The horns started blaring just before dawn. Low. Ugly. The kind of sound that made your stomach drop straight into your feet.
I bolted upright from my so-called command hammock, ears ringing, claws already curling in reflex. Here we go.
System pinged, helpful as always.
[Monster Surge Detected]
[Primary Wave Incoming]
No kidding.
From my perch at the lookout, the mist looked wrong. Too thick. Too heavy. It writhed like something alive, shadows flickering inside it. And then it broke.
Monsters. Dozens. Hundreds. Charging straight for the trenches.
The front line snapped into motion — Splitjaw bellowing, spears flashing, squads surging to intercept. I saw Embergleam's flame-squads peeling off to the sides, lighting up the outer brush in controlled bursts. I saw Bitterstack waving flags furiously from the supply lines.
It looked messy. It was messy. But it was moving. Controlled chaos. Ashring's brand of strategy.
I grinned, heart hammering. "Positions!" I barked into the roar.
The defensive trenches, shallow and spiked with hidden traps, swallowed the first wave. Snarling wolf-things fell screaming into pit traps. Beetle-beasts the size of cows got speared by hidden spikes.
Splitjaw's squads darted in and out, stabbing, retreating, stabbing again. Mobility over brute force. They couldn't afford to get pinned. That was how monsters won — numbers and weight. We fought smarter.
I scanned the edges. Embergleam's flames harried the monsters' flanks, scattering lighter units into disorganized messes. Seedfoot's vine-traps snapped up a few unlucky lizards, binding them for easy cleanup. One moss golem body-slammed a rat-thing into a trench wall. Good. Good. It was working.
System pinged.
[Monster Surge - Frontline Holding: 85% Integrity]
[Minor Breach Detected: Sector Three]
I hissed under my breath. Minor breach. Not catastrophic. Yet.
I grabbed a runner — tiny, fast-footed kobold practically vibrating with nerves — and barked new orders. Tell Artist to trigger Sector Three collapse early. If we can't hold it, bury it.
Runner squeaked and vanished into the dust.
Below, Splitjaw's squads pulled back to reset. Fighting smart. Fighting tired already. But still fighting.
I watched him shoulder-check a centipede the size of a wagon right into a pit. Splitjaw didn't do finesse. He did force. It was kind of beautiful, in a terrible way.
Scribble was visible too, tucked against the inner wall. Tiny arms outstretched, staff planted firmly into the dirt. Magic shimmered in faint layers across the fallback points — his runes stabilizing the inner perimeter. Kid had guts. Kid had better barriers than half the dungeon-born mages I'd seen too. Ashring's little miracle.
Another wave hit. Harder. Bigger beasts. Snarling, snapping, tearing at the trenches. One got lucky — a burrowing thing with way too many legs — and popped up inside the forward trenches, spewing acid and panic.
For a second, everything tilted. The forward squads recoiled. The monsters surged. Bad. Very bad.
I jumped down from my post, shouting orders as I ran. Splitjaw! Rotate left! Skirmishers, peel and slam! Golems, brace fallback!
Chaos exploded around me, but it bent, not broke. Ashring bent with it.
Splitjaw's squads pivoted like a school of angry fish, slamming into the breach from the sides. Embergleam's fire licked into the gap, slowing the worst of the rush. Artist — dear disaster-prone Artist — triggered a mossbomb trap early and sent half a dozen monsters flying backward into their own ranks.
Accidental brilliance. I'd take it.
System pinged again.
[Monster Surge Density: Escalating]
[Secondary Sub-wave Detected]
Perfect.
Through the dust, through the screams, through the grinding clatter of teeth and claws and desperate shouting, I saw it:
Ashring was holding. Barely. Badly. But holding.
I skidded to a halt near Splitjaw, panting, blood running down one arm. "Report!" I snapped.
He bared his teeth in a grin too wide to be healthy. "Still alive!"
Close enough.
We didn't have much longer before we'd have to pull back to the inner walls. That was fine. That was the plan. Mostly.
And then the mist shifted again. And something bigger moved inside it. I felt the ground shake beneath my claws.
System chimed coldly:
[Apex Entity - Alpha Gorak: Field Proximity Detected]
I sucked in a breath.
"Oh, now you show up."
Because clearly things weren't bad enough already.
The second surge slammed into the trenches like a living avalanche.
Wolves, rats, bugs, lizards — everything that could gnash, tear, and stomp came pouring out.
And behind it all, still shrouded but lumbering closer, was something so big it made the earth breathe wrong.
Gorak.
But not yet. Not close enough to punch. Small blessings.
"Fallback!" I roared.
Splitjaw echoed it, louder and with more enthusiasm than absolutely necessary.
The front squads peeled back, fighting as they moved, a staggered, snarling retreat.
The trenches collapsed perfectly — thanks to Stonealign's and Artist's pre-buried charges — turning the entire field into a mess of broken ground and rising dust.
The monsters stumbled. Good.
A few vine traps triggered late, snapping shut on unlucky beasts.
Seedfoot flailed from the safety line, his plants waving triumphantly like tiny angry flags.
Inside the second wall, it was chaos — but smarter chaos than before.
Bitterstack already had the wounded moving, dragging them to the clinic tents. Scribble sat at the heart of the fallback, eyes squeezed shut, staff trembling under the strain of holding the new barriers in place.
The moss golems shifted forward slowly, plugging the biggest holes where wooden palisades had taken too many hits.
Ashring didn't just react now. Ashring adapted.
I scrambled up the inner wall, nearly losing my footing as a tremor rippled through the stone.
At the top, I risked a glance outward. Still monsters coming. Still dust and blood and noise. But we'd hurt them. Thinned the first two waves.
System pinged.
[Secondary Sub-wave Diminished: 63% Remaining]
[Field Hostile Density: Decreasing Temporarily]
I exhaled, fast and sharp.
A breathing space. Small. Fragile. But ours.
Splitjaw limped up beside me, one arm bleeding from a nasty gash but still holding his spears. He looked out at the wreckage, panting.
"Good fight," he said.
I coughed a laugh. "You call this good?"
---
Down in the yard, Artist tried to reload a siege bolt into his latest monstrosity, nearly dropping it on Seedfoot's foot. Bitterstack screamed at two runners who dropped an entire crate of mossbombs. Embergleam crouched near the perimeter, eyes narrowed, watching the mist for movement. Scribble's magic pulsed quietly under our feet, a faint rhythm of stubborn resistance.
Ashring bent. Ashring bled. But it stood.
I scrubbed a hand down my face and tried not to think about how badly everything still hurt.
"Alright," I muttered, more to myself than anyone else. "We hold until tomorrow. Then we survive whatever Gorak throws next."
Another tremor ran through the ground.
Not small this time.
Bigger. Closer. Heavy.
System pinged.
[Apex Entity (Alpha Gorak) Approaching Combat Zone]
[Warning: Morale Shift Detected - Enemy Forces Empowered]
I saw it through the mist then. A mountain of muscle and teeth and rage. Not charging yet. Waiting. Smiling.
I clenched my claws so hard they creaked.
Not yet.
Not while we were still breathing.
One more wall.
One more stand.
Let's see how hard they had to hit us before we broke.