Siege of the East Gate
The world was deafening.
Idomay, Overseer of the East District and former champion of the Roake death-pits, slammed her fist against the stone parapet. The vibration stung her knuckles, but it was nothing compared to the tremor shuddering through the entire gatehouse. The night sky above Roake was a kaleidoscope of violence—red from the oil fires, gold from the fireworks Sylvanne had launched, and violet from the erratic, sickly pulses of the Cult's defensive wards failing one by one.
"Hold the line, you pathetic worms!" Idomay screeched, her voice raw. She hefted her signature weapon—a massive, brutal mace made from a scavenged mining equipment welded to a steel shaft. "If they breach, Solus will boil us all alive!"
Below her, in the courtyard, the "Iron Hounds"—her old gang, now Enforcers wearing the Eclipse's indigo robes over their mismatched plate were scrambling. But fear, not faith, drove them forward.
The East Gate, a behemoth of oak and iron meant to withstand mountain landslides, groaned.
The trebuchets outside fired again. A massive clay pot arced over the wall, smashing into the main thoroughfare. Ideally, it would have been filled with fire or stones. Instead, it was filled with... bees?
"BEES! THEY'RE SHOOTING BEES AT US!" A cultist screamed, swatting frantically at the cloud of angry, smoke-drunk insects swarming from the shattered pottery.
"Bees?!" Idomay stared in disbelief. "What kind of lunatic army shoots bees?!"
Just then, a loud BOOM! Another projectile hit the wall directly below her. This one wasn't livestock. It was a barrel of pitch, ignited mid-air by a trailing fuse. Fire splashed across the ramparts, catching two archers who went down screaming, their robes becoming flaming shrouds.
From the darkness beyond the wall, a roar erupted. Not the disciplined chant of an army, but the wild, chaotic howl of a mob that smelled blood and profit.
"OPEN UP! DADDY IS HOME!"
Sylvanne's voice cut through the din like a cleaver through bone.
Idomay looked down just in time to see a massive Siege Tower—hastily constructed from scaffold timber and prayer slam its boarding ramp onto the top of the wall.
And from its belly, the Northmen poured out.
Leading them was Erik, the Samifjord Nords' mercenary captain. He was a giant of a man, shirtless despite the mountain chill, his chest was tapestry of scars and tattoos. He wielded a double-bladed great-axe and a grin that promised nothing but pain.
"VALHALLA CALLS!" Erik bellowed, leaping from the ramp onto the stone walkway. He swung his axe in a wide, horizontal arc.
Three cultists tried to block him. Erik didn't even slow down. His axe cleaved through their shields, their armor, and their torsos easily, sending a spray of gore over the battlements.
"KILL THEM ALL! LOOT THE REST!" Erik laughed, kicking a severed head off the wall as if it were a ball.
"Archers! Focus fire on the giant!" Idomay commanded, raising her mace. She charged toward Erik, intending to crush his skull before he could secure a foothold.
But before she could reach him, a shadow flickered over the wall.
Hooks—dozens of them clattered onto the stonework. Ropes went taut.
"Seems the front door is busy. We'll use the window!"
Corgan, the bandit leader with a penchant for sticky fingers, vaulted over the parapet with the grace of an alley cat. Behind him, his crew of thieves and cutthroats swarmed up the ropes like rats escaping a flood.
Idomay tried to pivot, but a bandit slid between her legs, hamstringing the Enforcer beside her. Another threw a handful of powdered glass into the face of a mage trying to cast a barrier.
It was chaos. Unrefined, dirty, brutal chaos.
Down at the main gate, the hinges screamed. The reinforced timber, eaten away by fire and battered by a crude battering ram—which looked suspiciously like a giant statue of a phallus stolen from a local fertility shrine finally gave way.
"HEAVE!" A voice roared from outside.
With a final, splintering crash, the East Gate burst inward.
Dust and smoke billowed into the courtyard. And through the haze, the heavy infantry marched.
First came the mercenaries from Sycillia. Rows of pikemen moved with disciplined precision, their long spears forming a lethal hedgehog of steel points.
"Phalanx! Advance!" Vsevolod, the Varyag commander, barked from the side, his lamellar armor gleaming.
The pikes lowered. The Enforcers who had rushed to plug the breach foolishly charged into the forest of spear-tips. They were skewered instantly, lifted off their feet by the momentum of the advance.
Behind the pikemen came the archers.
Rashid, the Qurtuban captain of the Caravan Guard, strode forward calmly. His kalkan shield was slung over his back, and he held a recurve composite bow with effortless familiarity. Behind him, rows of Qurtuban archers were ready to decimate the cultists.
"Notch!" He shouted in his native tongue. "Loose!"
Arrows, black-fletched and deadly accurate, whistled through the air. They found the throats, the eye-slits, the gaps in the cultists' mismatched gear.
The Enforcers faltered. They were thugs, bullies used to fighting terrified civilians and starved miners. They weren't soldiers. Against a disciplined, motivated mercenary coalition, their fanaticism was worth less than the scrap metal they wore.
____
"This is madness!" Idomay roared, parrying a strike from Erik's great-axe. The impact rattled her teeth, sending a tremor all the way down to her boots. She stumbled back, barely keeping her footing. "Where are the Thralls?! Where are the elite units?!"
Meanwhile, atop a building, Cultist Priests and Mages chanted their spells. A Fire Priest stood, his hands clapped together as he began chanting.
"O Eternal Flame, consume the heathens—"
SWISH.
Before he could finish, a razor-thin line appeared on his neck. His head slid off a second later, blood spraying in a silent arc.
Behind him, Yamada sheathed his katana slightly, the tsuba clicking against the scabbard. The Ronin moved like a breeze, literally. Whenever he moved, a gust of wind followed. His skills could manipulate winds to increase his speed, allowing him to close the gap almost instantly.
"Y-You! S-stay away!" The other priests panicked, firing lightning bolts and ice shards.
Yamada moved before they even blinked. Bamboo leaves manifested in his wake as he dashed through the spells. Then, with a single, fluid motion—Iaijutsu—he drew his blade.
"[Thus Spoke The Blade: Wind]"
A horizontal vortex of wind slashed outward. The priests didn't even scream. Their robes were shredded, and deep cuts appeared across their chests simultaneously. They collapsed like puppets with cut strings.
Yamada flicked the blood off his blade—Chiburi—and sheathed it fully, then adjusting his straw hat.
The initial shock of the breach had barely settled when the ground began to tremble with a different, heavier rhythm. The retreating Enforcers suddenly split, forming a corridor through the chaos of the burning courtyard.
From the shadows of the deeper districts, they emerged.
Thralls. Not just the mindless laborers turned into monsters, but the 'Elites'—hulking masses of violet crystal and swollen muscle, wearing cobbled-together scrap armor. Behind them, a fresh wave of robed Battle-Mages began chanting, weaving defensive wards around the beasts.
"Push them back! For the Eclipse! For the New World!" Idomay screamed, spitting blood onto the stonework. "Crush these filthy mercenaries!"
The Thralls roared with the sounds like grinding tectonic plates and charged. The sheer momentum of their advance threatened to stall the Coalition's push right at the bottleneck of the shattered gate.
Erik, the giant Nord, didn't flinch. In fact, he stopped swinging his axe. He stood amidst the carnage, chest heaving, his eyes locking onto the largest Thrall leading the charge. A feral, terrifying grin split his beard.
"Odin's beard... they brought the heavyweights!" Erik laughed, a booming sound that drowned out the clash of steel. He dropped his massive double-bladed axe with a heavy thud.
"Men of the Fjord!" Erik turned to his unit of shirtless, tattooed warriors. "The Totems awaken! SKÅL!"
"SKÅL!"
Simultaneously, the Nords reached into pouches at their waists and bit down on dried, pungent roots. The reaction was instantaneous. Their veins turned black, bulging against their skin. Muscles expanded with sickening, cracking sounds as bones reshaped themselves.
Erik threw his head back and howled, but the sound shifted mid-cry into a guttural, animalistic roar. His jaw elongated, snapping forward into a muzzle. Thick, coarse brown fur erupted from his pores, covering his tattoos. He grew—six feet became seven, then eight, then nine.
Within seconds, the unit of mercenaries was gone. In their place stood a pack of massive, bipedal bears, their eyes glowing with primal blue.
The Berserkers had arrived.
The lead Thrall swung a crystalline fist the size of a beer keg. Erik—now a towering ursine monstrosity, caught the punch with one paw. The ground beneath them cracked from the impact. Erik roared in the Thrall's face, a spray of saliva and rage, and headbutted the monster.
Crystal shattered. The Thrall staggered back and dazed. Erik didn't give it a second chance. He lunged, jaws closing around the Thrall's throat, and ripped.
Similar scenes erupted across the front line. The Nords slammed into the Thralls with the force of a train wreck, trading technique for raw savagery. It was a brawl of monsters, shaking the very foundations of the East Gate.
Watching from a secure vantage point atop a commandeered supply wagon, Rashid lowered his bow for a moment, genuinely stunned.
"By the shifting sands..." Rashid muttered, watching a were-bear suplex a rock-monster through a brick wall. He casually plucked an arrow from his quiver and shot a cultist mage in the eye without looking. "Vsevolod, my friend. We have traded furs and amber for years, but you never mentioned your people could turn into... that."
Vsevolod, standing beside him, slammed the butt of his heavy pike into the skull of a crawling skirmisher. The Varyag commander looked at the carnage with a distinct expression of distaste, smoothing his lamellar armor.
"Do not lump us in with those tree-hugging barbarians, Rashid," Vsevolod scoffed. "The Samifjord tribes still cling to the Old Ways. Worshiping spirits, eating weird roots, running naked in snow."
"So you cannot turn into a giant bear?" Rashid asked, sounding slightly disappointed as he loosed another volley. "It would certainly save on siege equipment."
"We Varyags are civilized men now," Vsevolod stated proudly, tapping the Radiant sun symbol etched into his pauldrons. "We embraced the Light and the scripture generations ago. We traded fel-shifting for commerce, literacy, and proper table manners. Besides, look at the dry-cleaning bill Erik is going to have. All that blood in his fur? Disgusting."
"Heh." Rashid let out a chuckle, "Though one must admit, watching a bear tear a man in half is... oddly inspiring."
"Focus, desert-dweller," Vsevolod ordered, pointing his pike toward a cluster of mages trying to flank the bears. "If Erik dies, he owes me five gold for the beer I bought him yesterday. Cover his hairy ass."
"As you wish."
_____
While the battle of monsters raged below, a different duel was unfolding on the ramparts.
Idomay was backed against the stone tower. The chaos of the assault had shattered her command structure. Her Elites were dying, her mages were being sliced apart by a single Ronin, and her reinforcement Thralls were currently being wrestled by a pack of werebears.
"Cowards! All of you!" Idomay spat, her mace dripping with gore. "Die with some dignity!"
Then, a massive steel boot slammed into her chest, sending her tumbling backward. She crashed into a pile of crates, barely keeping her grip on her weapon.
She looked up, gasping for breath, to see a silhouette looming over her against the backdrop of the burning city.
Sylvanne stepped forward, her greatsword resting casually on her shoulder as if it weighed nothing.
"So... It's you who's the boss of this circus?" Sylvanne smirked, her crimson eyes gleaming with anticipation. "I heard you used to be a big shot in the pits. 'The Iron Bitch', was it?"
Idomay scrambled to her feet, wiping blood from her mouth. Her eyes narrowed. "It's the 'Iron Champion', you ignorant slut! I ruled the Roake Arena for five years! I crushed skulls with my bare hands while you were probably playing dress-up!"
"Iron Champion, huh?" Sylvanne tilted her head, unimpressed. "Funny. You look more like cheap scrap metal to me. And honestly? I was a member of Ardenian Security Bureau when you ruled those pits. A damn good one too. You do know what cops do to illegal pit fighters, right?"
"Enough talk!" Idomay roared. She reached into her robe and pulled out a jagged shard of Blood Lumite, jamming it into the socket of her mace. The weapon pulsed with a sickly crimson light, throbbing like an infected wound. "I have ascended! His Grace Solus has shown me true power! I will smash you into paste!"
She charged, swinging the mace in an overhead smash that crackled with corrupt energy.
Sylvanne parried with her Stormcleaver, creating a shower of sparks that illuminated their faces. The force of the impact shook the parapet, but Sylvanne didn't buckle. She held her ground, a grin spreading across her face.
"Oh? That's cute. You think a little magic rock makes you tough?" Sylvanne then followed by kicking Idomay's torso, making her stumble to create a distance.
"You know, I think you could be more... serious? Or maybe you're just weak?" Sylvanne asked. "Just kidding. Show me what you got, Champ!"
"Shut up!" Idomay screamed, channeling more power into her mace. The air distorted around the weapon head. "[Earthshatter Impact]!"
She slammed the mace into the ground. A shockwave tore through the stone floor, ripping up pavers and sending a wave of debris flying toward Sylvanne.
Any normal warrior would have been crushed. However, Sylvanne wasn't really normal.
Instead of blocking or dodging backward, she leaped into the shockwave. Using the flat of her massive greatsword like a shield surfing on an explosion, she planted her boots on a flying slab of masonry mid-air, using the debris as a stepping stone.
"Too slow, Champ!" Sylvanne laughed, airborne and upside down above Idomay's head. "My turn to spin the wheel!"
Gravity seemed to remember it had a job to do and pulled her down, but Sylvanne twisted her hips with impossible torque. She gripped the handle of Stormcleaver with both hands, the muscles in her arms coiling like steel cables snapping taut.
"[Gale Spin]!"
She didn't just swing the sword; she became a gyroscope of destruction.
The air shrieked as the massive blade accelerated, turning into a blur of silver death. A vortex of wind and dust formed around her, pulling loose stones and unfortunate arrows into its orbit before spitting them out as deadly projectiles.
Idomay panicked. She raised her glowing mace in a desperate guard.
CLANG!
The first rotation hammered into the mace, nearly tearing Idomay's arms from their sockets. The Blood Lumite flared, screaming in protest.
CLANG!
The second rotation came faster, harder. Idomay's knees buckled. The stone beneath her feet cracked.
CRACK!
The third rotation hit with the force of a falling cathedral.
Idomay's mace shattered. The steel shaft bent at a ninety-degree angle, and the head disintegrated under the relentless assault of Sylvanne's blade.
Sylvanne landed gracefully on one knee, the momentum of her spin dispersing into a final gust of wind that blew her silver ponytail back. She stood up slowly, resting the heavy blade on her shoulder, looking disappointed.
"Well," Sylvanne sighed, nudging a piece of the shattered mace with her boot. "That broke faster than a goblin's promise."
Idomay stared at her empty hands, shaking uncontrollably. Her "ascended" weapon was dust. Her arms felt like jelly. And the woman in front of her hadn't even broken a sweat; she was just adjusting her glove.
"Y-You..." Idomay backing away until her heels hit the edge of the parapet. "You're a monster!"
"I'm a mercenary, sweetheart. The pay is better," Sylvanne said, taking a step forward. "Now, are we going round two? Or are you going to cry?"
Idomay looked down at the courtyard. Her forces were being mauled. The bears were feasting. The Ronin was dissecting her mages. And now, the "Iron Champion" stood disarmed before a grinning executioner.
Fear, cold and absolute, washed away her rage.
"Screw this! Screw Solus! I'm not dying for this!"
Idomay scrambled onto the parapet ledge. She didn't look back at her men. She didn't shout a command to hold the line. She simply turned and leaped into a dark alleyway below the wall, using a gravity-dampening amulet to break her fall before sprinting into the shadows of the twisted city streets.
"Hey! Get back here!" Sylvanne yelled, rushing to the edge. She watched the fleeing Overseer disappear into the gloom of the lower districts. "Coward! I was just getting warmed up!"
She turned back to the remaining Enforcers on the wall. They stood frozen, having watched their leader flee like a frightened rat.
Sylvanne cracked her knuckles, hefting her sword again.
"Alright, boys. Your boss just clocked out early," she said, her voice dropping an octave into pure menace. "Who wants to be next?"
____
-Outside the East Gate - Command Post-
The smell of burning oil was sharp in the valley, but the sounds of battle were shifting. The frantic screams of the defenders were being replaced by the rhythmic, disciplined shouts of the Coalition securing the breach.
Zachary stood on top of a hill, two four-winged ravens circling above his head as the sky started to turn blue.
Two figures rode up the hill toward him. Princess Adreana, her white logistical armor smudged with soot but intact, reined in her white mare beside him.
"The breach is secure, Commander," Adreana reported, her voice steady despite the fatigue etched around her eyes. "Erik and the Nords have broken the Thrall line. Rashid's archers control the walls. Sylvanne... well, Sylvanne is cleaning up the ramparts." She paused, a small smile touching her lips. "I believe I saw an Overseer running for her life."
"Good," Zachary nodded, keeping his gaze on the burning gate. "The diversion worked better than expected. They committed too many elites to stop us, leaving their flanks exposed."
"Zachary," Adreana said, her tone growing serious. She pointed west, toward the faint, distant glow of the other battle. "Orwella and the Avalon Knights are currently halfway to the West Gate. I received a magical signal—they are moving to relieve the Resistance."
"I see." Zachary turned to her. "The West District is the priority now. If the Resistance falls, we lose the moral victory, and likely Asep along with them."
"Exactly," Adreana affirmed. She tightened her grip on her reins. "I am taking a detachment of the reserves to link up with Orwella. We will hit the West Gate together and ensure the encirclement is broken."
Zachary rubbed his chin. The plan was risky, but losing the resistance was riskier for long-term stability. Besides, the East Overseer was defeated, the East District basically turned into ruins. With their warehouses burned, the Cultists would have a hard time staying there for long.
"Go," Zachary said simply. "Take the heavy cavalry reserves. And Adreana?"
She looked back.
"Don't lose."
Adreana smirked—a flash of the confident leader she was becoming. "We haven't lost a battle yet, Commander."
She spurred her horse, galloping down the hill toward the waiting column of knights.
Zachary watched her go, then turned his attention back to the burning East Gate. His raven cawed, landing on his shoulder.
"Message to all unit commanders," Zachary murmured to the bird. "Secure the perimeter. Loot the supplies, burn what we can't carry. Do not advance into the mines. Once the West District signals 'clear', we initiate a tactical withdrawal."
He watched the smoke rise, blotting out the stars.
"We hurt them today," he whispered to the night. "But a wounded beast is dangerous. Let's not stay in the cage with it longer than we have to."