A cavalry of heat, fire, and pressure struck my body, throwing me several paces from where I had stood, my gaze still locked on the winding Amplifier.
The world did not return—it reassembled itself in jagged, painful fragments.
First came a field of solid, blinding white, the ghost of the blast burned onto my vision. Then a low groan—my own, I realized, as the white began to crack. Darkness seeped into the edges of the void—not true black, but a deep, pulsing murk, shot through with splinters of raw color.
Shapes began to congeal from the chaos: a darker smudge against the grey, the hard line of a pauldron, the wet gleam of mud. My eyes refused to focus, the images sliding apart, doubling. The sharp, regrettably familiar scent of flesh flooded my sinuses and the back of my throat, and with it, a pressure built behind my eyes, throbbing in time with a heartbeat I could feel hammering in my skull.
Slowly, stubbornly, the fragments of the field began to lock into place. The smudge resolved into a boot. The gleam became a discarded blade. Depth and distance returned not as a whole, but one object at a time, each piece pulling the next into grim, solid focus.
A great sphere of dense smoke darkened the skies where the Amplifier had stood. On the ground, a firestorm raged, consuming everything in its path. The priests' bodies lay scattered amidst the ruins. Some had their white robes ignited, flames crawling along them, devouring their unconscious forms. Others were torn apart, pieces of limbs and viscera blackened by the heat, flung across the field. I could not look away, yet my mind screamed to do so, each inhale carrying the sharp, acrid scent of burning flesh.
With great effort, I pushed against the ground and hauled my body upright. My gaze remained fixed on the firestorm that still raged before me. Slowly, painfully, the reality of what had transpired began to creep into my mind. After a few moments, I forced my eyes across the battlefield, taking in the full extent of the devastation.
Eleven foul wounds tore through the ranks of the Legio—eleven blooms of destruction flourishing simultaneously and without warning. Death spread like a spring's overflowing stream, sweeping away the ground, the souls that stood upon it, and every trace of cohesion that had once held.
I stumbled, my senses reeling, as the battlefield turned into a landscape of ruin and fire. The ringing in my ears gradually gave way to the guttural thrum of a drum. It took me a few breaths to realize the sound was no drum at all, but my own heart, hammering a jagged rhythm inside my chest.
Reality forced its way through my confusion. I saw men tearing off their helmets, their faces contorted by nausea and pain. Others had collapsed—some groaning in suffering, others lying awfully still. The devastation our enemies had unleashed stretched across the entire formation. Even the Amplifiers on the flanks of the Legio had been struck, their priests scattered before they could begin their prayers. Fortune had it that those instruments had fallen silent without unleashing the kind of ruin I had just endured.
Amid the stillness of the fallen, a sound broke through—the Hierophant's laughter, thin and cracked, carried upward to join the traitors' triumphant cries from the walls.
The last Amplifier, I told myself, the thought a spark in the smoking ruin of my mind. Felix is still up there.
I had to give the signal for the counter-attack. We had to destroy those blasphemous tubes on the walls before they could unleash another round of hell upon us. There would be no surviving a second volley.
"Come on," I snarled, the words a raw scrape in my throat, meant for my ears alone. I tried to shove myself upright, but my legs buckled, betraying me under the weight of my own armor and the dawning horror.
I faced the walls. Through the haze, I could make out the small, dark-clothed figures moving among the militia, their celebrations already giving way to purpose. They swarmed over their blackened tubes again, their movements precise, rehearsed.
They are preparing to fire again.
The realization was a cold lance of pure terror. I had to move. I had to reach the signal flags, the horns—anything. We had to stop them before they could finish reloading.
A wave of twitching motion ran through the Hierophant's cackling body.
I spotted a horn dangling from one of the fallen, its frame blackened by ash and heat. It lay just ahead of me—yet beyond it stretched the field of smoldering robes where the Hierophant writhed.
If I left him like this, everything would fall, I thought. And if I didn't signal Felix now, only we would be obliterated. I pawed at the hidden pocket beneath my pauldron, fingers scrabbling for the Ring Claw. The Magister's words came back to me—keep it close to the clergy—and suddenly its familiar weight felt less like a relic and more like a small, hot promise.
My hand closed around cool metal.
I inhaled deeply, smoke searing my lungs. It didn't matter. I forced the breath out slowly, the copper tang of blood mingling with the ash and soot in my mouth.
"Sorores, me amplexu vestro obscuro celate et peccatum meum a Patre abscondite."
("Sisters, cloak me in your dark embrace, and hide my sin from the Father.")