A month into the war, the newspapers of Richmond printed only victories.
Philippi, Little Bethel—Virginia had been held, the invader twice humbled.
In parlors and taverns men spoke as if the South were invincible, as if Providence itself had taken the field in gray.
Yet beyond the Alleghenies, fortune had wavered.
In Missouri, at Boonville, a ragged force of Southern volunteers had been scattered in June.
It was the first Confederate defeat of the war, a sobering reminder that not all ground could be held by sheer passion.
The North had celebrated it as proof the rebellion could be broken, only to receive a counter blow two weeks later from the missouri confederates in retaliation.
But in Virginia, the mountains loomed, and the next trial approached.
At Rich Mountain, General Garnett's force numbered scarcely thirteen hundred men.
They were weary, undersupplied, and aware that McClellan himself advanced with over six thousand Union troops.
To the world's eye, the outcome seemed decided: Garnett would be swept aside, the mountain passes opened, and Virginia pierced anew.
Yet Elias had not abandoned them.
Two thousand of his Greybacks had quietly joined Garnett's command, blending once more into the ranks as foreign volunteers.
They dug, they scouted, they fortified.
To the ordinary Virginian, they were silent allies.
To Garnett, they were the difference between annihilation and survival.
The morning of July 11th dawned with fog clinging to the ridges.
Pickets along the mountain road heard movement below—the crack of branches, the dull rumble of wagons.
McClellan's blue columns were climbing, their bayonets glinting like cold teeth in the mist.
Captain Varga stood on the forward slope, his coat damp with dew, eyes fixed on the valley below.
He had walked the ridgeline through the night, inspecting every placement, every line of fire.
His men crouched in rifle pits, patient and unnervingly still.
Through the System, his message carried east:
Enemy advancing in strength—several divisions.
Our numbers appear meager, but position favorable. Engagement imminent.
The reply came as always: brief, silent, implacable. Hold.
By late morning the Union had formed in the valley.
Artillery was dragged into place, muzzles lifted to the heights.
Skirmishers pressed upward, probing, firing blind into the brush.
Then the cannon roared, shaking the mountain.
Earth and stone splintered; branches cascaded down.
But when the bluecoats advanced, the ridge itself answered, with fire and smoke not simply a rearguard defending the retreat, but a true defensive action.
A withering volley lashed out from the tree line, dropping men in swathes.
Another followed before the smoke had even cleared.
The Greybacks fired as one, their discipline unnerving, each shot measured and deliberate, like 2,000 sharpshooter all never missing their target.
Union officers shouted for their men to press forward, to take the slope.
But the mountain seemed alive with fire, every hollow and rock spitting death.
"God Almighty,"
muttered one Federal captain,
"they fight like men possessed."
The struggle lasted hours.
Union brigades surged again and again up the ridge, their drums and bugles urging them on.
Each time, the volleys broke them, men tumbling back through the fog, leaving the ground littered with muskets and bodies.
At the Confederate center, Garnett himself watched in awe.
His thirteen hundred should have been swept aside in the first charge, yet the line held as though reinforced by stone.
He saw Rex stride calmly along the embankment, directing fire with the assurance of a veteran commander.
When militia wavered, Greybacks filled the gaps without hesitation, not even minding if the milita abandoned their posts and feld in terror.
"They are no common men,"
Garnett whispered, though none around him understood the truth.
By midday, Union artillery had battered the ridges into scars of dirt and smoke.
Yet still the defense did not break.
Cavalry attempted to flank through a narrow ravine, only to be cut down by precise volleys that struck as if foreseen.
Again and again, the Federals found their strength blunted against an unyielding wall.
The climax came in the late afternoon.
McClellan, frustrated and unwilling to report failure, ordered a final full assault.
Five regiments massed at the slope, drums beating furiously, officers waving their swords high.
They surged upward in a roar, bayonets gleaming.
The Greybacks waited until the enemy was halfway.
Then, with perfect timing, they unleashed a storm.
Volley upon volley poured down, faster than any natural army could sustain.
Men fell in heaps; colors tumbled into the mud.
The survivors pressed on, colliding at last with the Confederate earthworks.
For a moment, chaos reigned.
Bayonets thrust, rifles cracked at point-blank range, men grappled hand-to-hand in the smoke.
Rex himself led a countercharge, his blade flashing, his voice cutting through the din.
Greybacks moved with inhuman coordination, striking where the Union line faltered.
Within minutes the assault wavered—then collapsed.
Federal soldiers broke, stumbling back down the slope in ragged retreat.
Some threw muskets aside; others clawed over their own dead to escape.
The bugles called withdrawal, mournful against the ridges.
Rich Mountain was held.
As evening settled, the fields below were silent but for the cries of the wounded.
Union dead numbered in the thousands—greater than half their total number in casualties between killed, wounded, and missing.
Confederate losses were astonishingly light: fewer than a hundred dead, and a few hundred wounded.
Garnett's army, expected to be shattered, stood intact.
Campfires flickered along the ridge, their light dancing over faces lined with disbelief.
The men spoke in hushed tones of the miracle they had seen, how a handful of Virginians had repelled McClellan's host.
Songs rose again, ragged but defiant, carrying into the mountain night.
Garnett rode the line, speaking quietly to his men, offering thanks.
But when he reached Rex and the foreign volunteers, he dismounted, saluted, and said simply:
"Gentlemen, you have saved Virginia."
But more than that, they had saved a general, and in doing so prevented the rise of McClellan within the union ranks, leaving the command of the Potomac to anothers hands instead.
Rex was quick to mentally report their success along with total casualty numbers through the system link to Elias.
For the Union, Rich Mountain became a humiliation.
What had been planned as a decisive strike into western Virginia ended as yet another repulse.
McClellan's reputation, already fragile, was tarnished; his men whispered that the mountains themselves fought against them.
For the Confederacy, it was triumph upon triumph.
No longer did men doubt that Virginia could stand.
And for Elias, watching from afar, the ledger grew clearer: with every field held, with every enemy beaten back, his hidden legion carved its place in history.
The spark had become flame.
The flame now spread across the hills of Virginia, and it would not be easily quenched.
But even still Elias could not hand the confederate forces every victory, he needed them to suffer losses as well, force the hatred on both sides to build until the full might of the americas came crashing upon itself and indoing so further tearing itself apart.