Reinwald pulled his rough brown wool cloak tighter around himself in a futile attempt to ward off the bitter cold winds blowing down from the North as he stood atop the great wall, doing his patrol with the rest of his squad. “This damn leather armor doesn’t hold the wind back at all.” He mutters under his breath. Reinwald is a Captain in the army guarding the Great Wall against the vicious creatures of the North, a model solider at that, being in his late 20s with a fairly muscular build and of average looks. Like all of humanity, he has a dark tan with black hair and eyes. He is a member of a Lafayette branch family, a proud family of Knights who specialize in light magic to repel the disgusting creatures of the North. Seeing as they live in perpetual darkness, bright light burns their eyes and skin easily and is quite effective at killing or maiming them. Unfortunate for them and lucky for humanity that their planet only faces the sun with a single side, keeping the side of the continent that humanity controls in the light and warm while the beasts of the North are kept in perpetual darkness and freezing temperatures. He glared down the 40 foot tall and 20 foot thick wall built by ancient Ebenhard earth mages into the thick forest of pine trees below, his eyes darting back and forth as he searched for the terrifying Araxin soldiers, the Axi, that often hide within. Terrible, horrifying creatures, the Axi - massive black spiders the height of a man with eight legs and four arms, two on each side. The arms had 3 fingers and a thumb on each thus allowing the Axi to wield weapons similar to men, often utilizing the extra arms to carry two swords while still leaving the other two arms to interfere in other ways. While the Axi are just one of the horrors birthed by the Araxin race they are the most prevalent along the Great Wall separating the bitterly cold barren wastes of the North from the veritable warm utopia that was the South.

Reinwald’s patrols had been quiet and uneventful these past weeks as the North neared the warm season that it enters every ten years and the Araxin had been quiet leading up to it. This was a normal occurrence however, because every decade their planet nears its second sun for a period of a year and this warms the North enough to melt the ice and snow allowing the Araxi, the leaders of the Araxin, to lay more eggs than usual and mount a major invasion attempt at the end of the warm season when their troop count is at its highest. The Araxin desperately wish to breach the wall and take over the South of the continent where it is perpetually day and always warm, but humanity of course will not stand idly by and die.

As he turned away to continue walking along the top of the massive dark gray stone block wall, movement out of the corner of his eye made Reinwald whip his head back around and his breath caught in his throat. There, rushing out of the tree line, was a swarm of Axi troops headed straight for the wall! His training kicking in, Reinwald immediately pulls mana from the air around him and shapes it into a flare spell which he shoots high into the sky to alert other soldiers along the wall and to call for reinforcements. Immediately after he does so he sees flares fire off from other sections of the wall signaling that this is not a small incursion, and he likely wont be receiving as much aid as he had hoped. “Men! To battle!” He screams at the top of his lungs to the troops placed under his command. As the Axi spin their web and begin throwing it at the top of the wall to pull themselves up, the mages among his squad begin slinging all sorts of spells at the creatures while the normal soldiers unsling their short oak bows and begin to fire. Unlike most of the squads along the wall which were made up almost entirely of Fontayne and Lafayette mages, capable and fire and light spells respectively, his squad contained a bit of everything leaving them more balanced. He had members from the Ebenhard and Wenzel families with him as well, capable of using earth and water magic. Most of the other families were not nearly as suited for combat however, so it was rare to encounter any of the Warford, Delano, Isai, Thiery or Sorel along the wall. Their use of wind, darkness, illusions, telekinesis and space were more suited for other areas within society and it was there that most of them chose to stay. “Boom! Boom! Boom!” As three more Axi fall dead, Reinwald is yet again thankful that these new inventions, these rifles, now allowed even the weaker fire mages who were unable to produce a proper fire spell to participate in combat effectively. The shadows on the other side of the wall lit up as fire, light, water and earth spells crashed into their enemies all at once, knocking many of the Axi off of the wall and smashing them into the magic hardened earth below. “Don’t let up men! For humanity!” Yelled Reinwald, as he began firing his own magic into the fray. “It’s gonna be a long shift.” He murmured quietly to himself as the fight began in earnest all along the wall.

“Hah!” Yelled Reinwald as he cut down yet another pitiful Xi, one of the peasant shock troops of the Araxin, that had managed to get over the wall and into sword range by climbing over the fallen bodies of its brethren. The Xi were not nearly as large and powerful as the Axi but were much more numerous and often sent in before the main assault. All along the base of the wall lay the bodies of hundreds of Xi with a healthy dose of Axi thrown in, slain by the proud knights and soldiers defending the wall. He stumbled slightly as he pulled his sword from the Xi, his body beginning to fail him in his exhaustion. Around him the rest of his troops were engaged in their own skirmishes here and there. One of the non mage soldiers firing his bow from the wall reached for another arrow in the quiver on his back before realizing he was out. The panicked young soldiers quickly backed away from the wall as a Xi crawled over the side and began to list its misshapen pig iron sword to take his life. “Boom!” The Xi fell dead, dropping its sword and tumbling back over the wall to join the ever growing pile of bodies at its base. The lucky soldier had been saved by one of his troop mates and his rifle. A simple nod was shared between the two as the rifleman turned back to the battlefield and continued to fire when able. The archer took his quiver off to double check that he was indeed out, before glancing around for any spares. He had never run out of arrows while on patrol before, as battles of this scale were unheard of during the winter, especially right before the warm period. “Captain, whats going on?” The young man asked, as he threw down his bow and unseated his sword. It was not his preferred weapon, but it would have to do. “I’ve never seen so many Araxin attack us at once during the cold season. When will this end? Are reinforcements on their way?” Reinwald glanced around at his men and saw the young mans fear reflected in the eyes of nearly everyone there, although the men from the Fontayne family outwardly scoffed at the fearful questioning of the other man, too proud to show fear. As Reinwald prepared to give a reassuring answer to his men and attempt to bolster their confidence for the continuing battle suddenly the whole wall shook, stopping the battle in its tracks.

The air was suddenly quiet, Araxin and human soldiers alike standing still, staring off into the distant North where the shaking originated from. “Boom! Boom! Boom!” With each blast of sound, the wall shook, and along the horizon a shape began to appear. A creature the size of a small mountain that would give even the most ancient of dragons a run for their money in size slowly stomped its way toward the wall, all eight spider legs moving together, eyes the size of houses staring down the wall with clear malice. A thick black carapace coated in a thin layer of hair covered its body and it carried an enormous wooden staff in its hands. Above the wooden staff floated a miniature moon, its pockmarked surface visible even from this distance. “What in the hell…” whispered Reinwald to himself, with similar things being uttered all along the wall. “An Araxi… That must be an Araxi!” He half yelled, pulling his men out of their stupor. An Araxi had never been seen by humanity, at least not in recorded history, but everyone knew that there was nothing else this monstrosity could be besides one. The Araxi were only known to be the ruling caste of the Araxin race and what the rest of the race was named after. Each other sub species was only worthy of part of the Araxi name, giving us the Axi and Xi, but the Araxi were the originals. As everyone began to panic the Araxi suddenly unleashed a “SCREEEEEEeeee” so loud and high pitched that every soldiers had to drop their weapons and cover their ears. Even the opposing Axi and Xi seemed in pain from such a loud noise. As the scream finished, the Araxi pointed at the wall with its staff and the miniature moon threw itself at them! “Run! Get clear!” Panic clear in his voice, Reinwald gave his orders to the troops nearby. As soldiers ran in all directions up and down the wall and some jumped off the back risking broken bones in an attempt to escape, the massive ball of stone struck the wall to the far East and Reinwald’s world briefly went black.

He awoke several hundred feet away from the wall proper being drug toward a nearby barracks by some of his less injured and still conscious subordinates. Even being hundreds of feet away from the broken section of the wall, the force of such a large chunk of earth smashing down caused widespread destruction all along the wall in both directions with many collapses, one of which caught Reinwald’s troop and is what briefly knocked him out. As he stared back at the wall in shock while his subordinates drug him forward, unaware that he was now awake, he saw the dust begin to clear and a wave of Xi and Axi swarmed forward. He quickly pulled his arms free and clamored to his feet, shocking the other soldiers. “Sir! Your alive! When the wall collapsed we saw you get struck on the head and couldn’t leave you.” said Johnson. Reinwald grabbed the mans hand and shook it hard. “You have my thanks boys, but the Araxin are streaming through those breaches like locusts. We need to regroup with the main army and figure out what to do about this mess. Now run!”