Day 7 of the War. Noon.
Location: The Western Border, The Allied Encampment.
Weather: Hot, humid, stagnant air.
The war had stopped.
There were no charges. No cannon fire. No screams of combat.
The Corpse-Wall still stood in the center of the valley, steaming in the unnatural heat. The Lake of the Behemoth in the Swamp Sector lay still, a murky grave for a god.
But death had not stopped. It had merely changed its delivery method.
In the Orc Camp, the drums were beating a slow, sickly rhythm.
Thump... pause... Thump... pause.
Catapults—crude machines built from bone and sinew—were being winched back.
But they weren't loaded with rocks.
They were loaded with bundles of rags. Bloated, greenish shapes that leaked fluid.
Dead Orcs. Victims of the Rot-Plague.
"Loose!" Warlord Gorr croaked. He was wearing a mask made of dried herbs. Even he feared what he was unleashing.
TWANG.
Hundreds of catapults fired in a staggering volley.
The corpses flew through the air, tumbling lazily. They cleared the Corpse-Wall. They soared over no-man's-land.
They landed with wet, sickening splats in the middle of the Royal Encampment.
Some hit tents. Some hit the cooking fires, sending clouds of infected ash into the air. One landed in the main water trough for the horses.
Perspective: The Golden Center
Cassius Thorne stood outside his tent. He watched a severed Orc head roll to a stop near his boots. It was covered in black pustules.
"Disgusting," Cassius spat, kicking it away. "They are throwing garbage at us now? Is this their grand strategy? To make us vomit?"
Duke Ironwood frowned, holding a scented handkerchief to his nose. "It is an insult. A sign of desperation. Gorr has run out of warriors, so he throws meat."
"Burn it," Cassius ordered a servant. "And bring me wine. The smell is unbearable."
None of them understood.
They saw filth. They didn't see the Microbes.
They didn't see the millions of Yersinia pestis variants—magically enhanced by the Shamans to be hyper-aggressive—crawling from the bursting corpses into the soil, the water, and the air.
They didn't see the Carrion Flies buzzing around the bodies, landing on the knights' food, walking on their lips while they slept.
The Rot-Plague had arrived. And it didn't care about golden armor.
The Science of Barriers
Location: The Swamp Sector (Rian's Camp).
While the Royal Army complained about the smell, Rian's Camp had gone into full lockdown.
Red Flags marked the perimeter.
Warning Signs (painted with skulls) were posted every ten feet.
Inside the perimeter, the soldiers looked like aliens.
The "Gray Coats" were gone.
Every man, woman, and Wolf Rider was encased in a Bio-Haz Suit (Mark I).
Material: Canvas dipped in boiled linseed oil and wax (waterproof and airtight).
Hoods: Tight-fitting, sealed at the neck.
Masks: Leather beaks filled with Activated Charcoal (made from burnt coconut shells Rian had sourced via trade long ago) and layers of cotton gauze.
Gloves: Thick rubber (tapped from the Silent Reach trees).
Rian walked the line. He looked like a plague doctor from a nightmare. His voice was muffled by the mask.
"Rule Number One," Rian said, his voice projecting through the silence. "Nothing enters this camp. No wind. No water. No rats."
"Rule Number Two: If you see a fly, kill it."
"Rule Number Three: We drink only Distilled Water. We eat only Canned Rations. If you eat an apple from a tree, I will shoot you myself."
Baron Aris, wearing a suit Rian had provided, looked uncomfortable. He breathed heavily through the charcoal filter.
"Viscount... is this necessary? It's just dead bodies. We've seen dead bodies before."
"We haven't seen these bodies, Baron," Rian pointed a gloved finger at the Royal Camp. "Look at them. They are touching the corpses. They are breathing the dust."
"In twenty-four hours, the Golden Center will be a graveyard."
Livia walked up, carrying a sprayer tank on her back. She was spraying a fine mist over the tents.
Carbolic Acid. (Phenol).
A primitive but effective disinfectant. The smell was sharp and medicinal, overpowering the stench of rot.
"The perimeter is sealed, Rian," Livia reported, her voice tinny through the mask. "But the men are scared. They think we are hiding from ghosts."
"Let them be scared," Rian said. "Fear keeps the mask on."
The First Symptom
Day 8. Morning.
Location: The Royal Center.
It started with a cough.
A squire in Duke Ironwood's tent dropped a tray of wine. He fell to his knees, hacking up black phlegm.
"Get up, boy!" the Duke snapped.
The squire looked up. His eyes were red. His veins stood out against his skin like black spiderwebs.
"My Lord..." he wheezed. "It burns..."
Within an hour, a hundred men were down.
By noon, a thousand.
The Rot-Plague was terrifyingly fast. It attacked the lungs and the blood. High fever. Delirium. And finally, the necrosis of the skin—the "Rot."
The Healer's Tent was a scene from hell.
High Cleric Tomas stood over a dying knight. He placed his hands on the man's chest.
"[Cure Disease]!"
Golden light flowed from the Cleric's hands.
The black veins receded. The knight gasped, color returning to his face.
"It works!" a nurse cried.
But ten seconds later, Tomas stumbled back. He looked at his own hands.
Black spots appeared on his palms.
The magic burned the disease out of the patient, but the proximity allowed the germs to jump to the healer.
"No..." Tomas whispered. "It... it eats the Mana."
The plague was magically engineered to feed on healing energy. The more they cast, the faster it spread.
The Clerics began to fall. The Mages, terrified, erected barriers around their own tents, leaving the common soldiers to die in the mud.
The Beggar at the Gate
Day 9. Twilight.
The Royal Camp was silent. Not the silence of discipline, but the silence of the morgue.
Smoke rose from pyres where they were trying to burn the dead, but the smoke itself carried the sickness.
A rider approached Rian's sector.
It was Cassius Thorne.
He wasn't wearing his golden armor. He wore a simple tunic. His face was gaunt, sweat dripping from his forehead. He sat slumped on his horse.
He rode up to the Iron Brambles.
Standing on the other side were Rian's sentries in their terrifying Beak-Masks.
"Open the gate!" Cassius croaked. "I need to see my brother!"
Rian walked out of the command bunker. He didn't take off his mask. He stood ten feet away from the wire.
"The gate is sealed, Cassius," Rian said calmly. "Quarantine Protocol."
"Quarantine?" Cassius laughed deliriously. "You hide in your suits while we die? The King is sick, Rian! The Duke is sick! My mother... she is coughing blood!"
Cassius slid off his horse. He stumbled toward the wire.
"You have healers! I see your men standing! They aren't sick! Give us your cure!"
"I have no cure," Rian said. "I have Hygiene. I told you to burn the bodies. I told you to boil the water. You laughed and drank the wine."
"Open the gate!" Cassius screamed, drawing his sword. His hand shook so badly the blade wavered. "Or I will cut my way in!"
Rian raised his revolver. He aimed at his brother's chest.
"Take one more step, Cassius, and I will put you out of your misery."
The sentries leveled their muskets.
Cassius froze. He looked at the faceless, leather-clad figures. They didn't look human. They looked like reapers.
"You are a monster," Cassius whispered, tears mixing with the sweat on his face. "You watch your own blood rot and you do nothing."
"I am saving the only blood that matters," Rian said cold as ice. "Go back, Cassius. If you want to live, stop casting spells and start washing your hands."
Cassius stared at him with pure hatred. Then he collapsed, vomiting black bile into the mud.
"Don't touch him!" Rian ordered his men, who moved to help. "Leave him. His guard will come for him."
The Enemy's Gambit
Location: The Orc Camp.
Warlord Gorr watched the Royal Camp burning its dead.
He breathed in the tainted air. He was sick too. His skin was gray, his breathing labored.
But Orcs were tough. They could fight while dying.
"They are weak," Gorr rasped. "The Gold Humans are crawling."
He looked at the Swamp Sector.
He saw the gray figures patrolling. He saw the smoke of the Carbolic Acid sprayers.
"The Gray Human... he cheats death again."
"He wears a second skin," Grand Shaman Zog muttered, coughing up a piece of lung. "He denies the spirits of decay."
"It does not matter," Gorr grabbed his axe. "The Center is dead. We do not need to fight them. We just need to walk over them."
"Sound the drums."
"Tonight, we finish it."
The Night of the Flies
Midnight.
The final attack began.
But it wasn't a charge of warriors. It was a charge of Vectors.
Gorr unleashed the Carrion Swarm.
Millions of flies, bred in the rotting carcasses of the Corpse-Wall, were driven forward by the Shamans' wind magic.
A black cloud of buzzing death moved toward the human lines.
In the Royal Center, the soldiers were too weak to lift their shields. They lay in their tents, waiting for the end.
The flies descended on them, biting, infecting, driving them mad.
The cloud moved toward the Swamp.
Rian saw it coming on his radar. A massive biological density cloud.
"Insect Swarm," Rian noted. "Varg, bring the Foggers."
The soldiers wheeled out machines that looked like cannons, but with wide, fan-like nozzles.
Inside the tanks was a mixture of Sulfur and Pyrethrum (natural insecticide).
"Light the burners!"
The machines roared to life.
Thick, yellow-white smoke began to billow out. It wasn't normal smoke. It was a chemical fog.
It rolled over the trench, creating a dense artificial cloud.
The Fly Swarm hit the chemical fog.
The result was instant.
The insects convulsed. Their nervous systems shut down.
Millions of flies dropped out of the air like black rain.
They piled up in drifts against the Bio-Haz suits of the defenders.
Baron Aris, watching through his goggles, wiped a layer of dead flies from his visor.
"They fall like snow," Aris whispered. "You poisoned the air?"
"I sanitized it," Rian corrected.
The Political Pivot
Day 10. Dawn.
The fly attack failed. The Royal Army was decimated, but the Orcs were too sick to capitalize on it immediately. Both sides were paralyzed by the plague.
Except one.
A delegation arrived at the wire.
It wasn't Cassius.
It was King Aric.
He was carried on a litter by four Royal Guards who looked like walking corpses. The King was pale, his strong body wasted by fever.
He stopped ten yards from the wire.
Rian walked out.
"Your Majesty."
"Viscount," the King's voice was a whisper. "My army... is dying. My Mages are helpless."
He looked at Rian's healthy soldiers. He saw the energy, the discipline.
"You have the cure."
"I have prevention, Sire. It is too late for a cure."
"Then save what is left," the King pleaded. Not commanded. Pleaded.
"The Orcs are massing for the final blow. If they attack tomorrow... Oland falls."
"I cannot hold the Center. I have no men left who can stand."
The King looked Rian in the eye.
"Take command."
The words hung in the humid air.
Take Command.
The King was abdicating military control to a banished Viscount.
"If I take command," Rian said slowly, "I do it my way. No Mages interfering. No 'Honor'. No mercy."
"And I get the Mana Stones."
The King coughed, nodding weakly. "Take them. Take them all. Just save my Kingdom."
Rian turned to Varg.
"Open the armory."
"Issue the masks to the Royal Guard. Anyone who can walk, fights."
"And Varg?"
"Yes, Boss?"
"Bring out the Gatling Guns."
"Gorr wants to walk over the dead? Fine."
"We will make sure he joins them."
The Shift
The dynamic of the war had shifted.
For ten days, Rian had defended the swamp.
Now, he owned the battlefield.
He moved his "Gray Coats" out of the trenches. They marched into the infected, stinking mess of the Royal Center.
They sprayed Carbolic Acid on the Knights. They forced water down the throats of the dying.
And they set up their weapons on the King's own ramparts.
Cassius Thorne, lying on a cot, watched through fever-dimmed eyes as Rian's soldiers set up a strange, multi-barreled machine gun next to the Royal Standard.
"He took it..." Cassius wheezed. "He took it all."
Rian stood on the Royal Dais, looking out at the Orc Camp.
He wore his beak-mask. He looked like the God of Death.
"System," Rian thought. "Integrate the Mana Stones into the Steam Engines."
"It's time to upgrade from Industrial to Magitech."
Rian smiled behind his mask.
"Let them come."
End of Chapter 80