Joy snorted gently, shaking some of the grass out of his muzzle as kept himself low to the ground, It had been too long since his last hunt—too damned long, and he had missed the feeling dearly. The blood pumping loudly through his veins, the burning tension in his limbs, he had missed it all desperately. Words and speeches, they were all foreign to him even now. This was where he belonged, with his dirt beneath his claws and the scent in his mind.

The wind stirred his fur, suddenly falling still. His claws tensed, his muscles bunching. And then he struck.

In a blur of motion and outstretched claws, he sank his fangs into his prey, snapping its neck with the force of the blow. The rabbit barely had enough time to leap, its powerful legs nevertheless useless in the face of such overwhelming speed. Its gray-green fur was now stained with a deep crimson, its feet twitching with memories of life as it still struggled to escape.

Joy savored the sensation of warm blood bubbling down his throat, his body still coursing with the thrill of the hunt. It was a feeling that had been denied to him for too long—this was where he truly belonged. He tore into the small body voraciously, fangs ripping apart muscle and crunching through thin bone before swallowing the chunks of meat with a jerk of the head. The rabbit was small enough that there was little left over, no remains left to throw away.

He walked slowly back towards the camp, feeling the frenetic high of the stalk slowly dissipate. Even though it had just been a small rabbit, there was little enough game around here that it had taken him a while to track it down. Once he found it, he had played it, darting in the underbrush and making noise to startle the beast into something resembling a chase. It was rather pathetic compared to his hunts in the Outlands, but it was enough to remind him of those days past. The nostalgia and feeling of familiarity left a toothy smile on his face as he returned to the bluff, just in time for a hurried Mors to interrupt him.

“Have you seen the Capital yet?” the man blurted out, only to crinkle his nose as his gaze settled on Joy’s mouth. “Your—ah—mouth…” he managed, gesturing for Joy to wipe away the blood that stained his furred jaw.

“No. Why?” the demon grunted out in reply, roughly scraping away the crusted bloodstains.

“There was fighting earlier this morning.” Mors responded. “I had wanted to get you earlier, but you were out hunting. It sounded like there was conflict inside the Capital, maybe a rebellion of some sort. We could use this.”

“Are they still fighting?” Joy asked, hurriedly striding over to the overlooking bluff where he could see the Capital in closer detail.

“No, they stopped perhaps thirty minutes after we first heard the noises.” Mors replied, panting to keep up. Along the way, the passed a curious wagon, one of the few that remained untouched in the camp. Its outside was wrapped in thick metal chains, as if it trapped some terrible beast inside. Seeing where Joy’s gaze was, Mors slowly murmured. “Sir… did you want to use?”

But Joy hurriedly shook his head, keeping a relatively large berth around that wagon that none of the legionaries dared to come too close to. “Later, perhaps.” he whispered, yet the noise was enough for that wagon to suddenly rattle, rocking back and forth on wooden wheels that suddenly felt a shade too flimsy.

Joy paused as he closed in on the edge of the bluff, taking in the strange chaos that was the Capital. Curling columns of smoke spiraled towards the sky from within those imposing walls, evidence of fire that still had yet to fully die out. Yet more imposing were the skulls impaled on the battlements, severed heads that had been coated in tar and laid bare for the carrion birds to eat away.

“Lords and noblemen.” Mors spoke in a hushed voice, referring to the dead men. “Perhaps the soldiers rebelled from inside for some reason? It seems the most likely cause. How…” he paused slowly, “how do you want to respond?”

“Respond?” Joy snarled out softly, only shake his head. “I do not care for their squabbles. The Capital is a beast, and these are its death throes. So long as their fighting men are fit enough to bleed for me, that is all I wish.” He turned to face the rest of the camp, seeing the legionaries drilling under the tireless sun. Over a thousand men were sprawled out over the plains, nearly innumerable as a horde—and yet he knew that they would still not be enough. There would never be enough to drown out the skal.

They were a ragged mess when they had first joined, with men coming from all different legions. They had been missing chains of command, their leaders now buried in mud. It had been an ordeal to see them organized—one that had been met with great resistance at first. It had taken Kha and his skills with magic to, ah, convince them otherwise.

“How are your catapults?” he spoke suddenly, catching Mors off guard. “I would hate to see their effort wasted if the Capital is to fall so early.”

“I had not been anticipated such a hurried development.” he admitted. “Siege normally takes a… longer period of time. Perhaps they felt pressured without stores of food, or without any connections to help them break the siege. In any case, some of the first catapults have recently been finished. Jhossa did well with teaching them; I think the man must have been an engineer in the past. The men are currently drilling with loading and firing. Did you wish to watch?”

Joy felt a slow smile crawl across his face. “Indeed.” he replied. Just how effective would these new weapons be, that Jhossa had touted would be so revolutionary? He felt a familiar tingling in his blood, the kind that he had felt when he had first seen bows firing a volley that drowned out the sky. Would this be something similar, perhaps? Something that could give him the edge needed to break the skal?

They were certainly unimpressive things, he decided as he approached the legionaries. Little more than strange constructions of flimsy wood and corded rope, he failed to see how they could do little more than snap under the weight of the stones that the soldiers were launching. Padded leather reinforced a central beam, thick lengths of rope running parallel to another wooden arm. “This is it?” he grunted out in surprise. The entire contraption was perhaps four men’s size, certainly not the massive monstrosity of destruction that he had first imagined.

Mors merely snorted in response, nodding for the men to continue. One man carefully loaded a stone into the end of that arm, the others working to carefully wind back the rope. It was a tedious affair, and yet when it was done they all stepped back with a hurried action that could only have come from too many close calls. One man threw the lever, the catapult suddenly cracking with a motion almost too fast for Joy to even register.

The entire construction rocked up in response to the blow, the arm striking the padded beam as the stone continued to sail for hundreds of paces. In the end, the projectile disappeared into the distance, leaving only a stunned Joy to slowly try and recollect his thoughts. Mors barely managed to hold in his laughter as he saw the rarely surprised demon with eyes wide in shock.

“Can…” Joy finally managed to gasp out. “Can it throw more than just pebbles?”

Mors furrowed his brows in confusion, not understanding what Joy meant. “Certainly, whatever fits into the bucket on the end. Jhossa was even saying something about hurling dead cows with a leather strap or something. I don’t understand half of what goes through that man’s head sometimes.”

Joy ignored the man’s musings, instead feeling his own thoughts running away from him as a sudden excitement grasped him. “Oil, pitch!” he practically shouted, making the watching soldiers nearly jump in surprise.

“W-what do you mean?” Mors stammered out, still not getting it. Joy huffed in exasperation.

“Fire burns the skal, and we have plenty of things that burn. These things can throw at least three times the length of any man’s arm. Have them cover the skal in pitch, then burn them with arrows.” His eyes were bright, practically gleaming with excitement. He could feel his heart thumping out an energetic rhythm, a sensation of hope and thrill filling him.

Joy could see it now, the advancing wave of skal’va suddenly wreathed in a brilliant flame. The shadows would crackle and burn, falling away into ash under that terrible assault. This can kill the skal, he realized.

This is enough to burn Atal into cinders.