Brackus stood at the irregular roof edge of the half-collapsed building. A squad of his knights was to his sides and back, with the rest of the century positioned on the houses to his flanks. Below them, a battle for the breach raged in the trench that was once the First Ring wall and main boulevard; the fog held back from the area by mutual agreement.

  Along the eastern and western roads running along the wall were two cohorts of the Senatorial Guard standing in ranks down the street. Around the slope of the depression, standing within and, in some cases, on the ruins of buildings, were two more cohorts of the Ravens standing witness to the battle.

  On the edges of the broken walls and still-standing buildings around the trench were rows of archers releasing multiple flights of arrows numbering in the hundreds every few seconds into the massed goblins across the depression. Dozens of goblins were being wounded and killed with every thrum of the bows, and hundreds of others were occupied with blocking the attacks. However, it had such a minuscule impact on a battle of this scale.

  The number of the goblins massed on the far side of the breach was at least in the high thousands, maybe even the tens, struggling to force their way through the defenders. Defenders that were ridiculously outnumbered. Of the thousands of onlookers, no one besides the archers moved to help them, leaving the 8th and 4th Cohorts of the 15th Legion, a tiny two thousand bodies, to hold back the flood alone as they had been doing for hours.

  The only reason the legionaries were able to hold out for the last two hours was the rather significant fortifications they built within the trench and, of course, their coordination and unity, but that was a given. Rather than the small five-foot barricades throughout the city, theirs was a respectable fifteen feet tall and stretched hundreds of feet. More than that, the wall had a smooth casted front and battlements on the top.

  At least they had the time to prepare for the mental and psychological attacks from the dark elves executing prisoners. Primarily by killing them before the dark elves had their fun, but in the times that didn't work, the wall allowed the women to stop all but a handful from rushing toward them.

  Which was impressive, given the number of people who succumbed to their casting in the first few attempts. After their repeated failures, the bastards disappeared, no doubt waiting for the goblins to soften up the defenders before showing up again.

  The problem was that the time they could hold out was quickly ending. Over the last hour, there were simply too many casualties for them to sustain their cohesion for much longer, regardless of the amount of focused fire from the archers. Anyone could see they needed support, yet they showed no signs of faltering.

  The women and men holding the curved defenses were courageous and tenacious. They possessed the dedicated resolve that allowed the legions of the Republic to push the beastkin back and expand its borders. And they were being sacrificed.

  Brackus understood the logic. He could even make an educated guess as to why they were holding themselves back and what they were waiting for, but that didn't make it any easier to watch his brothers and sisters die.

  As far as the knight knew, only four cohorts of the Senatorial Guard had entered the southern fort. Why was that the case? Well, Brackus knew for damn sure it wasn't because of politicking.

  Things were already desperate enough that Legatus Hellious would have come swooping in to save the day if he had any intention to. Because if he waited much longer, there was a good chance that the dark elves couldn't be stopped before they took the Southern Fort of the Triad. And if they controlled Southtown and the fort, dislodging them without massive effort would be next to impossible.

  No, if he wasn't here, another plan was going on. That meant Brackus and the others were standing back, watching the vicious fighting so they could come crashing forward while still mostly fresh once the planned assault was launched.

  A cold calculus was needed for a commander to win a battle, but at the same time, they needed to keep the morale of their troops in mind. Watching their comrades slowly die before witnessing the toppling of the cohort's standards while knowing they couldn't step in was a big mental blow. Then again, it could act as the fuel to drive the men into the slaughter. Games within games… that's why I never tried to gain command. Didn't even want to be a centurion.

  Brackus saw the moment when the 8th's line broke for the last time, and he knew that soon, the forces around the breach would be engaged in combat one way or another. With stoic composure, Brackus didn't even twitch as he watched the death toll suddenly spike as the dark elves glided forward to claim lives.

  It happened on the far left flank, near where the hollow on that side once stood before the cliff was collapsed to cover it up. That position just had some of the women for the 8th repositioned to support another section of the line, and their foe took ruthless advantage of that fact.

  A group of dark elves appeared in their black armor from the ranks of the goblins and danced up the ramp of bodies to smash into the legionaries. It only took the first second of combat for Brackus to understand that these were the dark elves' equivalent to knights.

  The women stood no chance against them. The various shadows hiding from lanterns coalesced before driving up and into the female's bodies, puncturing holes that gushed out blood when the shadows retreated, if not entirely ripping off limbs from the impacts. The few who dodged the attacks were rewarded with the oily blades of the dark elves licking out to slice open their skin before severing bone.

  Shields were shattered into kindling, with some of the women being thrown back tens of feet before landing and tumbling over the uneven ground, stopping in a broken heap at its end. The ones who managed to deflect the enhanced blows found their shields broken and their bodies thrown to the side a step or two, an opening the dark elves' wouldn't let pass. Before Brackus could blink, their blades would come hissing around to chop off the heads of the women or spear through their chests.

  The more cruel elves — the ones Brackus was taking mental note of to make personal acquaintance with them if given the opportunity — opened the chests of their victims before moving on, leaving them to die slowly. One target even used their shadow tentacles to tear out organs or slowly expand the torso until they burst like a waterskin that had too much water pushed into it.

  After punching through the line, most of the dark elves turned to the sides to roll up the cohort's flanks and widen the breach to let the goblins pour through and down the inner slope of the wall faster. As for the rest of the umbra knights, they dashed across the parabola to hit the backs of the legionaries in the 4th Cohort.

  It wasn't like the legionaries were standing and waiting to die, but there was only so much they could do without the formation completely collapsing. The two cohorts' response was immediate, if not significant enough to do more than stall for time.

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  A portion of the 4th and 8th's back lines turned and moved at a quick march to intercept the goblins and dark elves already through the breach. Wherever the new battlelines formed, there should be enough of a gap in the center for the farthest portions of the cohorts to retreat through.

  Or that was what Brackus would hazard a guess as to what their plan was. Whether they could pull it off was another — probably impossible — matter entirely.

  The parts of the 8th Cohort's line receiving the brunt of the dark elves' attention turned toward the breach and all but threw themselves onto the dark elf blades to buy time. Their sacrifice only bought their comrades a few seconds to fall back and reposition… and it was far from enough.

  Two hundred men of the 4th were barely stopping the half dozen dark elves that moved to attack them… Though toying with them might be a better word. What had to even the entire cohort's psy reserves were pouring out through the legionaries as they formed shield after shield to block the shadow spikes.

  The women were facing at least thirty knights, and beaten down as they were, there would be no stopping them. It was a fact as immutable as the sun rising in the east. Shit, they probably can't even slow them down. Brackus thought clinically.

  Nearly in unison, the ordered ranks of the legionaries disintegrated, looks of fear twisting the humans' faces under their helms. Some even dropped their weapons in the rush to escape the goblins and dark elves. But they couldn't.

  Within their midst, matching them step for step, the elves danced. They leapt, spun, and swayed in one direction and then the other. Every moment, their swords were whipping around them in wide arcs, taking multiple lives at a time.

  His face impassive, Brackus watched the mounting death as he waited, his arms crossed a little too tight over his chest. Head suddenly tilting up as he listened to a pulse message, he grunted to himself so quietly no one else could make out the words, "About bloody time." Then, lifting his head, his voice boomed over the battlefield and through their union. "Knights! Advance!" As he spoke, the stone beneath his feet started wrapping around his body, its gray color changing to a dim cherry red.

  For the first time that night, the knights of the 15th Legion rushed into battle. So fast that ordinary human eyes would have trouble tracking them, the steel-clad men and women leaped thirty feet from their perches on the buildings to the ground with loud clangs of steel before rushing down the trench slope. If not quite as gracefully as the dark elves, the human knights wove their way through the fleeing legionaries.

  At their head, as fit his position as knight centurion, was Brackus. With every one of his footfalls, patches of the ground were ripped out to join the stone molding itself around his body. Already, there was over six inches of faintly glowing stone covering him.

  As he approached the closest elf, he didn't draw his sword, and he didn't slow. Twelve feet from the figure, Brackus rooted himself to the ground and threw out his arm in a lazy punch.

  The elf sneered at the old knight, but the look of scorn quickly vanished, replaced by shock and then fear, as a stone hand exploded from the ground three feet in front of him. It was like the side of a house was coming at the elf, and there was nowhere to run. Moving faster than anyone probably expected, the stone hand snapped closed around the black-eyed creature — a bastard that seemed to like exploding people — as it rose into the air before angling down to plant itself into the ground.

  With the cracking and clattering of stone, a humanoid-shaped rock heaved itself out of the ground, wrapping itself around Brackus. A volley of the small arrows chipped the golem's stone skin, but it was already far too late for the goblins to stop what was happening.

  Not that Brackus paid much more attention to them other than noting the direction the shots came from, as all his focus was on shaping the stone golem and heating it up. Of course, the first spot Brackus was heating up to radiate the heat of a thousand forges was his right fist. You know, the one where the dark elf just so happened to be within and was being cooked alive in.

  When he could no longer justify standing in place to cook the dark elf, Brackus shifted his psy, causing the fist holding the elf to squeeze shut. A moment later, blood steam drifted into the air as the hand opened, letting a charred lump of meat with some twisted steel lodged within fall to the ground.

  Brackus didn't watch the body fall, but he felt he had made his point as a broken sword clanged against the ground next to the meat. Now standing in the middle of the battle as a lava golem the size of a two-story house, Knight Centurion Brackus could feel eyes turning to him like a physical weight.

  The knight let out a roar of challenge in the golem's stone heart, and his will to shout was transferred to his creation. To enact his will, tons of stone began grating together, sounding disturbingly human-like, if far louder and rougher than was possible for a mortal. After ensuring no one could miss him, he stepped toward the closest group of goblins.

  There was no subtlety to the two-story golem, and all he did was swing its arms back and forth while crouched slightly or kick out with a foot. But there didn't need to be subtlety as the massive golem's limb swept over the ground. Where the burning golem passed, no one was left standing.

  Goblins and the occasional elf were thrown into the air by the dozens. Any group that tried to gather against Brackus had its center broken and scattered before the knights following in his wake finished them off.

  The only real threat he faced was the spikes of shadow lashing out toward him, which knocked off pieces of psy-infused stone while eroding the psy around the wound. But those attacks didn't last long, as his fellow knights targeted the casters as soon as they made themselves known.

  Like a bolder rolling down a hill with nothing but wheat in its way, the knights stopped the goblin's advance cold before they started pushing them back. Try as they might — and many of the goblins and dark elves weren't trying all that hard — the enemy line was pierced by three massive holes of knights.

  Not to be outdone, the shouts of four thousand voices filled the air, and the waiting legionaries rushed into battle. A bloody rage had taken over the minds of those watching the slow death of their comrades, and now they were going to enact their vengeance.

  There were no careful lines marching forward in unison here. No, it was the pure savagery that existed deep within every man, the beast that sleeps until it must be loosed onto the world to shake it to its very foundations. Hacking and slashing with wild abandon, the legionaries cut their way through the goblins, trying to keep up with the knights.

  Grinning to himself, Brackus surged forward, plowing through the creatures like the pests they were. It wasn't long until he reached the bottom of the trench and stepped over the two walls before starting up the slop, making it even easier to advance now that he didn't have to bend so low as he swung his arms.

  No longer some fish that would let themselves succumb to slaughter and lose themselves in it, Brackus looked around. Not with his eyes, as they were blocked by tons of stone, but with pulses and images from the union.

  While he was by far in the lead, the cohorts on each side were keeping up. Shock and fear filled every goblin's face, and most were trying to flee when confronted with the human's advance. Such pathetic creatures. Brackus mentally sneered as he took in the force that had brought Southtown to its knees.

  Getting back to work, Brackus continued his way up the ramp until he reached its lip and found that the battle on this side of the wall was already well underway. From the side streets along the wall and houses, legionaries and militia were cutting into the ranks of the goblins, dividing their focus between three sides.

  Grinning from his position inside the smoldering golem, Brackus commanded his knights, "Advance! Cut into them before they are ready! Show no mercy!"

  After pushing a quarter of the way into the square, Brackus had his knights slowed down and let the legionaries take the lead. Strong as they were, the knight still had a limited supply of psy, and it had already taken quite a hit. Should some force try to stop their advance, the knights would need to step in and smash them.

  There were, after all, thousands of goblins and who knew how many dark elves in the city. It was impossible to rush their way into killing them all. Ultimately, only endurance and discipline will get the job done, as was always the case for legionaries. But with the backs of their foe broken from this charge, they should be able to massacre the creatures at a steady pace.

  At least, that was Brackus' thought process until everyone stopped to look up at the two suns spreading light over the city and signaling dawn.