It was a national emergency. The kingdom was under attack by the horde to end all hordes. Hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers, human, elven, orcish, and even fairies were descending towards the last vestiges of the Kingdomium of Man. Things were dire. The Kingdomium was mustering all the troops they could bring up. Favors were being called out to as many neighbors as they could. Some went unanswered. Most got a response. But few could send troops to aid the Kingdomium. Their neighbors had their own hordes to fight and troops were few.

Nonetheless, the Kingdomium set their jawlines and prepared for the worst. Quarries were mined out. Cities and towns were fortified. Villages evacuated and new farms set in the Kingdomium’s interior. Castles and keeps were constructed.

The Kingdomium sent out a call to arms. Troops were raised. Every able bodied man and woman that was not constructing fortifications, growing food, or making arms was drafted for this confrontation. The entire Kingdomium knew it was do or die. The coalition of enemy races in the horde to end all hordes was coming to get them. They would be ready.

John was not ready.

John enlisted two decades ago when he became an adult and stayed in the military for all that time. He discharged years ago after getting bored with the military and wanting to find someone to spend his days with. He did get to find a partner for that cause.

But the military had other ideas when the horde of all hordes came knocking.

John was drafted back into the military. Luckily for him, his prior service had him at colonel and desperate for officers, the military put him in charge of a battalion.

John’s trip to the nearby military base to look over his command and see where they needed improvements went over like a lead balloon.

Of the ten thousand members of his battalion, few were actual soldiers. The rest of them, all nine thousand, eight hundred, and eighty four people, were...

... Bards.

And then the candlestick lit.

The Battle of Vindrel’s Keep was a victory.

Vindrel was a forward town with an impressive stone keep and was one of the three main avenues through the Kingdomium. Eight routes in total, but it was deduced the horde to end all hordes would go through these three. John’s command, laughable it was to the gods and the KIngdomium’s higher military leadership, was put at Vindrel’s Keep.

The enemy decided that this would be the first point of their invasion. Success would open additional hordes at Hedron and Revaria, two other forward cities.

John and his soldiers held that keep like the last spit of volcanic land on an ocean planet.

Those bards sat on the fortified structure and sang and played music.

Magical music.

Magical music that was full of attribute buffs, healing, and crowd control spells.

John and his squad became demigods that day. Armed with a short barrel triple-bolt-fire crossbow with magical bolts and a cap of thirty three and some magical fragmentation balls, John turned the courtyard to the keep inside out with bodies of the horde to end all hordes. Armored with a multilayer steel alloy and a hefty amount of magical resistance enchantments, John felt he could withstand a meteor bombardment. And then on top of that, those bards made him a hundred fold more powerful.