A sound tore through the battlefield, distinct from the screams of the wounded and the clang of steel. It was a raw, guttural, many-throated roar of triumph that rolled from the base of the walls and washed over the embattled defenders like a physical wave. "Huzzzaaahhh!" It wasn't a word so much as pure, exultant emotion given voice—the sound of a beast that has finally scented the fatal weakness in its prey. For the men and women of Cinder Town, clinging to the shuddering parapet, it was the peal of their own funeral bell. The gate had been breached.
Through the haze of dust, sweat, and gunsmoke that stung the eyes, Michael saw the source of the exultation. A dozen figures, shadows against the deeper gloom of the main gate's arch, had swarmed over the inner barricade—the Greyhound bus that served as the final, stubborn plug in the town's throat. They moved with the frantic, scurrying energy of carrion insects on a fresh kill, surrounding the three loyal guards who had made their last stand beside the vehicle's massive tires. Even as Michael watched, a sickening lurch in his stomach, one of his men was dragged down, disappearing under a flurry of hacking blades that reflected the harsh, white light of the noon sun. Others among the intruders were already heaving, backs straining, against the rocks and rubble chocked behind the bus's wheels. A groan of protesting metal cut the air. Once that was cleared, the dam would break utterly. The human river outside would become a tsunami inside, and the delicate, bleeding defense on the walls would shatter into a thousand isolated, hopeless slaughters in the dusty streets. It would be over.
A cold, heavy certainty, like a stone settling in his gut, told Michael this was the pivot. The fall. His mind raced, a frantic animal seeking a bolt-hole. The tavern. The portal. It was the only way. He had to get there, had to get as many through as possible. But as he turned, a flicker of motion at the edge of his vision—a blur of dun-colored cloth and pale skin—resolved with terrifying speed. A figure closed the distance between them, moving with the liquid, predatory grace of a striking snake. Sunlight flashed on a thin, wicked length of polished steel—a stiletto. The adrenaline that had been a constant thrum in his veins spiked into a sharp, electric jolt of pure fear. His hand, acting on a deep, lizard-brain instinct, flew to the pistol at his hip. He didn't aim; he pointed and squeezed the trigger.
Click. Click. Click.
The sound was small, pathetic, and utterly damning. Hollow, metallic snaps swallowed instantly by the battlefield's din. The pistol was empty. He'd lost count in the frantic chaos. He was out. Time seemed to thicken, to slow. He saw the blade, the determined set of a jawline he somehow recognized beneath a grimy scarf, the eyes—a startling, familiar shade of amber, wide and fierce. Audra. The Steel Rose. She was upon him. He braced, muscles tensing for the impact, the searing cold punch of steel, the hot flood that would follow.
It never came.
She flowed past him like a malevolent shadow, so close he felt the whisper of air displaced by her passage, caught the strange, incongruous scent of leather, old blood, and a faint, clinging hint of floral soap—a bizarre relic of her other life. He stood frozen, a statue of anticipated death, waiting for the delayed shock, the pain signals to travel from what must be a mortal wound to his stunned brain. Maybe it's better this way,a detached, oddly calm part of his mind mused. Quick. Clean. Probably won't even feel it.
But there was no gush of warmth down his front, no sudden weakness buckling his knees. He spun around, fingers fumbling uselessly at his belt for a fresh magazine that wasn't there. Audra had already skidded to a halt on the gravel six paces away, turning in a swirl of dust to face him. They stood in a pocket of surreal, charged stillness amidst the maelstrom, two duelists in an arena of roaring madness.
"Harry Potter Michael," she spat, the name twisting on her tongue into something ridiculous and contemptible. "What a stupid name. Listen. Run. Now. While the path is still yours to take. I know you have your... tricks. Your back doors. Get to your little stone house. I'll cover your retreat. Consider it a debt paid." Her words were rapid, low, bitten off, and laced with a grudging, furious urgency that was more insulting than any sneer.
The offer hit him like a physical blow, a wave of bitter, acidic shame that burned worse than the thirst in his throat. She was giving him a way out. She, of all people, knew he was beaten. He looked past her, his gaze sweeping the wall. John the Minotaur, a bloody furrow plowed across his furry brow, was a mountain slowly being worn down, holding three raiders at bay with desperate sweeps of his notched rebar spear. Onil was down on one knee, parrying a blow from a massive, notched axe, his face a mask of strain. He saw their faces, etched with exhaustion, dust, and a stubborn, hopeless courage that was somehow worse than fear. How could he leave? This town, these people, the sweet, impossible water from the deep wells… it was everything. The prospective loss was a physical hollowing in his chest.
But to die here, pointlessly, under the boots of savages? The calculation was brutal, instantaneous, survivalist. The tavern. The portal. A fighting retreat. Save who he could. The thought was a cold, thin lifeline, but it tasted of ashes and cowardice. And to accept mercyfrom her? This woman who had robbed him blind, ambushed him on the road, and now offered him a coward's exit with the condescension of a queen tossing a bone to a dog? His pride, a foolish, stubborn flame that had survived office life and interdimensional travel, roared back to life, hot and bright.
"Save your concern for your own hide," he snarled, his voice a hoarse rasp. He dropped into the only fighting stance he knew, a clumsy approximation remembered from late-night television, hands curling into what he hoped looked like formidable claws. The 'Dragon's Claw' technique felt absurd even to him, a pantomime in a slaughterhouse, but it was the only martial language he possessed. "Worry about yourself first! Let's see you try!" In his panic, rage, and the linguistic crossfire in his head, the words tangled. "You start taking your clothes off!"
Audra's eyes, already wide with the intensity of combat, bulged in pure, unadulterated fury. Her knuckles whitened on the stiletto's mother-of-pearl grip. "What?" The word was a venomous hiss.
"I mean—just defend yourself!" Michael yelled, the correction too loud, his face flushing hot under the grime. There was no more time. He reached deep, scraping the very dregs of the flickering, guttering candle of Aura that sputtered in his core. It was a faint, pathetic spark compared to the conflagrations he had witnessed today, but it was all he had. With a wordless cry that was equal parts frustration, bottled terror, and sheer bloody-mindedness, he launched himself at her.
He didn't try to out-fence her, to match her fluid, deadly grace. He was a brawler, a scrapper from a world of playground tussles and bar fights. He ignored her feint, ignored the expert, economical thrust of the stiletto aimed with chilling precision for the center of his chest. He took the hit. The blade struck with a solid, breathtaking THUMP, the impact driving the air from his lungs in a pained gasp and sending a jolt of brilliant agony through his ribs. The modern stab-proof vest and the hidden sheet of salvaged steel beneath his shirt held, but the transfer of force was like being kicked full in the sternum by a horse. Gasping, stars dancing at the edge of his vision, he used the momentum, his own weight becoming a weapon. He crashed into her, wrapping his arms around her slender waist in a clumsy tackle. They went down in a tangled, cursing heap of limbs, weapon, and fury, hitting the hard-packed earth with a joint grunt of pain.
What followed was not a duel. It was a schoolyard scrap catapulted into a life-and-death struggle. There were no techniques, only the raw, ugly grammar of survival. He grabbed a fistful of her sweat-and-blood-matted white hair and yanked. She snarled, a feral sound, and drove a knee up into his thigh with punishing force. He tried to pin her knife-arm; she twisted with an eel's contortionist skill and sank her teeth into the meat of his forearm, right through the sleeve. He roared, more in surprise than pain, and she spat out a mouthful of filthy cloth, aiming a thumb for his eye. They rolled, a cloud of dust marking their chaotic, undignified path—first him on top, then her, a frantic, graceless battle for dominance fought with nails, teeth, elbows, and sheer, brute stubbornness. To any dispassionate observer, it would have been darkly comical. To them, it was utterly, savagely primal.
The triumphant roar from the gate swelled to a deafening crescendo. A sustained, grinding shriek of metal followed. The bus had been moved. The way was open. The sound was a bucket of ice water dashed over Michael's fevered brain. The time for this brutal foolishness was over. Survival. Now. He reared back, ignoring the stiletto that scored a line across his collarbone, and slammed his forehead forward into the bridge of Audra's nose.
Crunch.
Stars, supernovas of white pain, exploded behind his own eyes. A warm, wet gush—her blood—splattered his cheek and filled his mouth with its coppery tang. She cried out, a sharp, pained sound, and her grip loosened for one critical, gasping second. He scrambled off her, vision swimming, the world tilting nauseatingly.
"Tuì!" he screamed, the command bursting from him in his native tongue, the language of pure, unmediated panic. "Suǒyǒu rén! Tùi dào lóu lǐ qù! Xiànzài!" (Retreat! Everyone! Fall back to the building! Now!) The words, in Mandarin, were met with blank, bewildered stares from the nearest guards. The monumental mistake registered a half-second later. He sucked in a ragged, bloody breath and shouted again, the English feeling thick and clumsy. "To the tavern! Fall back! Now! Fall back!"
But the first, unintended command, spoken in the forgotten, tonal syllables of a homeland an unimaginable gulf of time and space away, had already been unleashed. It hung in the charged air, a spell spoken in a forgotten tongue, and triggered a chain reaction of bewildering, battlefield-altering events.
On the wall, the tight knot of a dozen or so raiders of clear East Asian descent—Audra's personal elite, her razor's edge—had just consolidated a vital foothold. They moved with a disciplined, quiet efficiency that set them apart from the raving hordes, forming a small, brutal shield wall, preparing to cleave a corridor for the next wave. Their leader, a grizzled man with a scar bisecting his eyebrow and the calm eyes of a veteran, was opening his mouth to bark an order when the strange, familiar, utterly impossible sounds reached his ears. He froze. His head snapped around, his eyes, sharp as flint, scanning the chaos below until they locked onto Michael. He saw not the embattled Lord of Cinder Town, but a young man with black hair and dark eyes, shouting in the cadences of the Zhongwen, the tongue of the Central State, the Old Language. A look of profound, seismic confusion—the disorientation of a sleeper hearing a childhood lullaby in a nightmare—washed over his weathered face, followed by a dawning, staggering realization. He exchanged a single, rapid, piercing glance with his second, a younger man with a topknot. A decision was made in the space between two heartbeats.
"Tíng shǒu!" (Hold!) the leader barked, his voice cutting through the din with surprising authority. "Tā shì zìjǐ rén! Lóng de zǐsūn! Zhuǎn xiàng! Bǎohù nàgè shuō huà de rén!" (He is one of us! Sons of the Dragon! Turn your blades! Protect the speaker!)
In a move that defied all logic, tactics, and allegiance of the battlefield, the entire contingent pivoted as one. Their weapons, honed for the defenders of Cinder Town, now flashed in the sun as they turned on their former allies. The raiders pressing behind them, caught in a moment of victorious anticipation, were cut down from behind with ruthless efficiency. The breach they had paid in blood to create was suddenly, violently, and inexplicably plugged from within.
Michael stared, his mind a blank slate of utter incomprehension. The reversal was so complete, so absolute, it short-circuited his ability to process it.
Simultaneously, a new, deeper sound erupted from the main gate—not the roar of invaders, but a deep, grinding, metallic snarl that vibrated up through the soles of his boots and shook the stones. The first twenty raiders who had spilled into the town's main street, their faces alight with loot-fueled glee, now scrambled back in a panic, their triumph morphing into shrieks of pure terror. Forging through the billowing dust and smoke, grinding over the shattered remnants of the gate with the sound of screaming metal, came the Sherman tank. It was a rusted, ancient behemoth, a sleeping dragon awoken, its long gun silent but its resurrected diesel engine screaming a challenge that drowned out all else. It was a blunt instrument of pure, apocalyptic momentum. It crunched forward, a wall of moving steel, scattering the invaders before it like chaff, its steel treads chewing the hard earth into pulp. Michael's eyes darted to the commander's hatch. It was sealed. A ghost was driving the machine. Then he knew. Old Gimpy. The old fox must have crawled into the iron beast's belly with his last breath, a final, brilliant, defiant act. The tank lurched forward, a monument to stubborn refusal, blocking the gate with its own mass.
And then, the final, definitive stroke. Across the bloody tableau, the hulking form of Blackhand, the Fourth-Rank warrior who was more force of nature than man, had just battered Zach the Ogre to the ground with a final, two-handed smash of his flail. The Ogre was a ruin, a mountain of cuts and blossoming bruises, his great strength finally spent. Blackhand raised his notched weapon high for the final, decapitating blow, a roar of ultimate victory tearing from his throat.
It died there.
A feathered shaft sprouted, as if by magic or divine intervention, directly between his eyes. The steel broadhead punched out through the back of his skull with a soft, wet pop. He stood perfectly still for a moment, a grotesque statue of arrested triumph, the roar still etched on his face. Then he toppled forward, his body hitting the dirt with a final, heavy thud, his weapon falling from limp fingers.
A pocket of silence, profound and shocking, spread out from his corpse. Every head for fifty yards turned. Michael's gaze, dragged as if by a string, followed the impossible, arcing line of the shot back, back, over a hundred and fifty yards, to the edge of the battlefield where the scrubland began. There, standing alone on a slight rise, a longbow of dark, polished wood still held in the elegant follow-through of its release, was a lone figure. A scavenger. A man with a quiet face Michael vaguely recognized from the trading lines. A man whose quiet, wide-eyed daughter he'd once given a precious, crumpled packet of la tiaoto, a tiny, thoughtless act of kindness in a world that traded in cruelty. The archer lowered his bow. His eyes, sharp as a hawk's even at that distance, seemed to find Michael's across the carnage. He gave a faint, almost imperceptible nod. Then he turned and melted back into the shimmering heat haze, a ghost who had delivered judgment and departed.
The wave of attackers, now leaderless, bewildered, and faced with a rallied defense, a blocking tank, and a mysterious, god-like arbiter of death, broke. The tide, which had moments before seemed an irresistible law of nature, crumbled into a disorganized, fearful rout.
Michael stood panting, the blood from Audra's nose drying on his cheek, the coppery taste of his own failure and salvation mingling in his mouth. The cheap, greasy, gloriously addictive spicy strips. He had given them away on a whim, a tiny fragment of his other world's abundance. It had been, without a shadow of a doubt, the most astute strategic investment he had ever made.