Meant to make this one longer, but I'll go ahead and post this bit anyway, before I forget.
Alex coughed and choked on the dust from the rubble, straining to right himself to his feet. He squinted his eyes through the thick cloud of the fallen tower, and rushed over to his friend when he spotted him, "Seth, are you alright? Sorry I threw you, but I didn't really-"
"I can't move my legs, man."
"Are you sure?"
Seth winced as he pointed down to his left leg, which had been bent sideways far beyond the range it should have been, "Landed on it when I fell, I don't think I'm going to make it through this."
"It's just your leg, it's not going to kill you; you'll make it, don't worry," Alex removed the crossbow from his back and set it in the operator's grasp, and lay his bundle of quarrels down next to him, "In case anyone comes along. I'm going to find a weapon, and we're going to get these guys off our walls, alright? I'll come back for you when this is over."
He waited for a response, but realized that Seth's eyes were already closed. Alex shook his arm slightly, and pressed his finger's to his friend's neck, to find there was still a pulse. Still a chance.
He stood up and waded his way out of the dust cloud and towards the lower wall, seeing the ladders still being pushed up against it. He had long lost count of how many ladders there were; over twenty, at least. There were soldiers commencing with battle against each other ahead of him, and he drew the miniscule dagger from behind his back that he frequently used to cut his food with, and sallied forth.
Gelid peered his eyes over the heads of his comrades, and quickly ducked back down to avoid the incoming arrows, lifting up the small buckler he had picked up from one of his less fortunate allies, and very much wishing that he could have stayed back with the ruined catapult. He pushed himself down below the stature of those around his, and held the buckler above his head as he ran forward without looking, surrounded by the cries and shouts of the ceaseless turmoil, before slamming head first into a solid brick wall.
"Get yourself up from there and get up these ladders, boy!" Gelid glanced up as another man grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him against the ladder, before slapping him on the back and laughing like a deranged jackel. He didn't really see much of a choice, so he climbed with his empty hand and swore as he waved his buckler wildly in front of him to catch the incoming missiles, which were rapidly becoming more scarce as he neared the top, where more soldier were already engaged with battle. He swung his head forward and rolled off the ladder and onto the wall, before scrambling off beneath reckless feet to find some unoccupied ground to catch his breath on. He tried to wrack through his memory to some sort of spell that he could use. Some kind of protection, or rote of destruction, but he couldn't think of a single one that wouldn't cause more harm to himself than someone else. He dropped the buckler from his hand and rolled it over to see the front of it, and removed the scroll from his pocket that he had kept with him, before placing it down on the plate and swiftly uttering the incantation. Soft lights emanated from the underside of the sheet, and left an arcane imprint on the shield. He wasn't entirely sure of how it would help him in any way, but having a flaming shield felt, for whatever absurd reason, like it might have the slightest chance higher of keeping him from getting killed than a non-flaming one. He made a mental note of how this situation would probably never be logically applied in any other instance in history, and flipped the buckler back over to grasp the handle, and he drew his wand with his right hand, giving him the sort of impresion of a child who'd been thrust into the real world with nothing but a stick, and a poorly applied sense of heroism.