The main engagement was a different world from the battle at the corridor.
That was the first thing that registered when you looked at it from any elevated position. It was not just larger, not just louder, but fundamentally different in character.
The eastern corridor had been containable, its parameters defined by terrain and manageable numbers, the kind of engagement where four capable students could read the whole field simultaneously and adjust to every development.
This one was not containable.
The demon horde that had emerged from the treeline on the main approach was a mass. Not in the loose sense of a large group but in the specific, pressing sense of a force that occupied space with enough density that the individuals within it became secondary to the collective weight.
