Rise of the Horde

Dawn broke not gently but with violence.

The sun climbed over the jagged rim of the Tekarr Mountains, its red-gold rays burning through the heavy mist that clung to the foothills like the ghost of some ancient siege. The silence of anticipation fractured under the weight of marching boots, the crack of musket-locks, and the hum of magic weaving through the disciplined ranks of the Threians.

They came in columns, tight and precise, shields and bayonets gleaming, banners snapping in the frigid wind. The Royal Standard of Threia...an eagle clutching a bolt of lightning...rose high above the center phalanx. The crackling energy of warmages hovered in the air like distant thunderclouds.

General Snowe rode at the head of the formation, flanked by his captains and shieldguard. His blue cloak fluttered behind him, dusted in frost, his silver-plated armor unmarred by blood but radiating readiness. His steed, a warbred destrier infused with earthrunes, snorted plumes of steam. His eyes, sharp and cold, scanned the horizon.

High above them, the skies shimmered with movement. The Griffon Knights, aerial elite of Threia, rode through the air in majestic formation. Their mounts shrieked defiance to the dawn as polished armor and lances gleamed. At their head soared the Baron of Frost...Valden Snowe...his griffon clad in pale blue barding rimed with ice, its wings stretching wide, casting great sweeping shadows across the field. The Baron himself was a towering figure clad in frost-forged plate, his sceptre in hand, frost crystals dancing in his wake.

The Baron's presence turned the air brittle. Every beat of his griffon's wings brought with it a gust of snow and chilling magic. He did not speak, but his silence was thunder. The knights rallied behind him like falcons to their lord.

Below, the Threians waited.

They knew the orcs had not truly retreated. Scouts had reported movement, vast numbers. But what awaited them was no shattered force...it was a crucible.

At the base of the valley where the Threians had deployed, the land trembled.

Then came the roar.

It rolled down from the cliffs like an avalanche...the warcry of forty thousand orcs surging from the shadow of the Tekarr Mountains. They came not as scattered clans but as a storm given form: waves of varying colors of flesh, clattering bone armor, rusted iron, and burning banners. Their totems had awakened, and with them came the fury of ancient spirits.

The Iron Ram led the charge...Skull Crusher himself at its heels. The massive beast tore across the plain, each hoofstep a miniature earthquake. His warriors screamed his name, and the Threians responded with precision.

"Hold formation!" General Snowe barked. "Fire by rank! On my mark!"

A volley of boomstick fire exploded across the field.

Lead tore through flesh. Orcs crumpled in the front lines...arms torn off, chests burst open, faces erased by fire and smoke. But they kept charging. Blood soaked the trampled snow. Spearheads lowered as the orcs reached the front rank, and then the real battle began.

Iron met bone. Discipline met fury.

An orc berserker leapt through the smoke, cleaving a Threian soldier in two with a rusted cleaver, only to be impaled by three bayonets. Another swung a spiked flail into a musketeer's head, shattering it like a ripe fruit. Limbs flew. Blood fountained. Men screamed. Orcs howled.

Warmages raised their hands, chanting incantations in sharp, clipped tones. Fire lashed out, incinerating whole squads of orcs in bursts of magical napalm. Lightning arced through charging brutes, charring them black. But the orcs had brought their own sorcery.

Graka One-Eye, standing at the ritual mound, raised his staff. The Great Serpent twisted through the sky, shrieking with a voice like a thousand knives scraping against bone. It dove through the Threian ranks, not physical, but spectral...its passage draining warmth, life, and sanity. Men fell screaming, eyes bleeding, ears pouring black bile.

The Ember Wolf ignited the flanks. It prowled the edges of the battlefield, setting fires to wagons, burning powder stores. Threian cannons boomed, but their lines were breaking. The discipline began to fray under the sheer weight of bodies.

Then came the scream from the heavens...the Griffon Knights.

They dove from the clouds like celestial spears, wind screaming around their lances. They smashed into the flanks of the orcs, scattering entire warbands, lifting raiders into the sky only to drop them screaming to their deaths. Frost-laced lances pierced bone and spirit alike. One knight, impaled by an orcish spear, crashed his mount into the Ember Wolf itself, extinguishing its fire with the detonation of runes as both died in a blaze of glory.

And from the center of the storm descended the Baron of Frost.

Valden Snowe plummeted from the heavens, his sceptre glowing with ancient glyphs. He swept through the ranks of orcs with devastating force, each blow freezing flesh, shattering bone. His griffon clawed a shaman apart mid-incantation, silencing a totemic chant. With one gesture, he summoned a storm of ice spears that impaled ten warriors in a single volley.

The Great Serpent hissed and turned toward the sky, sensing a threat. The Baron rose again, and in a clash of roaring wind and magic, dove with his glaive extended. The blow struck the serpent's ghostly skull, channeling a frozen pulse into its form, shattering its essence into a blizzard of screaming shards.

The battlefield churned.

General Snowe rallied his men, calling forth the last of the earthrunes to form barriers of stone, directing fire teams to the crumbling flanks.

"To the ridge! We break them here, or they drown us in blood!" he shouted.

The orcs surged again. The Iron Ram charged, knocking aside barricades, flinging men like dolls. Skull Crusher was at its heart, his warblade cleaving through Threian lines.

Snowe met him head-on.

The two collided like gods.

Snowe parried, slashed, dodged. Skull Crusher's blows landed like thunder. Each clash sent shockwaves through the ground. Snowe took a hit to the shoulder, armor denting inward. He countered with a stabbing thrust, cutting across the warlord's ribs.

Above them, the Baron and the remaining Griffon Knights held the sky.

One by one, the knights fell, buying moments with their lives. The Baron alone struck down the Stone Boar with a dive that ended in a sonic explosion of frost and shrapnel. But even he could not be everywhere.

Snowe called to the warmages.

"Now! Seal the spirits!"

The mages, surrounded by their dead comrades, began the incantation of binding. Pillars of light rose from the earth, encircling the battlefield. Graka One-Eye charged to disrupt them but was intercepted mid-run by the Baron's magic.

The totem spirits howled as they were drawn into the binding glyphs. The Avatar began to form again, but this time its strength faltered.

With a final cry, the Griffon Knights unleashed their remaining energy into a suicide dive, breaking the last line of orcish resistance.

The Threians surged.

Snowe struck Skull Crusher again and again, battering down his defenses. With a final roar, he drove his blade through the warlord's chest.

The orc leader staggered, gurgled blood, and fell.

The battlefield went still.

Smoke curled upward, drifting across heaps of dead. Blood soaked the earth, freezing in the cold. The spirits were gone. The orcs, leaderless and broken, scattered into the hills. None remained to fight.

Victory.

But at what cost?

Of the Griffon Knights, only thirty of the original hundred and the Baron of Frost remained, his griffon limping and bleeding. Snowe's command was reduced to a fraction. The warmages were drained husks. The dead lay thick as snowdrifts.

Snowe knelt beside a fallen captain, brushing frost from the man's brow.

"We've won," he whispered. "And yet we've lost more than I ever imagined."

The Baron landed beside him, blood freezing on his armor.

"A pyrrhic victory," he said.

Snowe nodded. "But a victory nonetheless."

They looked out over the silent field. Banners still fluttered. Smoke still rose. But the war, for now, was over.

The Threians had endured.

But the price was etched into the blood-soaked ground of Tekarr.