CAIUS: Crown of Threads and Shadows

The mouth of the Ashen Gully had transformed into an absolute slaughterhouse.

Over four hundred wolf-riders lay dead or mangled, their iron armor buckled and their massive mounts crushed into gory heaps. Yet, instead of weakening under the constant onslaught, the two blindfolded constructs radiated an increasingly oppressive aura. The kinetic strikes absorbed by their frames had compressed their purified orc mana cores to a terrifying density, with Krag’gath glowing in neon violet spatial arcs and Borgath pulsing in heavy, dark-crimson shockwaves.

”OUT OF MY WAY, COWARDS!”

A roar like thunder shattered the air as the main Dire-Fang force reached the bottleneck. Charging through his retreating survivors came Warlord Gor’muka, mounted atop his monstrous, twenty-foot saber-toothed dire-wolf.

Gor’muka’s wild yellow eyes burned with insane rage as he looked at the piled corpses of his vanguard, then at the two blindfolded figures blocking the gorge.

”Krag’gath! Borgath!” Gor’muka screamed, raising his five-foot curved broadsword. ”I don’t care what dark sorcery turned you into silent hounds! I will carve you both into dog meat!”

With a deafening snarl, Gor’muka’s massive dire-wolf leaped thirty feet through the air, its four-inch fangs aimed straight for Borgath’s throat while Gor’muka brought his heavy broadsword down toward Krag’gath’s head in a mountain-splitting overhead cleave.

The two puppets moved simultaneously to intercept. Krag’gath raised its shadowy waraxe to block the descending blade while Borgath swung its serrated cleaver horizontally to disembowel the leaping beast.

BOOOM!

The impact detonated a blinding wave of compressed kinetic force, shattering the canyon walls and sending boulders cascading down the slopes. Gor’muka was a master of heavy physical aura, his blade bite driving Krag’gath’s boots two feet deep into the solid basalt floor. But Krag’gath’s frame didn’t snap. The condensed orc mana core in its chest absorbed the terrifying momentum, flaring brighter as dark kinetic lightning lashed out, frying the hide of Gor’muka’s dire-wolf mid-air.

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Gor’muka’s eyes widened in sheer horror as he felt his own destructive aura being absorbed and thrown right back at him. ”What... what are you?!”

High on the ridge, Caius observed the clash with cold, calculating precision. Over three thousand Dire-Fang cavalry were now packed tightly into the mouth of the gully, completely focused on the stalemate at the bottleneck.

”They are fully committed,” Caius murmured.

He extended both arms, his fingers weaving complex spatial runes into the biting wind.

”Close the gate.”

FZZT! FZZT! FZZT!

Three massive, ink-black voids tore open in the sky directly above the packed rear ranks of the Dire-Fang main force.

From the first portal, the Black Flame Demon plummeted like a falling star, slamming directly into the center of the cavalry. A two-hundred-foot ring of infernal black fire erupted outward upon impact, instantly incinerating hundreds of riders and turning their mounts to flying ash.

From the second portal, the Arachne Princess descended on thin web-strands of razor-sharp spatial silk. She blurred through the dense ranks like a cyclone of shadow and steel, her dual black blades decapitating orc captains while her four chitinous back-arms pierced through heavy plate, tossing riders off their mounts into the inferno.

From the third portal, the Black Sabre-Lightning Tiger struck the rear flank. It unleashed a continuous, deafening roar as violet chain-lightning detonated from its tusks, leaping from armor to armor, paralyzing entire squads and causing panicked dire-wolves to trample their own riders in agony.

Chaos exploded across the canyon. Gor’muka’s main army was trapped, frontally blocked by the two endlessly compressing puppet walls, and utterly dismantled from behind by three high-tier beasts of ruin.

Gor’muka backed his wounded, bleeding dire-wolf away from the two puppets, looking around in utter terror as his four-thousand-strong army crumbled into dust in a matter of minutes. Blood ran in rivers down the Ashen Gully, reflecting the pitch-black flames above.

Through the smoke and falling ash, Caius stepped off the ridge, floating down to the canyon floor on a cushion of kinetic static, his twin ivory blades humming in his hands.

”You said you didn’t need an alliance, Gor’muka,” Caius said softly, his pale eyes piercing the gloom as he walked toward the cornered warlord. ”Let us see if your pride can survive my harvest.”