"When Velgrith comes to tempt your blood
Your blood that boils with such fury
With promise of riches, spoils and glory
Light your soul aflame, sacrifice yourself to battle!
What a glorious purpose you have been burdened with.
You children of flame, so young, so naive.
You burn with fury, unaware that your life is the fuel.
Still, I much prefer you to the rationality of Tessarak's creations.
Or the serenity of Thal'Zirra and hers.
So be careful children, remember to fear the fire."
-Unknown
— — —
The field burned.
Not with the righteous blaze of their faith, but with something colder. Hungrier.
The Viritarii descended like nightmares given steel and form—towering things of twisted flesh, bronze-veined sinew, and hate-forged chitin plate. Where they marched, the land withered. Where they roared, men and women died screaming.
Eiran's ears rang.
He quickly reorientated himself, remembering where he was.
The ninth cohort had achieved its goal. We…
We won, for a moment…
As soon as we arrived in the battlefield, we headed straight towards it, like a laser-guided missile. Our mission was clear, a high ranking centurion carried a relic which was giving our machinery an incredibly hard time, meaning we hadn't been able to deploy many of our machinery in this warzone.
Although, saying it was clear didn't mean it was possible, cause it really shouldn't have been, nobody had done it before.
But she fucking did it, cause of course she did.
That image was burned into every one of our minds.
The Centurion fell — a towering beast of bronze, chitin, and fury — its heart pierced by Estra's burning blade. The brightest light in that scene did not come from the divine fire of her blade, no — it was her will, and the fury of a commander who knew she had no more wars left to fight.
We scrambled back, just holding off the century long enough for Estra's duel had cost most of our cohort, and as painful as it was, we all knew the chances, but not a single one of them died with regrets, for this could change everything.
The few of us who made it back to camp never looked back, there would be time to mourn later.
We did it, I'd been to many campaigns already, but had yet to taste victory, but as soon as I got moved to Estra's division, I won straight away!
Such a dangerous thing, hope. The flames of hope were nestling its way into the hearts of Eiran and the others, and the shape of the flame, was that of the beautiful and equally terrifying figure of their commander — Estra Kael
…
So then, what was all this?
He didn't remember when the front line broke—only the moment when Commander Kael vanished from sight in a surge of black fire and Viritarii shrieks. One moment she stood, face grim and bright with holy defiance, and the next… she was swallowed.
He stumbled through the bodies. Friends. Brothers. One woman clutched her spear still, embedded in a centurion's throat, though her eyes had gone glassy.
"Voss!" a voice called.
He turned too fast, nearly slipping in the muck. Kael was there—alive—but barely. One arm hung limp, and her left pauldron was melted to slag. Blood ran freely from a wound across her ribs, but her eyes still held flame.
She limped to him, shoving something into his hands. A cylinder—metal, scarred, humming faintly with heat. A war-sealed message case. Senate grade.
He quickly manoeuvred his way towards her, away from the cacophony of the sea of bronze, chitin, and blood.
Her voice was iron over coals:
"Take this. Get to Aurelia's Reach, the General needs this."
He opened his mouth to protest—she struck his chest with her good hand.
"You run, Voss. You run and do not stop. Let the gods remember us here, but you must live to tell them what we burned for."
Another explosion rocked the field. A pillar of flame and bone lifted the center of their line into the sky like a broken tower. Screams followed—cut short.
Kael looked toward the flames.
"This is our Thermopylae, boy."
She turned back, a smile cracking through pain.
"But you *cough* you're our Pheidippides boy. So run."
He didn't want to go. His knees locked. Every instinct screamed to stay, to die with his cohort, to not be the one who ran.
But Kael shoved him again, this time with her glare.
"GO."
And he ran.
Only once did he look back, just in time to catch a glimpse of it.
The repulsive cackling of the legionnaires, the foul snickering of centurions, it reverberated across the battlefield, all but announcing their overwhelming victory.
And behind them all, the one that caused all this, that mo- does monster even begin to describe it
Eiran felt chills running down his body just recalling its appearance.
The Praetorian…