The Spartan Legion emerged from the dense, suffocating mists of the Mire of False Dawn just as the first weak light of dawn bled across the sky. The sight that met them was not the quiet, undefended approach they had planned, but a massive, entrenched obstacle.
They stood facing a vast, open field—the training ground beneath the outer walls of Castellum Ferri. Arrayed against them was the full might of the Knights' Kingdom garrison.
Three thousand men—Knights in gleaming steel plate, heavy infantry forming a bristling wall of pikes, and cavalry massed on the flanks. The sun caught the intricate cross-sigils on their banners, marking them as the enemy.
The Spartans were exactly one thousand.
A wave of tension rippled through the Legion. They were outnumbered three-to-one, miles from their own territory, and facing an army defined by its defensive strength.
But there was no panic. Only a disciplined, coiled silence.
The Commander's Roar
From the Spartans' front rank, Milo, the bulky commander, stepped forward, unarmed, wearing only his simple leather armor. He looked at the vast enemy army, then back at his thousand soldiers, and a terrifying, granite-hard smile spread across his face.
He didn't speak. He roared. The sound was pure primal rage, amplified by the silent expectation of the dawn.
"Look at them!" Milo bellowed, his voice carrying effortlessly across the field, cutting through the morning stillness. "Look at the shining dogs of Castellum Ferri! They stand in rows! They wait for orders! They think the war is a ledger and the fight is a tally of steel!"
He raised his fists, shaking them at the rising sun.
"But we do not fight with steel! We do not fight with numbers! We fight with the Iron Vow! They outnumber us by two thousand, yes! But do they have a thousand hearts beating for the same, absolute cause?"
He paused, letting the question hang in the air.
"They are fat on stolen harvest! They are slow in heavy steel! They are individuals counting coin! But you! You are the Legion! You are the shield of the free people! You are brothers and sisters, forged in the heat of the same purpose!"
Milo pointed his hand toward the massed ranks of the Knights.
"Every Knight you face has the weight of their fear on their shoulders! They are afraid to bleed! They are afraid to die! But you, Spartans, you know the truth of the Iron Vow!"
His voice dropped, becoming a low, chilling promise.
"They will pay for the desecration of the Shrine! They will pay for the stolen Harvest! For every one of them that falls, fifteen of us will take them into the darkness! This is not a battle for a patch of ground. This is the moment you become legend!"
Milo drew his short bronze sword and held it aloft.
"You have seen your foe! You know their arrogance! Now, Legion! Show them what one thousand hearts can do! Show them the Iron Will!"
The Charge
Milo dropped his sword, letting the bronze clatter against the ground. He turned, facing the enemy, and began to run.
The thousand Spartans followed without a single command.
The entire Legion charged, a wave of disciplined, devastating force, their war cry ripping the morning air:
"FOR THE REALM!"
The collision was a catastrophic eruption of noise and violence. The Spartans, lighter and faster, aimed for the gaps between the heavy, slow-moving Knights. The Knights' front ranks were instantly overwhelmed, their disciplined pike wall shattering under the savage focus of the Legion.
The Spartan code of cooperation was immense: before one Spartan was felled, they had opened the way for their shield-brother to take down five, ten, fifteen of the foe. They fought not as individuals, but as a single, multi-bladed organism.
K-7: The Iron Talon
Liam/K-7 moved with the cold, absolute precision of a machine. He sought out the greatest dangers—the mounted cavalry that threatened to break the Legion's flanks.
A Knight, armored in black steel, charged him, lance lowered. K-7 did not sidestep. He drove his short sword up and through the horse's flank, then used the beast's panicked collapse as a launchpad. He vaulted onto the horse's back, using the momentum to spin and drag the mounted Knight clean from the saddle.
The Knight landed with a deafening clang. K-7 was already on him, driving the point of his bronze blade into the thin seam of the gorget before the Knight could even right himself.
Kill.
He dropped down the Knights from their horses, killing upon killing. His focus was absolute: isolate the threat, exploit the weakness, terminate. The field around him became a churn of broken steel and fallen banners.
The Duel of Champions
Suddenly, a presence cut through the chaos.
A figure of immense, personal strength—a True Knight—came into view. He was clad in ancient, gold-etched armor, and his movements were terrifyingly swift. He was not a garrison soldier; he was a champion.
The True Knight was a whirlwind of deadly skill. With a massive two-handed sword, he cut down three Spartans in quick succession, his blade moving too fast for their coordinated defense.
He roared a challenge that was lost in the din, and then his eyes locked onto K-7, recognizing the smaller, faster warrior as a key threat.
The True Knight advanced on Liam.
Their clash was immediate and brutal.
Phase I: The Weight of Steel
The True Knight opened with a devastating overhead strike, aiming to cleave K-7 in half. K-7 didn't block; he deflected. He leaned into the strike, using his small shield to guide the huge blade past him, letting the momentum carry the Knight slightly off balance. This move was not strength, but calculated physics.
The Knight, surprised by the maneuver, was immediately forced back as K-7 countered with a blindingly fast series of low, deep thrusts aimed at the Knight's unarmored joints and the leather of his leggings. The Knight had to use his massive sword to parry the tiny bronze blade, his heavy armor suddenly a hindrance.
Phase II: Exploiting the Flaw
The True Knight roared in frustration and transitioned to a flurry of complex, beautiful sword work—the kind of technique that won duels. K-7 ignored the beauty. He noticed the Knight's movements were always focused on the center line.
As the Knight executed a sweeping strike, K-7 took a controlled step back, letting the edge of the blade just graze his shoulder armor. It was a calculated risk. The Knight expected a heavy parry or a retreat.
Instead, K-7 dropped his shield, letting his body become liquid. He darted under the Knight's sweeping arm, using the Knight's own armor as a blind spot, and drove his shoulder hard into the Knight's solar plexus. The air rushed out of the Knight's lungs.
Phase III: The Decisive Move
The True Knight stumbled back, gasping, momentarily vulnerable. K-7 did not follow up with a kill shot. He was calculating the greater threat. The duel had drawn attention.
K-7 instead spun, using his disorientation to launch himself onto a fallen horse's saddle. He then used the leverage to launch the Iron Talon Gauntlet—his bare hand—at the Knight's helmet. It was an awkward, open-handed strike, seemingly ineffective.
But K-7 was aiming not for the Knight, but for the crevice between the helm and the pauldron. The blow struck the joint and, using the principle of leveraged rotational force, it momentarily locked the Knight's head in place.
The Knight stood frozen, trying to turn his head, his wide stance gone, his momentum lost.
K-7 was about to deliver the killing thrust when a sound, alien and terrifying, cut through the battle.
The Retreat
HISSS-WHEW!
A distant, whistling sound, growing rapidly louder. It was the sound of air being violently displaced.
Liam's mind—the CIP, the memory of arcane combat, the tactical awareness that transcended his Spartan identity—briefly surfaced. He didn't know how, but he knew this sound. It meant only one thing.
"EVERYONE! DOCK! NOW!" Liam/K-7 roared, his voice cutting through the battle.
The Spartans, trained to obey the Vanguard's urgent command without question, immediately reacted. They dropped their formations, throwing themselves onto the ground.
Liam drove his blade into the True Knight's thigh—not to kill, but to incapacitate—and threw himself behind the shattered wooden hull of a fallen siege weapon.
A second later, the sky filled with arrows.
THWUMP-THWUMP-THWUMP.
Thousands of fletched shafts descended like deadly rain, fired from the walls of Castellum Ferri. They struck the ground, the armor, and the few Spartans who hadn't instantly obeyed, turning the dense combat zone into a slaughter pen.
But the majority of the Spartans were alive. Having immediately dropped, they used their own shields, and the heavier, metal shields stolen from the fallen Knights, to cover their heads and backs, weathering the lethal storm.
Liam/K-7 watched the rain of death fall, the Spartan charge stalled, the field littered with arrows and the bodies of the slower Knights caught in the open.
The battlefield was silent now, save for the muffled groans and the incessant hiss of arrows slicing the air. The war had just paused.