Even in death, a castle wall was a formidable obstacle. Regardless of how powerful a cannon was, no amount of gunpowder could erase matter. When the fort’s walls went down, they left behind a tall layer of rubble. Normal soldiers would have balked at the thought of climbing up such a steep and uneven obstacle during the heat of battle.

But no one ever claimed carakhans were sane.

The screeching zealots scrambled up the loose debris. Twenty were gunned down during the approach, but the avian soldiers pushed forward. A regiment of neanderthal halberdiers tried to keep them from gaining control of the slope, but instantly broke when a vampire clad in crimson armor leapt into their midst.

“We’re in business, boys!” Sanguine cried, blood dripping off his claymore.

Slavering for vengeance, the carakhans rushed inside, guns blazing, but the arquebusiers and crossbowmen they were aiming for had already retreated behind a throng of halfling slaves and drooling ergaster lobotomites.

Lacking armor of any sort, the basal hominids died in droves. Realizing they were wasting ammunition on fodder, the carakhans gave the ophidian lancers room to charge.

The halflings trembled as they braced for impact. They knew death awaited them if they broke.

It came for them anyway.

A wall of lances twice the length of their spears ripped the slaves off their feet. The ophidians struck with such force their polearms erupted out of the halflings’ backs. Shatterglass blades fizzled as they reacted to the blood dripping off them. A moment later, the crystalline material detonated, showering the second rank of halflings in shrapnel.

Living up to their names, the impalers plowed through the flimsy phalanx, skewering halflings onto their nasal horns. When the impact of their charge died, the saurians pulped skulls between their powerful jaws and pierced bellies with their oversized claws.

In less than a minute, the halflings were dead, dying, or routing. The ergaster lines lasted slightly longer. Having lost any inkling of self-preservation, the lobotomites did not waver before their encroaching doom. They swarmed their opponents with the suicidal tenacity of ants and were swatted aside just as easily.

Pathetic as their resistance was, the chaff bought enough time for the Empyreans’ ranged units to reload. Ruthless homo sapien arquebusiers fired into the melee, killing eragasters and carakhans alike. The more heavily armored lancers remained relatively unscathed until a unit of heavy crossbowmen started launching enhanced bolts at them.

Impalers tried to close in on the skirmishers, but sapien pikemen and neanderthal halberdiers blocked their path. Carakhans attempted to thin out the pike wall with their pistols, but saw little success. Unlike the rabble before them, the mercenaries were well equipped. Their monofu silk vests did an excellent job of “catching” the round bullets that came their way, turning lethal perforating wounds into painful welts. However, while the loose weave garments provided excellent protection against ballistic threats, they were of little use against bladed or blunt weapons.

Individually, the neanderthals and humans were vastly inferior fighters to their bronze blooded opponents, with each carakhan and ophidian being a match for five or six red blooded humans. But as the saying went, quantity was a quality of its own, and the defenders outnumbered the attackers fifteen to one. The men had the additional advantage of holding a choke point, a potent force multiplier that amplified the effects of their numerical superiority.

Fanatically devoted to their cause, the zealots refused to take a single step back. In their minds, death was preferable to losing ground. Bullets pierced aeronite armor and halberds yanked ophidians off their mounts.

Sanguine was the only thing keeping the zealots from losing this breach. He cut down several foes with each swing of his weapon and shrugged off dozens of blows that would have felled a lesser creature ten times over. He couldn’t bring down an entire brigade on his own, but he could hold one long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

Thunderous footsteps and a booming wattle promised them deliverance from their plight. Ignoring his rider’s commands, a kasai rex continued to charge at breakneck speeds. At the very last moment, he leapt over its allies. Enemy pikemen scrambled away as the reckless dinosaur landed in the center of their formation.

Without skipping a beat, the kasai swung his head from side to side. His immense nasal horn hewing through men like a scythe through wheat. An Empyrean siege bow prepared to fire upon the beast, only to be cut down by a spray of lead pellets.

Tokai gecko crews scrambled to reload their swivel guns as their duck-billed shantu mounts waded into the fray. Puddles of gore blossomed across the ground every time one of the walking tanks took a step forward.

Not willing to cede these grounds without a fight, the Empyrean unleashed their own warbeasts. A herd of knuckle bounding mapinguaris slammed into the rampaging kasai’s flanks. Roaring, the theropods shook off the first ground sloth with embarrassing ease. He had a harder time breaking free when six other giant ground sloths clinched onto him. Even with the element of surprise, the mapinguari had little hope of overcoming the raging tyrant. It took all of their strength just to keep their grips on his legs and prevent him from slaughtering them.

Mapinguari

But they weren’t alone in this fight. While the mapinguari tied their ornery opponent down, the ogres riding atop their shoulders whittled away at the kasai’s armor with their pole hammers.

Ophidian lancers and carakhans attempted to free their beleaguered ally but became preoccupied with a battle of their own when a squadron of rhino cataphracts crashed into them.

Ultimately, the ogres succeeded in their task. Taxed by the constant blows, the power gems installed in the kasai’s armor flickered and died. Their mission complete, the ogres withdrew.

Enraged, the kasai threw his rider off and pursued the fleeing mammals. The sixty-foot-long predator was abominably fast. Capable of keeping pace with a greyhound, he easily caught up to the plodding ground sloths. Sixty serrated teeth slammed down on the slowest mapinguari’s back, effortlessly crushing its spine.

Disregarding its paralyzed victim, the kasai moved on to the next sloth, crippling it as easily as the first. The berserk theropod was working on removing a third mapinguari’s head from its neck when three cannonballs slammed into its chest plate. It screamed as it toppled over.

Any ordinary animal—and many supernatural beasts—would have pulped after such a devastating hit, but tyrants were made of sterner stuff. He suffered a few broken ribs, but his armor prevented any of the five-pound rounds from sinking into its flesh. No longer in the mood to fight, the wounded beast limped away.

Empyrean saker crews scrambled to reload their guns. Sensing its peril, the kasai hastened his pace but only injured itself further. Screeching, he doubled over, rendering himself an easy target.

A tremendous force flung the kasai rex aside. The dinosaur looked up in time to see his savior’s overshield deflect the cannonballs. Zhulong tarrasque growled as searing heat waste bathed its arquebus-proof scales. Bearded artillerists squeaked when its baleful yellow eyes landed on them.

Zhulong prodded the injured kasai with the haft of his poleaxe.

“Get up, Stabby, can’t have you dying on me too.” He turned his gaze to the devourer he loaned his beast to. “Runic, get this lug out here.” Shamed by his inability to control the creature, Runic silently complied.

Unwilling to allow such a high-value target limp to see another day, the Empyrean sicced more war beasts after the kasai. Hissing, the tarrasque ran forward to intercept them.

Few things could compete with a tarrasque in terms of raw killing ability. Despite being nearly twice the weight of a kasai, the massive reptile spun like a twister. It was lethal at all angles. A satisfying crunch of bone accompanied each snap of its jaws. Armored paws felled rhinos and ursa minors. A spiked tail devastated anything that tried to circle behind it. A flurry of ophidian pikes and great arrows skewered any creature that snuck up on the rauisuchid’s blind spots.

Realizing the futility of engaging the tarrasque in close quarters combat, the Empyrean sought to bring it down from afar. A saker crew squeezed off another shot before a whizzing bullet took off a man’s scalp and forced the rest into hiding. A zobaka gunner grinned toothily as he lifted a smoking musket off his bardiche.

An ophidian channeler hanging off the tarrasque’s left shoulder spike focused her attention on the cowering men. Inhaling deeply, she siphoned energy from the red heart stones embedded in her staff. She let the energy coalesce within her palms until it formed a fireball bigger than her chest. She lobbed the blazing sphere at the artillerists, scorching five of them. An explosion enveloped the rest when one of the blazing men rolled atop a wagon packed with satchels of gunpowder.

“Hah, nice one!” Zhulong shouted. “Remind me to give you a raise, Sessa.” The mercenary responded with a clipped nod.

As they waited for the debris to clear, a flamboyant figure emerged from the cloud of smoke. The humanoid devourer wore a gaudy set of armor that looked as if it had been cobbled from six different outfits. More eye-catching than his disastrous attire were the multitude of shadowy arms sprouting from his back and shoulders. Each phantom limb twirled a multi-section chain whip while his physical hands carried an adamantine panabas.

The warmonger pointed his translucent blade at Zhulong. His challenging gesture transcended their language barrier. Zhulong stroked his barbels as he considered his odds. Devourers of all stripes were deadly combatants, but out of all the archetypes, warmongers were by far the most adept at frontal close-quarters combat. Subjugators like himself did not possess any unique fell abilities that amplified their individual fighting prowess.

Zhulong was an experienced duelist and his sheer size helped compensate for his vocation’s lack of direct combat abilities, but he wasn’t confident he’d prevail in a fair fight. The pseudowyrm turned and stared at a seemingly vacant space on his tarrasque’s howdah. He tried to stifle a devious snicker as he slid off his mount.

Foregoing caution, Zhulong’s opponent ran straight at him. A maelstrom of dancing chains whipped around the pseudowyrm like the tentacles of a kraken. Within seconds, the telekinetically controlled weapons tethered Zhulong’s arms together and fastened his jaws shut. The warmonger smirked, pleased by this seemingly effortless triumph. His smug leer faltered when he realized Zhulong was still snickering.

Vexation turned into alarm when the warmonger suddenly hovered a yard above the ground. Cackling, Zhulong shrugged off the steel whips binding him and bashed his opponent over the head with the spiked end of his poleaxe. Black fluid spurted out of the warmonger’s shattered skull, splattering the ground and, inexplicably, the air behind him.

Its cover blown, the warmonger’s spectral assailant revealed itself. As with Sarin, the formerly invisible being was a gorgeous woman marred by bestial traits. From the chest up, the uncloaked saboteur was a tantalizer seducer. A practical need to divest herself of clothing augmented her upper beauty. Any lust her nude form invoked would have been quickly lost when her target's eyes inevitably roamed downwards, and they spotted the rasping beak jutting from her belly, or the tentacles sprouting beneath her shapely hips.

“Thatta girl, Strychnine!” Zhulong cackled as he remounted his tarrasque. “Drag that idiot back to friendly lines so we can chop him up at our leisure!”

Outraged Empyrean skirmishers leveled their arquebuses and arbalests at the saboteur. A flash of light blinded the men before they could squeeze off any shots. Cursing, they hastily rubbed the spots out of their eyes. They rubbed them again when eleven other Strychnines infiltrated their vision. Unable to distinguish the real saboteur from the illusionary doppelgangers, the skirmishers fired upon all of them. Strychnine took a single crossbow bolt to the shoulder before she dragged her captive out of range.

Unable to save their lord, the skirmishers took their anger out on Zhulong. So intense was their fire that Zhulong could hardly see past his flickering overshield. He grunted in annoyance when an enhanced bolt punched straight through his breastplate.

“Sarin, a shield would be nice.”

Wordlessly, Sarin tore a hole in the fabric of reality. The conjuror pulled a pavise from the swirling spatial distortion’s depths and handed it to Zhulong. Made of golden hesperidian wood and over two inches thick, the shield was proof against musket fire. It, however, was not impervious to channeler enhanced arbalest bolts, nor did it cover Zhulong’s entire upper body.

Without prompting, Sarin leaned forward and swaddled his exposed belly behind her wings. Bullets pinged off her deceptively delicate looking feathers.

When the barrage subsided, Zhulong peeked through a bleeding hole in Sarin’s wing. Alarm bells went off in his head when a vast shadow fell over them. He pushed Sarin away and focused on the aerial terror diving toward them.

“Bring that wyvern down.”

The brute wyvern was remarkably nimble for a creature that looked like a winged t-rex that had been chiseled from granite. Twisting in the air, it narrowly avoided a deadly swipe of the tarrasque’s thagomizer and a volley of ophidian arrows. Zhulong raised his poleaxe as the four-limbed dragon reached out to grab him. He let out a puzzled grunt when a bullet snapped his shaft in half. Taken by surprise, he could not prevent the wyvern from latching its talons around his chest and dragging him off his seat.

Zhulong may have been unarmed, but he was far from defenseless. He immediately sank his teeth into the wyvern’s ankle, drawing a stream of purple blood and a shrill screech. Outraged, the wyvern tightened its iron grip. Already drained after absorbing a barrage of bullets and arrows, Zhulong’s overshield quickly fried beneath the pressure.

Wanting to inflict as much damage on the wyvern before he went down, he savaged every bit of flesh within reach. Shaking his head from side to side, he pried sections of meat from the wyvern’s ankle and buried his claws into the wounds.

A second wyvern swooped behind him and seized his backplate. The aerial predators pulled in unison, snapping the straps holding Zhulong’s armor together. He frowned when filthy yellow talons sank into his exposed chest. His rib cage was perilously close to splintering when two cones of light illuminated his attackers’ faces. Their screams could have shattered glass. The luminous assault didn’t merely sting the eyes, it completely disrupted their attunement to the sky. For several perilous seconds, the two flyers spiraled down.

Seizing this opportunity, Zhulong wriggled out of their grasp. He hit the ground hard, but he ignored his broken arms and immediately scrambled away. Thanks to his quick thinking, he managed to avoid being pinned beneath the first brute wyvern, who had, by some miracle, turned a devastating crash into an undignified landing. Its companion wasn’t so lucky. It tumbled across the ground, trapping its rider beneath its broken sternum.

The surviving wyvern didn’t remain unscathed for long. Lunging forward, Zhulong’s tarrasque clamped its jaws down on the wyvern’s wing. Shrieking, the smaller reptile lashed out with its own fangs, barely pricking the tarrasque’s thick facial scutes. Unimpressed, the tarrasque casually tore off its wing with a flick of its neck.

Cursing, the wyvern’s rider pointed a huge musket at the tarrasque’s eye. He was quick on the draw, but he was still an eternity too late. With a single lunge, Sarin crossed the pike length of distance between them. Her lance rocketed its way into her enemy’s mouth and erupted out the back of his head.

Even with a pulverized brain, the devourer endured. Wriggling like a hooked fish, he grabbed the lance by its shaft, trying to yank it out of his skull. Sarin, in an unreal display of strength, raised her lance over her head. Her victim garbled out a series of curses as he slid down the length of her weapon. He let out another intelligible shout when Sarin used her free hand to unbuckle his cuirass.

Ophidians plunged their pikes into the devourer’s unarmored torso. They refused to let up their relentless assault, but the finger-length holes they left in his abdomen refilled almost as quickly as they appeared. Zobaka bardiches proved to be more effective at wearing out the devourer’s healing factor, but they weren’t working fast enough to Zhulong’s liking.

Using his tail like a spring, the pseudowyrm leapt behind the other devourer. Cackling, Zhulong seized him by the ankles while Sarin wrapped her tail around his chest. Exchanging malicious nods, they pulled him apart.

Zhulong grinned when a torrent of oily black fluids splattered his snout. Tossing the other devourer’s lower body behind him, he snatched Sarin’s lance and held it up to his mouth as if it were some gruesome lollipop.

Even now, the devourer’s unholy constitution worked to staunch the flow of his precious black blood. A thin layer of tissue formed over the ragged gap where his waist had been separated from his groin. Given enough time, he’d be made whole again.

Zhulong didn’t plan on giving him that time. His vicious tusks went to work. For every pound of flesh his victim regrew, Zhulong gulped down five. His victim’s blood gradually diluted. When the other devourer’s black ichor became clear as ethanol, he finally stopped healing.

Licking his chops, Zhu reached inside the dying devourer’s body and wretched out a bundle of squirming worm-like organs. Screeching, the mass of parasites latched their lamprey jaws onto the back of his hand. Laughing, Zhulong dislodged them with a wet pop. Lifting his head, he dangled the writhing creatures over his gaping maw.

“Zhu!”

A humanoid devourer steered his calkatrax next to Zhulong’s tarrasque. When its master’s hail went unanswered, the towering pterosaur thrust its enormous stork-like bill in front of Zhulong’s face.

The pseudowyrm stroked the animal’s beak. “Oh, hey Cotton. I’m guessing you’re the one that saved my ass back there. Appreciate it.”

Cotton didn’t acknowledge his gratitude. “Remember the treaty! Sovereign will chew you out if you break it again!”

Zhulong stuck his tongue out. “Gah, fine you killjoy!” He tossed the parasites away, allowing the abominable creatures to burrow into the earth.

Satisfied, Cotton reentered the battle, searching for more winged enemies to smite. His calkatrax’s bloodshot eyes emitted cones of light that punished anything that dared to flutter or flap in its presence.

“Right,” Zhulong said to himself once he outfitted himself with a brigandine chest piece. “Let’s get back to it.” His tarrasque refused to move.

Intrigued by this uncharacteristic disobedience, Zhulong leaned over to see what the issue was. He frowned when he realized it was rooting through the brute wyvern’s chest. Zhulong grabbed its heart before his mount could consume it.

“No! Bad crocodile-thing! Purple stones are too valuable for munching. Sarin, give this greedy bastard some reds. Pass me a handful too while you’re at it.”

Deciding his faithful pet deserved some rest, Zhulong assessed the battlefield. Things were going well for them. Varan riders were overrunning the eastern and western walls; ally pike squares were pushing back enemy footmen; quillgores were trampling over mapinguaris; and best of all, the grootslang had finally closed the distance. Drenched in silver blood, the titanic sauropod let out a cathartic bellow as its neck scythed across the battlements, splattering its tormentors.

Realizing they were losing control of the battle, the Empyrean pulled back. Many of their less disciplined mercenaries and thralls broke during the withdrawal. Ironically, their desperation to survive doomed them. Any hominid that presented their backs to their opponents were dragged down. Banshee wails rang out in tune with gunshots.

The remaining Empyreans regrouped at the center of the fortress. Their transmuters crafted spiked barricades out of salvaged wood and stone at unreal speeds. Flint eyed fighters hunkered down behind these fortifications.

At the heart of their land stand, dozens of devourers and hundreds of ogre lobotomites scrambled to transport supplies over to a pair of gate mirrors. Zhulong watched an ogre disappear into one mirror and saw a devourer emerge from the other. Several other devourers anxiously guarded a storage cube. A pegasus calmly chewed a mouthful of hay as the xenotech structure gradually converted it into pure energy and then absorbed it.

“Looks like they’re getting ready to leave,” Zhulong mumbled happily.

“Good. I can finally get some sleep,” Sion yawned.

“Should we try to stop them, or do we let them go?” another devourer asked.

“We can’t just let them scamper off with their gear,” Sovereign stated.

“We'll lose troops trying to break through that,” Zhulong pointed out.

“And we’ll lose a hell of a lot more if they decide to come back. We gotta hit them hard to make sure they won’t.” Sovereign tilted his head skywards. “Have you guys seen any basilisks recently?”

“Now that you mention it, no.”

“That settles it then.” Sovereign's eyes glowed. “Flyers move in.”

In the blink of an eye, a vast flock of large, top heavy pterosaurs with keel-tipped bills blotted out the sun. Nature had only intended for the tropeogueras to use their distinctive crests to help them attract mates, but their masters, always seeking to improve the killing ability of their troops, attached blades to the boney discs. A few dozen wyverns and adolescent calkatraxes flew alongside them.

Cockatrice

Now that a massive air force was threatening them, the Empyrean’s basilisks scuttled out of their hiding places. Evolution had endowed the giant chameleons with the same gifts the calkatraxes possessed. Any wyvern or cockatrice struck by the beams of light emitted from their bulbous eyes were forced to land. The tropeogueras fared far worse, many shattering against the unforgiving ground.

“Huh, looks like they still had some left.”

Sovereign crossed his arms. “A handful, not nearly enough.”

He was guilty of downplaying the casualties the basilisks had inflicted, but otherwise Sovereign’s assessment was correct. For every tropeoguera taken out by a basilisk, ten safely delivered their payloads down on their targets. A hail of ceramic rained down on the Empyrean forces. Several humans had their heads smashed open by the heavy jars. They were the lucky ones. Hundreds screamed as heated sand burnt their flesh.

Cursing, the Empyreans dragged their most valuable subordinates and the storage cubes through the gate mirrors. Sovereign assigned several devourers to guard the portals until the Empyreans destroyed their sister mirrors on the other side.

The coalition cheered, but they didn’t celebrate for long. Another battle was already brewing, and they were all tensed for action.

“I call that helmet!” somebody eventually cried out, and the floodgates were opened. Zhulong looked on with amusement as his allies descended on their beaten enemies like vultures on a carcass. Most of the enemy troops were still alive and screaming when their weapons and armor were taken from them. Chuckling, Zhulong dismounted and joined in on the looting.

Largely apathetic to gear, he ripped off a squealing neanderthal's gambeson and plunged a glassy carchadin dagger into his chest. Its diamond-hard blade glided through the thrashing man’s flesh. Within seconds, he carved an almost perfectly circular incision into his victim’s chest. Remorseless claws tore out the neanderthal’s heart and plucked the translucent red stone residing within it. Without skipping a beat, Zhulong stuffed the valuable mineral into his pouch and moved on to his next victim.

Zhulong laughed as he worked. Like most devourers, he enjoyed a good scrap, but he lived for moments like these. Nothing was more empowering than taking part in a one-sided massacre. The subjugators' demented titters grew louder as he moved from one victim to the next. His giggles devolved into a mad cackle by the time he had moved onto his thirtieth victim.

Then, at the apex of his deranged mirth, a flash of real pain erupted across his scalp. Clutching his smarting head, Zhu rubbed his eyes as the world slowly came back into focus. Another sharp jolt of pain brought him back to reality. No longer was he a monstrous abomination slaughtering mortals on a bloodstained battlefield. Now he was just a young man on the receiving end of his mother’s wrath.

Ignoring the angry red bruise forming on his forehead, Zhu snatched the helmet she had wrenched off. His mother sputtered in indignation, but made no move to confiscate his precious gaming device.

“Have you been playing all night?”

Zhu glanced at a nearby clock. “Guess so.”

His obstinance brought forth a string of foreign curses. From what Zhu could piece together, she cursed the day he was born, called him lazy in thirty-three different ways, and might have said something about his jowls. She ranted for five whole minutes before she had the decency to insult him in English.

“Worthless child! You will never amount to anything!”

“Love you too, ma!” Zhu quipped.

She threw his breakfast at his face.

“Go, before the bus leaves without you again!”

Zhu carefully lowered his visor into his backpack. Once his reason for living was secure, he put a gas mask over his face and headed out the door. The pollution was especially thick today. Dense curtains of smog blotted out the sun, yet the sky was still uncomfortably bright.

Burning with the intensity of a thousand stars, The Watcher’s crimson eye loomed in the center of the sky. His unnerving slitted pupil flitted back and forth, a constant reminder that no action escaped his notice.

As he waited for his bus to arrive, Zhu commenced his morning ritual of staring the deity in the eye. Even with his darkened visors, the act hurt like hell. Ignoring the pain, he grinned and waved.

“Morning, you all mighty prick!”