"How long are they going to stand there doing that?"
The sweat and blood had dried long ago. Nobody had afforded themselves the luxury of cleaning up — everyone had their eyes fixed on the enemy horizon, with the specific attention of those who know that what's happening on the other side matters before knowing exactly what it is.
That was why nobody was confused by the question directed at me. The axe Lord had been looking at the same place as everyone else — and had simply been the first to verbalize what nobody had managed to stop thinking.
"It's a ritual."
The exhaustion of keeping myself awake doing what needed to be done still hit me in waves. But there was one thing that always pulled me from the stupor — talking about the culture of other races.
Since before the Oasis, history had been my pastime. Not just the events — the milestones. What a civilization considered sacred said more about it than any battle it had ever fought. And there, on that field, I was seeing up close one of the most sacred things of the Infernals.
It was fascinating.
It was also terrifying.
"Ritual?"
Carla had sat beside me at some point I hadn't registered. Perhaps during the period when I was stacking bodies with the Griffins. Perhaps when I woke the Urskra and repositioned them near the Yokais. The spot where I had settled was strategically unpopular — the three-meter Yokais, even being mine, were still territorial, and most humans preferred to maintain a respectful distance. But Carla was there. The other two as well.
At some point during the day something else had also happened, without my having asked or planned — the reins of decision had slipped into my hands. Perhaps it had been the battlefield performance. Perhaps the simple fact that I was as committed as they were. But after the day's battle something had clearly been established in sweat and blood.
Respect.
"Yes. There is a legend about a ritual that the Infernals perform before a battle."
"But shouldn't they have done this before? To me, the eight hours we spent exchanging blood already seemed like a battle."
The smaller noble beside the axe Lord spoke.
He had a valid point. After the fight he had become my greatest surprise on the field — with simpler, more powerful units, and mediocre personal power, he had caused extremely relevant damage and, best of all, lost only five units while I in the same period lost all my shield soldiers. He read the field in a way I recognized: not as a warrior, but as a strategist. The question he had asked wasn't from cultural curiosity — it was analysis of a uncomfortable point. He was looking for a gap, or at least a deeper understanding of what was happening, before it happened.
I didn't hide what I knew.
"There are few accounts of the ritual. Most came from civilizations that had direct conflicts with the Infernals — and that survived to document them. The most solid account we have is from nearly thirty years ago."
I paused.
"Humanity was still learning how to be Lords. Nobody knew what they should learn or ignore. It was a chaotic time — and for that very reason rich in information that most people over time had discarded as useless but that I collected as a pastime."
The axe Lord seemed slightly irritated with the pace of the explanation. Carla, in contrast, looked at me with the attention of someone trying to memorize every word before it disappeared.
"Sorry — I rambled. There was a conflict between the Infernals' border and the Birmans . As you must know, the latter were never known for their diplomacy. The fact is that, during the same period, a human ended up being sent to that territory as a newcomer. He saw everything."
I paused again, organizing what I remembered from the text.
The author had had little opportunity to enjoy the Oasis — being sent to extremely hostile territory was, in those days, a decree of ending. But he had documented what he saw with the precision of someone who knew they might be the only one to see it.
"When the pioneer realized it, his territory had become the battleground between the two races. The Birmans rode fast and powerful mounts — creatures resembling prehistoric dinosaurs — that made the Infernals' advance nearly impossible to contain, turning the battlefield into a chaotic scene that worked heavily against them. But at a certain point, something changed."
I paused while assembling what was, to me, the most important part.
"According to the account of this survivor, after a ritual similar to what we're seeing now, the Birmans' mounts — which until then had been handling the Infernals with ease — began to look like toys."
"Seriously?"
All three looked at me at the same time.
"My theory was that this ritual unlocked something in them. More strength. More resistance. A change that the pioneer didn't know what it was, but managed to describe as something impossible to ignore — as though the Infernals had gained some kind of advantage making them fundamentally different from what they had been before the ritual began."
Silence.
I knew the question that would come before anyone asked it. It was always the same — because those who had grown up understanding how the Oasis worked had learned, early, that every advantage has a cost. Livina's magic gave summoning power and returned physical pain for the death of each creature. My blood magic amplified power in exchange for sanity. Everything was balanced. There was always a rebound — to a greater or lesser degree, but always.
"But what's the disadvantage?"
All three asked at the same time.
I almost laughed.
"Nobody knows."
The faces that formed were comically and tragically identical. Probably the same face I had made when I discovered that singular gap.
"The pioneer was far away and afraid of being caught in the crossfire. What he documented was impressionistic, not technical. Nobody after him managed to observe closely enough to register the rebound — and the Infernals have never spoken about it."
I paused again while analyzing my own opinion — what I had built over years of personal analysis on the subject.
"If I were to guess, I would say it's something related to life. But it would only be a guess. Nobody has ever known how it works — or what the price is."
The silence that followed had a specific weight — the weight of understanding that the enemy had a card nobody had seen being played, whose cost was unknown, but that was powerful enough to change the course of a losing battle.
"But that just brings me back to my first question."
The Lord with the axe. Impatient, but precise, he stood up.
"Why in the world didn't they do this before?"
I opened my mouth.
Carla answered before me.
"Arrogance."
A pause.
"They thought it disrespectful to do this for mere humans. But now we're no longer worthy of pity."
She stood up.
"That's great."
I looked at her for a moment.
She was right. And she had arrived at the right conclusion for the right reason — not because she knew the Infernals, but because she knew what arrogance does to judgment. When the enemy decides you deserve their best, it's because you've proven their minimum wasn't enough.
Eight hours of battle had proven that.
"How long do you think the ritual will last?"
Carla finally asked me while I stared at the horizon.
"The pioneer documented a clear sign for the end."
A pause.
"At the end, the leader finalizes the ritual by killing one of his own kind."
Sacrifice.
Something common in ancient cultures of the world I knew — Aztecs, Egypt, African civilizations. The method was different. The end was the same. Someone's life as fuel for something greater than that life had been.
All three opened their eyes at the same time.
Then, without anything more to say, each went in a different direction. I stayed alone.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Father — do you think we have any chance?"
Arachne had heard everything. She was intelligent enough to understand what the ritual meant before I explained — and what it meant wasn't good.
"Don't worry so much."
I paused.
"We're going to do the same thing we've done until now — wait to see what happens while we hold the advance as long as possible."
It wasn't the answer she wanted. But it was the only honest one I had. Creating theories without testing cost energy. And the wrong answer, on that field, cost more than energy.
The Prince descended before I finished the thought.
"My Lord — we've finished."
✦ ✦ ✦
The wall of flesh had been rebuilt.
It wasn't imposing. It wasn't the kind of structure that intimidated at first glance — the height just below a meter and a half was discreet, almost modest for what it represented. But it had been built with criteria: positioned close to Arachne, at the point I had calculated as the most defensible on the field, with the bodies organized to create a shapeless obstacle the enemy would need to climb before reaching the front line.
The formation had changed to accommodate it.
A continuous line in front of the wall, with four to five rows on the flanks. It was a risky tactic — it weakened the center in favor of the ends — but the wall compensated for that weakness in a way that no purely human formation could replicate. The center didn't need to be impenetrable. It needed to be resistant enough for the flanks to have time to act — gain ground, destroy the enemy line's cadence, make them turn on their own axis until the formation became chaos.
It was the kind of tactic that had ended classical warfare as a concept.
Because a front line that loses its flanks loses the structure that keeps it standing. And an army without structure doesn't fight — it stumbles.
✦ ✦ ✦
A few hours later, the great Vorthari moved.
It was the first time it had moved since the battle began.
It wasn't fast. There was no urgency in that movement — it was the movement of something that had decided the moment had arrived and that didn't need haste to confirm that decision. The heavy steps sank into the earth with the regularity of a countdown that only it knew how long it had to last.
It went to a small group of Infernal Lords.
Stopped.
The enormous sword permanently attached to its arm rose slowly.
And came down.
It wasn't violent. It wasn't glorious. It was precise — the kind of movement that only exists when whoever does it has done that before and knows exactly how much force is necessary and exactly where to apply it. The Lords around it didn't step back. There was no surprise on their faces.
There was acceptance.
The silence that followed on the human side was different from the silence before. It wasn't the silence of those processing. It was the silence of those who understood.
The ritual had ended.
What came next was something else.
"Prepare yourselves, comrades. There will be no tomorrow for one side."
Carla hadn't taken her eyes off the horizon and what had happened there when she said that. There was no drama in the voice — it was simply what was said out loud because it needed to be said before the moment arrived and there was no more time to say anything.
On the other side of the plain, the Infernals' bodies grew visibly while something magical seemed to interfere with their bodily structures. It wasn't an optical illusion. It was the ritual finishing what it had been doing — the trade completed, the fuel converted, the result materialized in ways that the pioneer had described as impossible to ignore and that I was now seeing with my own eyes.
They were coming to claim the prize.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Prince — keep the Griffins high. Save as many explosives as possible. I'll signal when to use them."
"Understood."
The explosives the Griffins carried hadn't originally been made for them — they were the armament of the Yokais' mini-bombards. But with the ritual underway, I had calculated that I wouldn't have time to operate the mini-bombards with the precision they required. Better to concentrate the explosives in the aerial power and free the Yokais for another function.
Twenty mounted Yokais, stationed in the middle of the formation.
Not to attack — to cover. If the central line broke at any point, they would be the second wall. I didn't know how the ritual-empowered Infernals would handle the wall of flesh, and I wasn't willing to find out without having something between them and the center if the answer was bad.
If everything went right, even with more strength and speed, the wall would still be a real obstacle — climbing shapeless slippery bodies while being met by steel is an equation that doesn't improve with brute force. But I had learned on that field that calculating what should happen and what happened were related, but distinct exercises.
The Griffins would be my held card.
The explosive power this time would be greater — the armament they carried had been calibrated for the Yokais, not for aerial launches. The difference in altitude and impact would create something the enemy hadn't calibrated to receive.
Arachne would stay behind the line. This time with freedom to use the shots she still had — I had asked Carla to focus the healing on her when possible, since I wouldn't be close enough to do it personally.
The front line rotation would follow the same pattern as before. But this time I would start with the father Urskra.
With the wall, the geometry had changed. The enemy would arrive on an ascent — and the higher I was when the enemy crossed the obstacle, the better the attack window. The tactic was simple: cut before the enemy had firm ground beneath their feet.
✦ ✦ ✦
"THEY'RE COMING — GET READYYY!"
I could see them running.
It wasn't the ordered advance from before — it was fury with direction. The difference was visible even from a distance: the pace, the posture, the way they occupied the space as they ran. It was the same army that had advanced with calculated precision eight hours before, now moved by something that didn't have the same temperature as precision.
The more I watched them, the clearer the feeling became.
It was familiar.
The body warming. The sharpened perception. The strength that went beyond what muscle could explain. It was what blood magic did — amplified, intensified, made the body more than it had been before at the cost of something only discovered afterward.
By instinct, I began.
"Wait, Urskra. I'm going to do something."
I got down from the creature.
The process was laborious. It always had been. But I had done it enough times for the internal ritual — the circle, the cut, the concentration — to happen with more fluidity than at the beginning. I tore open my palm. Let it fall at the center of the drawn circle. Felt the heat begin to rise up my arm before spreading through the rest of the body in waves that made every sense one degree sharper than it had been a second before.
I climbed back onto the Urskra.
My eyes saw better. My body responded faster. I was ready.
And while I finished preparing, something changed on the horizon.
At first, I thought it would be the Vorthari.
But it wasn't him.
It was the hill behind him.
Which was moving.
"WHAT THE HELL — WHAT IS THAT!"
My voice came out before my mind finished processing what my eyes were seeing.
Because the hill wasn't a hill.