The north wind howled like a tortured soul through the battlements of Border Town's new wall. Carter Lannis, Prince Roland's Chief Knight, rubbed his gloved hands together in a futile attempt to return some feeling to his numb fingers. He exhaled deeply, observing the thick mist hanging over the forest. A gust of freezing air carried ice crystals that bit his exposed face, but Carter maintained his upright posture.
As His Highness's primary personal shield, Carter's foremost responsibility was to ensure the Prince didn't suffer a single scratch. However, the battle against the Months of the Demons demanded sacrifices and adaptations. For this reason, he had established a tactical rotation with William: he spent an entire day supervising the militia directly on the walls, helping to maintain discipline, and for the following two days, he returned to the castle for his exclusive bodyguard duties. On those days of absence, the man who assumed the weight of that sector was Erik, a veteran and reliable patrolman, who received the honor — and the immense responsibility — of carrying Carter's own flintlock musket.
The firearm still seemed like an invention out of a fever dream to the knight, but he couldn't deny its brutal effectiveness. As he pondered how quickly Erik would be able to reload the weapon with frozen hands, the sound of heavy boots slapping desperately against the wooden walkway interrupted his thoughts.
Carter turned, his hand instinctively dropping to the pommel of his sword.
It was Saldon. The young militiaman, who had been informally promoted to field messenger due to his speed, came sliding on the snow accumulated over the cement. The boy's face was pale, devoid of any color, and his eyes were wide with raw, undisguised panic. Saldon's chest heaved violently, his breath forming dense clouds of vapor.
— "Sir Carter!" — Saldon panted, almost falling to his knees as he approached. He saluted with a trembling hand. — "The Commander... Commander William sent word!" —
— "Control your breathing, recruit," — Carter demanded, his voice laden with the authority of years of service in the capital. — "What did Lord William report? Has the second wave of the wolf pack emerged from the forest?" —
— "No... they aren't wolves, sir!" — Saldon swallowed hard, pointing frantically with his thumb over his shoulder, toward the eastern sector of the wall. — "It's a nightmare! The Commander and Iron Axe said it's a Hybrid Species! And it's... it's colossal! It's coming straight for our line!" —
Carter's blood ran cold, and it wasn't because of the wind. Hybrid species were dark legends, atrocities that older hunters whispered about near campfires. They shouldn't appear this early in the winter, and certainly not marching openly against a fortified wall in the first real attack.
— "Hold the position! No one retreats!" — Carter shouted to two other militiamen who had just arrived following Saldon, who were already beginning to mutter in fear. He turned back to Saldon. — "Return to your post on the wall. I will notify His Highness immediately." —
Without wasting a millisecond, Carter spun on his heels and sprinted toward the stairs. The descent was a blur. He ran through the camp's inner courtyard, ignoring the thick snow that tried to trap his boots, his mind working frantically on how to organize the Prince's retreat if the wall gave way.
He burst through the heavy double doors of the main castle, bringing a gust of wind and snow with him into the heated hall.
It was then that he saw him.
Sitting comfortably in a leather armchair near the entrance hall's large fireplace, oblivious to the impending chaos, was Arthur. The dark-suited strategist had his legs crossed elegantly, holding a thick, leather-bound tome about the history of the Wimbledons — Carter couldn't tell, nor did he care. The light from the bonfire danced in the lenses of his eyes. The atmosphere around Arthur was one of such absolute tranquility that, in that moment, it seemed nothing could disturb him.
Carter stopped abruptly, panting.
— "Lord Arthur!" — the knight called out, his urgent tone echoing off the stone walls. — "Where is His Royal Highness?" —
Arthur didn't even flinch. He slowly moved his eyes from the page of the book to the desperate figure of the Chief Knight.
— "His Highness is in his quarters, finalizing the combustion calculations for the new gunpowder," — Arthur replied, his voice perfectly level, monotonous, and cold. He noticed the man's heaving chest and terrified expression. — "Where are you going in such a hurry, Sir Carter? The wall seems to be standing, and judging by the lack of individuals for Nana to heal, I believe things must be calm." —
— "Perhaps not for long, Lord Arthur," — Carter vented, frustration leaking into his voice at the other's surreal calmness. — "A hybrid beast has been spotted! A gigantic abomination walking directly toward Lord William's sector. It is a cataclysmic-level threat, and His Highness asked to be informed when one of these appeared." —
A second passed, filled only by the crackling of firewood in the fireplace.
Arthur held Carter's desperate gaze. Not a single wrinkle of worry formed on his forehead. Not a muscle in his face twitched. With the slowness of someone who has just heard a mundane comment about the weather, Arthur used only one hand to close the thick book with a dry, dusty snap.
— "I see," — Arthur said, simply and devoid of any emotional inflection.
He stood up gracefully, adjusted the collar of his dark overcoat, tucked the book under his arm, and, with his hands buried in his pockets, began to walk calmly toward the stairs leading to the upper floors, with slow, measured steps, as if strolling through a botanical garden on a spring afternoon.
Carter gaped, processing the indifferent reaction. He cursed softly, knowing he couldn't waste time trying to understand the minds of those two foreigners from the Kingdom of Dawn. He ran up the stairs, passing Arthur and then Barov like a lightning bolt, and pounded violently on the door of Roland's office.
.
.
.
Ten minutes later, the Prince of Graycastle, escorted by an extremely tense Carter and a squad of elite guards, stepped onto the upper walkway of the wall. The wind messed up Roland's gray hair instantly. He walked to the parapet where William and Iron Axe stood like statues, watching the dark horizon.
— "The hybrid beast has finally appeared, William? Carter looked like he'd seen the devil himself," — Roland asked, squinting against the falling snow.
William did not answer with words immediately. He simply raised his leather-gloved, armored hand and pointed his index finger into the blizzard ahead.
Roland followed the direction of the finger. As soon as the creature's silhouette materialized through the gray mist, the Prince rubbed his eyes hard, genuinely incredulous. He blinked three times, hoping the optical illusion would fade. It didn't.
What the hell was that?
Roland's mind, the mind of an engineer, tried desperately to categorize the sight. Would that still be within the scope of the biological variability of a normal demonic beast under the effects of the miasma? What he saw was something so grotesque and aberrant that it was difficult to describe in coherent words. He had watched dozens of horror and sci-fi movies in his past life — from Chinese kaijus to Hollywood mutants — but even Hollywood monster designers wouldn't conceive of something so absurdly dysfunctional and terrifying.
From afar, the initial impression was that of a giant turtle with two heads. But as the monstrosity approached, with heavy steps that sent seismic tremors rippling through the frozen ground, the sickly details revealed themselves.
It wasn't a turtle's head. They were two complete wolf heads.
Roland felt his stomach turn. Is this an escaped test specimen from Dr. Frankenstein's lab? the Prince thought, horrified. The creature was almost as tall as the very cement wall he had built. Its body stretched an impressive seven meters long, a mountain of corrupted flesh. To support all that colossal weight, the beast's biology had created a structural anomaly: it possessed a total of six legs. They were stubby, thick, and muscular limbs, reminiscent of rhinoceros anatomy, covered by plates of calcified skin. The scariest part was the size of the paw; a single foot of the creature was the size and width of a grown man's torso. A stomp from that thing would turn an armored soldier into a puddle of meat and bone paste.
Roland focused on the twin heads. Unlike the two-headed monsters of mythology or the various movies he knew, where the heads growled at each other, fought for control of the body, or tried to show who was the dominant personality, these two seemed apathetic. They weren't biting each other. Instead, they just hung loosely on short, thick necks, swaying grotesquely with the creature's gait. Their eyes lacked the furious red glow of the wolves that had attacked earlier; they had an opaque gleam, like old, lifeless wood. It was like watching a colossal zombie moving forward without a functioning brain, driven only by a dark, inexorable command imposed by the miasma.
However, what chilled his heart wasn't its size or the morbid heads. The most striking and defensively desperate feature of the demonic beast was the enormous shell resting on its back.
The surface of the shell was a muddy dark brown, covered in blackened algae and luminous fungi growing in the damp cracks. Visually, it had a special texture and density. It perfectly resembled the carapace of an ancient turtle, covering the animal's body from the base of its necks to its non-existent tail.
Roland's engineering mind immediately calculated the logistical problem. If this monster has the same basic biology and can retreat into that carapace like a giant turtle, it will be absolute hell to get rid of it. A mobile, impenetrable fortress parked in front of our wall would be the end of Border Town.
Still, swallowing the bitter saliva of fear, Roland forced himself not to panic. There were advantages. A demonic beast of that massive volume, carrying tons of bone and flesh protection, absolutely had to be slow. Kinematics did not allow something that big to run like a wolf. Therefore, it was destined to be a giant target, impossible to miss.
The wall should withstand a few impacts, Roland reasoned quickly. Even if the lead spheres of our firearms cannot penetrate the thickness of that carapace head-on, it is still perfectly possible to aim and shoot at those huge wolf heads protruding from the shell. And if the worst-case scenario happens, and the beast decides to hide in its shell like an armored coward, I'll have to send Van'er and the demolition team with the gunpowder barrels. We'll have to blow up the ground beneath it and flip it upside down like a bug with pure explosives.
— "My dear Roland," — William's voice sounded beside the Prince, pulling him from his mental demolition calculations. The Commander kept his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the beast, without showing the panic that consumed the militiamen. — "That thing over there that you are admiring with such horror is the famous hybrid beast species." —
William turned his face to the Prince, his expression serious.
— "And seeing that aberration leading the march, I can now perfectly understand the biological and tactical pattern of why demonic beasts from totally different species, which would normally kill each other in the forest, are working together today. They haven't made an alliance. They appear to be under the direct hypnotic control of the hybrid demonic beast. It is the general." —
Roland processed the information. So it was like a lion docilely commanding a flock of bloodthirsty sheep? Roland nodded slowly. Collective intelligence was a danger a thousand times greater than isolated brute force.
— "I understand," — Roland said, adjusting his own cloak. — "You said you had already defeated a Hybrid Beast alone, when you went after Iron Axe. Do you think it's possible to deal with it now?" —
— "Unfortunately, no," — William shook his head, denying that possibility. — "This is the first time I've seen this kind of hybrid beast mixture. There are hybrid beasts smaller than this one, and because they possess a stature not absurdly larger than mine, those I can defeat if well-equipped. But unlike those, this one exceeds expectations. This hybrid beast is a deadly, lethal nightmare itself; dealing with it is out of the question, since they don't break rules, they create new ones." —
The Prince looked again at the creature, which continued its relentless march, closing the distance with every passing second. The earth trembled beneath its six colossal paws.
— "It will soon enter the maximum range of our projectile shooters," — Roland ordered, raising his voice so the captains around him could hear over the howling wind. — "Vice-Commander Iron Axe! Order the men in the towers! Try to weaken or blind it first with continuous volleys of arrows and heavy crossbow bolts before we waste the gunpowder!" —
At that moment, the environment was playing against humanity. As it was still snowing lightly, but with a very strong, constant wind blowing directly from the north, aerodynamics were compromised; the weather was definitely not conducive to bow and arrow ballistics. Accuracy would be terrible, and the wind would steal the force of the arrows' impact.
However, as he looked at the ranks of veteran hunters organized around William, Roland noticed something curious. Despite the wind, despite the seven-meter aberration marching toward them, the men were still confident. They did not retreat. The troop's morale was abnormally high because they knew an absolute, visceral truth: the man standing there at the front, Lord and Commander William, was phenomenal at fighting. He had broken wolves' skulls with his fists. To the militia, if the arrows failed and the gunpowder got wet, the warrior commanding the defense would jump down there and kill the giant turtle with his bare hands.
What none of them knew, however, was that the mind of the invincible guardian was boiling in an ethical and strategic conflict that could decide not only the battle but the fate of the entire World.