"My king. Brakkenvein is reporting contact. The strange blue forces led by human females are engaged in active assault. Magma breach through the upper levels. The walls are failing. They report heavy casualties among the mand structure-"
"Brakkenvein is two hundred miles west of the Greymount!"
"I know, my king. It's a separate attack… Two cities were besieged at once."
Ragnar stared at him.
"Quinlan Elysiar is barely level fifty."
"Quinlan Elysiar was level one ten months ago."
A third messenger came through the door before the second had finished.
"My king. Brakkenvein has fallen."
"What?"
"The final dispatch came in fifteen seconds ago. They said defeat is imminent." The messenger's voice cracked. "We can no longer reach them."
Ragnar's hand began to shake.
"The Primordial Villain will grind like never before. His experience gain is multiplied threefold…"
The fourth messenger came in before the third had stepped aside.
"My king. Fresh reports from two more fortresses." The messenger's hands were shaking so badly the parchment rattled. "Ironhold in the north is reporting a magma breach through the outer gate. They say they are engaging a force of blue people numbering in the hundreds, with human-looking women directing the strikes. Simultaneously, Greyhollow in the south has lost contact with its mand chamber."
Ragnar's one eye went wide.
The messenger flinched.
"Ironhold is six hundred miles north and Greyhollow is four hundred miles south from the first two cities! That just fell!"
"Y-yes, my king."
The messenger's throat moved.
"It… it appears the enemy uses mass displacement magic to transport forces across the country, my king."
Ragnar stared at him.
The messenger kept going because stopping felt worse than continuing.
"My king, we- we cannot mount a defense against this. The distances between targets are days of forced march apart. By the time we redirect reinforcements toward one fortress, the enemy has already struck two more. The cities are falling before the reports of the previous attacks arrive. The separation between them appears to be deliberately beyond any response window we have. We-" His voice cracked. "We don't know where they'll be next, my king. We can't get there in time even if we did."
"He doesn't even need much. Just a couple levels. And he'll go from 'just another continental powerhouse' to the undisputed apex of this continent."
"HE'S FARMING LEVELS ON MY CITIES!!!"
The scream tore out of Ragnar like something breaking loose from inside his chest. He whirled on the messengers. His bandaged fist slammed the war table once, twice, a third time like a child throwing a tantrum.
"WE MUST STOP HIM!"
"M-my king-"
"Where is the council?! They said seven days! SEVEN DAYS! It hasn't been one!"
The messengers backed toward the door as one.
Ragnar's chest heaved. His breath came in ragged pulls through clenched teeth, each one louder than the last, his single remaining eye fixed on nothing. The war table beneath him had gone blurry. The map pins had multiplied into red stars drifting across the Alliance's interior like spatter.
"Better hurry, dwarf…"
Chuckling. Low and wet.
"The villain is ing for you…"
"Tick."
"Tock."
A fifth set of footsteps came up the corridor.
A dwarven officer appeared in the doorway, pale, his uniform damp with sweat at the collar. He saluted with a hand that didn't want to stay still.
"My king. Report from the dungeon level."
"SPEAK."
The officer flinched.
"Both prisoners are resisting, my king. The collars have made no further progress. My men have tried everything."
Ragnar's eye bored into him.
The officer swallowed. "If we do anything more, they will die. Both of them. The venomborn assassin's ribs are broken in multiple places, her jaw is fractured, she has lost significant volume. The traitor elf is no better. Lady Aelindra's boot caved in part of her sternum. She's coughing red. We have an entire healer squad monitoring them on rotation just to keep them alive between torture sessions."
Ragnar's hand flexed against the war table.
"Why are they not talking then?!"
"My king, they are-" The officer hesitated. Then his voice dropped to something quieter and more afraid. "They are talking a lot… Laughing, even."
The war room went still.
"The traitor elf asked one of my men when the healer was ing because her new best friend was dying. The assassin…" His throat moved. "The assassin asked the same thing about the elf. And then they laughed together manically, my king."
Ragnar's shoulders began to shake.
"Tick."
"Tock."
A sound left Ragnar that wasn't a word. It started low in his throat and climbed into a wordless roar, and his bandaged fists came down on the war table and kept ing down, hammering the timber over and over, splinters flying, map pins scattering, stitches tearing in half a dozen places as fresh red ran down his arms and painted the Alliance interior beneath his pounding hands.
The messengers fled.
The officer stayed one second too long, saw the expression on his king's face, and then he fled too.
Ragnar kept hammering the table until the center collapsed inward with a splitting crack and half the map tipped off the edge. He stood in the wreckage, chest heaving, eye staring at nothing.
And through it all, the words kept repeating relentlessly in his head.
"Tick."
"Tock."
...
While two unhinged women waged psychological warfare on their captors from the depths of a dwarven dungeon, and while the Primordial Villain and his women devastated Elvardian lands from one end of the kingdom to the other, other pieces were moving.
Four of them, across four separate corners of the continent.
...
A hooded figure with pink hair and floral tattoos walked through a port city at the edge of the Greenvale, weaving between dockhands and merchants without drawing a single eye.
...
Near the border between Vraven and Elvardia, a small figure walked alone.
Purple hair caught the wind as she approached a giant army besieging the occupied cities.
...
A white-haired woman appeared before the dogkin palace. The guards aimed their claws at her, until…
"Young Lady?!"
...
And in a stretch of forest far from any marked road, a blue-skinned woman approached a single tent.
...
Four pieces. Four locations. Four missions that began at dawn.
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