In Greek mythology, Fear was not merely a feeling.
It was an entity. Real. Rational. A being that perpetuated its presence in the minds of the weak and the oppressed — Phobos, son and constant companion of Ares, the god of war. And there was a reason for that connection between Fear and war, a reason the Greeks understood before any civilization that came after.
It was on the battlefield, on the razor's edge, in the taste of metal in the mouth, that that feeling reached its purest form. It filled every part of the being. It occupied the space that reason should occupy and expelled it, leaving only the terror — that specific terror that comes not from imagination, but from reality.
The Greeks were the first to understand what war does to a human being.
They understood what we, modern humans, rarely learned in an entire comfortable life: the fear of something real is more cruel and more paralyzing than any imagined fear.
I was learning that now.
"We're being massacred — AHHHHH!"
"HEEELP!"
"MY LEG — WHERE IS MY LEGG?"
How had I believed there would be any chance?
✦ ✦ ✦
The terrain was chaos.
The enemy's force was omnipresent — there was no safe direction, no point on the field to look without finding a empowered creature cutting through whatever was in front of it. The front line that had lasted eight hours in the first assault lasted minutes in the second. The Infernals were no longer the calculated army that had retreated for the ritual. They were something else.
Monsters. Not in the figurative sense.
Irrational. Potent. Cutting through everything that moved — including their own. I saw an Infernal knock down another Infernal on the way to a human and not decelerate, as though the distinction between ally and enemy had been the first thing the ritual had consumed.
The sword that I had managed to parry for nearly eight straight hours now made my entire body tremble with every contact — like trying to stop an avalanche with your arms.
I had used the eighteen points I had saved just to avoid dying. But even putting everything into strength, I still felt the full impact of every blow — and the enemy didn't seem to mind colliding with a wall. On the contrary. They seemed to take pleasure in the exchange, indifferent to their own bodies, as though every self-destructive damage was part of the pleasure of causing damage.
In the end, eighteen additional points had only changed the dynamics of how I held the blows — not retaliating, not winning, just holding. Fighting for my life in the most literal sense the phrase could bear. Each parry cost more than the previous. Every second upright was a borrowed second.
"RETREAT AND FORM A CIRCLE AROUND ME!"
Blood ran down my face. The exhaustion had reached the point where the body swings the sword on its own, disconnected from the mind, operating on some survival protocol that didn't ask permission.
I was no longer hearing the field.
Until Carla's shout to retreat cut through the stupor.
I pushed the Infernal before me with the sword buried in his chest — and even run through, he didn't react. There was no pain on the face. There was no recognition of injury that any rational creature demonstrates. Just the continuation of movement, as though the blade through the chest were an irrelevant detail of something that had stopped caring about its own body.
That was no longer a creature.
I moved away in the direction of the voice leaving the Infernal desperately trying to move while blood cascaded out.
The terrain between me and Carla was the kind of image that doesn't leave those who see it. Mutilated human bodies. Faces frozen in the exact expression of the moment they understood what was happening — and most had understood too late for the understanding to serve any purpose. They had died without comprehending. It was almost a mercy.
"COME WITH ME, URSKRA!"
My healing had run out long ago.
Both Urskra were still standing — but standing was the most generous word the situation allowed. Fat and tissue escaped through cuts too deep, wounds that dictated a cruel fate if nobody tended to them. And there was nobody to tend to them. I had exhausted everything.
That was what I had left.
Less than an hour. That was all it took for me to lose everything I had spent months building.
The Yokais had taken many Infernals with them — they died fighting, doing what they had been created to do. But the madness of those empowered creatures was too much. The spiders died buried, swallowed by the number and the fury, sold dearly but sold nonetheless.
Arachne cried.
But didn't move.
And I would carry that. The weight of having brought that battle to her — to a creature I had named, raised as mine. Her children died like flies on the field, part of her body and blood being erased from existence, and she could do nothing. Not because she was incapable. Because I hadn't allowed it. She watched every offspring she had generated die knowing she had the strength to intervene and was being prevented from using it by an order of mine.
There are things a father shouldn't ask of a child.
I had asked anyway.
✦ ✦ ✦
"We need to reach her fast, or we're dead."
I knew exactly when the fight had ended.
It wasn't at first contact — that had been hard, brutal, probably the most terrifying thing I had seen until then. But it hadn't been the end. Maddened and blood-thirsty Infernals weren't what had turned the tide. I would have worn them down. The Yokais would have killed enough, Carla would have kept the front line standing long enough, and perhaps — perhaps — there would have been a victory at the end of it.
Nothing had prepared us for what came after.
"GET DOWN!"
A shout pierced my mind — not through my ears, through the bond.
Something enormous passed in a low sweep above our heads.
Blood rained. Feathers rained. The air displacement was enough to knock down those still standing too close. I ducked by instinct, and when I raised my eyes, I saw the form moving away — too large, too fast, too wrong for anything that field should have contained.
"It's killing all my Griffins like they're sparrows."
The creature that had made the pass landed at some distance. It was wounded — I could see that. But the rage in its eyes wasn't from pain. It was from pleasure. That creature was enjoying itself.
"How did the Oasis allow this?"
A Drake.
In the Oasis, a Drake was a unique creature — the closest relatives to dragons. Smaller than them, yes, but smaller was a relative word when the point of comparison was a dragon. They were rare to the point of almost never being seen, because dragons protected them as part of their own phylum — the way humans protect apes, recognizing the distant kinship and the obligation that came with it.
But there, on that field, that Drake didn't need protection.
There, it was the apocalypse with wings.
Nearly fifteen meters of pure colossus, with chitin scales that captured the sunlight like armor forged by something that didn't use a forge. Each wingbeat displaced the air in a way felt in the chest. Each movement was the confirmation that we were facing something against which none of the calculations I had made had any application.
"Zaetar — come."
Blood came from my mouth. The scarce mana was beginning to collect the price of everything I had spent.
Zaetar appeared already advancing toward the Drake, which still seemed confused by its own poorly executed pass while fighting with what remained of my Griffins. The scorpion-man approached the creature's body and tried to pierce the chitin — and found something I could only describe as a mixture of metal and diamond. His claws didn't penetrate. Didn't even scratch.
The Drake's rage turned that into a bite.
Zaetar disappeared — summoning ended in a single movement, as though his existence had been an inconvenience the creature had decided to remove.
That was it.
That creature was the chaos of the battle. Not the Infernals. Not the ritual. That.
"Now, Arachne!"
Arachne fired.
The Turkish Bombard shot hit the Drake dead on — and this time something happened. The chitin cracked. A visible fracture opened on the surface that had resisted Zaetar's blade, and for a second I felt something I hadn't felt since the creature appeared.
Hope.
It lasted a second.
The Drake looked at Arachne with irritation — not with fear, not with respect, just the discomfort of someone bothered by something small. And then simply returned to doing what it had been doing: killing the remaining Griffins without discrimination, without haste, without giving the creature that had wounded it the dignity of a response.
Arachne wasn't worth the effort of being fought.
It was the final insult.
✦ ✦ ✦
I didn't waste time.
I advanced to where Carla was. Around her, humans without arms, without legs, or nearly dead gathered at what had become the only point of gravity in a field that had lost any other. Carla looked at me while striking the unicorn's neck.
"Close dome."
A golden dome rose around us.
It encompassed Arachne. Both Urskra. The Prince — who had descended quickly in my direction when I called him, the last of his kind on that field, too weak to cause real damage to the Drake but intelligent enough not to have become its snack. And the fewer than fifty humans that still remained standing — or what was left of them.
"Are you alright?"
Carla advanced to me while I observed the terrain.
We had lost the war.
It wasn't a dramatic conclusion. It was just what the numbers said. The dome held the enemy on the outside — Infernals that were still trying to reach what was inside, striking against the golden barrier with the fury the ritual had left in them.
"How many?"
"Fewer than fifty."
That was what one hour of battle had done. Reduced a force of hundreds to remnants.
"We've lost."
The one who said that was the great axe Lord.
But it was no longer the great axe Lord. He was different — smaller, somehow, hunched around his own fear. The weapon was nowhere. The arm that had held it wasn't either — it had disappeared, torn off at some point he probably hadn't even registered. In the other arm, he carried a body.
I recognized the body.
The strategist Lord. The smaller of the two nobles, the one who had surprised me, the one who had lost only five units and read the field the way I read it. He was dead. Perhaps the axe man hadn't yet realized — or had realized and couldn't accept it.
It was obvious, in a cruel way. There was no strategy against berserkers of muscle and fury. The intelligence that had kept that man alive for eight hours had meant nothing in the hour that followed.
"I'm going to activate the healing. Come together."
Carla still believed in something.
I stayed quiet.
✦ ✦ ✦
I advanced to Arachne.
She had fallen to her knees — if the word applied to a creature of that form. Her body was lowered, drawn in, in the posture of something that had given up maintaining itself upright because the weight it was carrying wasn't physical.
She was crying.
For the loss of her children. For the offspring she had generated and watched die without being able to raise a single leg to protect them. I had no words to fix that — there were no words to fix that — so I did the only thing I could. I pressed my hand against her body and stayed.
The Prince was no different.
Watching his own peers — the Griffins that had flown with him, bombed the enemy for eight hours, been the most lethal weapon on the field — fall like insects before the Drake had shaken the creature in a way I hadn't anticipated. And still he had fought. Had offered real combat to that creature. I still didn't completely understand how — I had been too busy trying not to die to follow what was happening in the sky. What I knew was that blood and feathers had rained, and that in the end all the Griffins were dead, except him.
My force reduced to little more than four creatures.
Arachne. The Prince. Both Urskra.
It was all that remained of everything I had built.
Without leaving where I was, I spoke to Carla, who was healing some Lords a few meters away.
"How long?"
She looked at me — and her eyes fell into contemplation and sadness, the kind of expression of someone doing the math and not liking the result.
"Twenty minutes. Maybe less."
Around us, the enemy had formed a siege covering the entire dome. But something had changed — they no longer seemed interested in attacking. After a few attempts, they had understood the barrier was too resistant to be broken by brute force.
But the Oasis was fair.
And fairness, in the Oasis, meant that nothing resistant was permanent. If something was hard, it had a limit. I knew that. And the Infernals, with all certainty, knew it too — that was why they waited.
"I understand."
The healing began to rise through my body. Through the Prince. Through the Urskra. In less than a minute, we were as though the battle hadn't happened — save for the torn clothes, the cracked swords, the lost shields. Healing restored the flesh. It didn't restore what had been lost to get there.
"Why do they seem worse off than us?"
The comment came from a Lord looking outside with the expression of someone seeing something that didn't match what they expected to see. While the dome still held, I followed his gaze and observed the enemy.
They finally seemed to be breathing heavily.
"The rebound finally arrived."
Ironically, it had arrived too late.
We were dozens against hundreds — perhaps thousands, if we counted those coming behind. The ritual's rebound had finally collected its price from the Infernals, draining from them what the ritual had lent. But the price arrived after the work was already done. It wasn't a defeat. It was a one-sided massacre. And my theory, looking at the field, was simple: aside from me and my creatures, probably not a single Infernal had truly fallen.
They sat. Still watching us. Exhausted, but victorious.
And then, in the back, the great Vorthari approached.
It walked until it was a few meters from the dome — the first time it had gotten that close since the battle began.
"Humans… Pathetic."
Those words drew a smile from me.
The others looked at me in surprise. Even the Vorthari seemed not to understand the reaction. But I understood — understood perfectly. It was right. We had never had a real chance. They had been playing with us from beginning to end.
But their game cost lives.
I would never have lost a single soldier if I had had an advantage like the one they had. Watching someone who had acted so meanly — who had held back a Drake as a card up their sleeve while their peers died trying to fight with honor — call me pathetic was too tragicomic not to draw a smile.
"I was told one of you was a monster."
The Vorthari continued, its voice resonating.
"I waited. I took precautions. I even let you see something rare."
A pause.
"Who would have thought the monster I was looking for wouldn't be on the battlefield."
The great creature raised its sword and brought it down against the dome. The impact created a thunderclap that reverberated through the golden dome — and I saw Carla flinch, saw the trickle of blood begin to run from her nose and the unicorn's at the same time. Maintaining the barrier against that force had a cost, and the cost was being paid in real time.
I approached her while the Vorthari struck.
"Carla — can your dome be soundproof?"
The question caught her off guard.
I understood why — it wasn't the kind of question you'd expect to hear in that moment, with the enemy striking the barrier and twenty minutes on the clock. But she didn't seem irritated. Just too tired to spend energy trying to understand the logic behind the request.
"Yes. I can make a second internal dome that cuts the sound. But if I do that, I won't last more than five minutes. Maybe less."
"Perfect. Get ready then."
Honestly, I hadn't expected to reach that moment.
But it didn't matter anymore. Exhaustion and rage grew in my chest in equal proportions. I hadn't asked to be there. None of those newcomers who were now in pieces had asked. And still it had been my responsibility — I had believed my strength would be enough, and the strength hadn't been enough, because the Infernals were simply too strong.
I had finally understood.
Rank wasn't decoration. Wasn't a pretty number on a screen. It was the truth — raw, literal, with no room for the cleverness I had used to get there. The third strongest race in the Oasis was the third strongest race in the Oasis. And no amount of intelligence changed what that meant when intelligence met something of that scale.
I advanced to Arachne.
"Father — what's happening?"
I didn't respond immediately.
I simply stored the Turkish Bombard back in the ring, removing the enormous weight from her back. And when the weight came off, Arachne rose — free, complete, stretching her body in a way she hadn't managed since accepting to carry the weapon. She looked larger. Perhaps she had grown during the battle. Perhaps it was simply the first time I saw her without the burden on her back.
"It's time to seek our revenge."
Arachne began to tremble — not from fear, from anticipation, her entire body responding to the word as though it had been waiting for it the whole battle.
"We're going to fight the enemy. And even if I pass out — you keep fighting. You kill everyone. Promise me that."
"I can't understand. Why—"
"Stay calm."
I placed my hand on her leg.
"I'm going to give you the opportunity to get your revenge. Kill everyone. Then save me. But above all — tear our enemies apart."
She didn't completely understand. But the trembling of anticipation in her leg said everything about what she had wanted to do since the moment we had arrived on that plain — and that I had stopped her from doing the entire battle. Now I would give it to her.
The blood of our enemies.
I climbed onto Arachne as we approached the edge of the dome. The Prince and the Urskra tried to follow me — I stopped them. Many had died in that place. If someone had to die now, it would be me, and none of them any further.
I reached the edge of the barrier.
And the great Vorthari stopped striking.
"Who are you, mere human?"
I looked at the great creature.
And removed the mask.
The Hoplite helmet came off my face for the first time since I had crossed the portal — revealing to the enemy what I had hidden the entire time.
"So… It's you."
It was clear the creature recognized me.
I wouldn't waste that chance.
"Yes. The time has come to end this once and for all."
The creature seemed shocked. And then the composure it had maintained the entire battle began to crack — not from fear, from confusion, the kind that appears when something doesn't fit any of the anticipated scenarios.
"What did you do on my planet? Even being a mere human…"
A pause.
"I waited for you. My queen would not have feared what I saw here today…"
The Vorthari's confusion reached the remaining humans. It reached even Carla, who was now looking at me with a face where interest and confusion competed for space with exhaustion.
"The moment has come."
I looked at the creature.
"Get ready."
The Vorthari didn't take my words lightly.
It stepped back quickly — and the other Infernals, even weakened by the rebound, positioned themselves to defend against something. I didn't know what they imagined I would do. It didn't matter. They were right to be afraid.
I pulled something from the ring.
A small red box, adorned with a drawing I knew better than anything else I possessed.
The same one I had stored, waited with, protected — for the exact moment when there was nothing more to lose and everything to gain.
"It's time to bring hell to this battlefield."