Day 3 of the Forty-Day Campaign
The parchment had the look of an authentic field report: oil-stained corners, smudged glyphs denoting mana densities, and fictitious notations hinting at a collapsed relay station in the heart of contested territory. It was a forgery, expertly crafted by one of Prowler's spies—a lie dressed in the language of desperation.
Fornos had written the summary himself.
The bait was simple: the illusion of unclaimed arcane stone deposits, buried beneath the overgrowth of an abandoned mining camp. To mercenaries and rogue factions bleeding from constant skirmishes, it was a gift too valuable to ignore.
Two hours after it had been "accidentally" dropped in a neutral trade outpost, it made its way into the hands of two rival scouts. And by dusk, blood had started to spill.
Fornos stood on a cliff draped in mist, his gaze sweeping the valley below through an enchanted long-scope.
The battle had begun.
Two squads—each thirty strong, with three golems per side—had converged on the false location. It was never meant to be a real fight. It was meant to be a butcher's field.
"They bit," Fornos murmured, satisfied.
Behind him, Brassheart stood silent and still. Barely taller than an average man and half the size of the titanic machines below, it wasn't built for front-line combat. Its true value was precision. Scalpel, not hammer.
Kindling crouched beside a stack of stone, its broad wooden shoulders rising like drawn bows. At nearly 20 feet tall, it dwarfed its smaller companion and shifted with a predatory stillness, awaiting the signal.
The battle in the valley was chaos.
On one side, a warband called the Red Braid Clan. On the other, scavengers under a banner of bone and glass. Their golems were brutish things—hulking iron beasts etched with old runes, chipped from countless battles and barely responsive. Some still bore the sigils of noble houses, long since defaced.
They crashed into each other with thunderous force. One clay-armored golem snapped an enemy's wooden leg at the joint, causing the whole machine to topple sideways onto a screaming group of foot soldiers.
Another—a rusted hound-shaped golem—gnawed and clawed into a steel brute before exploding in a flare of overdrawn mana.
Fornos watched through his scope as two handlers on opposite sides were dragged from cover and cut down. The machines didn't even slow.
"Now," Fornos said.
The copper ring on his finger pulsed.
Kindling surged forward, grabbing a massive stone from its prepared pile and hurtling it down into the valley. The boulder arced like a comet, crashing into the side of a still-standing golem and obliterating its knee joint. The construct collapsed, its core hissing as it discharged harmlessly into the dirt.
Another stone followed, then another. Each targeted, calculated.
Panic swept through the battlefield.
The soldiers—already overwhelmed and low on mana—began to scatter. Golems, untethered by panicked or fallen handlers, wandered like broken animals or stood idle.
That's when Brassheart moved.
Rather than enter the fight directly, the small construct slipped down the slope like a shadow. It weaved between debris and corpses, finding the broken machines and scavenging critical pieces—uncracked cores, undamaged codex plates, fragments of armor that could be reforged. A salvager, not a brawler.
Fornos remained at the cliff, issuing commands through his ring with brief pulses of intent.
Kindling finished its barrage and stood sentinel over a ridge, its fists clenched and ready to intercept anyone who tried to flee.
By the end of it, the valley was littered with mangled metal and silent corpses.
Only three survivors remained, crouched in a gully near what had once been the remains of a relay cart.
Fornos descended alone, his coat flapping behind him like a torn banner.
The three stared at him as he approached. One was a woman with a fractured helm and a bloodied shoulder. Another, a boy no older than sixteen, clutching a broken codex. The last—a heavyset man with tattoos down his neck—sat in silence, eyeing Brassheart as it picked through a nearby golem's remains.
"You're still breathing," Fornos said. "That makes you valuable."
The woman spit near his feet. "To who?"
"Me," he said, stepping closer. "You saw what I did to them. I didn't kill for fun. I killed because I needed the junk they were protecting."
He glanced at the mountain of cores and salvage pieces already piled behind Brassheart.
"You can walk out of this ditch with a purpose... or be buried beneath it."
The youth looked at the tattooed man. Then back at Fornos. "What do you want from us?"
"Your work. Your service. Maybe your trust, if we live that long."
He pulled three small objects from his belt pouch. The collars.
But instead of threatening with them, he smiled.
"These protect you from mental corrosion. The kind that builds up if you're too close to broken cores for too long."
The lie rolled off his tongue with well-rehearsed ease.
"I wouldn't deploy anyone near unstable scrap without one. You've seen what mana-burn does to people. Think of this as... insurance."
The woman hesitated, then nodded. "Fine. Better than bleeding out here."
The boy followed her lead, taking the collar with wide eyes.
The tattooed man, however, didn't move.
Fornos crouched beside him, their faces nearly level.
"You strike me as the kind of man who doesn't follow orders."
"I break them."
Fornos smirked. "Good. But know this—if you raise a weapon against me or mine, you'll wish Kindling had been the one to end you."
Behind them, the towering golem stood like a silent monument, arms folded, its form casting a long shadow in the fading light.
After a long pause, the man took the collar.
Fornos rose, satisfied.
"Welcome to the Ash Company."