt from the ground. They toppled over to crush Ogres while the shadow beasts distracted them.
Nissassa saw a brother of hers get crushed by a pillar, and ran toward him. Somehow, he'd managed to roll mostly out of the way, but his leg had been crushed. Nissassa swung her sword down and severed the leg to free her brother. He screamed in agony and blood began to pour from his leg. Quickly, Nissassa cast a fire spell: the only spell that every Ogre knew. Fire shot from her palms and cauterized the massive wound.
Then, she ripped a pack off of her back and pulled out some sterile cloth. Binding the wound she asked, "You can fight my brother?"
"Yes. Until I die," he said, wincing from the pain as his sister helped him to stand.
"Then fight another day," Nissassa finished the traditional dismissal. She called for a soldier to take her brother to the tent where the wounded were being healed.
"Nissassa!" Rellik shouted as he ran toward her.
"General!"
"Was that your brother just injured?"
"It was, General," Nissassa said as she held back her rage.
The Ogres teamed up and fought back-to-back in order to protect each other from shadow beasts. They warned each other out of the way of falling pillars, and again gained the upper hand. Working together, the Ogres avoided the pillars and continued cutting their way through the monster assault.
One after another, the shadow beasts disintegrated into nothing as the Ogre army skillfully cut their way through them.
Suddenly, the beasts began to retreat quickly into a large mob.
"Don't let them regroup!" Nissassa shouted to her branch of soldiers.
Together, the Ogres ran after the mass of shadow beasts, but before they reached them the monsters began to disintegrate once again.
"Damn it! I thought this issue had been resolved!" Rellik shouted in frustration as his sword sliced into a swirling mess of dark energy that had replaced the corporeal form of the monster ahead of him.
As the Ogres watched in frustration, the whirling, dark forms melded together and took on a horrific new shape.
"It's a giant!" Rellik screamed in awe.
When would they ever have dreamed of getting the opportunity to battle a giant!
"Forward!" Rellik commanded, unable to hold in a loud laugh of anticipation.
With a powerful burst of speed fueled by excitement, the Ogre army swarmed against the massive shadow beast.
It sent an enormous fist crashing down onto the heads of ten warriors, instantly killing them all.
"Ugh! More of the same tricks!" Rellik half yelled, half growled in anger as he slashed at the gargantuan wrist of the beast.
"Poison and crushing is all they rely on! Don't they have any skills?" he thought in fury as he leapt onto the offending fist and stabbed it with all his might.
Nissassa hacked viciously at the beast's arm as she joined her general, and they ran up the monster's arm in an assault that culminated at the base of the creature's neck.
More and more Ogres joined in the attack, following their general's lead.
The shadow beasts had been slow and clumsy at a fraction of the size, and now the problem was multiplied by the beast's immense size. When the shadow beast finally started to scrape Ogres off itself in a frenzy, Rellik, Nissassa, and at least a dozen others had stabbed into its vulnerable neck and begun detaching its head!
Much to their disappointment, however, the beast did not simply die an agonizing death. Instead, when the head hit the ground, it split into every shadow beast that had comprised it. Its body also did this as it fell backward.
The Ogres found themselves instantly surrounded, and they had not been ready for the ensuing strike of whirling poisoned claws that slashed frantically at them seemingly from nowhere.
Then, the pillars began rising and falling onto them again at an ever increasing speed.
Exhausted, the Ogres could only keep moving to avoid getting hit.
"Spread out!" Rellik commanded.
Inside the castle walls, the clerics struggled against the shear immensity of the power they faced.
"AH!" an Ogre cleric shouted as he fell to the floor.
The Ohpa sweated profusely as he and two of his followers strained another mental missile toward the Fairies. It made it through.
Gasping for air, the three Ogres fell to their knees.
"We can't continue like this. What the hell are our guards doing out there?" the Ohpa asked between gasps.
He gathered his mind and sent a signal to Rellik and the other generals.
"The Fairies. Destroy the source . . ."
Rellik gasped and nearly found himself impaled by a shadow beast's acidic claw. Luckily, Nissassa had been near, and she'd killed it right before it hit him.
"What is it, General?"
"He's right. We're wasting our time fighting these small fry. Get ready to kick some Fairy butt!" Rellik said.
Nissassa nodded. "Get the Fairies!" she shouted and began charging past the shadow beasts and pillars.
"Now," hissed the voice of an unseen foe in the darkness.
"Yes, Lord," replied its minion.
Suddenly, a black cloud whooshed out of nowhere and enveloped the entire Ogre army. Inside the temple, the entire Ministry fell unconscious.