The throne room of the Royal Palace of Aerthos was a masterpiece of arrogant power. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows depicting the glorious victories of the Valerius dynasty, illuminating the gold leaf on the vaulted ceilings and glinting off the polished marble floor. It was a room designed to make any visitor feel small and insignificant.
Today, it was a room of incandescent rage.
King Theron IV, my father, sat on the Dragon Throne, his face a thundercloud. He was no longer the indifferent, distant monarch I remembered. The news from the wastes had transformed him into an avatar of wounded pride. Before him, kneeling on the cold marble, was the one-armed sergeant from Fort Drakon, his tale of the battle a litany of humiliation and disbelief.
"...and then he told me to walk back, Your Majesty," the sergeant finished, his voice trembling. "He said to tell you… to tell you this was your only warning."
A heavy, gilded goblet flew from the King's hand, crashing against a marble pillar and spraying wine across the floor. "Warning?!" King Theron roared, his voice echoing through the vast hall. "A warning? From my own misbegotten, gutter-born refuse? He dares?!"
Lord Malakor, the architect of the disastrous tax mission, stood near the throne, his face the color of spoiled milk. "Your Majesty, it is incomprehensible. The boy was a simpleton. It must be sorcery, some dark power of the wastes…"
"Silence, you incompetent fool!" the King bellowed, turning his fury on his advisor. "You saw a mud-hut village and thought you could bully it. You were outmaneuvered by a boy you deemed a simpleton! You have not only failed me, you have made me a laughingstock!"
The King stood, his powerful frame radiating menace. "This is not a provincial rebellion. This is a personal insult. This is a bastard son spitting on the name of his father. It is a stain that must be scoured from the earth with fire and salt."
He turned to the captain of his Royal Guard. "Summon the War Council. Summon General Kaelen."
A ripple of shock went through the assembled courtiers at the mention of the name. General Kaelen was a living legend, the 'King's Hammer', the man who had crushed the Northern Uprising and pacified the pirates of the Serpent Isles. He was a brilliant, ruthless, and methodical strategist who had not taken the field in a decade. To call upon Kaelen was not to quell a rebellion; it was to wage a war of annihilation.
An hour later, in the royal war room, General Kaelen stood before the King. He was an older man, his hair the color of steel, his face a roadmap of old battle scars. He listened impassively as the King recounted the story of Fort Drakon, his fury still burning hot.
Kaelen, unlike the other fawning courtiers, was unmoved by the King's rage. He looked only at the map. "You sent fifty knights into a canyon," he stated, his voice a gravelly monotone. "A tactical blunder of the first order. This 'Castian' did not win with sorcery. He won with superior strategy."
"I do not care how he won!" the King snarled. "I care only that you make him suffer for it. I want you to march into that wasteland, tear down his city, and bring me his head on a pike. I want the ground where Oakhaven stood sown with salt so that nothing will ever grow there again."
General Kaelen's gaze remained fixed on the map. "Anger is not a strategy, Your Majesty. Your son, it seems, understands this. He has shown his capabilities. He destroyed a fortress and collapsed a pass. He has crippled our primary invasion route and bought himself time. He expects a full-frontal assault. He is baiting us into a war of attrition in a land he knows and we do not."
"Then what do you propose, General?" the King asked, his voice laced with impatience.
"We will not give him the war he wants," Kaelen said, a cold, predatory light in his eyes. "We will not send one legion. We will send three. The First Legion will march on the now-impassable Dragon's Tooth Pass and begin the long, arduous task of clearing it. This will be a feint. It will draw your son's attention, make him believe he has predicted our move."
He traced a new line on the map with his finger, far to the south. "Meanwhile, the Second and Third Legions, under my personal command, will take a longer, more difficult route. We will march through the southern deserts, a path no army has taken before. It will be a brutal march, but we will arrive on his doorstep from the direction he least expects it. We will bypass his prepared defenses and his desert traps."
He looked at the King. "We will not just defeat his army. We will encircle his entire valley. We will cut him off from his allies. We will build our own forts, our own siege lines. We will turn his oasis into a prison. And then, when he is trapped and starving, I will dismantle his little 'Confederacy' piece by piece. I will give you your victory, Your Majesty. But it will be a victory of logistics, encirclement, and cold, patient annihilation. Not a battle. A siege."
A slow, cruel smile spread across King Theron's face. "Excellent, General," he breathed. "Make it so. Let the bastard know the true meaning of a king's fury."
The war machine of the Kingdom of Aerthos, vast and terrible, began to grind into motion. An army of ten thousand men was being mobilized. A logistical train of unprecedented scale was being assembled. General Kaelen, the King's Hammer, was preparing to bring the full, crushing weight of a true military superpower down upon the small, defiant nation of the wastes.