Myra stood in the war-tent by Viktoria's side, watching the elves bicker about whether or not Jasper should be allowed in, as if he wasn't raised in Kallias and wasn't a Captain of its armies once. She was glad that the leadership of the Mirasen army could come down to one person. There were about twelve elfin generals who each had their own soldiers to command.

"Jasper is here as part of our group," Viktoria told them sharply. "We suggested him here as an expert, but if you're going to be particular, then he's one of us. If you dare to talk to me about limiting, then I will remind you that there are twelve of you and five-now six-of us." The elves went silent. Her friend could be quite intimidating when she wanted to be, and the tall-and not so tall-tales about her made things all the easier.

"What is there here to discuss?" Diaz questioned. "We push them back for now. Once we reach the desert, we talk about claiming the cities."

"They've assumed a strong formation again," commented Myra. "They're holding their ground better now. Starting to fight harder. Before they were shocked and petrified; now they're prepared and petrified."

"Of course, they are. Their surprise and disorganisation were temporary disadvantages, and we knew they would never last. But it, like the tunnel, have served their purpose well enough." Viktoria reasoned.

"We should stop treating this so placidly. This land is well-known to us: how might we use it to our advantage?" Ruby questioned. "We're doing what the Kallians did. We're fighting with our strength, but this war can be quickened, and lives can be saved if we start fighting smart." Myra nodded to her heir.

"Once we reach the desert, the advantage is theirs. The coastal aren't pure sand. More of a rocky expanse, without all the heat of the desert but some of it. That's their homeland," she counselled. "They'll fight better there, and they will use the land to their advantage."

"We can't stop them from doing that," Diaz said insightfully. "We only have useless over there, writing love letters to the rebellion." Jasper went pink.

"What if we stopped them from reaching the desert entirely?" Myra asked. "What if we trapped them on the isthmus and then went to siege the cities?"

"For that, we'd probably need elfin magic," Talia sighed. "Walls of iron, ice or water. Mounds of earth, hills of bone. That sort of thing would work fine, but it won't hold against the shield."

"There must be something we can do with wyvern fire," Orion mused. "But the problem is that there's nothing to burn."

"The elves might be able to regrow the grass," Selene said hopefully. "But even then, the grass will all turn to ash within minutes."

"You know very little about wyvern fire," Myra laughed. "For someone married to a FireBreather of the Swallow line. It can burn on almost nothing. Regrow the grass, and it will hold for days, and with the Kallians trapped that might be all we need."

"We can take the ships to sail to the grasses behind the Kallians. Our armada isn't really in use and with water gifts to speed us, the grass will be ready within days." Selene counselled. "Of course, we'd need to be at our full strength for that. It might be almost a week before many of us can cast again."

"At the rate we're pushing the Kallians back, we'll be deep in the desert by then." Viktoria sighed.

"So, we stop pushing them back," Myra shrugged.

"What do you mean?" Diaz demanded. "Are you saying that we purposely fall back?"

"We don't really have to fall back," she retorted. "Just hold the line and nothing more."

"This might be the strangest thing an army has ever done. Not push back the opposition on purpose." Diaz muttered to herself. "Now we'll put humans on the War Council. Oh, wait! Already done that."

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Myra, a few days later

The wind howled in her hair as she knocked an arrow to her bow and let it fly. Seconds afterwards, her wyvern jerked suddenly, and she didn't have the chance to watch and see whether her arrow had flown true. Caelia had narrowly missed a swift crossbow bolt, and she took a sigh of relief as she gazed out at the isthmus and down at the warring armies.

Every time she saw the desert grow no closer, she felt a sense of failure, unused to this strange new goal. The valkyries had gained little ground on purpose, but she could tell that her warriors were struggling with this new objective.

The elfin ship had hissed through the water unnoticed by the Kallian Army, shielded by charms placed to make it reflect the water. At least stealth was not ruled out by the shield.The EarthWeavers were still tired and weakened, and the Water-Weavers were similarly struggling but it didn't matter. When all of them were gathered for one purpose they easily provided enough energy.

Myra could barely make out the ships, and the Kallians could not make them out at all with their human eyesight and without searching for them. She could see that they had landed behind the Kallian Army and knew it would be seconds before the charred, lifeless strip of land went into bloom. Well, if not bloom then grass and a few trees. All that mattered was that it would burn.

When it happened, she was lucky enough to see it. The broken land behind them suddenly healed over and grass sprouted swiftly, with wild fervour: grass tall enough to hide in and thick enough that you could almost imagine walking on it. Trees sprouted up around the broken land, small and sickly, few and far between, but flammable none the less. The wyverns tensed; their riders' eyes were drawn to the field behind them.

The Kallians looked at each other in confusion and bewilderment, but none seemed to know what to do. The grasses were beyond the shield's reach.

All at once, the wyverns streamed across the sky, readying. They dived towards the field, un-bothered by arrows and cannons too far away to shoot and let free the fire that burned inside them.

Myra's hair was singed slightly as she and Caelia swerved through the field of wyvern fire and emerged triumphant. It was a truly extraordinary sight: an organised row of fire that lit up the darkening twilight with voracious energy and heat. Caelia climbed higher and higher as the flames grew taller not for her own safety but for flammable Myra's.

The Kallians watched the wall of flame at first with confusion and then with heavy dread. They were trapped on an isthmus between valkyries and a wall of flame. A few hints of understanding flickered: this was why the valkyries had not gained ground. There had been no triumph from the Kallians. Instead, it was only patience and plotting from the generals of Miras.

Beneath them, the calvary and foot soldiers slammed harder and harder into the human army, pushing them further and further back, edging closer to the flame. Should they be pushed back into the hungry fire they would perish in seconds. The valkyries were now swift and deadly, their wrath unhampered and their blades ready. The wyverns roared their victory into the air and the valkyries let out a war-cry with all the energy they could muster. They had won by being clever, and this was more satisfying than winning by numbers. 

         ---------------

The next days were not glorious. They were not victorious and great and prideful, though perhaps poets would later paint the days as great triumphs. Myra looked back on them with a heavy heart: they were necessary, but they were brutal. Brutal and vicious and long. They were an unending slaughter, a long death, as though the Kallian Army were a brutally wounded stag bleeding out for days on the forest floor. They were days that no one who had witnessed them remembered as legends, even though so few valkyries fell and so many humans did.

They were dark and brutal and bloody, made of steel and pain and fire. Myra was not in the thick of it, but instead soaring above in the air, but she partook in it just the same. Arrows and fire rained down and they fought on and on, in what would eventually be called the Days of the Vultures. They pushed them back and pushed them back so far that they were at the brink of flame, feeling the hint of heat at their necks. How bitterly ironic that they would fall to the flame she still loved.

Myra swooped above them, tired and aching hands releasing arrows into hearts. The days seemed like one long scream of a dying beast as the Kallians fell in their hundreds of thousands, eventually shoved into burning wyvern flame.

So, the valkyries marched to the empire, with blood making a red carpet for them, and the echoes of screams rang through the air.