Chapter 33 — Preparations for the Battle (Part 2)

After two days, more invited guests started arriving at the house, and soon there were so many of them that on July 14, everyone had to move to a meadow behind the forest, a dozen or so kilometers from the city and only 2 kilometers from the valley where the battle was to take place.

Meredith and Elisabeth brought great magicians from Siberia and elves from the Amazon rainforest. Rita gathered all the members of the Spencer family, his mother, father, grandmother, two sisters, and another brother. Eleazar brought his thirty fellow wizards, with whom he attended the school of magic, and they took their family and friends with them. Johnathan, along with Isabelle, invited his mother, five brothers and their wives, even children, who were mostly grown up and could fight demons very well. Alice notified fairies and dwarves from parallel worlds, which Johnathan helped her with by opening portals, along with her family, friends, and acquaintances, whom she had many, in different parts of the world. Tess and Teresa returned with their mother, father, four other sisters and five brothers, friends, and acquaintances. Deborah brought in her mother, who was already looking forward to driving Salvatore away again, two older brothers and ten friends of their family. The next day, July 15, Maria returned from the Kingdom of Heaven. She brought over two hundred angels-healers, who would take care of the wounded along with her, and 500 fighting angels also arrived.

In total, 50.000 wizards and sorceresses came, 20.000 fairies, 40.000 dwarves, 20.000 good elves and 500 angels, which made 130.500 combatants who were on their side. The preparations for the fight went on all the time, with short breaks for meals and a little bit of rest. Everyone was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the enemy army.

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Selene watched the preparations for the battle with a faint horror. Here are all those wizards, sorceresses, angels, fairies, dwarves, elves, were to fight the army of scary, powerful demons. She just couldn't imagine this fight. How could such innocent beings as fairies or elves take part in a bloody battle? The worst part, however, was that this whole conflict was caused by her, so Selene wanted to help everyone in the fight. She couldn't just stand and watch it all, the more so since was good at both hand-to-hand combat and using Elemental powers.

"It's too much of a risk. If you find yourself on the battlefield, we will not be able to protect you well enough." Elisabeth replied, hearing her plea.

"Selene, listen to me...by midnight on July 19, you will be in the tent with Alice, Isabelle, and Johnathan. Damon will protect you directly, eliminating any enemy that manages to get closer to the tent. This is for the best. Nothing can happen to you before midnight. You will be needed by us afterwards to defeat Alistair." added Rita, looking at her carefully.

"Well... Okay, I understand." Selene sighed, resigned. There was no way anyone would let her fight, after all, she was too valuable to them to put her at risk. In a way, Selene agreed with them, there would be a chaos on the battlefield, and the demons would have an easy target of her, and for sure not only this group with Salvatore as the leader. Certainly there would be many other daredevils who would like to kill the "chosen one" and thus win the favors of their master, Alistair. It didn't really matter how much Selene wanted to help others in the battle, because she would help everyone most by staying alive until midnight on July 19 to 20, and then doing what she was born to do: defeat Alistair. Without the ruler of the Underworld who could resurrect demons, the outcome of the battle could change dramatically in their favor. Therefore, Selene decided to surrender to her destiny and do whatever it takes to survive until midnight and do her job later.

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The next day, July 16, the preparations were still underway. Everyone practiced in combat, even the healing angels had to learn some tricks to defend themselves just in case that some demons would manage to sneak into the camp where they were supposed to take care of the wounded in the battle.

Meredith was to warn the crowd when she sensed the approaching demons and possibly estimate their number based on the intensity of her feelings. Despite her age and the level of development of her gift, it was quite a challenge, because the army of demons will certainly be quite large. Rita was to help the angels in a makeshift "hospital", alleviating the pain of the patients, and also weaken the fear of the combatants on the battlefield. Isabelle, through illusions, was to overwhelm the opponent and distract the attention of demons from the tent in which Selene was, and Johnathan was supposed to take her to another dimension, if needed. Alice's job, of course, was to read minds and telepathically transmit the caught, important information to her sister, Eleonore, who, thanks to her highly developed gift of telepathy, was able to pass this information on to all combatants. Eleazar was to teleport the wounded to the "hospital", commanded by Maria, who was supposed to control the recovery of each patient.

Elisabeth's job was, of course, to command and control the emotions of both her army and that of the enemy, trying to influence everyone as needed. As a shield, Tess was supposed to stand far away and try to cover as many people as possible with her shield and block all mental attacks. It was quite a task, and was surely going to cost her a lot of energy, so she practiced intermittently to prepare well for the effort that lied ahead of her. Teresa, standing by her sister's side, was supposed to make sure if any of the fighters needed additional support and to try to predict the opponent's movements thanks to her visions. Both Deborah and Marco were the main destroyers. The essence of their gifts was based on the action of fire, which was the only Elemental that could destroy the demon once and for all. In addition, everyone was supposed to walk in a tight formation so that Tess would not have to strain her mind too much, after all, the extensibility of her shield had some limits.

Fairies were supposed to interfere with the demons' fight by casting various spells. Elves were archers, fighting angels had to fight with swords and hand-to-hand. The dwarves also belonged to the infantry, quite heavily armed with axes and clubs, and decided to go to the first fire—probably no one like them was eager to fight. Other wizards, mages and sorceresses also had their tasks separated according to their additional abilities. Of course, everyone was supposed to fight hand-to-hand, some also received swords reinforced with a repelling spell, which were brought by magicians from Siberia.