Seigmer did not wait for the Romans to lick their wounds.
The first wagon-bomb had shattered their confidence. The failed assault had bled them. Now the legion camped in a defensive ring south of the old ford — ditches dug, triple watch, fires kept low, men sleeping in armor. They believed they had bought time. They were wrong.
In the hidden ravine north of Seigmer's Hold, four wagons waited under camouflage netting.
Each carried a single massive barrel — oak bound with iron hoops, sealed with pitch. The largest held two hundred kilograms of black powder, refined and sieved over days by the smiths working in shifts. The other three were filled with pine tar and oil, layered with straw and rags to ensure the fire would spread and cling.
Seigmer had selected forty men for the operation — his original Tier-1 twelve plus twenty-eight of the best from the new two hundred and fifty. They moved in silence, faces blackened, bodies wrapped in dark wool. No torches. No talking. Only hand signals.
The plan was colder than the first raid.
Infiltrate deeper.
Reach the very center — the command cluster and the main sleeping lines of three cohorts.
Detonate.
Then finish what survived.
They left at full dark.
The Roman outer pickets had been tripled. Dogs prowled on leashes. Torches burned every fifty paces. But the forest was vast, and Seigmer's men knew every game trail.
They killed the first sentries without a sound — seaxes across throats, bodies dragged into brambles. A dog started to growl; a heavy crossbow bolt silenced it before the handler could react.
The wagons rolled forward — slow, steady, axles muffled with rags. Four drivers walked beside the oxen, faces hidden under captured Roman cloaks.
They reached the Roman center unchallenged.
The space between the praetorium and the main cohort lines was perfect — hundreds of men sleeping in tight rows, officers' tents clustered nearby, supply wagons parked close. The camp was quiet except for the low murmur of sentries and the crackle of dying fires.
Seigmer gave the signal.
The drivers lit the long fuses — four slow-matches, each trailing twenty feet — then slipped away.
The teams melted into the shadows.
Forty seconds later the night tore itself apart.
The first barrel — the two-hundred-kilogram powder charge — detonated with a sound that felt like the sky splitting open. A blinding white-orange fireball erupted skyward, visible for twenty miles. The blast wave flattened tents in a one-hundred-meter radius, hurling men and equipment like toys. The crater left behind was twenty meters wide and five meters deep. Bodies within thirty meters were obliterated. Within sixty meters, men were thrown through the air, bones shattered, lungs collapsed.
Then the tar and oil barrels ignited.
A roaring sea of liquid flame exploded outward, spraying burning tar across everything in a hundred-and-fifty-meter radius. Tents became infernos in seconds. Men woke screaming as fire clung to skin, hair, wool, and leather. Human torches ran in every direction, spreading the flames further. The entire central half of the camp vanished in a wall of fire and smoke so thick it blocked the stars.
The physical destruction was apocalyptic:
Over one thousand eight hundred men dead in the first minute (blast + shrapnel + immediate fire).
Another two thousand severely burned or wounded — many dying in the hours that followed from shock, infection, or simply being unable to breathe through the smoke.
The praetorium area was obliterated. Several senior tribunes and centurions died in their beds.
The crater and surrounding ground were scorched black and glassy. The air reeked of burnt flesh, sulfur, and tar for days.
The psychological effect was total.
Legatus Valerius Maximus staggered from the ruins of his command tent — half his face burned, one arm useless — and stared at the inferno that had been the heart of his legion. Men ran past him screaming, some on fire, some trampling their own comrades in blind panic. Officers tried to rally centuries that no longer existed. The chain of command was gone. The legion that had marched in as Rome's finest was now a mob of terrified survivors.
In the forest, Seigmer's forty men watched the distant fireball light the sky.
Then he gave the final signal.
The two hundred and fifty advanced — crossbows spanned, cannons manhandled forward on their carriages, sergeants calling cadence.
Behind them came Reik Hans and the nine hundred and fifty traditional warriors — axes high, shields locked, stirruped cavalry on the flanks.
The Tier-1 team moved first — silent, slipping through the smoke, heavy crossbows picking off any surviving officers who tried to rally men.
Then the cannons opened.
Canister swept the panicked Roman lines — nails and shards tearing through armor and flesh at point-blank range.
The two hundred and fifty followed — crossbow volleys by rank, then swords drawn as they closed.
Hans's nine hundred and fifty swept in from the flanks — lances couched, axes rising and falling.
The Romans had no formation left to fight with. They died in clusters, in tents, in ditches, trying to run or hide. The fire spread outward, consuming more tents, more supplies, more lives.
By dawn the Roman camp was a burning ruin.
Casualties:
Romans: ~5,200 dead, ~1,800 wounded or burned (many would die later), ~1,000 fled or deserted into the forest.
Suebi: 41 dead (mostly from Roman counter-fire during the follow-up assault), 92 wounded (mostly minor burns, cuts, arrow wounds).
The legion was finished.
Survivors scattered west toward the Rhine — a broken, terrified remnant.
Seigmer stood on the ridge overlooking the burning camp.
His men gathered around him — the two hundred and fifty in disciplined ranks, Hans's nine hundred and fifty behind them, all silent.
Then — slowly — the chant began.
"Seigmer. Seigmer. Seigmer."
It started low, from the Tier-1 men who had lit the fuse.
It spread to the sergeants.
It spread to the decuriae.
It spread to the traditional warriors.
It rose until it echoed across the valley — a single word, repeated like a prayer.
Seigmer did not smile.
He looked at the burning camp and whispered to himself:
"This ends the legion."
Then he turned to his men.
"Rest now. Tomorrow we begin to build."
The chant continued long after he walked away.
The cult had taken root.
And it would only grow.