Blood and Mud

Chapter 28: Chapter 28

As Rivlio was escorted out of the command tent to receive hot food and a safe bed, Miklas turned back to the map. The exhaustion in his eyes was gone, replaced by the lethal fire of a predator who had just spotted the exposed throat of his prey.

”They think they are safe behind a dying wall,” Miklas said softly, his deep voice carrying a terrifying weight. ”We will shatter that illusion.”

Within the hour, the 5th Cohort was assembled at the edge of the roaring river, rain slicking their boiled leather armor. The sky above Trivi was bruised, heavy grey. Five hundred men and women stood in absolute silence. There was no hesitation in their eyes, only the grim resolve of the Imperial vanguard.

”Listen to me!” Miklas roared, pacing his warhorse in front of the formation. ”The enemy relies on stolen technology! They hide behind a fragile shield and iron pipes! But you are the 7th Legion! You are the blood and the bone of the Empire! Today, we don’t just break their gates; we break their spirit!”

A synchronised, deafening strike of five hundred spear butts hitting the stone ground was their answer.

”Advance!”

The cohort moved as a single, massive organism. I marched in the center of the vanguard, my Veriti knife drawn, the rain washing over my face. As we crossed the stone bridge, the mercenaries on the battlements sounded the alarm.

A dozen yards from the gate, the air violently warped. The massive, semi-transparent blue dome erupted from the earth, sealing the lower tier of Trivi.

”Hit it!” Miklas commanded.

We didn’t retreat this time. Kaelen charged forward with a feral roar, his massive war hammer glowing with the force of his Ember. He slammed the steel into the blue light. CLANG! The sound was deafening, but the shield held.

Then the rest of the heavy infantry joined him. Dozens of soldiers hammered their weapons against the barrier. The mercenaries on the walls pointed and laughed, thinking us fools for striking an impenetrable arcane ward.

But they didn’t know we were counting the seconds.

One minute. My internal clock ticked, watching the blue light ripple under Kaelen’s relentless blows.

Three minutes. The laughter on the walls stopped. The mercenaries noticed the barrier was beginning to flicker, the blue hue turning pale and inconsistent. The Ember Stones powering their generator were suffocating under the continuous, massive energy draw.

Five minutes.

A sound like shattering glass echoed across the river gorge. The blue dome violently fragmented into a million shards of harmless light, dissolving into the freezing rain. The generator had burned out.

The mercenaries on the battlements panicked. ”The shield is down! Open fire!”

”Testudo!” Yuni barked, his voice slicing through the chaos.

The heavy infantry slammed their massive iron shields together, creating a solid, interlocking roof of metal over the vanguard. The sky darkened as a hail of crossbow bolts rained down from the battlements, clattering harmlessly against the iron shells.

”Bring up the ram!” Alysia yelled, holding her uninjured arm tightly against her chest, her scimitar raised.

A dozen massive soldiers rolled a heavy, iron-capped battering ram across the bridge. It hit the iron-reinforced wooden gates of Trivi with a thunderous CRUNCH. The wood groaned, but held.

”Archers, suppressive fire!” Miklas ordered.

This was where the superiority of the Empire truly shined. A normal archer required time to draw, aim, and loose a heavy war bow. The 5th Cohort did not use normal archers. Every single soldier was a Dormant Bud.

The shield-bearers slightly shifted their formation, leaving narrow, vertical gaps. Behind every shield stood two archers. Their Embers flared, pushing unnatural strength into their shoulders. They drew bows that would snap the spine of a common man, and they did it with terrifying, mechanical speed.

Thwip-thwip-thwip-thwip!

A black cloud of arrows shot upward, defying the rain and the wind. The mercenaries on the walls, trying to reload their crossbows to shoot down at the ram, were caught completely off guard.

I watched a mercenary lean over the crenellations, aiming his weapon. Before he could pull the trigger, two steel-tipped arrows pierced his neck simultaneously. Blood sprayed across the grey stone, and he tumbled silently over the edge, crashing into the muddy river below.

Another mercenary tried to raise one of the repeating muskets. An arrow shattered his eye socket, pinning his skull to the wooden post behind him.

The return fire was fierce, and we were not invincible. A crossbow bolt slipped through a gap in our shields, burying itself deep into the throat of a young legionnaire to my left. He choked on his own blood, collapsing instantly. Another soldier took a bolt to the thigh, screaming in agony. But the cohort didn’t break line. Another shield simply stepped forward to fill the gap.

CRUNCH!

The ram hit the gates a second time. The iron hinges shrieked in protest.

”Again!” Kaelen roared, his massive muscles straining against the wood.

CRUNCH!

With a sound like a dying beast, the massive wooden doors splintered and collapsed inward, kicking up a massive cloud of dust and debris into the lower courtyard.

”The gates are broken! Charge!”

The vanguard poured into the courtyard, a wave of leather, steel, and fury. I sprinted alongside Yuni, my eyes darting through the dust, looking for the next chokepoint.

And then I saw it.

Waiting for us at the top of the short stone staircase leading to the inner armoury was a tight formation of six mercenaries. They didn’t have swords. They had the long, wooden-stocked muskets raised to their shoulders, perfectly leveled at the bottleneck of the shattered gate.

”Cover!” I screamed, my instincts recognizing the kill zone a fraction of a second too late.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

The mechanical roar of the repeating firearms eclipsed the sound of the rain and the shouting. The courtyard flashed with blinding yellow light.

It was a massacre. The lead balls tore through the boiled leather armor of the vanguard as if it were wet parchment. Eight legionnaires in the front row were thrown backward, their chests and heads violently erupting in bursts of crimson. Ten more fell screaming, their shoulders and legs shattered by the indiscriminate, rapid-fire volley.

The charge instantly died. The cohort slammed back against the stone walls, taking cover behind whatever debris they could find. Yuni dragged a bleeding soldier behind a shattered piece of the wooden gate, his eyes wide.

”We can’t push that!” Yuni yelled over the deafening cracks of the muskets. ”They are firing too fast! It’s a wall of lead!”

We were pinned. The elite 5th Cohort, capable of surviving barbarians and magical shields, was being held hostage in a narrow courtyard by six men with machines.

Then, the heavy, rhythmic sound of metal boots echoed from the bridge.

I looked back. Miklas was walking through the shattered gates.

”Captain, get down!” I yelled, my heart leaping into my throat.

The mercenaries on the stairs shifted their aim. Six smoking barrels pointed directly at the towering Knight-Mage.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

A concentrated volley of lead tore through the air, aimed squarely at Miklas’s chest and head.

I braced for the impact, expecting to see the legend of the 7th Legion fall. But he didn’t.

As the bullets closed the distance, the air around Miklas’s body violently warped and shimmered, like the heat radiating off a boiling desert. His Ember, the power of a fully realized Bud Burst mage, wasn’t just internal anymore; it bled out of him, creating a dense, hyper-compressed aura of raw energy.

The lead balls hit the aura and flattened. Some melted instantly from the sheer heat, splattering against his steel breastplate as harmless drops of liquid metal. Others lost all their kinetic force, dropping into the mud at his boots.

Miklas didn’t even flinch. He drew his massive broadsword.

I stared at him, and suddenly, the courtyard of Trivi vanished.

My mind snapped back to Oakhaven. The burning village. The mud. I saw myself, a frail fourteen-year-old girl, standing in front of a mountain of slaughtered barbarian corpses. And standing atop that mountain of meat and blood, coated in gore, was the apex predator of the Empire.

I had forgotten. In the safety of the Shepfold mansion, playing politics and acting like a rebellious daughter, I had forgotten exactly what kind of monster had adopted me.

Miklas raised his left hand toward the sky. The deep, jagged scar on his neck—the Ancient Rune he bore—began to glow with a blinding, incandescent white light.

The heavy grey clouds above Trivi seemed to stop moving. The air pressure in the courtyard plummeted so violently my ears popped. The hairs on my arms stood straight up. The smell of blood and gunpowder was instantly overwhelmed by the sharp, metallic stench of ozone.

The mercenaries stopped firing. For the first time, the arrogant confidence of the Sfirt Republic soldiers shattered. They looked up at the sky, realizing too late that technology was fighting a war against a god.

”Burn,” Miklas whispered.

A pillar of pure, blinding white lightning violently struck down from the heavens.

The thunderclap was so loud I felt my internal organs vibrate. The lightning completely engulfed the stone staircase.

When the white light cleared, leaving a massive, smoking crater in the center of the courtyard, the six mercenaries were simply gone. Their muskets were pools of bubbling, molten iron on the charred stone. All that remained of the men were scattered piles of grey ash, washing away in the rain.

The absolute silence that followed was heavier than the gunfire.

Miklas lowered his hand, his amber eyes burning with a terrifying, untamed power. He pointed his broadsword toward the upper tier of the fortress.

”Kill the rest of them,” Miklas ordered, his voice echoing like thunder. ”Leave no one alive.”

The 5th Cohort erupted into a blood-curdling roar. The fear of the machines was gone, replaced by the fanatical devotion to their Captain. The heavy infantry surged forward, stepping over the charred crater, hunting down the remaining mercenaries with ruthless efficiency.

I stood slowly, my Veriti knife in hand, looking at the slaughter unfolding around me. Yuni was already moving up the stairs, his spear darting out to end a wounded mercenary. Alysia was barking orders, securing the flanks. Kaelen was smashing down the doors to the upper armory.

I looked back at Miklas, who was calmly wiping a splash of molten lead from his steel pauldron.