Karthane,
Arkaelus - Two Hours Later
Two
hours later. The world is still dark, the stars fading into the
pallid gray of predawn. The wind cuts through Karthane's streets like
a blade, dry, cold, metallic. Snow skitters across the ground in
thin, whispering waves.
The
door to the Vardengard barracks yawns open, the fire inside long
dead, its ashes cold in the pit. The space smells faintly of smoke,
steel oil, and the acrid tang of dried blood. Outside, the seven
giants of Invicta stand armored and ready; black Olympian plates
catching the faintest shimmer of moonlight.
Spartan
stands at the forefront, her breath ghosting through the thin air.
Beside her, Rho Voss rolls his shoulders, the servos in his armor
whining quietly. Naburiel and Ashurdan check their weapon seals.
Samayel tightens his gauntlets, his helm tucked under his arm.
Belqartis adjusts the heavy blade strapped across his back.
Morus
is the last one out. He emerges from the shadows with a faint hum in
his throat, the smell of his concoction sharp and earthy, honeyed
iron and fungal musk. In his hands is a wolf's skull, hollowed and
polished, the inside filled with a thick, amber-red liquid that
steams faintly in the cold.
"Finally,"
Ashurdan grunts, flexing one gauntleted hand. "Was starting to
think you'd fallen asleep in your own fumes."
"Patience,"
Morus answers, voice distorted through the half-fastened helm.
"Alchemy rewards the one who waits… and punishes the one who
rushes."
He
kneels briefly, checking the satchels on his belt, several glass
vials clinking softly, their contents glowing faintly with
bioluminescent sheen. Then, with a reverent air, he holds the wolf
skull out toward Spartan.
"Drink,"
he says simply. "From fang and bone. Strength for the march."
Spartan
takes the skull without hesitation. The liquid is thick and
bitter-sweet, burning down her throat like molten fire. It leaves a
metallic sting behind, something wild, electric. She lowers the skull
and exhales sharply, a hiss of breath.
"Strong,"
she mutters.
"Stronger
than you think," Morus replies.
She
passes it to Rho Voss next. He gulps deep, grinning faintly. He
exhales a deep growl.
"Means
it's working," Naburiel says, taking his turn.
One
by one, the Vardengard drink, the skull making its solemn circuit
through the circle of armored giants until it returns to Morus. He
finishes the last of it, wipes the rim with a gloved thumb, then
slips the skull into a bone-clasped satchel on his hip.
As
the others seal their helmets, Spartan slides hers on, the hiss of
the pressure lock punctuating the quiet.
The
seven warriors close ranks, forming a tight circle. The air around
them hums with faint energy, a shared current of purpose, violence,
and something older. They lean in, pressing their helms together, the
sharp crack of their uni-horned visors colliding echoing like struck
anvils.
Then,
as one, they throw their heads back and howl, a sound that rolls
through the streets of Karthane like thunder, primal and pure,
shattering the silence.
Down
the road, the Federalists look up from their loading, startled. APC
engines rumble to life, exhaust plumes twisting into the cold air.
As
the echo fades, Samayel chuckles, the sound distorted through his
helm. "Feels better having Morus around," he says, tapping
the shaman's shoulder. "If only for his potions."
Morus
laughs quietly, a low, rasping sound.
"Just
remember," he says, voice like smoke, "strength and madness
often share the same cup."
Spartan
looks toward the eastern horizon where the first gray hints of dawn
creep over the mountains.
"Then
let's drink deep," she says. "We move north."
The
wind has picked up, a thin, cutting draft that snakes through the
half-buried streets and rattles the steel banners above the outpost
gates. The thrum of idling APC engines fills the air, exhaust misting
like steam in the cold dawn.
Spartan
leads her pack through the snow-choked road, their heavy steps
sinking deep. The seven black-armored figures move with a purpose
that parts the Federalists like water. Soldiers pause in their
packing, heads turning, eyes following the slow, unified rhythm of
the Vardengard's advance, living tanks of steel and shadow.
At
the front of the convoy, Red Baron stands by the lead APC, one boot
up on the side rail, gesturing to the driver. He looks over as
Spartan's team approaches, raising a hand to flag them down.
"You're
leaving already?" he calls, his breath fogging the air. "My
boys are just about ready to move. Another few minutes and we'll roll
out together."
Spartan
slows, helm turning toward him. Her voice crackles through the
armor's comms speaker, firm but even. "We move now. We'll draw
them first."
Red
Baron frowns, crossing his arms. "If you wait, "
"You'll
follow," Spartan cuts in, raising a hand to stop him. "Come
in as reinforcements. Hold the line if it breaks."
He
hesitates, studying her unreadable visor, the faint hiss of
hydraulics whispering as her armor shifts. Then, with a resigned
exhale, he nods.
"Alright
then," he says quietly. "We'll be right behind you. Good
hunting."
Spartan
inclines her head once, acknowledgment, then gestures to her pack.
Without another word, the Vardengard continue forward, boots striking
the frostbitten ground like drums of war.
The
gates of Karthane creak open ahead, massive slabs of reinforced alloy
groaning against the cold. The seven pass through, swallowed by the
gray light of morning. Their silhouettes fade into the snow until
only the sound of their movement remains, then silence.
Red
Baron stands there for a moment, eyes fixed on the empty road.
Liam
steps up beside him, towering over him by nearly a foot, the
Martian's skin faint beneath his helmet's glass visor. He watches the
retreating forms too, then murmurs,
"You
see what they did before they left?"
Red
Baron looks up. "What's that?"
"Drank
from a skull," Liam says, voice low. "Wolf's skull, by the
look of it. Passed it around like a cup. Odd thing to do before
battle."
Red
Baron exhales, rubbing a gloved hand over his jaw.
"Invictans,"
he mutters. "Don't think too hard about it. Strange people.
Strange customs."
Liam
nods slowly, eyes still on the gates.
"Strange,
yeah," he says, almost thoughtfully. "But maybe that's what
makes them fight the way they do. The Forger, the Forge, all that
talk of fire and rebirth… maybe they believe enough to make it
real."
Red
Baron gives a dry chuckle. "Maybe," he says. "Or maybe
it's just another story they tell themselves so the dying makes
sense."
The
Martian hums quietly, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Together they
watch the horizon for a few moments more before turning back to the
convoy, the clang of loading ramps and the bark of sergeants filling
the air again.
The
Trenches North of Karthane - An Hour Later
Snowstorms
sweep the trenches like ghosts, shrouding friend and foe alike in a
pall of smoke and frost. The sound of battle carries for miles,
screaming engines, sonic bursts, the ringing thunder of plasma and
steel.
By
the time Spartan and her pack reach the front, the horizon burns blue
and white with the fury of war. The Vardengard crest the last ridge
above the Invictan line, their black armor gleaming faintly under the
muted daylight. Even through the storm, they can see the fight
unfolding, and it is brutal.
The
Invictans hold the trenches with grim precision, their lines tight,
weapons braced, discipline unbroken, but the eldiravan press like an
avalanche, armored titans, moving as one organism. The ground itself
seems to writhe beneath their feet, reshaping to their will. Great
spears of black stone jut from the snow, tearing through bunkers and
fortifications.
Spartan
raises a hand, halting her pack at the crest. They crouch low behind
the ridgeline, watching.
"Northeast
line's collapsing," Naburiel murmurs, visor zooming in on the
chaos below.
"No
air cover," adds Ashurdan, checking his scopes. "Eldiravan
artillery's chewing through them."
"Too
many," Belqartis growls. "Even for Invictans."
Spartan
stays silent, visor reflecting the flashes of battle, every motion
calculated, every outcome running through her head. The chemical fire
of Morus' concoction still hums through their veins, dull warmth
turning sharp. She feels everything more clearly, the vibration of
cannon fire under her boots, the heat signatures shifting like tides
through the snow.
Spartan
scans once more, her HUD painting trajectories and densities in cold
light, before locking onto the center flank, where Invictan forces
are beginning to buckle.
"There,"
she says. "We split, Naburiel, Ashurdan, Samayel west flank.
Belqartis, Rho, Morus with me on center. Hit their vanguard hard.
Disrupt formation, draw their fire."
The
pack acknowledges with curt nods.
For
a moment longer, Spartan watches the storm of battle. The eldiravan
charge burns across the snow like a living tide of black glass and
flame. Then she lowers her head, flexes her gauntlets, and lets the
voice rise, deep, guttural, inhuman.
The
howl.
It
cuts through the din of battle like a blade through silk , a sound
that makes every Invictan head turn, every eldiravan pause for a
heartbeat. It echoes off the steel of the trenches, rolling across
the battlefield like thunder.
"Vardengard!"
someone shouts down in the lines, and the word spreads like fire.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
From
the ridge, seven armored figures leap into the storm, thrusters
flaring, boots slamming into the churned earth. The Vardengard
descend like meteors, their howls joined as one, the sound of war
made flesh.
Below,
the Invictans rally. The eldiravan turn. And for the first time in
hours, the tide of battle shifts.
Snow
and ash spiral through the air, clinging to the black plates of the
Vardengard's armor as they land like meteors in the trenches. The
earth trembles beneath the impact, seven armored giants standing
shoulder to shoulder amid the chaos.
Before
them, the eldiravan move like a living tide. The Rahn-Vaen, their
foot soldiers, advance with perfect rhythm, song and step aligned.
Their voices rise and fall in alien harmonics, a war-cant that shakes
the snow from the steel walls of the trenches. Each note bends the
air, warping gravity itself, making the battlefield hum.
Spartan
draws her blade, the weapon's edges singing with its own resonance.
"We cut through their center," she commands. "Fast and
loud."
Rho
Voss holds up a notepad for Samayel to read aloud: [First to twenty
kills buys the others drinks.]
"Only
twenty?" Belqartis chuckles, chambering his rifle. "I'll be
thirsty before we even start."
Ashurdan
lets out a laugh, low and cruel. "Try to keep up, old man."
Spartan
doesn't wait for the banter to end, she launches forward, thrusters
flaring, and the pack follows like hounds unleashed.
They
hit the eldiravan flank with crushing force. The Rahn-Vaen barely
have time to turn their glowing eyes before the first line is broken;
Spartan's blade carves through two in a single swing, molten ichor
spraying across the snow. Belqartis' cannon thunders, turning another
into shards of light and bone.
The
trench fills with sound, the clash of steel and the strange, harmonic
shrieks of dying eldiravan. The air ripples around each Vardengard
strike, kinetic waves shattering the frozen mud and throwing bodies
skyward.
"Three!"
Belqartis calls out.
"Five!"
Samayel answers, his spear penetrating through a glowing spine.
"Liar!"
Naburiel laughs through the comms. "That one was already half
dead!"
For
a moment, it is a game, brutal, clean, precise. The Vardengard move
as one, carving their way into the eldiravan's center, breaking the
song that keeps their formation intact. The Invictan troops in the
rear rally behind them, shouting over the thunder of battle.
Then,
the tone shifts.
The
Rahn-Vaen begin to chant, low, deep, mournful. The sound vibrates
through the trenches, through the armor, through the bones of every
human there. It isn't a voice but a chord, and it carries a call.
The
snow stills. The hum in the air sharpens.
From
the white horizon, shapes move, taller, heavier, cloaked in flowing
scale-metal and burning sigils. Their voices rise to answer the song.
"Kairn-Vohr,"
Spartan mutters, eyes narrowing.
Four
of them.
They
move like dancers, their motions too smooth, too deliberate. The air
bends around them. One lifts a hand, a wave of invisible force
crashes through the trench, hurling debris and bodies alike. Morus
throws up a resonant shield just in time, the barrier screaming under
the impact.
Ashurdan
grins. "Now it's getting interesting."
Spartan's
voice cuts through the comms: "Break their harmony! Naburiel,
left flank! Belqartis, suppress! Don't let them sing together!"
The
Vardengard surge forward again, this time with their own song to
counter the singing frequencies of the eldiravan; growls and snarls,
chuffs and barks. Sparks of light and sound ripple through the air
like shattered glass. The battlefield becomes a symphony of
destruction: each strike a note, each roar a chord.
The
first Kairn-Vohr meets Rho Voss head-on, the clash of their weapons
sending shockwaves through the snow. Another targets Spartan
directly, their harmonics resonating in perfect sync, enough to
distort her vision, her HUD flickering. She slides under the blow,
counters, slams her blade through its chest.
"One
down!" she calls.
"Three
to go!" Naburiel shouts back, the sound of cannon fire drowning
his words.
The
Kairn-Vohr fight like living storms, their harmonics combining in
lethal patterns, bursts of kinetic force, waves of heat, distortion
fields that twist space itself. The Vardengard counter with raw
aggression, overwhelming precision, and their own steel-sung fury.
The
snow screams.
It
happens all at once, a harmonic detonation that rips through the
trench like thunder given shape. The four Kairn-Vohr stand in perfect
formation, their song rising in a crystalline chord that makes the
very air fracture.
The
Vardengard's visors flicker. Armor vibrates. The ground convulses.
A
wall of snow and frozen soil erupts in front of Spartan, a tidal wave
of earth given will. It slams into her with bone-shattering force,
hurling her backward into a mound of half-frozen corpses. The impact
warps her HUD into static. For a heartbeat, there is nothing but
sound, sound and pressure, pressing inward, clawing at her skull like
claws made of glass.
"Spartan!"
"Commander!"
The
voices of her pack fade, drowned beneath a deep, subsonic hum.
Then,
the world shifts.
The
snow no longer falls white, but ashen gray. The sky bleeds a dim
orange, sickly and eternal. The trenches are gone, replaced by a
wasteland of petrified flesh and stone; twisted human forms fused
together, reaching skyward, their mouths open in silent screams.
Spartan
staggers to her knees, her breath fogging the inside of her visor.
The sound around her has changed; the Kairn-Vohr's song now hollow,
reverberating from inside the stone bodies themselves. The melody is
mournful, yes, but there's something almost pleading within it,
something desperate.
Rho
Voss appears in her vision, distorted, his armor slick with some
tar-black substance that drips upward instead of down. His movements
lag, like frames missing between motion.
He
growls to her, voice distant and warped, and he reaches towards her.
His
words stretch, fracture. He's gone.
Where
he stood, a massive eldiravan looms, or something that might once
have been one. Its limbs are too long, its face smooth save for
hollow sockets where eyes should be. When it moves, the sound is wet,
not mechanical, its harmonics no longer structured but broken sobs
carried through the wind.
The
ground shudders again. From beneath the petrified bodies, hands begin
to move, human hands, reaching, clutching, grasping at her legs as
she steps back.
Inside
her helmet, her heart rate spikes. The armor's sensors glitch,
readings dancing erratically across the HUD.
"Morus!"
she gasps over the comms. "What the hell was in that
concoction?"
Static
answers her. Then laughter, not human. It echoes around her,
overlapping with the eldiravan's lament, the boundary between enemy
and hallucination dissolving.
Everywhere
she looks, the world is collapsing inward, tendrils of calcified
sinew rise from the earth, coiling like roots, splitting apart the
terrain. The horizon becomes a forest of stone torsos, human and
eldiravan alike, reaching toward a sun that no longer exists.
The
Kairn-Vohr step forward through the fog, their armor now coral-like,
fused with the terrain. Their song continues, but now it's clearer,
closer, threading directly into her skull. Each note thrums through
her bones, tugging at something deep, something primal.
Her
breath catches. She can see the sound, golden threads weaving through
the air like veins of light.
She
grips her sword tighter. "Enough," she growls, voice
shaking, "I said enough!"
Her
visor cracks as she roars, a guttural sound that sends a ripple of
distortion through the hallucination. The petrified figures tremble.
For a heartbeat, she sees her pack again, brief, flickering, fighting
shapes that shift between eldiravan and grotesque human forms.
The
snow begins to fall heavier. But it's not snow anymore. It's ash.
Spartan's
head is ringing. The harmonics fade from a scream to a pulse, steady,
nauseating, alive. Her body still hums from the strike. But she
breathes, forces her muscles to obey, forces the armor to move.
She
blinks. The world flickers, petrified horror and battlefield reality
bleeding together in alternating frames. Rho Voss is there, thank the
Forger, his outline warped, one shoulderplate looking more like bone
than alloy, but he's real enough. His text message pops into view on
Spartan's HUD:
[Spartan!
We've still got them in front! The things, they're still the
eldiravan!]
"Focus,"
Spartan snarls, voice a rasp in her helmet. "They bleed. That's
all that matters."
The
Vardengard close ranks around her. Each one looks wrong, helmets too
narrow, too bone-like, eyes glowing faintly through warped glass.
Behind them, the trench quakes beneath waves of harmonic pressure.
The Kairn-Vohr are still singing, still reshaping the field like
sculptors carving from madness.
Spartan
slams her fist into her chestplate, feeling the charge pulse back
into her armor's circuits.
"Morus!
Ground us!"
From
somewhere behind, the medic's voice cracks through the interference,
raw with alarm. "I'm trying! The draught wasn't supposed to...
By the Forger's flame, hold on!"
He
drives his war-staff into the snow. The impact sends a dull, resonant
thrum through the earth, and the bells and charms strung along its
shaft begin to sing their own discordant song. A dozen different
tones, mismatched and imperfect, human.
The
sound ripples through the haze, cutting lines of clarity. The twisted
terrain wavers; the stone hands and tendrils shudder and crumble to
dust. The pack exhales in unison, and reality, fractured as it is,
stabilizes into something they can fight in.
"There!"
Morus shouts. "Stay near the sound! Don't lose it!"
The
Vardengard rally. Spartan drives her sword into the ground, sparks
flaring as the alloy hums in sync with Morus' grounding tone.
"Rho,
left flank! Samayel, up the ridge! Keep your senses tight, don't look
too long at anything that doesn't bleed or breathe!"
The
pack moves like wolves through fog. Their armor whines with speed,
snow exploding beneath their feet as they charge. Each step is a
battle between vision and instinct, the world twisting in and out of
nightmares, the enemy's shapes changing mid-motion.
The
Kairn-Vohr counter. Their song surges again, and the earth rises to
meet them, pillars of frozen dirt forming like fingers reaching
skyward. Ashurdan leaps from a mound, drives his blade into an
Eldiravan’s chest, and the figure shatters into shards of
flesh-stone, screaming through every piece.
Rho
Voss' message comes in over their HUDs: [They're real! They feel
real!]
"Then
kill them!" Spartan roars.
She
breaks through the first harmonic wall, armor vibrating so violently
it feels like it might come apart. Her sword arcs, meeting a
Kairn-Vohr's staff, the impact sends another surge of sound, but
she's ready this time. She channels it, turning her own howl into a
counter-resonance. The shockwave bursts outward, shattering a nearby
ridge of snow and petrified bodies.
Behind
her, Morus' staff tolls again, an off-beat, human rhythm against the
alien harmonics.
Each
toll cuts through the hallucination a little more. Each note drags
them closer to reality.
"Keep
to the bells!" Spartan yells. "That's your world!
Everything else is theirs!"
The
battle devolves into chaos, ringing steel, sound, color, and shadow.
The Kairn-Vohr's harmonics clash with the Vardengard's war howls, an
unholy duet of sound and fury that shakes the trench to its bones.
And
through it all, Spartan fights forward, eyes burning, armor flashing,
mind splitting between what she sees and what she knows.
She
doesn't know if she's cutting through snow, ash, or the dead, only
that every swing must matter, because if they stop, even for a
breath, the song will take them.
The
battlefield vibrates. The songs are no longer just sound, they are
pressure, weight, and memory. Spartan feels every note like a pulse
through her bones, her vision split between the snow and that
impossible, other realm.
Stone
fingers reach from the ground, frozen faces weep soundlessly beneath
her boots. The air tastes like ash and copper.
"Hold
formation!" Spartan bellows. Her voice cracks through the
distortion. "Don't let the world take you!"
The
Vardengard tighten their line. Rho Voss on her left, Naburiel and
Samayel covering the right.
A
Kairn-Vohr shrieks his final note, his body fracturing like glass as
Naburiel's spear pierces through his chest. The shards scatter, still
singing faintly, then fade into dust.
The
snow stills for half a heartbeat. Then two Veyr'Kael descend into the
field, their arrival heralded by an eruption of sound. The harmonic
frequency is too complex to comprehend, felt more than heard, a
cathedral collapsing, an ocean folding inward. The very world bends
around them.
Their
armor is etched with glowing runes that shimmer like molten gold.
Their eyes blaze, their mouths open, and the song begins.
The
hallucination deepens. The sky itself becomes flesh, clouds pulsing
like lungs, light filtering through veins. The petrified hands that
once reached up now move, groaning, struggling. The field between
both forces turns to a graveyard of motionless bodies half-trapped in
stone, half-alive, half-dead.
Spartan
digs her feet in. "Veyr'Kael."
Rho
Voss growls beside her. [Two of them.]
"Doesn't
matter. They bleed the same."
But
even she knows it's not true.
The
Veyr'Kael's harmonics crash into them like tidal waves. The ground
rises, walls of frozen earth and twisted bone surging upward,
separating the Vardengard.
"Rho!"
Spartan roars as she's thrown back, slamming through a mound of
half-formed stone faces.
He
tries to respond, but the harmonics erase the sound. His lips move,
no voice comes. His armor flickers with light and static before he
vanishes behind a wall of shimmering air.
"Rho!
Naburiel! On me!"
Nothing.
The
Vardengard are split. Each one isolated in a patch of battlefield
that bends to the will of a Veyr'Kael.
Morus
hammers his war-staff into the ground, his bells a defiant
counterpoint against the alien song. His face twists in pain as blood
trickles from his ears. "They're learning our rhythm! They're
using our own grounding against us!"
Ashurdan,
half-blind from the hallucinatory light, laughs, a mad, giddy bark.
"Let them try! The Forge tests us harder than this!"
His
laughter cuts short as one of the Veyr'Kael turns his song toward
him. The air around Ashurdan compresses, armor screeching, flesh
groaning. Spartan surges forward, drives her blade into the
vibration, the strike breaking the pressure for a moment, but the
world distorts again, pulling her back into the nightmare realm.
The
Veyr'Kael shift tone. Their voices rise and fall in perfect unison,
shaping words in the Eldiravan tongue; long, resonant, mournful. It's
not a battle cry. It's a naming.
"Vaer'Naskha…"
The
sound cuts through the storm, translated only by instinct. Spartan
feels the meaning ripple through her skull.
The
name spreads like a wound through the harmonics. The Rahn-Vohr and
Kairn-Vohr in the distance echo it, "Vaer'Naskha! Vaer'Naskha!"
Their voices a chorus of fear and reverence.
Spartan
snarls, forcing herself upright through the distortion. "They've
named us."
Morus
spits blood into the snow. "Then we've earned it."
Rho's
message comes in through her HUD, flickering with static: [Spartan
hold coming through]
She
steadies her stance. Her armor hums, drawing every volt of light it
can gather.
"Then
come fast, brother. The gods are singing."
The
Veyr'Kael advance, two avatars of harmonic power, their song shaking
the marrow of the world. And the Vardengard, now scattered, bleeding,
and half-lost to madness, rise again to meet them.
