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At the ridgeline General Irontide planted his fra, legs braced wide enough to anchor a siege-tower. Lava-orange light flowed through seams of his armour, pulsing to the beat of a heart that had carried him through centuries of war. His compound eyes narrowed, tracking the Blood-Scythe Mantira that vanished beneath the dunes with Kai and the rib of A’zhorath. A cold oath hissed between his mandibles yet he dared not dive after the Kai.
"Priorities," the grizzled general reminded himself. "The corpse first, the army second, That boy is just a worker ant. It doesn’t matter if he dies." For a commander, sentint was a luxury paid for with lives.
The main threat demanded his attention. The Night-Leopard King, seven tres of lean, obsidian-spotted muscle, stalked in a widening circle about the crippled column. Each step cracked the vitrified crust left by its own erald breath-cannon. All wagons were still hitched to the Ruler’s torso. If that leopard lacerated even one segnt the interior stasis-runes would fail and mile-long shockwaves of decaying aura would tear the convoy apart.
Irontide snapped open the copper grille of his command horn. "Third Pike Phalanx, on !" His voice bood with the unmistakable resonance of an eight-star warlord; its shockwave rolled along lines, rousing dazed pikers from shell-shock.
Thirty veteran heavy-pike ants or six star rank surged forward, eight-tre shafts angling into an iron forest. Irontide calculated distances like a mathematician: wind speed ten knots, dune incline seven degrees, leopard gait four strides per breath. Perfect.
The predator tensed, erald embers swirling in its throat once more, its intent was clear. Workers ants knelt helpless at the wagon, their world narrowing to the death-beam’s green glow.
"Now!" Irontide bellowed and he leapt, covering twenty tres in a single burst of rune powered speed. His gauntlets, each forged from the condensed shells of three extinct colossi, crackled with sun-bright sigils as he smashed them together launching himself into the leopard’s incoming lunge.
THROOM!
Mid-air collision. Fist t jaw, runes t shimring hide. A sound like a church bell rupturing rang across the desert; the leopard’s skull whiplashed, erald beam shooting wide and carving a smoking trench two hundred tres long but it never reached the corpse train.
Both behemoths landed in an explosion of blackened sand. Pikes closed in from three sides, tips hissing where residual beam-acid touched them. They stabbed in perfect cadence: belly, hip, flank, haunch. Greenish ichor sprayed fans of corrosive droplets; pike-hafts smoked but soldiers held formation.
The Night-Leopard shrieked, tail lashing, shattering four spears in a single whip. It pounced again only to find Irontide already inside its guard. The general’s left gauntlet hamred the beast’s sternum, fracturing ribs like a brittle shell. His right fist, glowing with compressed rune-plasmas, drove between star-spots and buried itself through nape, gripping vertebrae.
"Yield, carrion." Irontide’s voice thrumd. He wrenched one brutal motion tearing the spine with a bloody crack. Leopard limbs jerked, then sagged. The corpse dropped like a felled obelisk.
A cheer rose, ragged, weary... then died to trembling silence. Nearly two thousand workers lay dead or writhing, eaten by acid or crushed under flipped sledges. The price of a single beam. Shields had been ash, armour slag.
Irontide knelt to close the nearest soldier’s fading eyes. He forced rage into cold iron discipline. "Triage lines! Breachers, salvage intact wagons, swap ruined axles. We move in ten minutes!"
A harried lieutenant stamred, "But sir, the scouts of princess Mia’s team, Kai, he is missing. Shouldn’t we look for him?"
"Silence," Irontide cut. "I saw direction, he is dead or he will die soon. We can’t waste our ti on so worker ants. Our oath is the corpse. Any worker that still draws breath chains them up and pulls the wagon, or we’ll lose more than a boy."
Regret flickered but never softened his stare. "Compassion is best served by victory," he told himself, then turned toward the empty dune where Kai had vanished. "The sting of failure hid behind stoic plates of uncharted grief for a recruit too brave for his star-grade."
"Form a long column! Double pace," he barked. "If we tarry, predators will gather like flies to sweet rot."
The half-legion trudged onward between holes of cooling erald glass, leaving behind a silent red-and-green battlefield and the anonymous stain of their worker ants and low level soldiers.
The morning after the leopard fell, sunrise painted the desert in blood-peach streaks. The convoy wound into Needle Canyon, a crooked gash where ochre spires jutted like the fangs of so sleeping titan. Echoes of rattling chains bounced between cliffs; workers hauled A’zhorath’s torso on sled-runners greased with lted quartz. For every twenty steps they paused to cough up dust or retighten harness vines.
Night found the train camped beneath a leaning butte that cut the scouring wind. Fires burned small, tiny blue nubs of heatless mage-fla to avoid scavenger attraction. Many commander ants walked the periter, checked each wounded worker, handed out extra water ration despite the quartermaster’s scowl.
A few days later...
Twilight finally bled across the sand. In the purple distance rose Amber Bastion, twin towers glowing like furnace mouths above the border wall. Watch-fires on parapets flashed gold signals; bronze bells rang a thrumming welco heard for leagues.
As final companies limped through colossal resin gates the street-lamps lit. Citizens cheered, flinging petals of dried lotus. They have returned with the ruler body.
Mia was standing on the walls. She scanned every face, every arriving squad. When the gates sealed behind Delta-19 company and still no ragged scout straggled in, hope guttered.
Irontide delivered casualty reports to scribes; healers sward triage carts. Mia dismounted, stiff legs numb. She glanced skywards, stars wheeling too fast. "Where is Kai? Why can’t I find him?"
The resin gates of Amber Bastion yawned open with a groan like a wounded giant. Banners drooped in the sunset breeze; the air tasted of resin smoke and wilted lotus petals scattered by well-aning citizens who expected a parade of glory, not a procession of ghosts.
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