The atmosphere in Prince Roland's office had changed drastically. What began as a risky recruitment in the muddy alleys of Border Town had transformed into the first war council of Graycastle's new era. The autumn wind howled against the thick glass windows, a freezing reminder that the clock to the Months of Demons was ticking relentlessly against them.
Roland Wimbledon leaned back in his oak chair, his fingertips steepled beneath his chin, the expression of a general evaluating the battlefield before the carnage. To his right, Arthur stood near the fireplace, silent, observant, his analytical mind processing every variable on the board. And in the center of the room, contrasting violently with Iron Axe's rigid and respectful posture, was William. The modern giant had pulled up a rustic stool with his foot, sitting sprawled out, arms crossed over his broad chest and a predatory smile drawn on his lips. He was, by designation and instinct, the new Supreme Commander of the militia.
— "You survived by hunting in those dark forests and tracking the edge of the snowy mountains for years, Iron Axe," Roland began, his tone deep, anchoring everyone's attention. — "If you are going to act as the Vice-Commander of our army, assisting William in turning a mob of farmers into a firing line that won't flee in terror, I need you to give me a surgical report of what we are going to face. Military tactics demand intimate knowledge of the enemy. Tell me in detail about the demonic beasts. How do they act when the snow begins to fall?"
The warrior from the Mojin clan remained standing, his posture unwavering like an old oak that has weathered many storms. His deep, dark eyes blinked slowly, and he let out a harsh sigh, the invisible smoke of winter memories escaping his lungs.
— "You asked me earlier, when I arrived, if I had ever killed these creatures with my own hands," said Iron Axe, his voice low, raspy, and heavy with the accent of the southern sands. — "The answer is yes, Your Highness. Dozens of them come down the mountains throughout the winters. We hunters classify them roughly by their original forms. Basically, the most common types that descend the slopes in packs are the boar species and the wolf species."
— "Species?" Roland frowned, his brain accustomed to modern taxonomy trying to fit magic into logical boxes. — "What exactly do you mean by that? Is it forced evolution? Continuous magical mutation?"
— "That is the generic name we use for the demonic variation, Your Highness. It acts as a curse that multiplies aggressiveness," Iron Axe explained, resting one of his calloused hands, riddled with frost scars, on the prince's desk. — "The law of the mountain is cruel: the more ferocious, lethal, or resilient the ordinary animal already was before the snow fell, the more colossal and indestructible its subsequent variation will be to deal with. The demonic miasma emphasizes to the extreme the physiological advantages they already possess. The boar, for example."
He paused, his eyes fixed on a blind spot on the wall.
— "A common boar is already a machine of muscle, tusks, and fury. Its demonic variation develops a layer of dense fur on its back that clumps together with magical resin, dirt, and coagulated blood, fusing to the skin until it becomes an impenetrable carapace. It is harder than dwarf steel chainmail. Even if you position an elite marksman using a heavy siege crossbow fifty meters away, the iron-tipped arrow simply ricochets or shatters upon impact. To wound it, you need superhuman precision on the eyeballs or the soft underbelly while it charges at you to crush you."
Arthur, on the other side of the room, furiously jotted down the details on his parchment, even though he already knew this.
— "The wolf species, on the other hand, undergoes an even more insidious mutation," continued the Mojin warrior, a phantom shiver of respect running down his spine. — "Their fur doesn't offer much additional defense against blades, but their predatory intelligence... becomes terrifying. Their running speed becomes an absolute nightmare. In the blizzard, they move like black blurs; the eyes of an ordinary pikeman can barely track them. They gain the tactic of flanking in perfectly coordinated packs. To kill an adult wolf nowadays, you cannot simply shoot; you must predict its movement, isolate it, and set pit traps with sharpened stakes days in advance."
— "The strongest would gain carapaces and become even stronger, and the fastest would hone their reflexes becoming even faster," Roland nodded, his project manager mind absorbing the problem and outlining industrial solutions. — "It is frightening, yes, but they are still animals. They follow patterns. They get hungry. A cement wall and firearms will level the battlefield."
Iron Axe's expression hardened considerably upon hearing the prince's mechanical optimism. He swallowed hard, his throat parched. The climate in the office cooled palpably.
— "They are animals," the hunter agreed, his voice now laced with a contained dread. — "But, forgive my frankness, the boars and wolves I've described so far are not, by a long shot, the worst kind of enemy our men will face at the wall."
Roland stopped twirling the quill between his fingers. — "What could be worse than an armored meat tank?"
— "The worst, Your Highness... are the hybrids."
Silence descended upon the room, heavy as lead. Even the crackling of the fire seemed to diminish.
— "They are incarnate demons walking the earth," Iron Axe whispered. — "Only the depths of hell would be capable of stitching together and spawning such a horrifying monster. I have seen a hybrid. I survived by a hair's breadth. It not only possessed colossal, strong limbs like those of a bear, but it sported a pair of enormous, leathery wings on its muscular back, allowing it to fly short distances to overcome obstacles or dive onto unwary hunters."
Slowly, ignoring royal protocol, Iron Axe untied the upper laces of his leather tunic and pulled the fabric down. Roland's eyes widened slightly. A monstrous scar, silvery and deeply raised, tore across the warrior's dark skin from the left side of his abdomen, slashing diagonally up to his chest. It looked as if he had been gutted by the sharp anchor of a ship.
— "And the worst wasn't the body, it was the intelligence," he continued, closing the tunic with slightly trembling hands. — "The creature always knew where I was. It didn't matter the wind direction, the mud I used to camouflage myself, or how hard I tried to hold my breath hiding in the snow trenches. It sensed my presence. It wasn't hunting its prey to satiate its hunger, Your Highness... It was bored. It was playing with me, taunting me for hours before attacking. I lost consciousness and fell into the freezing waters of the Redwater River. I had the blind luck not to drown and to escape its territory."
Roland felt a slight cold sweat on the back of his neck. Such a monster actually exists. The world now seemed like an unforgiving and unfair fantasy. A twelve-foot cement wall would work wonders against the beasts' ground infantry, but if creatures could fly short distances and possessed magical radar, the entire "impregnable castle" strategy would suffer astronomical casualties. — "Hybrid species are very rare, right?"
— "Yes. During the span of each Month of Demons, only two or three mixed-species demons usually appear," Iron Axe reassured him. — "Otherwise, Longsong Stronghold would have fallen decades ago."
Suddenly, the sound of a genuine, booming, and completely out-of-context laugh shattered the mournful mood of the office.
— "PFFFFT... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
William, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief, threw his head back, laughing until he gasped for air, slapping his open hand on his knee. The mocking laughter echoed off the stones, making Iron Axe glare at him with a mix of shock and homicidal fury.
— "Oh, my God..." William wiped an imaginary tear from his eye, waving his hand. — "Seriously, vice-commander? You narrate this like it's the apocalypse. An owl on steroids scratched your belly and you almost died of fright? You guys are so dramatic."
The vein in Iron Axe's neck bulged. He was the living pride of the frontier hunters, a former Mojin warrior. — "Sir," he said, his voice dangerous, every syllable dripping venom. — "If you think facing a winged demon that tears a bear apart with a swipe is a laughing matter, perhaps you should be out there right now, instead of protected in this castle."
— "Protected? Listen here, Axe," William rose from the stool in an athletic, agile motion, stretching his broad shoulders with palpable arrogance. What Iron Axe didn't know was that William's mythomania was about to kick into high gear spectacularly. — "Where Arthur and I come from... hybrid beasts are a morning warm-up. I've faced dozens of mixed, mutant, hybrid demonic beasts, and whatever else you want to invent. And you know what? They're no big deal. They're dumb and predictable."
Iron Axe looked ready to have a stroke. The audacity, the madness of that statement defied sanity. He looked from William to Roland, expecting the Prince to silence the madman, but Roland maintained a curious expression.
— "You... you expect me to believe a flesh-and-blood man defeated a hybrid?" the hunter retorted, incredulity seeping from every word. — "Alone?"
— "A black lion hybrid with stone scales," William lied with the naturalness of someone talking about the weather, gesturing with his massive hands. — "It flew at me. I didn't run. I used its inertia vector against it, grabbed the creature's horns mid-air, applied a spinal armbar as we fell, and punched the soft cartilage between its eyes until I crushed its skull. In thirty seconds it became a living room rug."
Silence reigned again, but this time, permeated by cosmic absurdity. Iron Axe stared blankly at William, torn between thinking the modern giant was the most divine warrior on the continent or a complete idiot who would die to the first horde that arrived.
Roland, who knew his friend's boastful nature, saw the opportunity presenting itself. That was the perfect moment to execute the subtle directive Arthur had whispered in his ear days ago. That they possessed physiological advantages from having read 'ancient books'.
— "William," Roland's voice sounded imperial, cutting through the tension and commanding everyone's attention in the room. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, feigning inquisitive skepticism. — "Your combat stories are fascinating, but Vice-Commander Iron Axe raises a valid biological question. You are a formidable man, yes, but a normal human's body structure cannot withstand the impact of the inertia of a flying creature weighing tons. How, exactly, did you and Arthur acquire this driving force and endurance beyond mundane limits? If you defeated beasts of that magnitude without the heavy long-range weapons we are forging, there must be a clear reason we can understand."
From the corner of the room, the shadows on Arthur's face masked a thin, diabolical smile of pure strategic satisfaction. The hook was cast perfectly. William, catching the cue fluidly, suddenly lost his boastful tone, his expression turning serious, solemn, and surrounded by a fabricated mysticism. He looked around, as if checking for Church spies hidden under the rugs.
— "Your Highness asks the right question," William began, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper that immediately captured all of Iron Axe's attention and superstitious imagination. — "We don't like spreading this to commoners, as it is classified."
He crossed his hands behind his back, pacing slowly across the room like a wise master guarding the secret of the universe. — "I cannot reveal all the obscure details of the process, Axe. But we were not born with scales or mystical powers. The answer lies in forgotten wisdom. Arthur and I, during our long travels to the Fjord Islands, found and translated a collection of ancient books and tablets from pre-collapse ruins."
Iron Axe's eyes widened. Lost knowledge. That world revered ancient relics and scrolls almost as much as gods.
— "Deep reading and rigorous practice of the techniques described in those ancient, forbidden books," William continued, channeling every fantasy literature cliché he knew to build the perfect lie, — "reprogram the energy channels of the human body. They unlock the latent potential dormant in the muscles and the mind. In short, the knowledge engraved in the ruins made us physically and mentally more 'competent' and lethal than ordinary people. I call it Pure Arcane Magic."
The Vice-Commander from the Sand Nation looked as if he had taken an invisible blow. Iron Axe's mind reeled. Men with divine strength, capable of strangling hybrids without the need for ecclesiastical purification rituals from the Church or divine amulets, merely through access to hidden secrets of antiquity? That explained the insane confidence, the flawless way William moved, the incomprehensible trade tactics, and Arthur's prophecies. He felt that, instead of joining a bunch of madmen doomed to die in the snow, he had just been enlisted into the inner circle of the most dangerous and promising military core in Graycastle.
Arthur was satisfied that the narrative of "cultivation through lost books" had been successfully planted in the mind of an influential and respected witness like the Mojin, and perhaps even for Roland himself. In the future, when he and William demonstrated physically anomalous feats or abilities beyond the explanation of gunpowder, Iron Axe and Roland wouldn't be surprised like the rest; they would simply think: "Pure Arcane Magic." A vital, preventive vaccine against mass hysteria.
Arthur quickly searched his mind. The Mojin Clan, the resilient people of the Extreme South, located in the distant southwest of the arid lands. It was rumored in capital gossip that they were descendants of the giants of antiquity, a lineage of strength and survival. Iron Axe didn't even use his complex, honorable tribal name, preferring the shallow, dirty, utilitarian nickname given by the bigoted miners and ignorant peasants of Border Town. It was evident he yearned to sever all ties with his homeland in the wastelands, pointing to a tragic series of exiles, deaths, and stories of pure sorrow bathed in sand.
But, now for the Engineer Prince, that fractured past and racial pains didn't matter in the slightest for the month's reports. In the industrial empire he would build, everyone was an essential gear. The city would be the melting crucible where origins would be melted down to forge loyalty.
— "Anyway, regardless of how frightening the winter may be," said Roland, with a magnetic firmness. — "Everyone who sweats and fights under my banner is an honored and vital citizen of Border Town."
He pulled a heavy brown leather pouch from his drawer, its sides clinking with the familiar, unmistakable sound of royal precious metal.
— "It wasn't just to discuss the appearance of the beasts that I called you here, Iron Axe." Roland tossed the pouch across the desk. The southern warrior caught it mid-air, his instinctive reflexes proving his usefulness, and the weight of ten pure, authentic royal silver coins filled his palm. An unbelievable fortune for an exile who lived off skinning squirrels.
— "This is your advance pay," Roland declared, his voice banishing the poverty from the warrior's life with a single command. — "From this exact moment, Lord William is formally and indisputably the Commander-in-Chief of the First Army of Graycastle that we will forge here. And you, for your crucial tactical skills and knowledge of the terrain... are the Vice-Commander. Your job will be to instruct the militia in precision with our new weapons, assist with trench logistics, and ensure that, under the strict leadership of your new Commander, the firing lines never break."
Iron Axe squeezed the pouch of silver tightly until the veins in his forearm popped. A lifetime of rejection seemed to be swept away by the freezing wind. He now held an official rank in the kingdom, would lead troops instead of being cursed at in the squares, and would serve alongside generals who possessed the lethal secrets of the old world.
He took a step back, bent his large knee onto the cold stone floor of the castle, and brought his clenched right fist to his chest, in the traditional deep bow of a Mojin Clan blood oath.
— "My life and my axe belong to Your Highness. My loyalty belongs to the Town. Thank you very much for your trust in pulling this dog out of the mud." Iron Axe's voice resonated with pure, indomitable tactical conviction. — "They will advance where the Commander orders. No wolf, boar, or hybrid will breach our defense."