[The First Day of Destruction, 20:20]
[The Inner Wall — The Kill Zone]
Grand Marshal Beren stared out over the parapet. The green horizon was mutating.
The chaotic, ambient light within the fog pulsed. It sickened. The gaseous viridian hue bled out, replaced by a deep, bruised purple. The smell of the battlefield shifted with it. The suffocating stench of rotting meat and boiling oil faded. A sterile, freezing odor washed over the ramparts. It smelled like the earth of a freshly dug grave in the dead of winter.
The shambling silhouettes of the mindless zombies were gone. In their place, something else coalesced in the gloom.
Lines. Perfect, razor-straight, geometric lines of heavy infantry.
They did not stumble. They did not crawl. Furthermore, they marched.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The sound of synchronized iron boots striking the ruined cobblestones echoed across the dead zone. The rhythmic perfection of the march was a physical force. It traveled up the stone face of the Inner Wall and rattled the teeth in the defenders' skulls.
A militiaman standing near Beren dropped his water skin. It shattered on the flagstones. The boy did not notice. He was shivering violently. His breathing turned rapid and shallow. A chaotic mob was terrifying, but a disciplined, immortal military force was psychologically paralyzing.
"Here it comes," Beren rasped.
He drew his broadsword. The heavy steel scraped against the brass scabbard. It was a lonely, pathetic sound against the approaching drumbeat.
The real war, Beren thought.
From the churning mist, the heavy hitters of the Sorcerer Kingdom finally emerged.
The lead Death Knight did not rush. It walked out of the purple mist with the inexorable cadence of a pendulum swinging toward midnight.
It was a masterpiece of engineered hate. It wore no standard plate. Its armor was a jagged, black carapace. The dark metal drank the ambient starlight, casting no reflections. Deep, infected red runes throbbed across its chest plate like pulsing veins. Its helm was a smooth, expressionless maw broken only by two vertical slits. Crimson intelligence burned within.
In its left hand, the giant carried a massive tower shield. It was not forged from wood or steel. It was made of a dark, weeping resin. Agonized faces shifted and pushed against the surface of the material, a physical manifestation of trapped souls.
In its right hand, it dragged a massive flamberge. Liquid shadow dripped continuously from the undulating blade. The shadow hissed. It scarred and pitted the stone wherever it fell.
The creature breathed. A plume of freezing white fog escaped its visor. The hot, sulfurous air of the burning city plummeted in temperature. Beren could hear the flagstones audibly cracking beneath the monster's heavy sabatons.
It was not alone.
The purple fog parted like a theater curtain. The true legion disgorged into the killing field.
Thirty Death Knights formed the vanguard. They were an unbreakable wall of obsidian moving in flawless lockstep.
Flanking them marched thirty Death Warriors. They were leaner, unburdened by heavy tower shields. They carried dual jagged swords. Their lighter armor allowed for supernatural, lethal speed. They twitched. They blurred. Their erratic, hyper-lethal movements defied the heavy gravity of the mortal world. They were the hammers meant to strike against the Death Knights' anvil.
Between the strict ranks of iron rode the Soul Eaters.
They were skeletal nightmares resembling heavily mutated draft horses. They were wreathed entirely in an ethereal, suffocating mist. Their elongated jaws snapped silently at the air. Their mere presence warped the environment.
Up on the wall, veteran soldiers suddenly clutched their chests. They fell to their knees, gasping for air. The ambient mana thinned out. Sister Milla felt the divine magic in her fingertips wither and die. The Soul Eaters were passively feeding. They projected an aura of absolute despair that starved the living of oxygen and hope.
Lumbering behind the cavalry came the siege breakers.
The Blood-milk Hulks stood three full meters tall. They were grotesque, bloated giants constructed of pale, translucent flesh. Thick, glowing white alchemical sludge pumped aggressively through engineered veins beneath their stretched skin. The fluid granted them monstrous, visible regeneration. They carried massive, rusted iron siege hammers. They dragged the heavy iron lazily across the ground, gouging deep trenches into the ruined cobblestones.
Banners of stretched sinew and flayed human faces snapped in the windless air above the legion.
The sound of their unified march Crunch. Clank. Crunch. was a rhythmic hammer blow to the defenders' fraying sanity.
This was not a mindless horde sent to scavenge the ruins. It was a flawless execution detail.
The heavy infantry marched until they reached the fifty-meter mark. The exact edge of the killing zone.
With a single, synchronized crash of iron boots, the entire legion halted. The kinetic impact shook the dust from the battlements.
They did not raise their weapons. They did not attempt to scale the butchered ramp of corpses at the base of the wall. They stood in the dark. Hundreds of crimson eyes stared up at the brittle humans clinging to the stone.
Grand Marshal Beren felt a profound chill settle deep in his marrow. It had nothing to do with the freezing aura of the undead.
He looked at his exhausted militia. He saw his bleeding priests. He looked up at the ragged, dimming wings of the celestial angels hovering above the wall. The Theocracy had spent its strength swatting away flies. Now, the wolves had arrived.
He refused to let his men die shivering in silence.
Beren stepped onto the highest firing ledge. He intentionally exposed his armored bulk to the entire undead formation.
"Stand fast!" Beren roared.
His magically amplified voice violently broke the paralysis gripping the wall. It forced the whimpering militiamen to look at their commander.
"They bleed like anything else! If they want this wall, they have to tear it down stone by bleeding stone!"
He raised his glowing broadsword. He pointed the tip directly at the lead Death Knight.
"COME THEN!" Beren challenged. He hurled the desperate, heavy weight of his defiance into the teeth of the monster.
"THE THEOCRACY DOES NOT KNEEL!"
The lead Death Knight slowly tilted its heavy, horned helm upward. It locked its burning crimson eyes onto the Grand Marshal.
It did not rush forward. It did not roar.
It slowly raised its dripping flamberge. It brought the hilt to its chest in a slow, precise, mocking salute.
Behind it, the vanguard of Death Knights moved as one. They raised their screaming resin shields and slammed them together. The interlocking plates formed an impenetrable, solid wall of black iron and trapped souls.
The killing field went terrifyingly still. The executioners were ready.
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