Corvis Eralith
The world was a cacophony of screams, shattering stone, and the guttural roars of mutated horrors.
Another earth-shattering CRUMPH echoed down the tunnel, followed by the heart-stopping groan of collapsing rock.
Dust, thick as a burial shroud, billowed through the flickering light of dwarven glow-lamps, choking the air. Another artery severed. Another lifeline to the outside world, buried under tons of Darv's own bones.
"Order the Beast Corps to intervene!" The command ripped from my throat, raw and desperate, aimed at Captain Hornfels Earthborn.
His broad face, etched with grime and grim determination, was a familiar anchor in the swirling chaos. He stood like a bastion beside me, his earth magic a constant, rumbling counterpoint to the Alacryan assault.
Another explosion fractured the ambient, closer this time.
The concussion wave slammed into my raised cane conjuring a shield of vibrations made with Accaron—humming in my grip, the black length of my cane was vibrating violently as it dispersed the force into a shimmering wall of oscillating energy.
Behind the shield, a young dwarf soldier stumbled, eyes wide with terror as a chitinous nightmare—a scorpion the size of a train wagon, dripping acidic venom—lunged.
My cane snapped forward. Accaron sang, focusing the vibrating energy into a precise, concussive blast that slammed the beast sideways, buying the soldier precious seconds to scramble back.
"On it, Vice Commander!" Hornfels bellowed back, his voice somehow cutting through the din, thick with the strain of holding the line.
He slammed his gauntleted fist into the tunnel wall, and jagged spikes of rock erupted, impaling two charging Strikers mid-leap. "But they're stretched thinner than dwarven patience at a human feast!"
Panic, cold and sharp, threatened to rise. The scene was a tableau of desperate valor and brutal loss. Dwarven soldiers, faces set in masks of fury and fear, fought with axe and hammer and earth magic against a tide of Alacryan soldiers and their grotesque mana beasts.
Civilians—the old, the slow, the stubborn clinging to ancestral homes—huddled in makeshift barricades, their eyes hollow with terror. A mother screamed, clutching a child as a section of ceiling groaned ominously above them.
I threw out a hand, wind magic surging to solidify the dust-laden air into a cushioning barrier just as rubble rained down. Pebbles pinged harmlessly off it, but the strain made my core ache.
Pebble Machine Gun, I named the next instinctive fusion—wind whipping shards of shattered rock into a lethal barrage that shredded through a cluster of lesser beasts. It lacked poetry, lacked finesse. It was pure, brutal necessity.
"You are the only person," Romulos's voice slithered into my mind, laced with sardonic detachment that felt obscene amidst the carnage, "who contemplates originality while their people bleed out at their feet. Charming. Where, pray tell, are the vaunted reinforcements?"
I wish I knew! The thought was a snarl. Beyond the Meta flared amd my foresight answered—a split-second warning painted in cold, geometric certainty across my vision.
A Striker, cloaked in shadow magic from his Shield, materialized from the swirling dust, dagger aimed for my kidney.
No time for Accaron. Dagonet, the shadow-kissed dagger, was already leaping from its sheath at my wrist, guided by instinct honed in a hundred desperate moments.
It buried itself in the Striker's throat before his Shield could even realize what was going on. Hot blood sprayed my face as he crumpled, gurgling.
I yanked Dagonet back thanks to the shadow created by my sleeve. There was no time to think, only act.
"The Beast Corps are pinned at Burim, Vice Commander!" Hornfels gasped, appearing beside me, his chest heaving. A fresh gash bled freely on his forearm. "A surprise attack. They're holding, but barely."
Burim attacked again. If Burim fell… the intricate web of tunnels, the supply lines feeding the southern Darv resistance, the last bulwark before Vildorial… all would unravel. Vildorial breached meant the plains of Sapin laid open, the Wall flanked and Elenoir isolated.
A cold dread, colder than Darv's deepest mines, seeped into my bones. I couldn't abandon Hornfels, these people, this crumbling outpost. But Burim… Burim was the keystone.
"Hornfels! Where's Mica?" My voice was tight, strained.
"Rushing to Burim!" he shouted back, deflecting a searing bolt of fire magic with a hastily raised earthen buckler. It shattered, showering him in molten fragments. He grimaced but didn't falter.
A thunderous roar shook the tunnel. Berna. My magnificent Guardian Bear was a whirlwind of destruction, a primal force unleashed.
One swipe of her massive, clawed paw sent a mutated wolf-beast crashing into the tunnel wall, bones snapping like dry twigs. Another clamped jaws around a serpentine horror, shaking it violently before flinging the limp corpse aside. Her fury was a beacon, a bulwark against despair. But she was one.
Romulos. The call was internal, desperate. If I leave Berna here… could I make it to Burim? I ducked under a whip-crack of lightning, retaliating by hurling Dagonet coated in high-frequency vibrations from Accaron.
It screamed through the air, shattering an Alacryan caster's protective amulet before the shadow-tendril recalled it. My breath came in ragged gasps. The air was thick with blood, ozone, and dust.
"Consider," Romulos's voice was chillingly analytical, devoid of the battle's heat, "that if you so much as stub your toe on the way, Berna will tear through dimensions to reach you, strategic importance be damned. Your bond overrides tactical nuance."
"However…" A pause, filled with the cold calculus of war. "...Burim is the strategic linchpin. Losing it loses Darv. Losing Darv loses the war."
Grey wasfighting Alacrya's northern fleet off Sapin's coast. Chul, a lone Phoenix firebrand holding sections of the Wall. Mica and Bairon stretched thin across the southern shores. Aya, Varay, Alea—scattered across Elenoir and the vast Beast Glades.
The radio network Gideon and I had built hummed with pleas on every statio, but the distances… the sheer, overwhelming scale. The trains… abandoned dreams buried under the immediacy of survival.
We needed Mordain's power. We needed… a miracle.
Fuck! The silent curse was a white-hot brand in my mind. Burim was too far. Without the Barbarossa, grounded for repairs after the last skirmish with Chul and the logistic impossibility of Darv, I was earthbound, bound to this collapsing tunnel—I really needed that White Core.
Hope was a fragile thing, crumbling faster than the rock around us. Only one path remained. Risky. Desperate. A gambit that could shatter me as easily as the enemy.
Decision crystallized, cold and sharp. "Hornfels!" My voice cut through the din, sharper than Dagonet's edge. "Get every earth conjurer you have! Their only task is hold the ceiling! Keep this cavern from becoming our tomb! Do you understand?!"
He whirled, eyes wide, not with fear, but with dawning apprehension at the intensity in my voice.
"Vice Commander? What madness are you brewing now?"
"The only kind left, Captain," I rasped, sheathing Dagonet. My hand dove into a storage ring, fingers closing around the cool, impossibly dense sphere within. Sylvia's mana core. "Our trump card. Pray it doesn't kill us all in the playing."
I planted my cane's tip firmly on the stone floor, gripping it like an anchor in a storm. The other hand clenched around the Sylvia's mana core, its immense energy humming against my palm, threatening to vibrate my bones apart.
Romulos, I need your help. The command wasn't spoken; it was a psychic bridge flung open, wide and desperate.
"Ah, the 'World Eater' Accaron variation," Romulos purred, a dark thrill resonating through our shared consciousness. "Reminds me of when I stripped that technique oit of General Aldir's skull—at last he was still blinded by Grandfather."
I surrendered control. Not fully, but the delicate, brutal task of channeling Sylvia's core? That was Romulos's domain. Against the Tragedy flared across my skin, intricate runes burning with agonizing intensity as it struggled to contain the power surge.
My own core screamed in protest, a small vessel trying to hold an ocean. Meta-awareness flooded my mind, overlaying the chaos with a grid of optimal frequencies, stress points, escape vectors—a cold, logical map painted over the screaming reality of battle.
Focus on Accaron. On the spell and the spell alone. My entire being narrowed to the black cane in my hands, to the vibrations I needed to birth—not destructive chaos, but a targeted, resonant death.
Romulos took the reins of the dragon core. I felt his consciousness, vast and ancient and terrifyingly alien, merge with the torrent of pure draconic mana.
He didn't force it; he conducted it. Against the Tragedy screamed, the runes glowing white-hot, searing my skin even as they strained to contain the impossible power being funneled through my fragile lesser body.
Agony lanced through every nerve ending, a white-hot fire threatening to consume me from within. My vision blurred, tunnelled. Blood trickled from my nose, warm and metallic.
"NOW, CORVIS!" Romulos's excitement was a clarion call amidst the internal inferno.
I poured everything into Accaron. Not a blast, but a command. A single, focused, ultra-low frequency vibration, amplified a thousandfold by the draconic power Romulos unleashed through me. Accaron became a tuning fork struck by a god. The vibration pulsed outwards, silent, invisible, insidious.
The effect was immediate, yet horrifyingly selective. Our dwarven allies felt it first—a deep, subsonic thrum, unsettling, vibrating their armor, their bones, their teeth. Uncomfortable, jarring, but harmless. A warning buzz.
For the Alacryans and their beasts, it was annihilation. The vibration bypassed armor, ignored shields. It resonated with the water in their cells, with the rhythm of their hearts, with the delicate lattice of their mana cores. It found the fundamental frequency of life within them… and shattered it.
A Striker mid-charge stumbled, clutching his chest. His eyes bulged in profound, silent confusion. Then, without a sound, he collapsed. Blood starting to spill from every pore.
A Caster, magic half-formed on her palm, simply… stopped. Her eyes glazed over, and she slumped. The massive scorpion beast shuddered violently, its chitinous plates cracking like eggshells under an unseen pressure, before its legs folded, and it crashed to the stone, lifeless.
Dozens. Scores. Alacryan soldiers, beasts of war, collapsing in eerie, soundless unison.
Their hearts stopped mid-beat. Their mana cores fractured like spun glass. The cacophony of battle ceased. The dwarven cheers that erupted moments later felt grotesque, a dissonant counterpoint to the silent field of corpses we'd created.
The backlash hit me like a runaway golem. The connection to Romulos snapped. Against the Tragedy's runes flickered and died, leaving my skin raw and blistered. All while Sylvia's core dropped from my numb fingers, clattering dully on the stone, its light dimmed.
I doubled over, my cane the only thing keeping me upright, as a torrent of hot, coppery blood erupted from my mouth, splattering the dusty floor.
Pain, profound and all-consuming, radiated from my core, a hollow, screaming void where power had raged. The cheers of the dwarves sounded distant, muffled, like noise heard underwater.
Victory. It tasted like blood and more blood.
"Look at them, Corvis," Romulos's voice was a cold whisper in the aftermath, devoid of triumph, filled only with a chilling observation. "Rejoicing over the corpses we made. War has always been a fascinating subject of studies to me. Actually was has always been the only topic I agreed with Grandfather more than our Dad. In the end war is irrational making it inconclusive and unsatisfying. Maybe, if I could still consider this war a game of chess with Dad I would gladly make it continue forever, but now? It's just a waste of our precious time."
The weight of the lives extinguished, the silent, efficient horror of the spell, pressed down on me, threatening to crush me beneath the very stone I'd saved. The hypocrisy was a poison ivy, tightening around my throat.
Hornfels was at my side instantly, his strong hand gripping my shoulder, preventing me from collapsing completely. His eyes, wide with awe and a dawning horror that mirrored my own, scanned my battered form.
"Vice Commander! By the Stone's heart…"
"Burim…" I gasped, the word wet with blood. "Get the army… to Burim… Now…" The command was ragged, desperate.
Hornfels nodded, understanding flashing in his eyes. He turned, his voice booming with renewed authority, snapping orders to reorganize, to tend the wounded and to prepare to move.
I leaned heavily on my cane, trembling, tasting iron, staring at the silent field of the dead. The cheers felt like mockery. Romulos's consideration echoed in my skull.
The war felt infinitely heavier each passing day, Agrona's forces starting to flood our borders en mass. And the blood on my hands… it would never wash clean.