The charge began with the rhythmic thunder of war drums that made the very stones of the ancient city tremble.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The mammoths advanced first, a living wall of muscle, metal, and fur that shook the ground with every step, followed by the wolf cavalry deploying in disciplined wings and, further back, the Hobgoblin infantry marching in close formation with shields raised and spears shining under the alien light of the three suns.
"SHIELD WALL!" The voice of Arcturus Stormhand cut through the noise like the crack of a whip. "BLOCK AND HOLD!"
The Ironclads, thirty elite warriors in full plate, drove their tower shields into the cracked pavement in unison, making the metallic sound resonate across the entire plaza. Behind them, a second row of lancers planted their weapons at an angle, creating a bristling forest of steel points.
"Mages!" Kyra Emberclaw raised her staff and fifteen mages formed around her with hands glowing from prepared spells. "Aim for the mammoth platforms! Fire on my signal!"
Renn positioned himself on the right flank with Lily's contingent. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his throat and his shoulder throbbed where Valeria had bandaged it, though the adrenaline was doing a good job of drowning out the pain.
Lily's twenty troops had formed a tight defensive square. Helga and Greta were at the corners with their shields, Bram and Korg anchoring the center, Sera and Lyra with the elven archers providing ranged support, and Thrain patrolling the perimeter like a nervous cat.
"Shadow," Lily said with a tense voice. Her eyes were fixed on the approaching horde, but her free hand found his arm and squeezed it. "Stay close to me."
"Okay," Renn replied, feeling the warmth of her touch through his sleeve.
"How romantic," Valeria commented dryly from his other side. "If you survive the next ten minutes, maybe you can hold hands properly."
"Valeria," Lysandra said behind them with a warning tone. "If you distract my Substitute Lord and he dies, I will be very upset."
"Noted, Your Highness."
The mammoths were two hundred meters away now. Renn could see the steam rising from their massive bodies and the glint of arquebuses being leveled by the marksmen on their backs.
One hundred and fifty meters.
"MAGES!" Kyra's staff blazed with orange light. "FIRE!"
Fifteen beams of elemental magic like fire, ice, and lightning crossed the plaza like shooting stars and struck the vanguard mammoths with explosive force, detonating against their armor in cascades of sparks and steam.
Two mammoths stumbled with cracked and smoking armor, and one fell to its knees with a trumpet cry that made Renn's teeth ache.
But the others kept coming.
"RELOAD!" Kyra yelled. "Thirty seconds!"
Thirty seconds. Renn did the math. The mammoths would arrive in twenty.
"Marksmen taking aim!" shouted Sera, whose elven eyes detected the danger first. "TAKE COVER!"
The arquebuses fired.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!
And then the lead arrived.
Renn heard the whistle and snap of bullets tearing through the air. One of Darian's men jerked back with a red flower blooming on his chest and hit the ground without a sound.
A lancer to Stormhand's left screamed as a bullet shattered the arm holding his shield, and another took a hit to the thigh and fell heavily.
"SHIELDS UP!" Arcturus roared. "DON'T BREAK RANKS!"
Renn pulled Lily down just as another volley tore through the space where her head had been. He felt the hot wind of a near miss against his mask.
"That was close," Lily gasped.
"Too close."
Fifty meters.
The mammoths lowered their heads, aiming their metal-wrapped tusks like battering rams, while the marksmen reloaded frantically with ramrods flashing under the strange light.
"They're going to hit the center!" Bram shouted with a hoarse voice. "Stormhand's line won't hold that impact!"
He was right. Thirty armored soldiers, however skilled, could not stop six tons of charging mammoth multiplied by eight.
"HOLD!" Arcturus planted his feet and his entire body began to glow with golden light, a defensive aura that spread to the warriors around him. "FOR THE ALLIANCE!"
Renn looked at Lysandra. The cat girl was still standing casually with her arms crossed, watching the charge with the interest of someone looking at an ant farm.
"Lysandra," Renn said urgently. "Now would be a really good time."
"Not yet," she replied calmly.
"They're going to die!"
"Probably. But if I act too soon, the others won't learn anything. Besides..." Her cat ears twitched. "I want to see how the humans handle it first. It's educational."
"Educational?! A moment ago it looked like you wanted to jump into battle!"
Twenty meters.
Renn could see the lead mammoth's eyes now. They were burning red, filled with magic-induced fury, and the Hobgoblins on its back were grinning in anticipation of the slaughter.
Ten meters.
Arcturus Stormhand raised his shield.
Five meters.
"NOW!"
The impact...
It did not come.
Or rather, it arrived, but not in the way anyone expected.
A fraction of a second before the lead mammoth obliterated Stormhand's shield wall, the air in front of the Ironclads flickered.
The mammoth hit an invisible barrier and stopped dead. It was as if it had crashed full speed into a mountain.
The beast's legs buckled, its tusks crumpled like aluminum foil, and the platform on its back was catapulted forward, sending the Hobgoblin marksmen flying through the air in a tangle of screaming limbs and arquebuses.
The mammoth coming behind it could not stop in time and crashed into its companion with bone-breaking force. Then the third hit the second. Then the fourth.
In the span of three seconds, the unstoppable charge turned into a catastrophic pileup of wounded beasts and scattered riders.
"What..." Arcturus Stormhand stared at the wreckage in front of him with his shield still raised and his defensive aura still burning. "What just happened?"
Renn looked at Lysandra.
She was examining her nails again.
"Spatial anchor," she said as if she were chatting. "I simply told that particular section of space that it was no longer allowed to be breached by large objects moving at high velocity, and physics obeyed."
"You... stopped a mammoth charge with physics?" Lily asked, her voice trapped between awe and disbelief.
"Eight mammoths, actually. The others were collateral damage." Lysandra looked up. "Also, the wolf cavalry is flanking. You might want to deal with that."
"WOLVES!" Sera's scream cut through the moment of shock. "LEFT AND RIGHT! THEY'RE SURROUNDING US!"
The wolf riders, seeing their mammoth support turned into a disaster, had adapted instantly. Two groups of fifty each were sweeping wide around the flanks, trying to encircle the Alliance formation.
"Emberclaw!" Varic's voice was sharp. "Suppression fire on the left flank! Darian, hold the right! DON'T LET THEM CLOSE THE CIRCLE!"
Kyra's mages turned, casting spells at the approaching wolves. Fire, ice, and lightning brought down the first wave, but there were too many, they were too fast, and the mages needed time to reload.
"They're going to break the line," Greta said with the flat voice and certainty of a veteran who had seen this scenario too many times. "We can't cover both flanks."
"Shadow," Lily said, turning to Renn. Her orange eyes shone with controlled fear and absolute determination. "Your people. Can they...?"
"Valeria," Renn said simply.
The crystal assassin smiled.
"Finally."
She moved.
Renn barely processed what he was seeing. One moment she was standing beside him and the next she was forty meters away, in the middle of the wolf pack charging from the left.
Valeria's daggers became blurs of purple light and every strike was surgical and precise: throat, eye, heart, spine. The wolves fell without knowing what had killed them and the riders slumped from their mounts, dead before hitting the ground.
She danced through the pack like water through a sieve, untouchable and lethal. A wolf tried to snap at her with jaws that could crush steel, but she simply was no longer there and the beast's own momentum carried it onto her blade.
In thirty seconds, the left flank assault crumbled. Fifty riders became a scattered mess of corpses and terrified survivors fleeing back toward their lines.
"By the Ancients," Sera whispered. "What is she?"
"Expensive," Renn said, because he couldn't think of a better answer.
"The right flank!" Thrain shouted, pointing with his twin swords. "They're still coming!"
The wolves on the right flank, emboldened by the destruction of the mammoth charge and still unaware of what Valeria had done to their comrades, were seconds away from crashing into Darian's poorly organized defensive line.
And Renn could see that Darian's men were breaking. The arrogant Lord who had tried to swindle Lily was screaming orders that no one followed, while his kobold troops scattered in all directions.
"They're going to collapse," Lily said. "If Darian's flank falls, the wolves will roll up our entire line from the side."
She was right. Basic tactics. And if that happened, they would all die.
Renn looked at Lysandra.
The Princess of the Celestial Court watched Darian's panic with an expression of mild disgust.
"Pathetic," she murmured. "He has resources and troops, and he wastes them through incompetence."
"Can you help them?" Renn asked.
"I can," Lysandra said slowly, turning those amber eyes toward him. "But should I? That particular human tried to exploit Miss Thornwhisper for profit. Why should I save someone like that?"
It was a fair question. A cold question. A celestial question.
Renn thought of Torvald's melted corpse. Of the young redhead soldier eating rations with shaking hands. Of Lyra's bright eyes, of Bram's rough competence, and of all the other people here who would die if the line collapsed.
"Because they don't deserve to die for his mistakes," Renn said quietly.
Lysandra held his gaze for a long moment. Then her ears twitched, that small sign that meant she was pleased with something.
"You have such inconvenient morals, Substitute Lord," she said. "Fine."
She raised her hand.
The wolves charging Darian's position suddenly... stopped running. Renn could see them struggling, pumping their legs, clawing at the stone, but they were no longer moving relative to the ground beneath them.
No, that wasn't quite right either. Renn's eyes watered trying to parse what was happening. The wolves were still moving at full speed... but sideways. Gravity had rotated ninety degrees just for them.
The entire pack of fifty wolves and riders tumbled across the plaza, perpendicular to their original trajectory, turned into a chaotic grinder of howling beasts and screaming hobgoblins that crashed into one of the ancient buildings with catastrophic force.
The building, already weakened by millennia of decay, collapsed on top of them.
Problem solved.
"Done," Lysandra said, lowering her hand. "Your morals have been satisfied and I have saved idiots who didn't deserve it. Are we finished with dramatic rescues or should I prepare more spatial anomalies?"
"The infantry!" Korg shouted. "They're advancing!"
With their cavalry devastated and their mammoths in chaos, the Hobgoblin infantry had done what disciplined soldiers do when their first plan fails. They adapted. Four hundred Hobgoblins in heavy armor advanced in a closed phalanx formation, shields interlocked, spears bristling, moving with the mechanical precision of a war machine.
And behind them, the shamans chanted.
"Magic buildup!" warned one of Kyra's mages. "Multiple sources! They're casting something big!"
Renn felt it too, a pressure in the air like the moment before a storm breaks. The shamans' staves glowed with a sickly green light and the runes carved into the Hobgoblins' armor began to pulse in response.
"Buff magic," Lysandra observed. "They're increasing the strength and stamina of the infantry. Standard military enchantment, but applied to four hundred soldiers simultaneously. Impressive coordination, actually."
"Can you stop it?" Lily asked.
"Yes. But..." Lysandra tilted her head, listening to something only she could hear. "...it seems that won't be necessary."
"What do you mean?"
Lysandra smiled and pointed up.
"Because she wants to play too."
Renn followed her gesture and saw Valeria standing atop one of the ancient statues, a three-armed figure from an extinct civilization. The assassin had somehow scaled twenty meters of smooth stone without anyone seeing her.
She raised her hand and her crystal daggers began to vibrate with a high, sharp note that made Renn's ears ache.
"Resonance cascade," Valeria said, her voice carrying across the plaza with unnatural clarity. "Tactical application: Anti-personnel crystal storm."
She threw.
The daggers multiplied in the air. Two became twenty, then two hundred, then thousands. A glowing purple cloud of crystal death hung over the battlefield like a frozen constellation.
Then they fell.
The shamans' chanting cut off mid-syllable as the crystal storm descended. Every shard found a target with precision. Through gaps in armor, through slits in helmets, through the joints where plate met mail.
The shamans fell first and their buff spell collapsed with a thunderclap of released energy that knocked over the nearest Hobgoblins. Then, the crystal rain swept through the infantry formation like a scythe through wheat.
It was not total annihilation, as the Hobgoblin armor saved many and their shields deflected the worst of it, but it was devastating. When the crystal storm dissipated, the phalanx was broken. Dozens had fallen, dozens more were wounded, and the perfect mechanical precision of their advance had been shattered into chaos.
"NOW!" Varic roared, feeling the moment. "COUNTER-CHARGE! HIT THEM WHILE THEY'RE DISORGANIZED!"
Arcturus Stormhand did not hesitate. "IRONCLADS! WITH ME!"
The shield wall broke into a wedge and charged. Thirty warriors in full armor, moving as a single unit, slammed into the disoriented Hobgoblin infantry with the force of an avalanche.
The sound was incredible. Metal against metal, war cries, and the crunch of breaking bones. The Ironclads drove deep into the enemy formation, splitting it like an axe through rotten wood.
"My Lady!" Helga shouted. "Orders?"
Lily's eyes shone with battle fever as she raised her sword.
"Squad! Wedge formation behind Stormhand! We're punching through!"
"FINALLY!" Greta laughed with a wild sound. "I WAS GETTING BORED!"
Lily's twenty troops formed up and charged. Renn found himself running with them—when had he started running?—sword in hand, legs pumping, and the world narrowing down to the green-skinned enemies before him.
A Hobgoblin lunged at him with a spear. Renn deflected it with his blade, using basic form, third position, just as Valeria had drilled into him. Helga's axe took the Hobgoblin's head off before Renn could follow up.
"KEEP FORMATION!" Helga roared at him. "YOU ARE NOT A SOLO FIGHTER!"
Right. He wasn't. He was part of a unit.
They pushed deeper into the melee. Bram was at the tip of their wedge, shoving Hobgoblins aside with his shield as if they were bowling pins, while Korg fought at his side with his kitchen knife turned surprisingly effective weapon. Thrain was a whirlwind of twin swords, cutting down anyone who tried to flank.
Sera and the elven archers had climbed a ruined wall and were eliminating targets with surgical precision; every arrow found an eye or a throat.
And Lily... Lily fought like a woman possessed. Her sword glowed with light magic, shearing through Hobgoblin armor like tissue paper. She was everywhere at once. Protecting Renn's blind side, covering Helga's back, marking targets for Sera.
"LEFT!" Lily shouted.
Renn spun and saw a massive Hobgoblin, one of the three-meter mutants, swinging a battleaxe at his head. He couldn't block that. The weight alone would shatter his sword.
He dropped to the ground.
The axe passed over him with a hiss that parted his hair. The mutant grunted in surprise.
And then Lysandra was there.
She had moved from the back line to the front in the space of a heartbeat, and she was not happy. The boredom was gone from her eyes, replaced by a cold, feline fury.
"Did you just try to kill my Substitute Lord?" she asked the mutant Hobgoblin as if making conversation.
The creature roared and swung the axe at her.
Lysandra caught it with one hand. The axe blade stopped inches from her face as if it had hit an invisible wall.
"That was rude," she said.
Then she squeezed.
The metal of the axe head crumpled like aluminum foil and the mutant Hobgoblin stared at his destroyed weapon in disbelief.
Lysandra put her other hand on the creature's chest and pushed.
The Hobgoblin flew backward twenty meters, smashed through two of his own soldiers, and embedded himself in a wall with enough force to crack the stone.
"Anyone else?" Lysandra asked the battlefield at large, with a voice that somehow carried over the din of combat.
The nearest Hobgoblins looked at her and decided to find somewhere else to be.
"Renn!" Lily pulled him up. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I'm... look out!"
A wolf, one of the stragglers from the collapsed cavalry, had managed to break through the lines and was charging straight at Lily's back, jaws gaping, aiming for her neck.
Renn didn't think. He threw his sword.
It was a terrible throw. His form was wrong, the balance was off, but terror gave it speed. The blade spun end over end and struck the wolf in the shoulder, not deep enough to kill but enough to deflect its trajectory.
The wolf skidded past, sliding on the blood-slicked stone, failing to impact Lily.
Valeria appeared out of nowhere and drove a dagger into its skull.
"Adequate improvisation, Substitute Lord," the assassin said, handing Renn his sword back. "But please refrain from disarming yourself in the middle of a battle. It defeats the purpose of carrying weapons."
"Noted," Renn gasped.
The battle was reaching its climax. The Hobgoblin infantry, trapped between Stormhand's Ironclads and the contingents of the various Lords, was collapsing. Their formation was broken, their shamans dead, and their morale shattered.
"THEY'RE BREAKING!" someone shouted. "THEY'RE FLEEING!"
It was true. The Hobgoblins were retreating in a panicked rout, abandoning their weapons and trampling their own wounded in their haste to reach the safety of their fortress.
"DO NOT CHASE!" Varic's voice cracked like a whip. "REGROUP! DEFENSIVE POSITIONS!"
It was the right call. The Alliance forces were exhausted, wounded, and disorganized. Chasing the enemy to the walls of their fortress would be suicide.
The drums had stopped. The three suns of the alien sky seemed to pulse with a sickly light over the plaza, which was now a nightmare landscape of bodies, blood, and broken weapons.
Renn stood in the middle of it all, panting, covered in blood that was mostly not his own, his sword heavy in his hand.
They had won.
They had actually won.
"Casualties!" Arcturus was shouting. "Roll call! Who fell?"
The answers came in a grim litany: fifteen dead, twenty-three wounded, five critical. A third of their fighting force was inoperable.
But they had faced eight hundred and survived.
Lily appeared at Renn's side. Her armor was dented, her face splattered with blood, and she had a cut above her eye that fortunately wouldn't leave a scar.
She looked beautiful.
"You threw your sword," she said.
"I know. Bad form."
"You saved my life."
"You've saved mine three times today. I'm still in debt."
She laughed and leaned against him. He draped his arm around her shoulders and for a moment they just stood there, breathing, alive.
"Shadow."
Varic was approaching, his armor dented and scorched, blood dripping from a cut on his forehead. Behind him walked Arcturus and Kyra, both looking exhausted.
"Sir," Renn said, trying to straighten up.
"That was impressive specialist support," Varic said expressionlessly. He looked past Renn to where Lysandra and Valeria stood, neither of whom was even breathing hard. "Your... consultants. How much to hire them permanently?"
"Not for hire," Renn replied. "Special contract. Non-transferable."
"I figured." Varic spat blood. "Well, tell them they just saved about two hundred lives. If they want gratitude, they have it. If they want gold..." He shrugged. "When we get out of here, we'll talk numbers."
He turned to address the whole group, his voice echoing across the bloody plaza.
"Listen! We've broken their field army, but we haven't won yet!" He pointed toward the fortress. "Kral'thak is still in there with whatever reserves he kept! The Dungeon Core is inside those walls. We finish this or we die trying!"
A ragged cheer rose from the survivors.
"Thirty minutes!" Varic continued. "Treat your wounded! Redistribute supplies! Then we go in!"
As the Overseer walked away to organize the next phase, Renn felt Lysandra's presence at his side.
"Not bad," the Princess said quietly. "For humans."
"We had help," Renn replied.
"You did. But you didn't break. That counts for something." She looked at him with those unsettling amber eyes. "You're learning, Substitute Lord. How to lead. How to fight. How to survive."
"I'm just trying not to die," Renn said.
"No," Lysandra corrected. "You're trying to keep others from dying. There is a difference. And that..." Her ears twitched. "...is why I chose you."
Before Renn could respond to that absolutely loaded statement, Valeria appeared with medical supplies.
"Sit down," she ordered. "Let me check your shoulder again. You humans are terrible at monitoring your own damage."
While Valeria forced him to sit on a piece of rubble and began cleaning his wounds, Renn looked at the survivors. At Lily organizing her troops. At Bram and Korg sharing a flask. At young Lyra cleaning blood from her bow with shaking hands while Sera comforted her.
At the dead, lying motionless under the alien sky.
They had won a battle. But the war, the real fight, was still ahead.
Inside that fortress, Kral'thak was waiting.
And Renn had a feeling that everything they had faced so far was just the opening act.
"Thirty minutes," he muttered to himself.
"Thirty minutes," Lily repeated, sitting down beside him with a tired smile. "Do you think that's enough time to catch our breath?"
"Probably not," Renn admitted. "But let's try anyway."
She took his hand.
They sat together in the ruins of a dead civilization, surrounded by the aftermath of violence, and for those precious thirty minutes, they simply existed.