Chapter 36

  Reyn’s Siege-Crabs were not creatures of flesh and chitin, yet in the heat of battle, amidst the swirling dust and the stench of scorched metal, such distinctions lost all meaning. For Sk?ll Wolfsgrund, these mechanical behemoths became living demons that day. He did not see the gears, the hydraulic lines, or the soot-stained chimneys on their backs. He saw only the relentless, hungry advance of metal monsters crushing everything that stood in their path.

  It was not a fight; it was an execution of architectural proportions. Wolfsgrund’s first line of defense, those walls that had defied every storm for centuries, fell within twenty minutes. The crabs did not merely ram the stone; they bored their massive, jagged legs deep into the foundation and used their hydraulic power to simply rip entire sections of the fortification out of the earth.

  Thousands of Arcane Guard soldiers and loyal border sentinels died within seconds. They were not struck by blades or pierced by arrows; they were quite simply crushed beneath multi-ton stone blocks that whirled through the air like pebbles. Sk?ll, sitting in the cockpit of the Night-Howler, watched through his optics as entire companies vanished beneath the massive bodies of the constructs. The screaming of men was drowned out by the deafening shriek of bursting rock and grinding iron.

  But the trauma that burned itself deep into Sk?ll's soul that day had a name: Iron-Bite.

  His father’s golem, a massive bulwark of hardened steel and the embodiment of House Wolfsgrund’s power, stood directly before the breach. Burnar Wolfsgrund was a man who never yielded. He had positioned the Iron-Bite to block the passage while the smaller golems attempted to push back the Dragon-kin infantry.

  “Father, get back! The crab is too massive!” Sk?ll screamed over the ether-radio, but his voice was lost in the static hiss of magical discharges.

  The lead Siege-Crab emitted a dark, greasy cloud of smoke as its pressure boilers reached their limit. The colossal shears at the front—mechanical pincers originally intended to pry gates from their hinges—shot forward. It was a movement of terrifying precision and speed.

  Sk?ll watched in slow motion as the shears gripped the Iron-Bite by the torso. The sound was indescribable. It was not the clashing of weapons, but the dull, cruel crunch of metal yielding under unimaginable pressure. His father’s golem, the pride of their house, was caught like a nut in a cracker. The armor plates of the Iron-Bite bulged outward, rivets shot from their moorings like projectiles, and the central Veska-core began to flicker unstably.

  Burnar still tried to drive his golem’s energy fists into the crab’s joints, but it was like an insect striking a boot. With one final, bone-chilling shriek of steel, the shears closed completely. The cockpit where his father sat was simply crushed under the kinetic force.

  The crab held the deformed lump of metal—which had once been the mightiest golem of the North—in the air for a moment, almost as if inspecting its prey. Then, with a casual movement of its mechanical arms, it cast the Iron-Bite aside. The golem slammed into the mud far away, a smoking wreck in which every spark of life had been extinguished.

  In that moment, something died in Sk?ll. Fear, exhaustion, even reason—everything was washed away by an ice-cold, all-consuming flood of pure bloodlust. It was not controlled anger; it was the heritage of Wolfsgrund boiling in his veins. A wounded wolf no longer hunts; it tears apart anything that comes near, with no regard for its own safety.

  “PACK!” Sk?ll roared into the radio, and his voice no longer sounded human. It was hoarse, broken, and filled with animalistic rage. “KILL THEM! NO RETREAT! TEAR THE METAL APART!”

  The Night-Howler reared up. Sk?ll slammed the levers forward, ignoring all the warning lights flashing red in his cockpit. The remaining golems of the pack, having witnessed their leader's death through shared sensory links, reacted with the same instinctive ferocity. They lunged at the crabs' legs. They used their chainsaw-swords to sever hydraulic lines; they rammed their shoulders against the massive joints, even as their own armor shattered in the process.

  It was a slaughter of steel against steel. Sk?ll drove the Night-Howler directly under the belly of one of the crabs. He fired his shoulder cannons at point-blank range, the impacts shaking his own canopy so violently that blood dripped from his nose onto the controls. He saw nothing but the dark iron of the enemy. He hacked at the mechanical legs with his plasma blade, again and again, until his golem’s arm began to melt from the heat generation.

  But the crabs were tough. Unbelievably tough. Reyn had not just built them as siege weapons, but as unstoppable fortresses. Every time a golem damaged a leg, internal mechanisms seemed to compensate for the damage or redistribute the weight to the other limbs. The Dragon-kin infantry now swarmed through the breaches of the first wall, using the crabs as cover and firing crossbows and magic at the golems' exposed points.

  “We can’t hold out!” reported one of the pilots, his voice distorted with pain. “They’re simply crushing us!”

  “THEN DIE FIGHTING!” Sk?ll screamed back. He rammed the Night-Howler against one of the shears that was about to grab another comrade. The impact threw him forward in his seat, his head striking the visor, and for a moment, he saw stars.

  The second line of defense—a hastily erected wall of rubble and reinforced barricades directly in front of the inner fortress gate—began to waver. If this line fell, Wolfsgrund was lost. The crabs prepared for the final thrust. Their steam boilers howled, a sound like the roar of a thousand monsters.

  Sk?ll saw the lead crab rear up to throw its entire weight against the inner gate. He prepared to pilot his golem into a final, desperate suicide attack against the crab’s mana core. If he had to die, he would take this thing to hell with him.

  But before he could give the order for overload, a new sound tore through the air. It was not a howl or a shriek. It was the sonorous, deep drone of heavy bass horns sounding the rhythm of a marching army.

  From the eastern slope, which led steeply up to the Wolfsgrund plateau, a new force erupted. They were not wolves. These golems were massive, square-set, and clad in colors of deep blue and gold.

  “The Lords of Barwan...” Sk?ll breathed, struggling to bring his optics into focus.

  They were the heavy defense golems of Barwan, known as the Iron Sentinels. They were slower than the wolves, but they possessed firepower designed to hold fortresses. With precision born of decades of training, they fanned out.

  The heavy mortars on their backs discharged simultaneously. A salvo of armor-piercing shells rained down upon the Siege-Crabs. The impacts were so violent that the crabs staggered. Dust and metal shards rained onto the battlefield.

  Behind the Barwan golems appeared the house troops—disciplined rows of pikemen and musketeers who immediately began to flank the Dragon-kin infantry.

  “Wolfsgrund!” a deep, calm voice boomed over the general radio channel. It was Lord Barwan himself. “Hold the second line! We are the anvil, you are the hammer! Push them back into the dirt they crawled out of!”

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  The arrival of the reinforcements acted like an electric shock on the remaining golems of the pack. Despair gave way to a cold, precise fury. Sk?ll saw the crabs retreat for the first time to regroup. The Barwan golems marched forward, their massive shields forming a new wall that slid protectively in front of the remnants of the Wolfsgrund line.

  Sk?ll let the Night-Howler sink heavily onto its knees. His arms were shaking so violently he could barely hold the controls. He stared through the monitor at the smoking wreck of the Iron-Bite lying in the distance. His father was dead. House Wolfsgrund was decimated. But the second line held.

  He wiped the blood from his forehead and watched as the blue golems of Barwan took their positions. The fight was far from over, but total annihilation had been averted for now. Reyn might have his crabs, but Caleon was not yet ready to go down without a fight.

  Sk?ll took a shaky breath. He switched on his cockpit’s ether-radio. His voice was quiet now, but it carried a dark promise.

  “Thank you, Barwan,” he muttered. “But leave me the crab that killed my father. That one is mine.”

  -

  The roar of the hydraulic servomotors vibrated in Thorsten Barwan’s chest—a familiar, rhythmic rumble that had accompanied him through countless battles for decades. While the golems of Wolfsgrund stalked through the mud like hunting predators, the Iron-Fist was a walking anvil.

  Thorsten thrust his arm forward. The massive mechanical fist of his golem, surrounded by a bluish energy field, struck the chest of a Bone-Giant with the force of a falling boulder. The calcified skeleton of the undead construct literally exploded under the pressure; ribs and vertebrae sailed across the battlefield like white rain. Without pausing, Thorsten activated the retractable blade on his right forearm. With a fluid rotation of the torso, the jagged steel plate tore through a whole row of Half-Giants attempting to flank the golem line.

  The impact jolted the cockpit as Thorsten rammed the Iron-Fist’s reinforced shoulder into one of the massive front legs of the second Siege-Crab. The sound of bursting iron on iron was deafening. The crab swayed, its joints shrieking under the strain, but it did not fall. Directly above Thorsten, the heavy cannons on the ramparts of Wolfsgrund howled. The fortress's remaining artillery fired coordinated salvos that passed just over the heads of the Barwan golems, forcing the advancing infantry of the Heartfire Legion into cover. This rear support was the only thing preventing the Iron-Fist from being swamped by the sheer mass of enemies.

  At that moment, the ether-radio inside the canopy crackled. It was a private channel, encrypted by the runes of House Barwan.

  "Father?" the voice of his second son, Barchas, sounded distorted, underscored by the noise of his own engagement. Barchas commanded the right wing of the reinforcements. "Father, the sensors are reporting further movement behind the hill. The crabs are shrugging off our hits like they're pebbles. Are we... are we going to win this battle?"

  Thorsten paused for a moment. He was the eldest of the reigning Lords of Caleon. His hair beneath his helmet had long since turned snow-white, and his skin resembled the tanned leather of an old saddle. He had seen kings come and go; he had fought wars when Thivan Sothar was still in the womb. This experience gave him a calm that some might mistake for cold-bloodedness, but in truth, it was simple, unfiltered reality.

  He corrected the Iron-Fist’s position, parried the blow of an enemy axe, and replied calmly: "Barchas, focus on your sector displays. Do not let doubt into your cockpit, or you will only pilot with half your strength."

  "But Father, look at the field," Barchas urged, the heavy breathing of the young man audible. "The first wall is gone. The Baron of Wolfsgrund is dead. We’re just holding a ruin here. If Reyn has more of these machines..."

  Thorsten took a deep breath. He knew that lying to his heir now served no purpose. "Strategically speaking, Barchas, you are right. If we look at the raw numbers—the destructive power of these crabs and the exhaustion of the Wolfsgrund troops—this fortress will fall. Sooner or later, Reyn will break the gate. As a bulwark in the North, Wolfsgrund was lost the moment the first crab rose from the ground tonight."

  A brief silence followed on the frequency. The distant explosion of a mana grenade filled the gap.

  "Then... why are we fighting here so doggedly?" Barchas asked softly.

  "Because a lost outpost does not mean the end of the war," Thorsten answered firmly. He rammed the energy fist against the crab again to keep it at a distance. "My faith in our House and in the walls of Drymon is unshakable, son. We are not fighting here for stones or old walls. We are fighting for time. Every minute these crabs remain stuck here in the mud of Wolfsgrund is a minute in which Thivan can reinforce the shields in the capital. A minute in which the Lords in the Southwest can close their ranks."

  He switched to a broader frequency so his son could feel the determination in his voice. "Reyn may win battles with his constructs, but he underestimates the endurance of Caleon. Drymon will hold because we are prepared to pay the price it costs to make it hold. My faith in victory is great, Barchas, even if that victory might not be won on this specific plateau."

  "I understand, Father," Barchas replied, his voice sounding a bit more stabilized. "Buying time. Paying the price."

  "Exactly that," Thorsten said. "We are Barwan. We are the rock upon which the surf breaks. Even if the rock eventually crumbles, it has held back the waves long enough. Now, aim your forward batteries at the joint of the right crab. We will show them that age has not made us weak, only more patient in killing."

  The Iron-Fist stomped forward, its heavy mechanical feet digging deep into the furrowed earth. Thorsten Barwan felt no fear of what was to come. He had seen too many winters to fear a storm. He knew the situation was critical—that Reyn was playing cards no one had foreseen—but his confidence in the structure of the realm and in the young generation he had left behind in Drymon was steadfast.

  The golems of Barwan now formed a dense, blue-and-gold wall in front of the second line of defense. They were the shield behind which the remnants of Wolfsgrund’s pack regrouped. Sk?ll’s Night-Howler limped up on the left side, its armor shredded, but its weaponry still operational.

  "Wolfsgrund, do you hear me?" Thorsten radioed the young Sk?ll.

  "I hear you, Lord Barwan," came the gravelly reply.

  "Your father was a stubborn dog, Sk?ll. Be just as stubborn today. We hold this line until the sun goes down or until no more mana flows in our cores. Do we have an understanding?"

  "Understood," Sk?ll replied curtly, but with a new intensity.

  Thorsten Barwan smiled grimly. He was the eldest here, and he would play his role to the end. He pulled the Iron-Fist into a stable defensive stance, shields activated, energy fists charged. The Siege-Crabs prepared for a renewed assault, and the mass of the Dragon-kin rolled toward them like a dark tide.

  While the cannons of Wolfsgrund continued to drum their fiery rhythm above them, Thorsten Barwan stood at the center of the storm—an old rock in a surging sea, firm in his belief that Caleon would endure, no matter how many walls turned to dust tonight.

  Barchas’s golem fired the first salvo of heavy mortars. The battle continued, relentless and without mercy, while on the horizon, the faint light of a new day was yet to appear.

  The defenders were now firmly anchored in the second line. The Barwan golems formed the backbone, while the infantry sought cover in the trenches and behind the rubble walls. Reyn's crabs advanced more slowly, more cautiously now that they had encountered the massive resistance of the Iron Sentinels.

  Thorsten watched the displays. His mana supply was sinking steadily but controlled. He knew exactly how to ration his strength. He was no hothead like the young pilots of Wolfsgrund; he was a strategist of endurance.

  "Barchas, watch out for the Legion's flank-fire units," he instructed his son. "They are trying to fill the gaps between our shields with incendiary bombs. Stay close together."

  "Yes, Father."

  The coordination between the two houses improved with every minute of the fight. The Wolves learned to use the protection of the Barwan shields to ride out for short, heavy sorties, while the heavy golems absorbed the constant pressure of the crabs. It was a partnership of survival.

  Thorsten looked briefly at the wreck of the Iron-Bite lying far off in the mud. He had known Burnar since he was a small boy. The loss stung, but Thorsten did not allow himself to feel that pain now. He would mourn later when the cannons were silent. Now, only the next wave mattered, the next blow, the next minute of time for Drymon.

  The darkness was repeatedly illuminated by the bright flashes of magic and the explosions of the cannons. It was an apocalyptic scene, but Thorsten Barwan stood in the thick of it, calm and determined. He was the anchor of this army, and as long as the Iron-Fist stood, hope would not fade in the hearts of the defenders.

  The crabs hissed steam once more. The next great assault was imminent. Thorsten tightened his grip on the control levers. He felt the weight of his age, but he also felt the strength of his ancestors in this golem.

  "Come then, Reyn," he murmured softly. "We still have plenty of time left for you."

  The roar of the crabs mingled with the howling of the wolves and the thundering of the Barwan horns. The second line held—for now. And for Thorsten Barwan, this "for now" was everything that mattered that day.