“Man, it’s cold up here,” Timo said, flicking a breadnut from his scout badge. “Could be worse though. We could be working the mines.”
“The cold iron miners do as much to secure the sanctuary as we do, Timo,” his watch partner countered, panning his sight-scope across the realm.
“Suppose you’re right,” Timo said sheepishly. He pulled his cloak tight. “Always the scholar, Luka. You haven’t changed since we were kids.”
“You’d be in those mines if I hadn’t helped you through Defence Science class—” Luka cut himself off as he looked through the viewfinder. “Shit.”
“What?”
Luka stood, pushed his braids over his ears and squinted into the distance. From the nest atop the natural stone spire, the lanky, stubble-faced scout He was looking east, across the Hollow Plains toward the realm of Flengftan. “Fuck. Fuck.”
Timo watched as his lanky, stubble-faced friend started darting around the watchtower. “What is it, Luka?”
“It’s an army, Timo.”
Timo pushed his stout figure from a wooden chair. “Surely not!”
Luka grabbed a coiled rope anchored to the stone wall and gave it two swift tugs. “Signal the Rose Tower.”
He threw the rope over the edge and pulled a flint from his pocket. He lit the alarm fuse and watched a spark fly down the wire into the mist surrounding their blue stone tower.
“Luka, wait,” Timo said. “An army? Here? Why don’t you check again?”
Luka hopped onto the crenel. His cold-iron scout insignia fell, unnoticed, from his shirt. “I know what I saw,” he said. He nodded solemnly and jumped off the edge of the tower.
“Fucking hell. I’m taking the stairs. One of us needs to make it there alive,” Timo muttered to himself, tucking Luka’s badge into his pocket.
He pulled a pouch of powdered true ice and tossed a handful into the tower’s signal fire. The flame crackled a bright blue, and Timo stared west to the Rose Tower, awaiting their response.
Except for being shorter by a foot and marbled with rose quartz instead of Topaz, the Rose Tower was identical to the one where he stood.
Scouts of the Topaz Tower kept watch over the plains, coasts and cliffs to the east, while—three hundred feet to the west—the Rose Tower surveyed the highlands and the Empyrean Inlet. Together, the towers provided an unobstructed view for miles in every direction.
When the fire burned blue on the Rose Tower, Timo started down the steps.
A series of candles burst into light below in the bridge, the command centre of the Sanctuary’s defences.
“Marm.” The Bridge’s First officer, Hugo, gestured to the flames.
Hugo was an older man who had long, white hair pulled back in a ponytail and a broad, white moustache to match.
“How long for a report?” General Anteegha asked. She turned her tall, muscular frame toward the candles quickly enough that her long, dark-green overcoat cast a wide and authoritative berth.
“The descent takes eighteen minutes, marm.”
Her eyes narrowed. Too much could happen in eighteen minutes.
Hugo gulped as her displeasure made her sharp, chiselled face look sterner. Coupled with the bun of black hair pulled behind her head, she presented quite a formidable appearance. “But we should have word in fift—” Hugo stopped as something hit the roof of the bridge.
The command centre was perched between the Rose and Topaz towers, five hundred feet below the scout nests. It sat atop a stone archway that spanned the towers, designed by the ancient builder, Letyr Har’eez.
Another four hundred feet below the bridge was a keep nestled in the base of the twin spires. The three levels of watch sat stacked atop the hollow mountain that housed the Sanctuary city.
A door in the ceiling opened, and Luka jumped through.
“General Anteegha, Marm.” He bowed slightly.
The bridge guard had converged on the General when they’d heard the thud but eased upon seeing their scout.
“You take your duties quite seriously to make the trek in half the time, Scout . . .” She waited.
“Luka, Marm. The many outweigh the few.” Reciting the sanctuary mantra elicited a nod of approval from the General.
“Now, tell us, what have you seen?”
“There’s an army marching, five or six wide, across the pass beyond Slammik. It stretches for miles,” he explained.
“What else, scout?”
“It’s not men. I don’t know what they are, but there are mighty creatures among the horde. I’ve never seen legions like these.” He continued. “Their pace is—” He paused. “—unnatural.”
The General walked to the bridge’s western bank of windows. “Call the Banners.”
“Which ones, General?” Hugo asked.
All eyes were on the leader, who stared into the distant highlands.
“All of them,” she ordered.
Officers scrambled to the fuse wall and dispatched calls of alarm to all corners of the Sanctuary. Hugo watched as the messages left a spider’s web of smoke in the setting sun.
In the chaos, Timo and the scouts from the Rose Tower had entered the bridge, waiting to be addressed. While the General surveyed the scouts from the Rose Tower, Timo shuffled over and slid Luka’s fallen pin into his pocket.
“Back in line, Scout!” Hugo scolded, his moustache and stiff upper lip accentuated his disdain.
“Never mind that,” the General said, quashing the matter. “You two from the Rose Tower, I want reports every hour on the army’s progress. Dismissed.” She then turned her attention to burlier scout, Timo. “I want you and the daredevil to seal the Tree Gate and give orders to the stables. It’s crucial for the Sanctuary’s survival.”
Timo and Luka nodded.
“A general’s words can move hearts, but hearts do not move feet. Our enemy will have hawks, and we can’t rely on our birds. You must ensure the Banners heed our call and have the Green Fire Battalions ride to their outposts,” the general said, staring at Luka. “Understood?”
“Understood.”
Timo and Luka ran from the command centre and across the archway. Each tower staircase continued from Bridge level to the keep atop the mountain fortress below.
As they left, the first officer spoke up, looking disconcerted. “Marm, the gates haven’t been sealed in fifty years.”
“I know, Hugo. My brother and I were the last ones to close them.”
“The many outweigh the few,” he said with solemn understanding. “Is it. . . . Is it her then?”
Anteegha narrowed her eyes. “Yes. It’s Violette.”
Luka bounded down the staircase with Timo trailing in feeble pursuit.
“Shit! Luka, The Green Battalions?”
“I know. It’s been a lifetime since they’ve been called.”
They arrived at the Crestkeep, a squat formidable-looking structure with two guards stationed at its entrance.
“Seal the door behind us,” Luka called to the summit guards.
One of the guards looked up at the bridge between the spires, clearly uncertain. “But the General . . .”
“Her orders,” Timo explained.
He and Luka entered the building that served as the base for the bridge and scout nests above. On the far side of the building, they entered a cable lift that would take them to the ground level of the sanctuary fortress below.
The sound of clanking metal grew louder as armouries opened and readied, confirming that the General’s orders had been received. No one was allowed to carry arms in the city, but in times of war, the Sanctuary’s forces were as formidable as any in the realms.
At the end of their descent, the pair stepped into the town of the Sanctuary, which was washed in the warm tones of dusk as the arrays of polished steel plates reflected light into the subterranean metropolis.
In the city’s centre, a sky birch stretched its blue branches two hundred feet above a majestic courtyard. Tree-lined boardwalks carried thousands of citizens from shops to schools to workplaces and homes. The bustling citizenry would have heard the defences being set in motion but would assume it to be routine drills and training.
They wouldn’t yet know an enemy was approaching.
Hidden on the mountain walls were the ant-holes—narrow passages just wide enough for a single person. They required much effort to traverse and could only be reached from the inside by a series of mobile platforms.
Ordered by the travelling fuse and smoke, the pulley-masters manned their stations, ready to move the platforms away from the ant holes at a moment’s notice.
Preparation is the key to the Sanctuary, was the first lesson in all defence sciences classes; all citizens were required to take them.
Hundreds of companies and armouries were scattered throughout the mountain, all in service of the Sanctuary.
“Come on, Luka. This way,” Timo called, pulling Luka across a boardwalk. They walked northeast towards the underground passage of the Tree Gate. The guards saluted Timo before gesturing to Luka’s bare lapel.
Timo elbowed Luka in the ribs. “In your pocket.”
Flushing, Luka fumbled into his trousers and re-attached the pin.
Satisfied, the Treewatch pulled a hatch open and handed each a torch. Timo and Luka each took deep breaths and went below to the level of the crypts, situated over a thousand feet below their scout nest.
Torches lit the earthen corridor that led straight through to the northwest side of the mountain. After a short walk, they found the first pair of levers flanking the massive portcullis that hung above them.
“Sixteen gates of Nlamkas-forged cold iron,” Timo remarked. He pulled the wall-mounted lever, and the gate crashed into the recessed plate in the floor.
“Levers on either side so that one may close the gates in any circumstance,” Luka joked nervously, trying to imitate their defence sciences teacher. He hadn’t forgotten anything about protecting the Sanctuary, even if the sudden call-to-arms was proving more nerve-wracking than expected.
After a thirty-minute jaunt, they reached the eighth gate. The corridor opened into a large cavern and continued on the far side.
“I don’t remember this,” Luka’s voice cracked.
He and Timo shared a look of uncertainty. Timo pulled the lever and the closing gate echoed into the dome-shaped room.
“We should split up and walk around the outside,” Luka suggested, his voice lowered. “We’ll meet at the corridor on the other end.”
They parted and began circumnavigating the cavern with cautious footfalls. It was quiet except for the distant clicks and clanks of chains and gears deep inside the mountain. They’d each made it halfway around when a low rumble echoed inside the concave room and the ground began to shift.
“Fuck,” Luka whispered to himself. He looked across the large empty room to Timo, whose torch illuminated his own look of fear.
“RUN!” Timo yelled.
Luka obeyed. He ran at top speed around the room and stumbled into the corridor at the other end, falling to his knees. He sat up and looked back for Timo; he should have made it out, considering he was faster than he looked. Luka brushed himself off and glanced back at where Timo had been. He would be fine—
In the middle of the room, a massive, humanoid figure made of rock and dirt rose. It was nearly as tall as the sky birch in the town square but much broader. Timo was waving his torch at the monster back near the gated corridor from where they’d come.
The monster swung a massive fist of boulders toward Timo, who dove just in time. The entire cavern shook as the creature’s rock fist met the wall.
“TIMO!”
“RUN, LUKA. CLOSE THE—”
The creature’s left hand swung and caught Timo by the arm, pulverising it completely and snuffing his torch.
“NO!” Luka stood in the doorway, his hand on the ninth lever, unable to see his friend or the beast. “TIMO!” He yelled into the suddenly quiet cavern.
The weighty sound of rock grinding returned from deep inside the room, and Luka gripped the lever a little harder. The scraping grew louder, and the monster charged into the weak light of Luka’s torch.
Luka pulled the lever, trying not to cry.
The golem crashed into the cold iron gate just as it slammed down. It clapped its heavy hands together and smashed them on the ground, shaking the earth beneath. Luka stumbled backwards, his eyes straining to see in the dimly lit corridor. He tried to see, and he tried to hear. But there was no sight or sound of Timo.
Years of training kicked in, and Luka collected himself, swallowed the guilt, and stood.
An army was marching to their doorstep. Every minute he wasted here was a minute longer the Banners would take to arrive.
At the next gate, he looked back at the lone gate holding back the golem. A single hand reached up, fingers wrapped around the lattice, and Timo pulled himself to his feet.
They locked gazes and Timo shouted with waning strength. “Go,” Timo called, “You did the right thing. Go. Call the Banners,”
From the darkness, a bouldered fist hurtled toward Timo. Luka recoiled, unable to shout before the rock crashed against metal. When Luka opened his eyes, a thick pool of blood and flesh had collected on his side of the stained gate.
He turned and ran, closing the next seven gates in full stride, sweat pouring from his brow and grief rotting in his gut. Luka bounded out of the mountain and collapsed, unable to watch the sixteenth and final gate fall into place.
“We received a fuse. What’s going on?” came the gruff voice from one of several mounted officers that awaited him on the outside.
“Seal the gates,” Luka said, beginning to hyperventilate.
A short, rotund man stepped in front of the officer. Four gilded horse head epaulettes marked him as the Stablelord. He started pulling a series of levers: Calmit, Sin, Forn, Brith, Tibi, Ada, Sathuus, Qaye.
The order was a convoluted code to prevent the unintentional sealing of the gates.
With the final lever pulled, clicks and pulleys rolled into action in and around the gate. The sound of sizzle and steam preceded a thick flow of molten metal from flowing on either side of the gate. It spilt into the depression at the bottom, welding the barrier to the ground. Luka could hear the hissing of deeper gates through the lattices as they were permanently sealed in place.
A shiver went down Luka’s spine, thinking about what remained of Timo mixing with the liquid metal at the ninth gate.
“What was that monster?”
“The Golem is a defence mechanism should anyone breach the first eight gates. They leave that part out in scout class,” he explained. “What orders do you bring from the General?”
Luka was staring at the steam rising from the outer gate. At that moment, he understood what the general had asked of Timo.
“SCOUT!”
Luka shook his head and turned to the Stablelord. He had to focus. “She’s calling the Banners,” Luka said meekly, then cleared his throat. “They’re to march hard for the Sanctuary. No rest. Send a rider in each direction.”
“Fuck me. Those fires we saw marching on the mountains?” He pointed to the highlands east, and Luka nodded.
“And the Green Fires.”
Everyone stopped and stared at the scout.
“Shit. You ride for Two-Trees, scout. I’ll ride to the Skill Swords. Godspeed.”
The Stablelord turned to a trio of riders whose horses dwarfed the others. “Green Fire Battalion, assemble your company and ride to your posts at once.”
Each squad leader spurred their horse and was off.
The Stablelord barked orders at a dozen other riders, and in minutes they’d all left. A stableboy handed Luka the reins of a readied horse, and he took off in the direction of the house of Mountains Two-Trees.
“Marm. It appears she’s building an encampment on the plains. It looks like a castle,” one of the scouts reported. “It’s a twisted, ugly wooden building and a barn of sorts. Carts go in one end, and . . . and their soldiers walk out the other.”
Anteegha turned back to the war room table shaped like the realm of Nklamkas. “Violette is settling in, then. That barn is where she makes her fighters, stitching together man and beast.”
“General, we have reports of a horde marching toward the Moon gate,” Hugo added.
Anteegha walked to the bridge’s southern side and looked down at the inlet that met the lower side of the mountain fortress.
“. . . And the skull moon will rise in two nights,” he continued.
“I know my Celestry lieutenant. Seal the moon gate.”
“Marm.” Fuses buzzed away from the bridge in a straight line down inside the Sanctuary.
Minutes later, sixteen sequential thuds landed and reverberated throughout the mountain, even audible inside the bridge. Added to the sanctuary decades after its initial construction, the moon gates didn’t require a sacrificial scout to draw the attention of golem defenses.
“Marm. Tree Gate and Moon Gate are closed.”
The general nodded and turned back to the windows. “We have stores for decades and infrastructure for centuries. What now, Violette?” the General asked into the distance.
The next night, a nearly full skull moon hung in the sky, and with it came the lowest tides of the lunar cycle. They’d be impassable for a human, but the inlet had been reduced to a tide pool for the horde of monsters.
Scholars tried classifying the monsters marching toward the gates, but each report conflicted with the next. Some reported seeing giants with the heads of bulls, others had seen trolls with the limbs of bears while some described six-legged creatures with lion heads and feathered arms. Monsters rode mammoths with antlers in place of tusks and long arms protruding from their necks.
And that was to say nothing of Violette’s infantry.
Each of the twenty-thousand armed soldiers were at least half of something and half another thing entirely—men, horses, stags, bears and even pigs were stitched into the creatures standing guard for their siege force in the inlet below.
The general had taken to using one of the bridge’s sight-scopes to survey the enemy encampment. It was easy to pick out Violette, strutting proudly on the veranda of her makeshift castle. The gaunt woman was something to behold: thin as a rake and appearing taller than even the general. Violette’s wispy black dress waved around her while she spun her hands in widening circles at her side, her Grave Wand in one hand. She then propelled the wand in front of her and a thud echoed from the first door of the Moon Gate, barely audible atop the lookout. Nearby, the monster horde was driving a timber battering ram into the first gate. It rattled but did not break.
The general looked back to Violette and gasped slightly when she saw the necromancer staring right back at her through the viewfinder. A discomforting smile crept across the queen’s face, followed by another distant thud of wood on the gate.
“Three Owls and their fucking coven,” the general cursed as she paced. The general took a meal, used the lavatory and retired to her quarters for a quick nap. Sleep may not be afforded in the battle to come.
Luka arrived at the house of Mountains Two Trees and found it destroyed. At the town’s gate, a man lay propped up against the wall with his hands nailed above his head, and his Banner draped on his chest. Luka pulled the heraldry aside to reveal his injuries, so expertly inflicted that it would be days before he perished.
“What happened?” Luka yelled, startling the man awake.
He sputtered. “You’re . . . you’re from the Sanctuary. I’m sorry, my lord.”
“I’m no lord, friend. Tell me what happened.”
“They called themself Valentine. Arrived at our gates with a small army . . . we stood fast, but . . . .” The man coughed and did not finish.
“What does this Valentine want?” Luka asked.
“They said they were here on behalf of the queen. Said the Sanctuary is an affront to her as a bastion of life that has no place in her world. They won’t rest until their precious Violette is satisfied.” The man was growing weaker. “Valentine . . . wears the skin of a demon.”
“Where is everyone?” Luka asked, fearing the answer.
“Told us we had a choice. We could stand against Violette and die, or we could join her. Some laid down their arms, and some of us stood to fight.” The man had a fit of coughing, and blood streamed from the corner of his mouth. “But everyone ended up in the pile or the cart just the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“There.” The man nodded with great effort toward a glistening pile nearby that Luka hadn’t managed to look at yet. “They butchered every last one of us,” the man continued. “Three days, it took them. They put what they wanted in a cart pulled by a troll. That pile there is the leftovers.”
“I’ve been nailed here, watching. Do me mercy, scout. Kill me. Kill me now.”
Luka tightened his jaw and obliged the man with a quick blade to the heart. He didn’t have time for rites, so he found his horse and galloped back toward the Sanctuary, leaving the ruined town at his back.
“Marm, they’re through the first gate,” Hugo said.
“Fuck, where are the Banners?” she asked. At this pace, it would take months to breach the remaining gates, but that wasn’t what troubled Anteegha; it was what her enemy was constructing that drew her ire.
She stepped out of the bridge onto one of the two cantilevered verandas offering a bird’s eye view of her domain. The monster horde smashing at the gates had retreated from the inlet when the tide came in. During their break, they’d acquired more timber and begun to build.
When the next moon came, the fruits of their labour became apparent; they were making a cofferdam. The monster siege corps would no longer have to await low tides to attack the remaining gates.
Absent welding, water should have sufficed as a barrier, but no one expected an army with this level of scale or resourcefulness. The monsters appeared to have been butchered and re-assembled as if for this purpose alone. Violette and her necromantic ingenuity had cut the Sanctuary’s defence estimates by an order of magnitude.
Forget months—they’d be lucky if they made it through days.
“Fuck,” she said to herself again, her breath visible in front of her face. It was near winter now, not that it mattered much inside the Sanctuary, but it was getting colder. General Anteegha squinted to the horde below, then hurried inside the bridge. “Get me a stormist. Now,” the general barked at Hugo.
A messenger began the arduous journey down to the Sanctuary, and the stormist arrived in under an hour. She told the general that frost was expected the next several nights. Stormists were usually at the beck of the Sanctuary’s farmers and gardeners but would gladly serve the military if called.
“Are you sure?” the general asked.
“As sure as we can be in predicting the seasons, Marm.”
“If we stop the siege, we can advance on her army where they wait.”
“Shall we turn on the spigots, Marm?” Hugo offered.
“No, not yet. Tar and oil first. Let’s burn these abominations.”
Hugo nodded and notified the fusemen.
With the horde hard at work, hundreds of ant-holes opened and lobbed small vats of tar and oil on the siege team of abominations at the gates. From a second set of openings, archers loosed bolts of fire into the horde. They exploded into flame but to no immediate effect.
The monsters made of monsters continued their ramming.
Eventually, the flames burned to bone, and without any flesh to hold the ram, it fell to the ground. When they had no arms left to carry it, the creatures ran their own bodies against the gate. Monsters with failed legs were flung against the gate by those still standing.
More creatures arrived the next day and the battering resumed. The coffer dam was fully functional, and the horde beat on the gates incessantly, slowing only at night when the temperatures dropped. Across the Hollow Plain, the majority of Violette’s forces hung back in wait.
“Marm, the Banners have arrived.”
“How Many?”
“Two. The sister houses of Moon Mountain Tree and Tree Mountain Moon.”
“Fuck. Violette must have gotten to all the others first.”
“But the Skill Swords have arrived as well, Marm. Theseus and Leonidas are among them. They’re stationed on the eastern side.”
“All right.” Anteegha went to the table and moved her model armies. “The Skill Swords will attack the horde from the opposite side here.” She pointed to the eastern side of the inlet, opposite Violette’s company of beasts that were standing guard for the monster horde. “Our forces will take the fight to her army here.” She pointed. “Under cover of cold, we can defeat them. The Skill Swords can handle the monsters at the gates. Ready the spigots.”
Her officers scuttled about, putting her orders into action. Anteegha worked her way back to the sight-scope to find Violette once more. Her adversary was already staring through her own viewfinder, smiling, but her movements were different than before. The delayed sounds were different as well. There wasn’t a bang on the gates from the ram, this time, the sounds came from behind Violette..
A giant that made the other giants look like dwarves lumbered from behind a ridge and made for the moon gates. Its stride was twenty times that of an ordinary man.
“Send the soldiers through the ant-holes and to their quartermasters,” the general ordered.
The defenders of the Sanctuary swarmed out of the mountain—carrying hammers, swords, scythes and other long combat weapons—and headed for battle.
“Would you look at this big bastard?” Leonidas asked, taking in the Giant of Giants who had lowered itself down onto the beach at the moon gate..
“A hundred Lords for whoever fells this one, Leo,” Theseus said, pushing his long grey-white hair back underneath his demon crown.
Leo laughed, adjusted a strap on his demon husk armour, and pulled his burnished katana from its sheath. Moonlight flowed down the blade, casting light on his determined, weathered face.
“Make it two hundred,” Leo said with a wink and took off toward the beach.
The giant of giants grabbed the battering ram in one hand and began to hammer it on the gate. Already damaged, it fell in one swing. He squatted, pulled the mangled gate away and tossed it behind.
“Would you handle that dam?” Leo called to Auron, a skilled but swordless mage.
The man tapped his book, conjured a ball of fire and threw it at the dam, engulfing it in flames.
“Skill Swords, on me,” Theseus called.
Though they only had thirty-three in their ranks, the Skill Swords were an imposing bunch. They launched themselves down to the beach and began to swarm through the monsters with impeccable speed, swiping with their katanas at the beasts’ arms and legs. Limbs fell to the ground but the monsters did not stop.
“Take their heads!” Leo shouted, his voice booming in the rocky arena. With the moon gate at their backs, they charged at the horde.
The large giant swung the battering ram, unable to hit any of the fleetfooted Skill Swords. They jumped and ducked, each time rolling close to the giant and slicing at its legs. Eventually, the creature fell to one knee, and the pace of butchery increased. No one attack was particularly damaging, but in sum, they would end the giant of giants.
As Leo and Thes moved in, a war horn rang from above, signalling the Skill Swords to retreat. Not many creatures had been killed, but none remained without injury. Several companies of beastmen soldiers were throwing themselves down the cliff to join their brethern, just as the Skill Swords darted back up the other side.
Up on the bridge, the general nodded at the plan.
“Release the reservoirs!” Hugo ordered.
Two faint booms echoed in the underground city, followed by the sound of rushing water. The reservoirs stored thousands of tankards of water and raw energy, which was now being emptied into the narrow tubes carved into the mountain. The mixture smashed out of two spigots atop the entrance to the Moon Gates, crashed into the ground, and took the feet out from any monster still standing, blasting them back against the burning dam.
Weakened from Auron’s blaze, the dam groaned before giving way. Sea water flooded the inlet, pushing the monsters toward the gates—and cascading water—first, then back out to sea with the spigots providing the thrust.
The giant of giants was the last one struggling against the current but ultimately it also washed out into the First Arm of Vasmir.
“A fucking tie,” Leo said in dismay.
“I took his leg out. That’s my kill,” Theseus rebutted before calling to the Banners and citizen army across the inlet. “It’s been fun, soldiers!” He gave a tip of the demon crown and rallied the Skill Swords to his side.
The Skill Swords had no way to cross, and it would take weeks to circle the mountain. It was up to the Sanctuary and her Banners to carry the fight.
On the bridge, the General ordered her Banners to join the Sanctuary soldiers and advance on the beastmen army. It was well into the night, and the temperature had dipped below freezing. The living men found motivation in the cold, using it as a reason to swing a little harder in case annihilation wasn’t enough. It helped that the reanimated fighters couldn’t react as quickly, since their flesh was slowed by the cold.
Over the next several hours, the Sanctuary forces pushed Violette’s army closer to her castle on the Hollow Plains.
“The Green Fire, Marm?” Hugo asked.
“Not yet.”
Morning came, and the undead found new vigour with the sun, gaining ground on the soldiers of Sanctuary. Heaps of bodies piled between the armies.
The second night of the offensive was colder than the first, and Violette had ordered her troops back in waves to warm around the pyres she had built. Any progress made in the cold of night was returned in the warmth of day. It was not a war of endurance but one of attrition. Every time a Sanctuary soldier fell, it bolstered Violette’s ranks shortly after.
“Marm, they’re a quarter league from the fault. Should we light the green fire?”
“Not yet! One more night,” the general replied.
“Marm, they grow closer each day. Our assault from the ant-holes won’t stop them forever.”
“For fuck’s sake, Hugo, I know that. But our men are strong. They’ll hold one more night,” she said, pacing between several sight-scopes. “We need Violette to send all her forces before we make our move.”
The next hours passed slowly, and morale started to wane. The army of men had done their best, but the inexhaustible army of Violette had pushed them to the brink of the fault line.
General Anteegha made the call. “Now.”
An officer walked to the braziers installed on the verandas and poured a substance into the flame. It flickered and sputtered before turning a bright green.
“Should be less than an hour, Marm,” Hugo said gravely.
Luka was riding hard when he rounded a bend and caught his first glimpse of the Sanctuary at the horizon’s edge—and the war being waged before it.
He squinted at the bridge but stopped when he saw the green flames. He didn’t know how long it had been burning, but he should have heard the implosion; the Green Fire Battalions would not need long.
He rode on with one eye on the distant green flame and one eye on the trail. The third Green Fire Battalion outpost wasn’t far, though they would have left their post to discharge their duty.
Still well short of the outpost, Luka brought his horse to a stop when he heard a scream. He dismounted and continued on foot, being sure to stay out of sight.
The outpost was situated near one of the far-off mine entrances northeast of the Sanctuary, in an area of rocky terrain and thick scrubby forest. The screams grew louder before stopping entirely.
He slunk through the woods and got to a rocky area where he could covertly view the outpost.
Peeking over the edge of the rock, Luka saw a troll with four arms harnessed to a wooden cart. The cart was piled high with severed torsos and unidentifiable parts. Under the light of the moon, Luka spotted the earthy-coloured tunics of the Green Fire Battalion amid the carnage. The troll sat casually, scratching himself while his cart dripped blood and his compatriots worked.
Luka’s gaze shifted to the unit commander.
He was a gaunt, tall figure with a black katana—Valentine.
As Luka watched, the man brought the weapon up and sliced through the midsection of a corpse so easily, he could’ve been cutting through ripe fruit.
Luka watched the units moving around the outpost grounds and flinging body parts into either the cart or the pile.
The last man breathing from the Green Fire Battalion—the squadron’s leader—was crawling away in a feeble attempt to escape. A bear with a man’s head picked up the legless squadron leader and held him up. Valentine swung his katana and separated the Green Fire commander’s head from his body, collected it and carried it to a gruesome beast waiting to the side.
This creature had the form of a mountain lion but with an extra set of forelegs in its midsection. On its posterior, it had a second tail, longer than the first and a second spine with large, sharpened vertebrae protruded from the fur. It was holding a bloody bag in its mouth.
Valentine muttered something to the creature, dropped the new head into the bag, and waved it away. The lion-like beast bolted toward the battle carrying the sopping sack.
Luka shuddered and squatted back behind the rock. As he went, a bur in the rock snagged his scout pin and pulled it from his robe. Luka didn’t notice, and the pin fell silently onto a bed of moss.
Valentine examined the outpost and then swatted the troll with the flat side of his katana, forcing it to pull the cart forward with a grumble. Valentine jumped atop his six-legged caribou and cantered off at the head of the raiding party.
They left camp with the four-armed troll pulling the parts of thirty-six mutilated members of the Green Fire Battalion. The harem of butchers walked, trotted or crawled behind.
On the bridge, the general paced, stopping only to look through the sight-scope. “How long’s it been, Hugo?”
Hugo just shook his head.
The general wheeled the sight-scope toward Violette. The necromancer smiled and waved a disapproving finger, then held up the heads of the Green Fire Battalion squad leaders. In her hands, it looked like a bouquet of defeat.
The general jerked away from the sight-scope. “Drop the ropes. I’m going down,” she ordered, but no one moved.
Hugo was the first to speak. “General, you can’t do that. We will have to wait them out.”
“The fortress is secure and our army is near exhaustion. We have no need of a general. Lower the fucking ropes. I’ll blow the mines myself.”
After being sure that Valentine and his crew were gone, Luka stood tentatively and left his hiding spot. He looked back at the green fire burning desperately on the bridge and then took off. He arrived at the overgrown mine entrance and pulled back the vines to reveal three large, numbered dials. The mines were sealed with a code only known to the ones who’d most recently been slaughtered.
He looked back at the green fire burning on the bridge and then at the towers where he and Timo had first spotted the army.
He couldn’t let the lack of information stop him. Luka went to work.
General Anteegha had thrown off her overcoat and readied her swords when Hugo called out from the sight-scope.
“General, look!”
A flame was burning in the distance near one of the mines.
“Who is that?” she asked.
The distant flame sputtered and then burned a bright blue, causing some determined to settle in the general’s expression.
“Hugo, stay there and do exactly as I say,” she said.
Luka watched the green flame in the distance but kept his head on a swivel, hoping his blue signal fire would be seen by friend before foe.
The green flame on the bridge began to flash.
Five quick flashes. Then covered.
Two quick flashes. Covered.
Seven quick flashes. Covered.
Then the flame burned blue.
Luka spun the dials to the numbers given by the bridge from the bridge, and the door began to open—first with a series of small clicks, followed by the heavier clack of the deadbolts. It cracked open and released a plume of dust.
Luka ducked inside, shutting the door behind him and locking himself in.
He lit a torch and orange light flickered off the corridor into the mines. After ten minutes of running through the underground maze, he entered a sizable, shallow room. Judging from the maps he’d been forced to examine for his lessons, he knew he was under the battle now, on the plains that stretched out from the sanctuary.
He lit a bank of fuses, and they whizzed into tunnels in every direction. Luka plopped down on a rock and took a deep breath. A few moments later, he heard a distant explosion.
With his eyes closed, he put a hand over his where his scout badge should have been and smirked. “See you soon, Timo.”
From the bridge, the first explosion boomed almost unimpressively on the battlefield. Then there was a second. Then another.
“The many outweigh the few,” the general said.
Hundreds of muted bangs dotted the plains in a pattern expertly that had been devised by the realmists of the Sanctuary. The ground started to shake—gently at first, but then harder, opening tiny fissures across the land. They crept across the plains to meet each other, creating a web-like pattern, one that widened along a fault line.
The plateau began to tip toward the ocean.
Some soldiers tried to jump back to safety as the land crumbled beneath them, only to plunge into the widening crevasses. Dust and debris filled the air as the entire land mass shifted and broke apart. Living and undead soldiers slid across the land and tipped toward the sea.
The networked explosions continued to go off, as load bearing columns and supports exploded beneath the battlefield.
A single—final—explosion severed the plain entirely. It crumbled and collapsed into the sea.
The following day, the general led the remaining troops to the edge of the newly made cliff face. The jagged and broken earth exposed the series of caves and tunnels that had saved the Sanctuary. It may have cost them part of the realm, their most fertile soil and most of their fighters, but the Sanctuary would endure.
Hugo gave the general a look of compassion, clearly aware of the weight she bore.
She raised her chin in response. “All units, watch over this ledge in shifts. Help any Bannermen or citizens that may have survived. Strike down everything else.”
“Bless the few, Marm,” an officer said.
The general nodded. “Following the brightest nights are the darkest mornings, and those that won must live with what they’ve done,” she quoted.
The famous line had once been penned by a long-departed Sanctuary poet, and little else seemed so apt for the moment.
She turned back to her army and raised a fist in the air. “Many have given their lives to defend the Sanctuary. We will hang their Banners in black and tell stories of their valour for generations.”
“Here, here,” came the chorus.
“No one can take the Sanctuary. It has stood for thousands of years and will stand for thousands more. The Sanctuary is our ancient home!” she shouted.
The chorus melded into cheers and whistles.
“Now, we return to routine. To preparation and to discipline. Cataclysm may strike, but we are the refuge.”
A more subdued round of, “ayes” and, “Yes, Marms,” came from the crowd.
The general began the walk back to the Sanctuary, her officers in tow.
“Marm, what of Violette?” Hugo asked.
“I do not know,” she said, “but for now, we’ll prepare in case she comes back.”