The sound of five thousand soldiers marching was no mere noise, it was a terrifying pulse that shook the barren earth, a rhythm of iron and steel announcing the coming of death. From the vanguard of this armoured sea, a figure emerged that silenced mouths and forced eyes downward. With one slow and decisive gesture of a single hand, gloved in black metal, the entire immense procession halted. There was no need for horns or cascading shouted orders, that single gesture was a law that brooked no violation.
From atop a massive black warhorse, its eyes blazing with a demonic red and hot vapour rising from its breath, a man dismounted. He wore a full suit of armour engraved with the Imperial royal crest. This man wore no crown, and he had no need of one for every soul on the battlefield to understand that he was its absolute sovereign and its sole executioner in that moment.
He was General Vargas, commander of the Sixth Legion, always preceded by his title: the Falcon's Eye.
A man in his late forties, yet time had not dared leave the wrinkles of weakness upon his face, it had instead granted him an unyielding hardness. His body was massive and broad-shouldered, standing upright as though hewn from raw granite that no storm could fracture. His heavy armour appeared as nothing more than a light cloth draped over his enormous frame.
His face was a living map of past bloody battles, but the most prominent marking was that long and fearsome scar, a raised white line that slashed across his face with savage violence, beginning at the top of his forehead, cleaving through his left eye which had become nothing but a dead white socket, and descending all the way to his wide jaw. That scar was a memento from a legendary ancient battle with a winged Rank S beast in the Great Northern Mountains, a battle from which Vargas had emerged having lost his eye, yet carrying the beast's severed head in his other hand.
But what truly sowed genuine terror in the hearts of enemies and soldiers alike was what remained to him: his intact right eye. It was a sharp yellow eye, hard and piercing as the eye of a striking falcon that has just locked onto its prey. It was no ordinary eye; it radiated dense and steady blue mana that danced around its pupil and seeped into the surrounding air to create an immense spiritual pressure. This glow was irrefutable proof that he had reached the pinnacle of Rank A+, a single step, a hair's breadth, separating him from breaking through to Rank S. He stood on that terrifying edge of power that divides mortal humans from legendary beings.
With heavy, measured steps, Vargas ascended a raised wooden platform that the military engineers had completed in minutes, built to befit his standing. He stood there like a statue of wrath and looked with profound contempt at the thick, unnatural white mist enveloping Falus Forest before him. The mist writhed like living serpents, obscuring all vision and concealing within itself the secrets and traps of the Dark Elf.
"Okonnor…" Vargas spoke the name in a hoarse and deep voice, the sound of two great rocks grinding against each other, carrying a smouldering, long-buried hatred. "That accursed rat… he believes this magical mist will protect him. He believes that hiding like insects in the burrows of ancient trees will save him from the Empire's justice."
Vargas drew his broadsword from its scabbard in a slow motion, and the pale sunlight reflected off his gleaming steel blade. He raised his iron-clad fist high, and an absolute silence fell over the five thousand, a lethal silence that none dared break, the horses even ceasing their whinnying in awe.
"Hear me well, Falcons of Visus!" His voice rang out, amplified by mana to fill every corner of the valley and strike the eardrum of every soldier. "Our mission today is not merely combat. We have not come here to trade blows with common brigands. Our mission is total cleansing! Okonnor is not simply a rebel, nor merely a thief who has dared to defy our laws, he carries the Sacred Nectar… that divine treasure whose only rightful home is within the Emperor's vaults."
His words paused for a moment, letting their meaning seep into the minds of his soldiers. Then he pointed his sword toward the dark forest as though pronouncing a divine death sentence upon nature itself and all it contained. "The Dark Elf, those lowly creatures that believe this ancient forest has belonged to them since the beginning of time. They are nothing but occupiers, parasites that settled our lands without our consent and exploited the Empire's tolerance for far too long. Today, by the edge of these swords, we will teach them before whom the trees bow and before whom the earth kneels!"
His falcon eye blazed brighter, and an aura of blue mana erupted around his body, making the surrounding air tremble. "Hear my oath! We do not return to the Great Capital until the heads of all the Dark Elf are mounted on our spears as a warning to any who dare challenge our supremacy. I want no prisoners! I want no negotiations! Show mercy to neither child nor elder. As for Okonnor…" Vargas smiled a bloody smile that revealed his white teeth amid his scar-covered face. "I will bring his head personally. I will wrest the Nectar from his cold corpse, and I will place his head beneath the Emperor's feet as a footstool for his boots! Glory to the Empire!"
"Glory to the Empire! Glory to the Falcons!"
Five thousand soldiers echoed the cry as one voice, shaking the earth with the force of a seismic strike. Spears clashed against armour in a terrifying rhythm, and a wave of pure killing intent rose toward the sky, a wave sufficient to rouse the sleeping beasts in the deepest caves of the surrounding forest, heralding the beginning of a bloody catastrophe that history would never forget, and inscribing the opening lines of the Falus Forest Massacre.