The battlefield was quiet in the way that only places where people have recently died can be quiet.
Demeterra's army had stopped advancing. The withdrawal of her Descent — the collapsing of her divine avatar back into the substrate — had taken the momentum with it. Five thousand soldiers stood in the ruins of the Iron Covenant's third trench line, surrounded by the golden grass that Demeterra's footsteps had planted, and wondered what came next.
Gorvahn's Frogmen reformed without orders — the disciplined reflex of professional soldiers who knew that standing still in a combat zone was a way to die. They established a perimeter, covered their wounded, and waited for instructions that didn't come.
