One could say that Cory was fortunate that Therion didn't find out exactly what he did to Deidra or Therion would have tried to kill him, but the truth was that Therion was fortunate for that. All Deidra would tell Therion was that she did something wrong, and furthermore that she didn't even know what it was. So Cory left the castle again without word getting out about his cruelty towards the soothsayer.

Cory met General Meriel in a huge camp on the edge of the Arxian border. The border between Arx and Nihilus was a natural one, made up by a mountain range with steep cliffs, like walls, on the Nihilus side. Only a small portion of Meriel's forces were there, the ones who would take the first mountain pass that would allow the rest to march into Arx. The rest were staying at a fortresses not far from there, awaiting the word to move in and invade Muri. Meriel's soldiers all wore masks whenever they went into battle. She found that the anonymity helped her soldiers with any moral reservations they may have had against some of the atrocities she ordered them to commit. Word had been sent ahead of time about Cory's arrival, so Meriel met him at the edge of the camp, along with several bodyguards.

“There he is! Our hero!” Meriel said, smiling at him as he approached.

“Good day, general,” Cory dismounted and some of the soldiers from the camp took his horse for him.

Meriel led Cory to her tent, which was in the center of the camp. “The first part of our campaign to take Arx will likely be the most difficult step. We have to cross the border into the March of Muri, which means taking mountain passes that are likely heavily guarded. Fortunately, Lorna has a force that can go in before ours. Over the past few months she has been building up a legion of daemon thralls, former prisoners and criminals. If they go in first then whatever soldiers guard that pass will give away their positions and attack, getting the ambush out of the way. Once the enemy army has revealed itself the rest of our forces can rush into the fight and turn the tide in our favor.”

“What role can I play in this?”

“Your human forces will march with mine,” Meriel said. “As for your special blessing, I have something I've had my men working on for you. We have a heavily armored wagon, one with small slots for you to see out of, but slots that are far too small for archers to be able to easily fire arrows in at a distance. You can ride in there and conjure daemons for support from within. You'll also be heavily armored, in the off chance that an arrow does come in or one of their scouts manages to get into the carriage. Also, I'd advise you not to interfere too much in the battles just yet, we want to keep you and the ring you wear as a trump card, a secret that we can use to turn around a battle where we're severely losing.”

“I appreciate the armored wagon, but I don't think I should try wearing armor,” Cory said. “I've never been trained with that sort of thing and would likely end up dead the first time the carriage hit a bump and I fell over.”

“Fine, then, so you'll ride in the armored carriage but you won't wear armor. That works too.” Meriel didn't want to argue with the young man, considering what he was capable of. Lorna's spy network had already heard about the little town of Ormondsburgh, and Lorna in turn had told Meriel. This was a man after her own heart, and Meriel knew just how black that heart was.

“Is there border patrol to deal with?”

“There will be, but General Lorna already has a plan worked out for them. The idolaters have an outpost at the very start of the mountain pass we'll need to use. The purpose of this outpost is not to hold back an entire army, but rather to send messengers to the forces further in if they see an army approaching, and to keep people from sneaking in.” Meriel smirked. “If you've heard anything about our many infiltrations into Arxian territory you can tell how effective that's been.”

“Once we're through the pass can we expect any reinforcements?”

“Not immediately, but as we march further and further into Arx we'll see our people coming to greet us, particularly in the County of Xane. There's not a full army already across the border or anything, but we do have a few who could help. And if Lorna's project to turn several small, rural towns into bastions of daemon thralls worked then we'll be heavily reinforced when we get there.”

“Good.”

“Now, mind you, we won't try to move our full forces in at once, in such a narrow pass doing something like that is suicide. In narrow spaces numbers don't matter, so we'll have to march in with a fraction of our forces and take the pass. Once the pass is taken we can guard it while the rest of our soldiers march through.”

“Understood. Which pass will we be taking?”

Meriel rolled a map out in front of Cory and pointed out a mountain pass that had been circled in red ink, “Ten-Red Pass.” Ten-Red Pass was so named because of a battle hundreds of years ago. A few hundred men, called the Red Battalion, defended the pass against invaders. Things were going smoothly for them, until the invaders found a few tunnels and smaller passages that allowed them to flank the Red Battallion. Most of the Red Battallion died defending the pass, all except for ten soldiers, who managed to survive until reinforcements arrived.

“It's one of the shortest ways in,” Meriel said. “A quick way to get to the March of Muri, but not as quick as Frost-Ridge Pass or Clay-Foot Pass, so likely nowhere near as heavily guarded.”

“Are we going to bother with taking the Marquise's castle?”

“No,” Meriel said. “But we cannot leave such an army at our back as we march further into the kingdom of Arx, so we must draw her forces out to meet us on the battlefield, if possible. We cannot afford to use up our forces on more sieges than necessary. The idolaters have a strong advantage when it comes to sieges.”

“Good point.”

A trumpet blew in the distance. “Sounds like your forces have arrived. You'll likely want to speak to them before we move out tomorrow.”

“Aye. I bid you good night, General Meriel.”

“And to you, General Cory.”

Cory crossed the camp and greeted his men at the edge of the camp. They'd gathered there and had started making camp, setting up their tents and rolling out their bedrolls. “Soldiers!” Cory called out. All of them turned to face him. There wasn't a soldier among them who didn't resent this new general on some level. He was not Qenneth, whom they followed because he'd made himself a great war hero. Qenneth had bled beside his comrades, proven his worth over and over. The way he led he managed to both ensure victory and lose as few of his own as possible. He would often even charge in front of his forces. This upstart was some young fool who bullied his way to the top when General Qenneth was killed. Sure, they knew that Cory had been chosen by Malkira, but though all of them were faithful worshipers of Prunikos, they generally found much more tangible signs of good leadership skills easier to follow. Still, none of them dared defy him, both because in the army the punishment for insubordination was death, and because many of them had heard of the amazing power he commanded. “Lend me your ears, countrymen! When I was just a lad I heard glorious stories of Qenneth,” this was true, though Cory had never really cared about Qenneth's heroic exploits. “From that time I always looked up to him, wished I could be just like him. Now, he's dead. The false God of the Agalmites, Saklas, or Enlil, as he is truly called, sent his angels to murder our beloved war-hero. For many thousands of years Saklas has held human beings in this place, prisoners! We have been kept from our true destiny, to roam the Void, free! Qenneth believed in that dream, my comrades! he believed in freedom, and that's why Saklas had him murdered! We cannot allow this to go on any longer! Malkira has blessed me with the power to kill the false God, to bring about the end of this world. The time has come to free all humanity from this prison and avenge General Qenneth! Follow me, men, and I shall lead us to victory over our enemies! Our army will forever be remembered in the Void as the army that crushed the idolaters and their damnable Law! I will lead you to victory! I will lead you to glory! I will lead you to vengeance!”

In spite of his passion, the men were less than inspired by this speech. Still, they cheered when he was done, hoping that if they acted appreciative enough he'd shut up.

After a good night's rest the soldiers began their march towards Ten-Red Pass. Lorna sent her scouts ahead of time to make sure the border patrol wouldn't be able to alert their enemies. For the four Arxian soldiers on border patrol it was a quiet day. Three of them were playing dice and gambling away their pay while the fourth one stood watch. They'd been ordered to be ever-vigilant, to take no chances, and keep their eyes on the fields below, but after so many months of hearing “War's coming!” such orders just stopped mattering to them. For them this was just another day, not the day that Nihilus was going to invade Arx. Not one of them saw the crossbowmen creeping up on them, slowly, wearing foliage so that they could blend in with the bushes. There were several loud twang sounds, followed by seven well-placed bolts hitting their targets. Each soldier in the border patrol took at least one crossbow bolt to the forehead.

With the border patrol out of the way the rest of the forces designated to take the pass could move in. As they passed over the bodies of their enemies the soldiers took whatever rations they could find off of them. In war you never passed up the chance to eat, especially if the food looked reasonably fresh. The Nihilite army marched into the pass, all infantry. No cavalry would be taken along for this battle. Cavalry was almost useless in narrow mountain passes. At the front of the army were the thralls, “The Damned Platoon” they were called. They wore enough armor and equipment to hide what they were, to hide the many eyes all over their bodies marking them as thralls of a seeker. Following them were Lorna's forces, with every one-hundredth man a warlock, and the daemons they'd conjured to fight beside them. Between Lorna's forces and Meriel's were the conscripts, laborers mostly. Men and women forced to come along to do all the work, to dig trenches, build barricades, and even cook meals for the soldiers. Behind that marched Meriel's soldiers. They wore masks of iron with grotesque faces. Finally at the rear, led by an armored carriage pulled by four large horses, marched Cory's forces, clad in armor that was as beautiful as it was practical, and meant to inspire one another to fight on. They had several banner bearers, with General Qenneth's coat of arms sewn into the banner. On such short notice they'd had no time to make banners with Cory's coat of arms, and furthermore Cory didn't actually have a coat of arms, being from a peasant family. Not that anyone would bring up that particular reason.

The whistling of arrows signaled that the ambushers in the pass had indeed fallen for Lorna's trick. The thralls were peppered with volleys of arrows raining down from the cliffs. Men who had been sentenced to die for treason or other such crimes now had their sentences carried out, but in a way that served Nihilus far better than simply execution. The surviving members of the Damned Platoon turned their crossbows and long-bows up toward the cliffs and fired back at the archers who shot down on them. The problem was that gravity was working against the thralls in this and working in favor of the Arxian forces. Many arrows fell or started to fall long before they reached their targets, but some found their way to the archers on the cliffs.

Being ever so clever, the fletchers who made the arrows fitted a small Blackstar Talisman to the tip of every one-hundredth arrow, enchanted to conjure a daemon once the arrow hit either the ground or human flesh. As these arrows arrived among the enemy ranks countless different kinds of daemons appeared and attacked the archers.

Magdiel, one of the paladins who was with Hadar at Countess Ezra's castle, had been assigned to help the ambushers in the pass. Seeing the daemons attack his comrades he sprang into action and loosed his diamond-tipped arrows at them. At his suggestion, most of the archers had small, diamond daggers, which gave them at least somewhat of a fighting chance.

“Blaggards!” Magdiel shouted as he shot his arrows into a daemon that looked like a tall man with four, very long arms. He grabbed one of the soldiers and shouted to him, above the sounds of the carnage going on around him, “Ride back to the Marquise! Tell her that Nihilus has begun the invasion! Go!”

“Yes, sir!” the soldier shouted back before he ran off to find his horse.

With the archers distracted between the daemons attacking their ranks directly and the thralls firing arrows at them, Lorna sent her main force to scale the mountainside to attack the archers defending the pass. They had been instructed to do so as quietly as possible, and to stay out of view until they could make a full charge at the enemy soldiers.

Magdiel rushed into the thick of the battle, his two diamond daggers in hand. He slashed out at the locust daemons, the leopard daemons, and the occasional seeker that attacked his soldiers. “TRIPLE UP!” he yelled. This order all the Arxian soldiers knew, and they all began yelling it to each other as well, in case there were any who hadn't heard it. They had anticipated that the warlocks of Nihilus would be able to conjure daemons behind their defensive lines, so they had devised a plan to gather in small groups of three, two archers, one soldier with a diamond dagger. The two archers would focus their fire on the enemies below while the one with the dagger would do his best to defend them from daemons. Once the soldiers had formed groups of three and seemed to be reasonably holding their own Magdiel shouted, “RELEASE The GOLEMS!”

When the soldiers first arrived at Ten-Red they had suggested having the golems standing in the middle of the pass to block the way of anyone who tried to cross. Magdiel had pointed out that doing so would allow the enemy time to see what they were up against long before they arrived, so he devised a different plan. They dug pits in the floor of the pass and ordered the golems to climb into these pits. Once the golems were in they buried them there and the plan was to have the golems surprise the enemy and break through their lines, the same as the warlocks conjured daemons behind theirs. Once they'd heard the order seven runners dashed down the slope towards the bottom, all the while dodging the rain of arrows sent at them. One of them was struck square in the chest and fell over onto his back. He was not dead yet, but badly wounded, and the arrow would likely leave an infection. The six others made it to the bottom and put their faces near the ground, “GOLEMS! RISE!”

With fists of diamond and bodies made of stone and clay, twenty hulking golems burst out of the ground. They punched their way through the earth, and attacked the daemon thralls. The thralls fought back, stabbing at the golems with their swords and spears, but their weapons couldn't pierce stone, and most broke upon impact with the golems' bodies. Each pointless stab against a golem was met with an immediate punch to the face that usually shattered the thrall's skull, and sometimes sent their heads flying off in a crimson stream.

Shortly after the golems had been released, Lorna's forces made it to the tops of the cliffs and charged at the archers, weapons in hand. Magdiel saw the enemy forces charging and cried out, “LIGHT The LINE!” Fearing that such a maneuver was possible, the soldiers had prepared a line of lamp oil, alcohol, and tinder along the most obvious path that led to them. The plan was to fire flaming arrows at the oil and create a line of fire that would block, or at least slow, their enemies. In order to prevent the fire from spreading towards them, the Arxian soldiers kept the grass between them and the line constantly as short as possible and wet. At the time that they came up with this idea it was brilliant, and nobody felt the need to second-guess it. There were, however, a few factors they failed to take into account. First of all, where they stood was very slightly uphill from the line. It wasn't visible to the eye, but if one were to place a ball on the ground where the archers stood it would roll towards the line easily. Second of all, they hadn't accounted for strong winds, something Magdiel wasn't thinking about in the heat of the moment.

Ten archers lit their arrows and aimed at the line of oil and tinder in front of the charging enemy soldiers, only one of them noticed that the wind was so strong that it was blowing the flames on the end of the arrow towards his face and realized that this was a terrible idea. “WAIT!” he cried out.

But he was too late, the nine others released their arrows and the line was lit. This did have its intended consequence of slowing the advancing soldiers to a halt, but immediately afterward everyone realized that it would have many unintended consequences as well. First the wind blew the smoke at the archers. Their eyes burned, and they began coughing and gasping for air. The men with daggers swung wildly at the attacking daemons, who were unaffected by the smoke. They occasionally struck each other or the archers they were supposed to be protecting in all of the confusion.

Seizing the opportunity, Meriel ordered her soldiers to begin setting up one of the trebuchets to bombard the cliff-side. A trebuchet was a sort of catapult with a range much longer than most catapults. Meriel had drilled these soldiers day after day, forcing them to learn how to set up the trebuchet faster each time, until they could complete it under two minutes. Once it was set, several soldiers, working together, lifted a large boulder into the trebuchet and launched it at the cliff-side. The boulder crushed the archers and broke apart the very ground on which they stood. Archers screamed and wailed as they tumbled down the cliffs, falling onto the hard rocks below.

With smoke in his eyes, boulders flying up at him from below, and fire advancing toward them at an alarming rate, Magdiel came to the horrible realization that he had lost the battle. The only thing left for him to do now was save as many of those put under his charge as he could. “RETREAT!” he cried out. The order was repeated by every soldier down the line, and immediately they all began to run away, back into Muri. Some stopped to help the wounded and the injured who were unable to run, but they were soon either crushed with boulders or caught in the advancing fire.

Cory practically squealed with glee as he saw the enemy army retreat, so many of them unable to run because of their injuries. The range on the trebuchet was great, and as Meriel saw the enemy soldiers retreating she shouted, “Keep bombarding them! Crush as many as you can!”

Boulders rained from the sky in intervals of no less than fifteen seconds. They crashed down all around, in front of, and on top of the Arxian soldiers fleeing the field. Magdiel was absolutely horrified at how wrong the battle had gone, but even more horrified as he saw comrades broken by huge rocks falling out of the sky. “SCATTER!” he shouted, hoping to be heard above the pandemonium. The way he saw it, if they didn't group together they were less likely to suffer heavy casualties. The enemies would be most tempted to fire wherever they saw groups clumped together. The problem was that in such a narrow pass there weren't many places to which they could scatter. They had very little space that they could put in between them, especially with them all trying to run in more or less the same direction.

While the thralls were of no true consequence to the people of Nihilus, it was also true that they were a huge asset to Lorna's army, so she didn't want to see them all massacred. “Re-direct the daemons down the mountainside to protect the thralls,” she told her warlocks.

“Yes, ma'am!”

The daemons that had previously been fighting the archers up on the cliffs, and had also been pursuing them as they fled, turned back and flanked the golems. The golems held their ground surprisingly well against such an overwhelming force, and it quickly became clear that there simply weren't enough daemons on the battlefield to win that conflict. In order to continue, Lorna knew that they would need to destroy the golems. Golems felt no fear, did not route, did not retreat. If they managed to squeeze their way past them they'd merely have a powerful, fearless enemy at their backs, chasing after them.

That was when Cory finally decided to act. There were no enemy soldiers left on the battlefield who could report back to their superiors that someone in the Nihilite army could summon large numbers of daemons instantly, so the timing was perfect. “Malkira! Win this battle for us!” he spoke into the ring. Daemons resembling men with the heads of bulls, wings of eagles, and lower bodies of serpents appeared over his armored carriage and flew into the battle. They scooped up the golems in their strong arms and lifted them as high as they could into the air before dropping them again on the cliff-sides. The golems broke apart as their bodies struck the cliff-sides, and the pieces of them rolled down into the pass, crumbling into dust and pebbles.

With the enemy forces gone and the golems all crushed, the army of Nihilus had won the battle, the pass was theirs.

“Build barricades and watch-towers!” Meriel ordered the laborers. “We will make this pass our first fort in Arx, and defend it as the rest of the army marches through.”

“Good job!” Lorna called out to her soldiers as she walked by them. “They suffered heavy casualties and we suffered none! Well, none that truly mattered.”

With the battle over the daemons that had all been summoned promptly disappeared back into the Void, and Cory came out of his carriage to walk amongst his men. “Marvelous! The day is ours! I've never seen such a beautiful battle!”

“There will be plenty more to come,” Meriel said. “Some that will be far more glorious than that!”

Magdiel and his forces soon arrived at a camp just outside the pass, where many more of Muri's soldiers and many paladins and geomancers were staying.

Berne greeted Magdiel as he approached. “What happened?”

“The demon-conjurers took Ten-Red Pass! We suffered heavy casualties!”

“Schyte! What do you suggest we do?”

“Gather together all of the geomancers. We'll guard them, bring them close to the pass. Working together they can bring the cliffs crumbling down. Block the paths ahead with rocks. That should at least slow them down while we ready the welcoming party those blaggards deserve!”