I. The Iron Grinder
Tarik did not feel like a man; he felt like a piston in a machine made of black steel.
The Obsidian Phalanx held the courtyard of Obsidios Iubeo. For three hours, the Union mercenaries had thrown themselves against the shield wall, driven by the panic of men who realized there was no way back.
"Lock!" his Sergeant roared through the Flock-Link.
Tarik slammed his Obsidian Scutum against the shoulder of the man next to him. The impact came a second later—a wave of heavy, rusted iron bodies crashing against them. The Union soldiers were screaming, slipping on the mud and the gore of their own dead.
Tarik thrust his Obsidian Gladius through the gap in the shields. He didn't aim; there were too many targets to miss. The blade sank into chainmail, punching through the iron links like paper. The mercenary shrieked—a sound that was too high, too terrified for a battlefield.
Tarik pulled the blade back. He saw the wound. It wasn't bleeding red; it was smoking black. The flesh around the cut was turning grey and crumbling, the anti-regeneration magic unmaking the man while he still breathed.
"Push!" the command echoed in his skull.
Tarik stepped forward. The Phalanx advanced one pace. The crunch of boots on armor was sickening. They were walking over the dead. Tarik looked through his visor at the enemy faces. They weren't fighting for coin anymore; they were fighting for air.
II. The Bankruptcy of Courage
Captain Joren of the Iron Legion Mercenary Company had fought in twenty campaigns. He had never seen a rout like this.
He stood near the shattered gates, trying to rally his men. "Form up! Push them back! We have the numbers!"
But numbers meant nothing in this kill box. Joren watched as his best lieutenant swung a heavy warhammer at a Legionnaire. The blow connected with the black helmet.
It should have cracked the skull. Instead, the Legionnaire didn't even stumble. The Obsidian Plate absorbed the kinetic shock with a dull, impossible thud. The Legionnaire turned, his movement fluid and mechanical, and drove a sword through the lieutenant's breastplate.
"It's magic!" a soldier screamed, throwing down his pike. "The metal is cursed! Look at the wounds!"
Joren looked. The men dying on the ground were rotting before his eyes. The smell was atrocious—not copper and bowel, but ozone and ancient decay.
Then, the horn blew from the rear.
Joren turned. He saw the dust cloud on the road. He saw the banners of the First Legion approaching from the east.
"They aren't bandits," Joren whispered, the cold realization hitting him. "We are the rats in the trap."
The hammer hit the anvil. The rear of the Union army disintegrated as Veridian Vex struck. Joren dropped his sword. There was no pay high enough for this.
III. The View from the Battlement
High on the inner walls, Elara stood with the reserve bucket brigade. She clutched her meat cleaver, her knuckles white.
She looked down into the courtyard. It was a sea of chaos. The gold and red of the Union was being consumed by the inexorable black tide of the Raven Legion.
But her eyes were drawn to the horizon.
To the east, where the rear guard of the Union army was clustered around the baggage train, the sky looked... wrong. The clouds of the Obsidian Ordo were swirling, but not with wind. They were convulsing, like skin around a wound.
She saw the slave wagons—hundreds of women and children trapped in cages, watching the slaughter.
"The sky," Elara whispered to the archer beside her. "Look at the sky."
The air pressure dropped so suddenly her ears popped. The thunder stopped. The screams of the dying seemed to be sucked away into a vacuum.
IV. The Hammer's Desperation
Veridian Vex was covered in blood that was not his own. He hacked through the Union rear guard, his Obsidian Gladius a blur.
"Drive them!" he ordered. "Push them to the walls!"
The First Legion was winning, but the cost was mounting. On his right flank, the Rear Guard companies were fighting a desperate, screaming battle against the Pale Ones that had ambushed them. Veridian could feel their deaths through the Flock-Link—sharp, sudden silences in the collective song.
He had to finish the Union quickly to turn and save his men from the monsters.
He reached the baggage train. The mercenaries here were not fighting; they were looting the wagons, trying to steal horses to flee.
"Leave the wagons!" Veridian shouted to his men. "Secure the civilians!"
Then, the hair on his arms stood up. The Raven Brand on his neck burned with a sudden, freezing cold.
The sound hit him—a tearing, wet screech that vibrated in his teeth.
He looked up. Above the slave cages, the air tore open.
V. The Breach of Reality
On the gatehouse, Obsidian Marshall Garrus Vane gripped the battlement.
"Hold fire," he commanded the archers. "What is that?"
A rift had opened in the sky above the Union rear. It wasn't a portal; it was a wound. Grey, sickly light spilled out, illuminating the battlefield in a corpse-light.
Something fell through.
It landed with a seismic impact that knocked the slave wagons onto their sides. Dust and shadow billowed out.
When the dust cleared, the battle stopped. Union mercenary and Raven Legionnaire alike lowered their weapons, united by a primal, biological terror.
The Malum-Behemoth rose.
Fifteen feet of wet, grey muscle. No eyes. A mouth in its belly. And the faces of the damned pushing against its skin.
It let out a sound that wasn't a roar, but a chorus of screams.
Garrus saw it turn. It didn't look at the soldiers. It looked at the overturned wagon where the children were screaming.
"Veridian is too far," Garrus said, his voice hollow. "He can't reach them."
VI. The Descent
Corvin Nyx stood on the edge of the tower.
He felt the Tear in the world. He felt the Malum leaking into his domain. It was an insult. It was a violation of his Order.
Through Obsius, he saw the monster raise a whip-arm, the bone-skewer poised to impale the cage of children.
Veridian was sprinting, hacking through the stunned mercenaries, but he was fifty yards away. He screamed a denial, but physics was against him.
The monster lunged.
Corvin didn't think. He didn't calculate.
He stepped off the ledge.
He fell like a judgment from the heavens, a streak of violet and black against the grey sky. He channeled every ounce of his Obsidian Magic into his velocity.
The soldiers on the ground looked up. They saw a black star falling.
The Behemoth's arm snapped forward to kill.
BOOM.
The world went white with impact.