The ogres overran the camp like scores of mad titans. The trees belched monsters with eyes shining and spittle flying from their maws. Innumerable tents were trampled, and sickening red oozed from the wreckage. Warriors mounted a desperate defence, but they stumbled in confusion - half-blinded and crazed by terror.

One towering beast took a spear to the chest, snarled, then grabbed the thrower and squeezed the life from him. Another fighter was tossed high into the air, her terrified wail abruptly ending when she impacted a tree. A man struggled in the steel-grip of a grey-skinned giant, his irate roar abruptly changing to an agonized mewl as he was pulled in two. Gore poured onto his slayer. The creature opened its mouth to drink the grisly rain.

The fireball faded, plunging all into a blind nightmare of screaming and ripping flesh. The army was ruined. The old wizard stiffened. Decades of effort evaporated before his eyes, trampled flat by these brutes like a child stomping a snow castle.

He clenched his fist around the ember. He would pay this back tenfold! A hundred-fold!

Yet, he must wait for that. This was not the time.

Moving quickly, he followed the sound of Avernix's bellowing. “My overlord!”

Overlord Avernix had gathered twenty of his best and was rallying to charge, but whirled at the call of his wizard. “Lukotor!” he roared. “What madness has befallen us!? We were hidden! The Three-”

“-are dead! They are dead, overlord!”

Avernix and his bodyguards recoiled from his words, and Lukotor knew he had erred. Even these hardened veterans had only the loosest grip on their courage now, and giving witness to their guardians’ destruction could doubtless cause the rest to slip away. He had to speak quickly. “Overlord, we are overrun! We must get away!”

The Overlord of Garumna, pale as the moon, looked about as the silhouettes of carnage destroyed the army that had carried him from victory to victory. An army that would have protected him and fought his enemies far into the future. An army he had planned to gift to his heir. An heir he had also been robbed of. The golden crown encircling his battle helm felt like mere tin for all it meant now.

Yet, his conqueror’s spirit demanded no surrender. No bowing. Not even to death.

“What do you advise?” his gaze grew sharp.

“The egg! It is our one hope now! With my magic, we can escape and move quickly to claim it! Its power…it will fix this.”

With his last words, he was unsure if he spoke to convince his sovereign or himself. Avernix rose up to his full height, eyes blazing. “Make a path for us.” The conqueror turned to his remaining warriors. “We will pierce the encirclement to the north. Stay in formation and gather any others who would join us. Spears down. Shields away. Do not stop running. May the Three-” the words caught in his throat, and he grit his teeth and raised his spear. “Forth! We charge!”

With a roar of desperation, they followed their sovereign while the old wizard took up position in their midst, raising the pyromancer's ember.

Boom!

Flame exploded before them, and ogres screamed and writhed as they burned, lurching apart. Again, Lukotor spat the same incantation.

Boom! Boom!

Streaking comets crashed into grey flesh. Heat, light and the reek of scorching meat battled each other in the air as Avernix rushed onward, his powerful arm coiling then exploding in a piercing thrust to a confused giant’s throat. A rip sideways saw the bronze point slash the throat open. The towering brute clutched its ragged wound, tumbling back from its burning fellows. It collapsed like a felled tree. The conqueror’s warriors cheered, pushing into the gap with bronze spearheads glinting in light of moon and fire. Speartips washed red when driven up into incensed forest giants. More warriors rallied to the violent push as one drowning would cling to passing driftwood.

Ogres bounded forth to meet them, bellowing challenges and sweeping with their clubs - crushing warriors two and three at a time - but Lukotor was already chanting.

His ember flared a deadly orange.

Fwoooosh!

He unleashed a stream of fire akin to dragon’s breath, sweeping back and forth to coat their attackers. Their screams were deafening. The scorching was unyielding as ogres were swallowed in flame, toppling onto warriors and taking them too to a burning doom. Remaining warriors pushed on behind their roaring overlord, fleeing as if escaping all hells. A glance at looming bodies swarming the paddock told them that the horses and oxen were lost, so they pushed for the trees.

Spears thrust and fire magic roared until those surviving were drenched in sweat and delirious from terror and exertion. The ogres drew back from Lukotor’s devastating flame to cast a hail of immense stones with disastrous accuracy, striking many down and nearly taking Lukotor’s life.

Yet, a scant few made the tree-line. Perhaps a score. Perhaps a dozen. Lukotor and Avernix had no time to count. Wordlessly, the wizard and the conqueror pushed on in the grimmest of marches, their rhythm broken only by the screams of their dying comrades in the shadows of night.

Crunch.

Another tooth shattered in Lukotor’s mouth.

He swore. He swore to himself that he would lay hands to the egg. He would make it his own. Its fell powers would find those thieves, that saint, and whatever did this. The tortures he would conjure would be everlasting and vile enough to drive demons mad.

This he swore to himself. He swore in his mind loudly. Loud enough to have it echo through his entire being.

…yet, it could not shout down insistent doubts that had further arisen in his heart.

The old wizard ran. Forward lay endless power and glory. Pursuing him was death.

He could not be sure which would move the quicker.