Lily Violet and Claire Bell stood outside the smoking remains of the Golden Lion Tavern, their expressions thunderous. For twenty straight minutes, they'd endured the tavern owner's screaming. Not only had their Commanders blown the roof clean off the building, but the Vice Commanders were left to empty their own coin purses to pay for the structural wreckage and silence the panicked patrons.
Lily snapped open her silver pocket watch, glaring at the ticking hands. "An absolute waste of time and gold."
"Civilian priorities," Claire agreed, sighing heavily from her perch. She was comfortably settled on Ser Duncan's massive shoulder again, half-swallowed by her oversized black cloak.
Behind them, a hundred heavily armed infantrymen from Bella Snow's southern unit marched in lockstep.
Bella jogged up alongside the Vice Commanders, her white tail lashing with nervous energy. "We can still make the Capital in time for the meeting, right, Lily?"
Lily snapped the watch shut. "Barely."
A sudden commotion shattered the quiet of the King's Highway. Up ahead, a gang of rugged bandits had swarmed a merchant's wagon, dragging the screaming driver down into the muddy road.
Ser Duncan's eyes lit up. "Bandits!"
"Let's go!" Bella yelled. Golden Paladin mana flared around her fists, eager for an excuse to fight.
"No." Lily's voice cut through the excitement like ice. She stepped in front of the towering Paladins, dark eyes narrowing. "You two will just blow up the wagon along with the merchant. Leave this to me."
Before Bella could argue, Lily vanished.
Clutching the pocket watch, she surged down the road. Dense, dark purple mana bled from her fingers into the ticking gears, projecting a massive, invisible dome over the ambush.
Inside the barrier, time seized.
The bandits slowed to an agonizing crawl. To them, Lily was nothing but a blurred shadow drifting through their ranks. No explosive force. No battle cries. She just drew her rapier and wove through the frozen men with clinical precision.
Stepping past the edge of the dilation field, Lily clicked her watch shut. "Twelve seconds wasted."
Time snapped back into place. The bandits, completely unaware they'd been cut, raised their crude swords to charge. Before a single boot could hit the dirt, all twenty heads slid cleanly from their shoulders and hit the ground in unison.
Claire and Ser Duncan offered polite, enthusiastic applause at the flawless execution. Bella just crossed her arms and puffed out her cheeks, furious she didn't get to punch anyone.
Hundreds of miles away, the freezing winds of the northern border carried no such levity.
Three hundred hired swords rode silently into a snow-choked valley. Their eyes shared a dead, glazed-over purple hue—marionettes stripped of their free will by High Mage Kelvin's magic.
"Hold!" a Dwarven Captain barked as the riders neared the resting army's perimeter. "State your business! Our deal is done. Where's the wagon?"
The mercenaries offered no answer. Driven by Kelvin's unseen command, they suddenly spurred their mounts, scattering in a wild, violent charge directly into the dense lines of the resting Dwarven infantry.
"What are you doing?!" the Captain roared, drawing his war-hammer in panicked confusion. "Stop them!"
Miles away on a snowy ridge, High Mage Kelvin and Elara stood over a glowing blue projection of the camp.
"General Ulric was right," Kelvin whispered. A cold light caught in his ancient eyes. "Prisoners are a waste of resources."
With a casual flick of his wrist, he triggered the spell.
Strapped beneath the cloaks of the three hundred mercenaries were heavily modified, highly unstable fire-scrolls. As Kelvin snapped his fingers, all three hundred ignited at once.
The snowy valley vanished into a blinding inferno.
The initial blast vaporized the mercenaries and their horses in a heartbeat. Shockwaves of pure, roaring magical fire tore through the tight Dwarven formation, flash-frying hundreds of heavily armored soldiers where they sat.
The destruction didn't stop there. Rolling waves of flame washed over the front wagons, licking at the Dwarves' final reserves of volatile artillery gunpowder.
The spark caught.
A secondary explosion ripped the valley in half. The sheer concussive force snapped surrounding pine trees like twigs and fractured the bedrock. A devastating storm of twisted iron, splintered wood, and jagged shrapnel scythed through the surviving ranks. Shattered armor and broken bodies were thrown violently into the sky, raining back down onto the rapidly melting snow.
The shockwave hurled the Dwarven Captain fifty feet through the air. He hit a jagged rock with a sickening crunch. Vision swimming and ears ringing violently, he coughed up a terrifying amount of red blood. He tried to push himself upright, only to find his left arm gone—shorn off completely by the flying debris.
All around him, the once-proud Dwarven army was screaming. Those who hadn't been incinerated or crushed by the wagons were now bleeding out in the freezing mud. The biting cold rapidly set in, quietly claiming the lives of the wounded as they painted the snow crimson.
Up on the ridge, the blue hologram flickered and died.
Elara stood in absolute, horrified silence. In less than ten seconds, General Ulric's brutal trap had annihilated the Dwarven Vanguard. Not a single Phoenix Knight had needed to draw a sword.
"The northern border is secure," Kelvin stated flatly. He turned his back on the burning valley. "We march for the Iron Horn."