The War Room was a silent, humming heart of focused violence. The Advanced Planning Table displayed a real-time tactical map of the eastern frontier. A pulsating red icon marked the source of the corrosive beam—a massive, slug-like construct of iron and obsidian, surrounded by a protective cordon of Ashen Horde warriors. It was positioned just outside the maximum effective range of their wall-mounted ballistae.
"Designate: Soul-Drinker Engine," Xx'orth's voice slithered into their minds, pulling data from Veldrak's Knowledge Seed. "A mobile necrotic focusing lens. It channels sacrificed life force into a beam that unravels magical constructs. It is why they are targeting the Aegis directly and not the physical wall."
"It's also a trap," Torac grunted, pointing to the disposition of the enemy forces. "They've left a clear killing ground around it, expecting a frontal charge. Their main strength is hidden in these two flanking gullies. Classic hammer and anvil. We charge the anvil, their hammer falls on our flanks."
"Then we break the hammer before it swings," Thorzen said, his voice devoid of all emotion save cold calculus. "We do not play their game. We rewrite the rules."
He began placing icons on the map, his movements swift and sure.
"The enemy believes we will defend. We will not. We attack. Our objective is the total annihilation of the Soul-Drinker Engine and its protective force." He placed a blue fist icon directly opposite the engine. "Hector, Torac. You are the Anvil. Take the Aethelgard Phalanx and the Stonehide Ogre contingent. You will advance in a standard shield wall formation. Your job is not to charge, but to draw them in. Be the irresistible target. Make them commit their reserves."
He placed two swift, clawed icons in the flanking gullies. "Zog, Guy. You are the Flanking Blades. Take your scouts and the Scalefolk hunters. You do not engage the main force. Your sole target is the enemy command and control. Isolate and eliminate their officers and shamans. Create chaos in their rear. When their hammer tries to swing, you will sever its wrist."
His gaze swept to the arcane specialists. "Fan, Nyx, Kaelen. You are the Storm. You will not be on the front line. You will be here," he pointed to a small plateau overlooking the battlefield, well behind their own lines. "Your priority is the Engine. Nyx, you will use Spatial Rend to bypass its physical armor and strike its core. Fan, you will protect the group from psychic backlash and necrotic counter-attacks. Kaelen," he looked at the Arcane Entity, "you will perform a Conceptual Refutation on the beam itself. Not the Engine, but the energy it projects. Can you unmake the spell?"
Kaelen's featureless head inclined. "The necrotic beam is a defined arcane process. It can be deconstructed. I will require a stable channeling period and significant mana support."
"You will have it. Rosa and Sanctuary will be with you, providing a healing and warding anchor." He finally looked at the remaining Sentinels. "Wan, you are the Gate. You and the Legion reserve will hold the main wall. Nothing gets through. Magma, you are with the Anvil. When the enemy is fully committed, you and Bedrock will shatter their center. Torax, you are the Redeemer's Fist. You punch holes where Hector and Torac dictate."
He stood back, the plan laid bare. It was complex, multi-layered, and relied on perfect timing and the individual excellence of every component. It was a plan only they could execute.
"The Ashen Horde believes it is besieging a fortress. It is mistaken. It is marching into a forge. And we are the smiths. To your positions!"
The eastern landscape was a study in grim contrasts. On one side, the warm, honeyed light of the Amber Aegis. On the other, a wasteland stained by the Soul-Drinker's necrotic beam, a constant, sizzling stream of green energy that made the very air taste of grave dust.
Just as Thorzen predicted, the Horde's force was arrayed for a defensive engagement. A thousand warriors, a mix of hulking orcs in spiked black iron and smaller, more numerous goblin skirmishers, formed ranks around the massive, pulsing Engine. In the hidden gullies, the light glittered off the armor of their elite reserves.
Hector's voice roared across the field, amplified by a minor enchantment. "Aethelgard! Advance!"
The Anvil began to move. The fifty warriors of the Phalanx, their runed shields interlocked, advanced with a metronomic precision that was unnerving. To their right, a hundred roaring Stonehide Ogres provided a discordant, brutal counterpoint. The ground shook with their passage.
The Horde's front line braced, their own shields coming up. Shamans at the rear began chanting, weaving spells of dread and bolstering.
They never finished.
From the gullies, there were no war cries. Only the wet, final sounds of slit throats and the soft thrum of crossbows. Guy and Stalker were phantoms, their work silent and efficient. A shaman's chant turned into a gurgle. An orc captain reaching for a signal horn found his hand pinned to his chest by a black-fletched arrow from a Scalefolk hunter. The Horde's command structure began to fray at the edges.
On the plateau, the Storm gathered.
Kaelen hovered, its hands extended. Arcane formulae, visible as shimmering gold equations, spiraled around it. "Initiating deconstruction sequence. The beam is a construct of [Entropy], [Soul-Theft], and [Ordered Decay]. I will refute its foundational premise."
A beam of pure, ordered logic, the antithesis of necrotic chaos, lanced from Kaelen's hands. It did not strike the Soul-Drinker. It struck the beam itself, about halfway between the Engine and the Aegis. Where the two energies met, the green beam… stuttered. It fractured, like glass hit by a sonic frequency. Chunks of disintegrated magic fizzled and died.
The Soul-Drinker Engine shuddered, its rhythmic pulse becoming erratic.
"The Engine is compensating! Increasing output!" Fan reported, her eyes closed, a psionic shield shimmering around the plateau as lances of retaliatory necrotic energy were deflected.
"Nyx," Thorzen's command was calm. "Now."
The Void Drake unleashed its power. Space twisted, and a Spatial Rend tore into existence not on the Engine's armored shell, but inside it, bypassing its defenses entirely. There was a sound like a mountain groaning, and a section of the Engine's internal machinery vanished into the void. Green fluid—not blood, but concentrated soul-stuff—erupted from the wound.
The beam flickered and died.
The battlefield fell silent for a single, stunned second.
Then, the Horde's hammer tried to swing. The elite reserves, their officers dead or isolated, charged from the gullies on sheer instinct. But their charge was disorganized, a mob instead of a spear.
They charged directly into Magma.
The Umbral Borer, waiting with the patience of a tectonic plate, met them. It and Bedrock slammed into the ground.
[Seismic Reverberation].
The earth in front of the charging elites turned into a collapsing sinkhole. Orcs and hobgoblins screamed as they were swallowed or had their legs shattered by the violent upheaval. Magma's drill-head glowed white-hot, and it plunged into the chaotic mass, turning it into a charnel pit.
The Anvil, seeing the enemy center waver, stopped advancing.
And then it struck.
"PHALANX! FORWARD… PUSH!" Hector bellowed.
The shield wall, which had been a defensive bulwark, became an offensive weapon. They didn't break formation; they accelerated as a single entity, a 50-ton battering ram of steel and will. They hit the disoriented Horde front line and simply… drove through it. The sound was a continuous, grinding crash of metal and breaking bone.
Torax and Lineage acted as the tip of the spear, the Redeemed's immense strength creating breaches that the Phalanx flooded through, their short stabbing swords finding gaps and seams with clinical precision.
It was not a battle. It was a dissection.
Thorzen watched from the center of the Phalanx, Prime a silent guardian at his side. He did not use grand magic. He was a force multiplier. A localized gravity field would pin a cluster of orcs for the Legionnaires to finish. A precisely timed telekinetic shove would collapse a weakening part of the enemy line. He was the conductor of this symphony of destruction.
Within twenty minutes, the Ashen Horde's expeditionary force was broken. The Soul-Drinker Engine was a smoking, silent ruin. Those who could, fled in a blind panic, pursued by the vengeful Scalefolk and Zog's scouts.
The field was theirs.
As the Legion began the grim work of policing the battlefield and stacking the enemy dead, Thorzen stood over the husk of the Soul-Drinker. He placed a hand on its obsidian shell, still warm with fading necrotic energy.
[Assimilate: Soul-Drinker Engine.]
This was not a creature, but a construct. The concepts he absorbed were different: [Necrotic Focusing], [Life-Force Channeling], [Siege Magic]. It was a dark, ugly knowledge, but knowledge nonetheless. He could feel his Assimilation level creep forward, inching toward the next threshold.
[Assimilation Complete.]
[Assimilation Level 9 Progress: 92%.]
[New Strategic Data: Ashen Horde Siegecraft.]
[Biomass acquired: 25,000 lbs. (Mostly metallic and mineral).]
He turned. His Sentinels gathered around him, bloodied but unbroken. The Phalanx stood in perfect ranks, their new armor scarred but holding. They had faced the first true soldier of a major empire and had not just won, but had annihilated it with negligible losses.
Laeronis, who had observed the entire battle from the wall, approached, his face a mask of stunned reverence. "I have witnessed the legions of the Imperium march. I have seen the wild charges of the Horde. I have never seen anything like that. It was… a single thought given form. A terrible, beautiful thought."
Thorzen looked east, towards the heart of the Ashen Horde's territory. "They thought to break us on their anvil. They failed. Now, they know the quality of our steel." He looked back at his Conclave, his city, his nation. "This was not the end. It was the opening move. The real war is coming."
He raised his voice, letting it carry across the field to every warrior, every Sentinel, every worker on the walls.
"You have proven the Aethelgard Conclave is not a dream. It is a fact! You are the shield of the west! You are the unbreakable wall! Let this be a lesson to all who look upon us with hostile intent! We do not yield! We do not break! We endure! We conquer!"
A roar went up from the army, a sound of pure, unadulterated triumph that echoed against the mountains, a defiant answer to the silence of the dead.
The Anvil had answered. And its voice was thunder.