The scorched wind howled like a mourning god.
Their boots struck dust-cracked stone as they descended deeper into the ravaged canyon, heat rising from fissures like breath from a dying beast. The terrain shifted beneath them—unnatural and unstable. Craters yawning like open mouths, jagged fault lines stretching for miles. The planet groaned with every tremor.
This place had been sundered.
Valkar moved in front, visor scanning the shattered terrain. "I've seen orbital bombardments do less damage."
"It wasn't a weapon," Candren muttered. "These aren't impact marks. They're… claw marks."
The Warmachines halted. Before them, the stone floor had been raked open by something massive—four parallel gouges as wide as corridors and deep enough to lose a drop ship in. Black soot crusted the edges, pulsing faintly.
"Canyon-sized claws…" Mitus whispered. "What in the name of ash did this?"
No one answered.
Riven crouched, running armored fingers through the grooves. "This isn't old. The heat is still fresh. Whatever did this is still here."
Maverick said nothing. But his helm tilted slowly toward the skyline.
And somewhere beyond the dead horizon, the ground moved.
⸻
They marched further. Past boulders shaped like broken teeth. The deeper they went, the more the terrain changed—once-mountains cleaved in half, rivers boiled into vapor. The wind began to carry something acrid and primal. Burnt blood. Scorched marrow.
Suddenly—movement.
Four bear-sized creatures leapt from behind twisted rock formations, their bodies forged of fire, ash, and obsidian. Their maws burned like furnaces, claws dragging sparks across the stone.
Maverick's eyes flared.
"Contact."
The team scattered into formation instantly.
Riven fired a concussive pulse that shattered the lead beast's torso. Mitus followed with a pincer maneuver, his blade cleaving through the second's spine. Valkar stomped one creature into the canyon floor before unloading plasma rounds into its skull. Fitus caught the fourth mid-leap, grabbing it by the neck and hurling it into the cliff wall where it exploded in a burst of molten stone.
Seconds.
That's all it took.
Candren scoffed, wiping blood from his visor. "That's it? If that's all he's got, he's slipping."
Fitus grunted. "Be careful what you ask for."
The canyon rumbled beneath their feet.
Then it howled.
⸻
The rock cracked in slow, agonizing protest.
One clawed hand—large enough to crush a fleet—erupted from the canyon wall beside them. Then another. Entire cliffs collapsed around it, dust rising like smoke from a funeral pyre.
And then it pulled itself free.
The titan towered—miles tall, forged of fire and decay. It blotted out the sun as it rose. Its bones glowed beneath cracked obsidian skin. It had no eyes, only seething sockets of red smoke. Its back hunched with molten spines that dripped glowing rock. Its mouth opened, and inside were rows upon rows of whirling teeth—like a furnace grinding bone.
Candren stepped back. "By the Forge…"
Valkar snarled, stepping forward. "FORM UP!"
⸻
Brutal Team Fight Begins
The titan roared—a shockwave of pure sound that threw boulders skyward and shattered ridges into dust.
The Warmachines responded in kind.
Maverick ignited his plasma hammer, the core glowing like a newborn star. He leapt first—straight at the beast's lower chest. The hammer struck home, vaporizing a chunk of its carapace and sending shock tremors rippling up its towering frame.
Valkar followed, slamming his fists into the beast's ankle joint, cracking it sideways. Mitus dashed up a crumbling ledge and launched himself from above, embedding both blades into the monster's shoulder before flipping off mid-air.
It roared and swung a limb the size of a tower—its sweep catching Riven and throwing him through a stone arch. Fitus grabbed Riven mid-fall and skidded back with him before launching a volley of micro-rockets into the beast's lower neck. The explosions seared holes into its hide, but it wasn't enough.
The titan countered—slamming both fists into the ground. Shockwaves split the earth. A wave of obsidian fire chased the squad, forcing them to scatter.
Maverick sprinted up a sheer rock wall, planted a magnetic boot, and used his shock gauntlet to leap back down. He slammed into the side of the beast's head with the weight of gods.
CRACK.
The titan reeled.
Candren fired a beam from his shock cannon, targeting a wound Mitus had just opened near its rib. Valkar stabbed deep into the opening, prying it wider.
Blood like magma gushed forth.
"WEAKENED!" Valkar roared.
"NOW!" Maverick called, his voice echoing like judgment.
All six surrounded it.
Fitus and Riven targeted its legs with high-density rounds. Candren struck high, blinding it with an electric burst. Valkar rammed his shoulder into the titan's knee, destabilizing it.
And Maverick…
Maverick leapt—higher than he ever had.
He activated both shockwave gauntlets, the plasma hammer roaring in one hand. As he descended, he aimed straight for the crown of its skull.
"FALL."
The hammer struck.
The head erupted in light, gore, and stone—shattered across the landscape in a cascading collapse.
The titan swayed… then crumpled forward.
The ground shook for miles.
Ash settled.
The world stilled.
They stood victorious—heaving, scorched, bloodied—but alive.
⸻
Aftermath
The crater left by the beast smoked like the mouth of a volcano.
The Warmachines regrouped at the edge of the corpse.
Valkar looked around. "This wasn't a sentry."
He turned to Maverick. "It was a message."
Maverick stared into the shattered skull.
"…And I received it."
___________________________________
The air still trembled from the fall.
Cracks radiated across the canyon for miles, smoking and pulsing as if the planet itself had been wounded. And in the center of it all, they stood—scarred giants of war, dwarfed only by the corpse behind them.
Valkar turned to Maverick, breathing hard.
"You shattered its skull," he said slowly, as if speaking it aloud made it real. "A beast that size… you broke it."
Mitus stared up at the cratered impact point where Maverick had landed his final blow. "I knew you were powerful, but that wasn't strength. That was something else."
Riven let out a low whistle, shaking his head. "If I hadn't seen it… I wouldn't have believed it."
Fitus was silent, his eyes on Maverick.
Candren, voice calm but edged with something new, murmured, "What are you?"
Maverick said nothing at first. He stood at the edge of the smoking ruin, the hammer still glowing faintly in his grasp.
"I'm a Warmachine," he answered at last. "Just like you."
But none of them believed that—not entirely.
⸻
They began to walk.
Their boots crunched over scorched gravel and ash, navigating what was once a canyon and now resembled a crater from godly fury. No one spoke for a while. The magnitude of what they'd done—and what they'd faced—hung thick in the air.
Fitus finally broke the silence.
"If that was one of Armatus' beasts…" he trailed off, jaw clenched.
"…then we've only seen the edge of the storm," Valkar finished.
Maverick remained ahead of the group, silent, unreadable.
⸻
Behind them, unnoticed—just beneath the sole of Riven's left boot—a small ember glowed.
A speck of heat no larger than a coin.
It pulsed faintly, alive with red light. Then… it vanished into the armor's tread, invisible once more.
Watching.
Listening.
Waiting.
⸻
They reached the edge of a low ridge where their drop ship had touched down hours earlier, the trail of destruction stretching far behind them like the scar of a planet that had tried to fight back—and lost.
Mitus sat down on a boulder, wiping his brow. "That wasn't just a fight. That was a statement. He wanted us to see that."
Valkar nodded grimly. "He wanted Maverick to see it."
Candren added, "If he's sending monsters like that… Earth won't be far behind."
Riven grunted, flexing his fingers. "Then he'll find out what happens when Earth sends us back."
⸻
Maverick stood on a rise overlooking the battlefield, visor catching the molten glint of the beast's corpse in the distance.
His voice came low, a warning carved in iron.
"That was a message," he said again. "And messages are meant to be answered."
A long silence followed.
Above them, the sky darkened. Clouds churned in slow, unnatural spirals, pulled by the tremors still echoing beneath their feet.
In the distance, the drop ship approached—blades of light cutting through the rising dust.
But none of them relaxed.
Because they knew—
This was not the end.
It was the opening note of a symphony of war.