Chapter 30.2: The Final Battle - Arrival of the Forest Guardian Beasts of Shadowfen
Personal System Calendar: Year 0009, Days 1-28 Month XI: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6854, 11th month, 1st to 28th Day
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Strategic Assault
The battle continued to rage day and night without respite. The defenders, both beast and human, had fought bravely and held their ground admirably, but they were reaching the limits of what they could endure. Exhaustion was becoming as dangerous an enemy as the invading forces themselves.
To make matters significantly worse, the Shadowfen beasts weren't only attacking the Lonelywoods Forest. They had simultaneously launched assaults near the edge of their own territory, the Lonely Forest of Shadowfen, targeting the border regions where imperial reinforcements would need to pass. This was a tactical maneuver designed to ensure that no external forces like the empire could easily intervene to help Lonelywoods defenders.
The beasts conducting these blocking operations didn't need to be the strongest monsters Shadowfen possessed. These assaults were meant to dissuade and delay any reinforcements, creating a cordon that would isolate the main battlefield. It was a brilliant tactical maneuver orchestrated by Pico the Wise Old Owl, demonstrating why she had earned her reputation for strategic thinking.
While most observers simply saw beasts rampaging to an unusual extent, those with more sophisticated tactical analysis had already identified the unusualness of the pattern. This wasn't random aggression or territorial instinct. This was a coordinated military strategy on a scale rarely seen in beast conflicts.
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Talon Two: Mandibles
Back in the forest, Talon One and Talon Two or the newly designated team name (Mandibles), who had collectively adopted the name "Mandibles" for themselves in reference to the beak parts of predatory birds, had continued pushing the boundaries of their guerrilla warfare operations. They along with Talon One struck the enemy where it hurt most while remaining methodical and careful in their approach.
They had established an agreed-upon policy among themselves: everyone returns home alive. No heroic sacrifices, no reckless last stands. They would take calculated risks, certainly, but not suicidal ones. The goal was to inflict maximum damage while minimizing their own casualties.
Despite this caution, they still sustained injuries, especially the newer Mandible members who were more inexperienced in actual combat. But this war was proving what human limits could achieve when pushed to extremes. The Mandibles were discovering reserves of strength, endurance, and determination they hadn't known they possessed.
Meanwhile in Talon One, their leader August had become a walking arsenal of death, utilizing his wide array of weapons with deadly efficiency. He combined the Emperor's gift, Dorgon's Fang, with his preferred bastard sword in close-range combat, dual-wielding to create a fast-paced whirlwind of slicing attacks. Enemies fell left and right, leaving traces of blood and burnt flesh wherever he passed. The unquenchable fire that trailed from Dorgon's Fang created additional chaos, igniting fur and vegetation alike.
At mid-range, he switched to his spear, using its reach advantage to pierce charging enemies before they could get close to him in melee distance. He employed his daggers for precision strikes, targeting vulnerable points like eyes to blind and distract opponents, and creating openings for follow-up attacks from different angles.
At longer ranges, he utilized his bow augmented with magic to increase lethality. His lightning and wind elements allowed him to pierce the tougher hides of defensively focused beasts, while his primary fire element amplified the damage of each strike. Basically, August had transformed into a walking, living meat grinder who could kill most opponents in a single exchange even when not employing his full power.
The rest of Talon One did what they did best: complementing each other's strengths and covering each other's weaknesses. Adam served as their forward tank, absorbing the majority of attacks and creating space for others to operate. His presence set everyone else in motion, allowing them to focus on offense while he handled defense.
Erik and Bren, mounted on their respective beasts, Rexy the Grimfang alpha and Kirpy the Mighty Peregrine Eagle, dominated combat on land and in the sky. They ripped weaker beasts to shreds with coordinated strikes that gave enemies no chance to mount effective resistance.
Wherever Talon One and Mandibles struck, death followed in their wake. They had become a legend among both defenders and attackers, their reputation growing with each successful operation.
But this would change soon enough. The monstrous boss-ranked beasts had now emerged to counter them.
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Ozythalos' Strategy
Elsewhere in the forest, Ozythalos the Equilibrium of the Depths was preparing for an inevitable clash with Pico the Wise Old Owl. That confrontation would likely determine the ultimate outcome of this war, a battle between Arbiter-class Guardian Beasts whose power could reshape entire regions.
For now, Ozythalos was conserving his strength, directing the flow of battle from the backlines rather than committing personally to every engagement. The other Guardian Beasts and beast lords were handling the heavy work, intercepting the brunt of Shadowfen's assault while the great serpent maintained strategic overview and prepared for the critical moment when his intervention would be most decisive.
But even Ozythalos admitted privately that he might need to enter combat sooner than expected. The pressure on the defenders was mounting faster than anticipated. If he waited too long to commit his full power, there might not be a forest left to save.
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The Sovereign of the Sky
Aetherwing and the other Guardian Beasts of Lonelywoods were handling the enemy's attacks with remarkable coordination. Aetherwing had established absolute command of the skies, his presence and that of his offspring creating an aerial superiority that prevented Shadowfen's flying forces from operating freely.
The avian Guardian Beasts also served as an early warning system, literally acting as eyes above the forest canopy. They provided their own forces with vital intelligence about enemy movements, allowing ground forces to position themselves advantageously and avoid ambushes.
So far, the battle for air supremacy had been decisively in Lonelywoods' favor. But the enemy had grown tired of this disadvantage. Now they were deploying more powerful aerial beasts to challenge Aetherwing's dominance, attempting to contest the skies through sheer force of superior numbers and individual power.
It was easier said than done. The sovereign of the sky was not to be challenged lightly, and Aetherwing had no intention of yielding his domain without extracting a terrible price from those foolish enough to try.
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The Emergence of the Behemoths
The arrival of the Behemoths had been long anticipated but dreaded nonetheless. These were beasts of differing species that all could have achieved Arbiter Guardian Beast status in their own right if not for one critical factor: Pico's intellectual superiority.
She had outmaneuvered them politically, crushed them strategically, and forced them to acknowledge her dominance through demonstrations of tactical brilliance rather than pure physical power. They had all crumbled and fallen beneath the weight of her strategic mind, forced to kneel at the talons of a creature who ruled through cunning as much as strength.
These behemoths were the most feared creatures of the Lonely Forest of Shadowfen, ancient beings that had survived for thousands of years. Some were younger, mere hundreds of years old, but still possessed power sufficient to destroy human kingdoms at their whim if they chose to do so.
The reason these beasts didn't regularly assault human territories wasn't fear of individual humans but recognition of humanity's collective danger. Humans bred at rates that made even the most fecund beasts pale in comparison. What humans lacked in individual power, they compensated for through numbers, organization, and technological innovation. A prolonged war with unified human kingdoms would be costly even for creatures as powerful as the Behemoths.
They only emerged from their territories when driven to a significant corner or when Pico issued direct orders. They respected the rule of strength, "Absolute Might Makes Right" and that was why they begrudgingly followed Pico's commands despite their own formidable power.
Of course, they had attempted to overthrow Pico numerous times throughout their long existences. Each revolt had been crushed, not always by Pico herself but by her supporters among the behemoths, creatures like themselves who genuinely admired her vision and leadership. This internal division among the behemoths was one of Pico's greatest strategic advantages, ensuring that they could never unite against her.
These behemoths were diverse in nature, ruling various domains throughout Shadowfen. Some commanded the land, others the waters, still others the skies and shadows. Each had their own territories and vassals, creating a complex hierarchy beneath Pico's overarching authority.
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The Shadow God's Legacy
What made Shadowfen's inhabitants unique among all the great forests was their integration with the power of the deity called Shadowfen, for whom the forest had been named. Shadowfen had been a god in ages past, a being of immense power who had been sealed somewhere within the forest's depths through means lost to history.
His divine essence had not been fully contained by that ancient sealing. The god's shadow continued to corrupt much of the Western Great Forest even in his imprisoned state, transforming it into the dark, twisted place it had become. The creatures who lived within this corrupted realm had absorbed and learned to wield this shadowy divine power.
This made them exceptionally powerful in the darkness and shadowed places, but it also created a critical vulnerability: they were weak against light elemental attacks. Their strength waxed and waned with the presence or absence of illumination.
This weakness meant that Angeline held a significant advantage against them. Her light magic, amplified by her developing connection to a goddess whose manifestation hadn't fully emerged yet, was particularly effective against shadow-corrupted creatures. Among all the defenders in Lonelywoods Forest, she was one of perhaps only ten individuals who wielded meaningful light elemental power.
Her role in the coming battles would be far more critical than her relative youth and inexperience might suggest.
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The Guardian Beasts of Shadowfen
Now these behemoths, the Guardian Beasts of the Lonely Forest of Shadowfen, had begun to move toward the battlefield in force. Unlike the Lonelywoods Forest, which had only four Guardian Beasts corresponding to the four cardinal directions and five if you include Aetherwing in it, although he was not a Forest Guardian Beast but August's Guardian Beast, on the other hand Shadowfen had no such limitations. Their territory was significantly larger, and their Guardian Beast population reflected that scale.
Conservative estimates placed their number at least fifty such creatures, though some intelligence suggested the actual count might be higher. The exact number didn't particularly matter to Lonelywoods' defenders at this moment. What mattered was that even the conservative estimate meant they were vastly outnumbered in terms of Guardian Beast-class combatants.
The situation had just deteriorated from dire to catastrophic.
Twenty of these behemoths had now entered the battlefield, spreading across the contested territory in coordinated groups. They were as huge as mountains themselves, or in some cases as "small" as fifty feet in height, but their physical size bore no direct correlation to their devastating power. They were walking natural disasters in every shape and form, creatures whose mere presence could alter weather patterns and reshape terrain.
They were currently organized into four groups, an unusual arrangement since these powerful beings typically preferred to operate independently. But now they moved in perfect synchronization, coordinated by Pico's strategic direction in ways that maximized their collective impact.
Accompanying each behemoth were the beast lords who ruled territories within their domains. If the Glistening Dread Queen, the beast lord August had killed months ago, was considered one of Pico's adjutants, then these behemoths were her generals, commanders of armies rather than individual fighters.
Each behemoth could lead at least fifty and up to a hundred beast lords of comparable caliber to the Glistening Dread Queen. Beneath those beast lords were Commander-ranked beasts, then Soldier-ranked beasts, then Common-ranked beasts. The hierarchy created force multipliers that amplified each behemoth's threat level to catastrophic degrees.
Currently, twenty such creatures were spread across the vast expanse of Lonelywoods Forest, each commanding their own army of vassals and subordinates. This represented almost half of Shadowfen's known behemoth population committed to a single campaign.
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The Forest-Shattering Clash
This was a clash meant to fundamentally alter or outright destroy the forest itself. The concentration of power now converging on Lonelywoods exceeded anything the region had experienced in recorded history. Ancient trees that had stood for millennia would be toppled. Entire ecosystems would be obliterated. The very geography would be reshaped by the forces about to be unleashed.
For the defenders, the arrival of the behemoths represented a test beyond anything they had prepared for. Fighting common beasts and even boss-ranked creatures was one thing. Facing Guardian Beast-class opponents was an entirely different magnitude of threat.
Colonel Commander Araxes received reports of the behemoths' approach and felt ice settle into his stomach. His military training had covered fighting large-scale beast incursions, but nothing in the empire's tactical manuals adequately addressed confronting twenty Guardian Beast-class creatures simultaneously. The recommended response to encountering even one such creature was typically to retreat and request specialized support.
Retreat wasn't an option here. There was nowhere to retreat to that wouldn't simply delay the inevitable.
August stood on the village walls, watching the distant forest as trees fell in the wake of approaching behemoths. Even from miles away, he could feel the pressure of their presence, the weight of power that preceded their arrival like a physical force.
"Can we even actually survive this?" Adam asked quietly, standing beside him. The usual optimism in the young warrior's voice was absent, replaced by genuine uncertainty.
August didn't answer immediately. He was running calculations in his mind, assessing their available forces against the threat level approaching. The math was not encouraging.
"We have to try our best," he finally said. "There's no alternative. We stand here and fight with everything we have, or we die. Those are the only choices."
Master Ben joined them, his ancient eyes scanning the horizon with an expression August had never seen before: genuine concern bordering on fear. "I've fought in many battles across three centuries," the old wizard said softly. "I've never seen anything quite like this. Twenty Guardian Beasts working in coordination. It shouldn't be possible. The logistics alone, the ego management required to make such powerful creatures cooperate..." He shook his head in reluctant admiration. "The enemy leader is either brilliant or insane. Possibly both."
"Can Ozythalos even stop them?" August asked.
"He can kill any one of them individually," Master Ben replied. "Maybe even two or three if they're foolish enough to fight him simultaneously. But twenty, spread across the entire forest, each commanding their own army? No single being can be everywhere at once, not even an Arbiter-class Guardian Beast."
The implications hung heavy in the air. They would need to somehow defeat or at least stall these behemoths themselves, without relying on Ozythalos to solve every problem. The great serpent would handle what he could, but vast portions of the battlefield would be beyond his reach.
As night fell on the tenth day of winter's war, the defenders of Lonelywoods Forest prepared to face their greatest test. The behemoths were coming, and with them, the possibility of total annihilation.
But they would not yield. Not while they still drew breath. Not while their homes and families depended on them. They would stand and fight, against odds that should have been impossible, because that was all that remained to them.
The forest-shattering clash was about to begin.