The dawn did not break so much as it bled across the sky, a dull crimson smear that promised violence. The full might of War-Chief Grull's horde was now arrayed before the Amber Aegis, a seething, roaring tide of muscle, iron, and hatred. Thousands of orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins formed a ragged but vast line, their crude banners whipping in the chill morning air. At their center, a full head taller than the largest orc, stood Grull himself. Clad in spiked, blackened plate armor and hefting a massive, serrated greatsword, he was the embodiment of the horde's fury.
On the wall, the Aethelgard Conclave stood silent. The only sounds were the snap of banners and the low, menacing hum of the protective barrier.
Chief, Zek's voice was tight through the comms stone. The Clan Guard is at their stations. All ballistae are loaded and manned.
Scouts report no flanking maneuvers, Zog added. They are forming for a frontal assault. They have brought rams.
Thorzen's gaze swept the enemy lines. He saw the massive, felled trees being hauled forward by teams of ogres, their ends fire-hardened and tipped with iron. He saw the siege ladders Xx'orth had predicted. And he saw the shamans, clustered around Grull, their staffs already glowing with foul, green energy.
"They will test the wall first," Thorzen said, his voice carrying calm and clear to his Sentinels. "Then, they will try to break the gate. Hector, Wan, you have the center. Torac, the right flank. Zog, the left. Guy, you know your role. Fan… be ready. The shamans are yours."
A guttural roar from Grull cut through the morning, a wordless command. A wave of orc berserkers, frothing at the mouths and clad in little more than pelts, broke from the line and charged, screaming their defiance.
"Archers, hold!" Torac bellowed, his voice a gravelly whip-crack. "Ballistae, hold! Wait for the signal!"
The berserkers pounded across the open ground, a wave of pure, unthinking aggression. They hit the invisible line of the Amber Aegis. There was no shattering impact, no dramatic explosion. The barrier flared a brilliant, sunlit gold where they struck. The lead orcs simply… stopped. Their momentum was arrested instantly, their bodies slamming into an unyielding wall of solidified light. Bones audibly cracked. A few were trampled by those behind them. The charge dissolved into a confused, furious mob, hammering uselessly against the glowing, impassable field.
A cheer started among the Clan Guard, but Thorzen raised a hand, silencing it.
"They have learned the wall is real," he said. "Now they learn it is lethal."
He focused his will, channeling a sliver of his immense mana into the core's directive. The Amber Aegis, a purely defensive barrier, could not attack. But the land it protected could.
From the soil just inside the barrier, a dozen thick, thorny vines, glowing with the same amber light, erupted. They shot through the Aethelgard like spears, passing through the barrier as if it weren't there. They wrapped around the legs of the berserkers, their thorns sinking deep, injecting a paralytic toxin. Orcs screamed as they were dragged, kicking and flailing, back through the barrier and into the killing zone before the wall, where kobold archers waited with grim efficiency.
It was a brutal, demoralizing display. The horde's roar faltered.
Grull was not deterred. He bellowed again, and this time, the shamans raised their staffs. Balls of green fire arced through the sky, splashing against the Aethelgard. The barrier held, but the amber light flickered, the runes on the wall glowing hot as they dissipated the necrotic energy.
"They are trying to overload it," Fan observed, her voice a detached whisper. "A crude but effective strategy, given enough power."
"Then we deny them that power," Thorzen replied. "Fan, begin the harvest."
Fan nodded, her eyes closing. She raised her hands, and the air around her grew cold. The amulet at her chest, the skull rune, began to pulse with a sickly violet light. She was not drawing on the core's energy, nor on the ambient mana. She was tapping into a deeper, colder well—the domain Hecate had opened for her.
On the battlefield, the orcs who had fallen to the vines and arrows began to twitch. A faint, grey mist—the nascent, unformed energy of their departing souls—stirred around their corpses. The shamans, sensing the intrusion, redoubled their efforts, trying to claim these energies for their own dark rituals.
But Fan was faster, and her method was infinitely more refined.
[Fan has activated: Soul Siphon.]
Tendrils of violet energy, invisible to all but those with magical sight, lashed out from Fan's position. They touched the dying orcs, and the grey mist was drawn away from the shamans' grasping magic, flowing back across the field, through the wall, and into Fan. She didn't absorb it; she channeled it. The energy pooled in her hands, swirling into a concentrated ball of necrotic potential.
"They are resisting," Fan reported, her brow furrowed in concentration. "Their head shaman is strong. He seeks to contest my claim."
"Then show him the difference between a tribal witch-doctor and a disciple of the Crossroads," Thorzen commanded.
A cruel smile touched Fan's lips. "As you will, my Chief."
She didn't try to pull harder. Instead, she shifted her focus. The shamans were protectively gathered around a single, ancient orc whose staff was topped with a mummified griffon head. Fan's psionic senses, honed by Xx'orth, pinpointed him. She didn't target the souls he was trying to claim. She targeted the connection itself.
With a sharp, twisting motion of her hand, she severed it.
The head shaman staggered, a gout of black blood erupting from his nose and eyes as his own spell recoiled. The green fires around his staff sputtered and died. In that moment of his weakness, Fan's Soul Siphon flared, and a torrent of grey energy—dozens of orc souls—flooded into her grasp.
Now came the true test. The second part of the ability Hecate had gifted her.
[Fan is attempting to create: Bone Thrall.]
The ball of soul-stuff in her hands condensed, becoming a pulsing, malevolent jewel. She gestured towards the pile of orc corpses just outside the gate. The bones of the fallen berserkers rattled, then ripped free of their flesh, flying together in a clattering storm. They assembled into a monstrous, ten-foot-tall construct of jagged bone, its hands ending in scythe-like claws, its skull-head burning with twin points of violet light—a tiny fragment of the soul-stuff Fan had harvested.
A ripple of shock, followed by a new kind of fear, ran through the Gritch horde. This was not natural. This was not a fight against other humanoids. This was a fight against something that twisted the very cycle of life and death.
The Bone Thrall let out a silent roar and launched itself at the nearest living orcs, its claws tearing through armor and flesh with terrifying ease.
"By the Forger…" Hector muttered, watching the abomination wreak havoc. "That's… efficient."
The strategic effect was immediate. The horde's advance, which had been regrouping for another push, stalled in confusion and horror. The shamans were thrown into disarray, desperately trying to protect themselves from Fan's psychic assaults and counter the thrall.
Grull solved the problem with characteristic brutality. He strode forward, bellowing orders. A team of hobgoblin archers focused their fire on the thrall, their arrows doing little damage, but buying time. Then, Grull himself charged. His greatsword, glowing with a brutal enchantment, cleaved through the bone construct in two massive swings, shattering it back into a pile of inert fragments.
He raised his sword to the sky, roaring his victory, trying to rally his troops.
It was the opening Thorzen had waited for.
"Now," he said, his voice cold as winter stone.
On the left flank, Zog and Vigil, who had been waiting in a concealed sally port, exploded into motion. They didn't engage the main line. They targeted the siege ladder teams, moving with blinding speed, cutting down the ogre handlers before they could react, and sowing chaos in the rear lines.
On the right, Guy and Stalker materialized from nothingness among the hobgoblin officers. There were no war cries, only the wet, final sounds of slit throats and pierced hearts. The command structure on the right flank began to collapse.
The main assault finally came. Under a renewed barrage of green fire from the recovering shamans, and with Grull himself leading the way, the horde surged forward with the rams and the bulk of their ladders.
"Ballistae, fire!" Thorzen commanded.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The massive, rune-engraved bolts, enchanted by Hephaestus's power to shatter on impact, lanced out from the towers. They struck the leading rams, and detonated. Shards of wood and metal scythed through the orcs surrounding them, turning the tools of siege into weapons of mass slaughter.
But they came on. Ladders slammed against the wall. Orcs began to climb.
"Clan Guard, to the wall! Repel them!" Wan's voice boomed, steady as a mountain. He and Bastion positioned themselves at the most heavily contested point, a living bulwark. Orcs reaching the top of the ladders were met by Wan's immovable shield, which he used not just to block, but to shove, sending ladders teetering back with a dozen screaming warriors still clinging to them. Those few who made it over were crushed by Hector and Bulwark, who fought as a single, grinding engine of destruction.
Thorzen did not remain idle. He moved along the battlement like a storm, his hands weaving spells. He didn't use grand, flashy evocations. He used precision. A lance of ice to freeze an orc shaman solid mid-incantation. A localized gravity well to drag a dozen climbers from a ladder, their bodies crushed against the ground. A telekinetic shove to send a cauldron of boiling pitch, prepared by the goblins, splashing perfectly over a ladder swarming with hobgoblins.
The battle became a symphony of controlled, brutal violence. The Clan Guard, inspired by their Sentinels and protected by Rosa's shimmering healing auras, fought with a discipline that belied their numbers. They formed shield walls, rotated wounded comrades to the rear, and delivered killing thrusts with cold efficiency.
But the horde was vast. For every orc that fell, two more seemed to take its place. The Amber Aegis was flickering constantly now, its light growing dimmer under the relentless magical and physical assault.
"The core is being strained," Zek reported, his voice strained. "It cannot hold much longer under this barrage."
"Then we break the barrage," Thorzen said. He looked to the two Sentinels who had yet to be fully unleashed. "Magma. Nyx. Clear the field before the gate. Give the core a chance to recover."
Magma let out a deep, grinding rumble of acknowledgment. It and its guardian, Bedrock, moved to the edge of the battlement directly above the main gate. Below, a sea of orcs was packed tight, hammering at the reinforced wood with a massive ram.
Magma's drill-head began to spin, glowing cherry red, then white-hot. It slammed its forelimbs into the stone of the battlement. Bedrock mirrored the action, slamming its own stone fists down.
[Magma & Bedrock have activated: Seismic Reverberation.]
The ground in front of the gate did not simply shake. It liquefied. A wave of violent tremors radiated outwards, turning solid earth into a churning, sinking morass. Orcs screamed as they were swallowed to their waists, their legs broken by the shifting ground. The siege ram sank into the muck, immobile. The charge dissolved into a panicked, struggling mess.
As the seismic waves subsided, Nyx took its cue.
The Void Drake unfolded its wings, though it did not take flight. It lowered its head, and the amulet around its neck—the circle of the void—flared with impossible darkness. Event Horizon's crystalline foci hummed, channeling and amplifying the power.
[Nyx & Event Horizon have activated: Spatial Rend.]
The air in front of the gate tore. It wasn't an explosion of light and fire, but a silent, terrifying rupture in reality itself. A twenty-foot-wide sphere of space simply… unraveled. Orcs caught within the effect were not cut or burned; they were unmade, their atoms dissociated into their base components. When the effect vanished a second later, there was nothing left. Not even dust. Just a perfectly smooth, hemispherical crater in the liquefied earth.
The battlefield fell into a stunned, deafening silence. The horde's advance had not just been stopped; it had been erased.
On the wall, Thorzen felt a surge of power, a wave of experience so vast it was almost tangible. The system notifications flashed behind his eyes, but he ignored them. His gaze was locked on War-Chief Grull.
The massive orc warlord stood alone in the newly created no-man's-land, his personal guard wiped out by Nyx's attack. He was surrounded by the evidence of his catastrophic failure. His horde was broken, his shamans were dead or routed, his siege engines were destroyed. The unbreachable wall still stood, and upon it, his enemies watched him, unbroken and victorious.
Grull's eyes, burning with a mixture of rage, shame, and a dawning, primal fear, found Thorzen's. He raised his greatsword, not in challenge, but in a final, desperate gesture of defiance.
Thorzen pointed a single finger at him.
The command was silent, but his will was law. From the shadows at the base of the wall, where he had been patiently waiting, Guy and his guardian Stalker emerged. They did not run. They simply walked towards the lone warlord.
Grull turned to face this new threat, bellowing a challenge.
Guy didn't answer. He and Stalker moved with an unnatural synchronicity, becoming blurs of precise, lethal motion. Grull was a powerhouse, his blows capable of shattering stone, but he was a brawler. Guy was an artist of death. He flowed around the orc's attacks, his daggers finding the gaps in the black plate armor—the armpits, the groin, the back of the knee. Stalker harried from the other side, its monomolecular claws screeching against Grull's helmet, blinding him with sparks.
It was over in less than a minute. Grull, bleeding from a dozen mortal wounds, sank to one knee, his greatsword falling from his grasp. Guy stood before him, not even breathing heavily. With a final, graceful motion, he plunged his dagger up through Grull's jaw and into his brain.
The War-Chief of the Gritch Clans slumped to the ground, dead.
The last of the fighting spirit fled the horde. A rout began, as the survivors turned and fled back towards the tree line, pursued by vengeful kobold skirmishers and the occasional, silent arrow from the walls.
The battle for the Aethelgard Conclave was over. They had won.
Thorzen stood on the wall, watching the fleeing remnants of the army. The air was thick with the smell of blood, ozone, and death. He could feel Ares's exultant roar echoing in his soul, the God of War thoroughly sated by the bloodshed. He could feel the cool, calculating approval of Athena. The battle was won, but the work was just beginning.
He turned to look at his clan. They were bloodied, exhausted, but alive. Their eyes were wide with the shock of survival, and then, slowly, filling with a fierce, hard-won pride.
The Harvest of Grull was complete. And from the seeds of this victory, an empire would grow.