Amon walked.

  The tunnels, rough-hewn by Kobold claws and reinforced with veins of black tar, stretched endlessly before him. After weeks of being encased in Preserverant—immobile—he hadn’t stopped walking. For two days he’d paced this subterranean labyrinth, the steady thump-thump of his boots the only sound in the suffocating quiet. His silent fox trotted at his heel, a shadow made of oil and bone.

  Above him, the world burned.

  He didn't need to see it to know. The tremors in the earth told the story. The dull, rhythmic thuds of artillery were a constant heartbeat of war, shaking dust from the ceiling.

  With Dragons now identified within the realm, the Fearless Maws sought to take the plane for themselves. Which included stopping threats from gaining ground, and becoming potential rivals.

  ‘Let me see.’

  The tar obliged.

  His vision shifted, rising through layers of rock and soil until he broke the surface. Through the eyes of a thousand tar-ravens perched on the high walls, Amon looked out at the nightmare the Tharnells had built.

  The forest was gone. In its place stood a fortress of gray concrete and blackened steel. Walls, three times the height of a man, circled the mist, trapping it like smoke in a bottle. Beyond them, the Tharnell war-machine churned.

  Towers rose like broken fingers from the mud, each topped with a flak-cannon. They swiveled constantly, tracking the sky with mechanical paranoia.?

  ‘They are afraid,’ Amon realized.

  And they should be.

  On the horizon, the sky bled red.

  Dragons.

  Not the solitary form of Lavia, but a flight. A flight of Red Dragons, massive and terrible, circled the edge of the Tharnell encampment. They were Ancient-tier, or close to it, thrice the size of the fallen tyrant. Their scales were the color of dried blood, their wingspans wide enough to shadow entire battalions.?

  But they did not attack. They waited.

  ‘Why do they wait?’

  The answer came from the ground.

  From the tree line, a tide of crimson erupted.

  One could not say it was a formation, more a rushing flood. Thousands of Draights and Kobolds poured from the remaining woods, a screaming wave of muscle and hate. They charged the Tharnell lines without siege engines, without strategy. They had only their rage.

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  "Fools," Amon whispered in the dark tunnel.

  The Tharnell response was mechanical, and bored.

  Click-whir-boom.

  The Fodder-tanks—squat, ugly boxes on treads—opened fire. Their heavy machine guns tore into the lead ranks of the Scales. Kobolds evaporated in sprays of red mist. Draights, their natural armor shattered by high-velocity rounds, stumbled and fell, only to be trampled by the kin behind them.?

  Still, they came.

  The Dragons roared, a sound that shook the mist itself. Two of the great Reds tucked their wings and dove.

  It was a magnificent sight. A plunge of pure, elemental fury.

  It was also a suicide.

  The flak-towers turned, and the air filled with the tearing sound of mana-rounds.

  The lead Dragon jerked as if it had hit a wall. Its chest erupted in a fountain of gold-tinged blood. The second managed to loose a breath of fire—a cone of white heat that melted a tank into a puddle of glowing slag—before its wing was sheared off at the joint.

  They crashed.

  The earth jumped. The impact crushed tanks, flattened bunkers, and pulverized hundreds of Tharnell soldiers. But the Dragons were dead before they hit the ground.

  The Scales didn't stop. They climbed over the broken bodies of their gods, using the corpses as ramps to assault the walls.

  Then the artillery spoke.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Shells fell among the charging mass. The ground churned. Bodies were thrown into the air like ragdolls. The charge faltered, then broke.

  It was a massacre.

  Amon leaned against the tunnel wall, the cold stone seeping into his skin. He felt a profound, hollow sadness. This wasn't war, this was industry. The Dragons were fighting with honor, with rage, with biology. The Tharnells were fighting with math.

  ‘They never stood a chance.’

  The thought was a traitor, but it was true. The age of monsters was over. The age of machines had arrived.

  Through the raven’s eyes, Amon looked toward the rift. The portal pulsed, a steady, rhythmic beat of violet light. And from it, something new emerged.

  It stepped out with a heavy, hydraulic hiss.

  A Battlemech.?

  It stood a hundred feet tall, a humanoid shape of gunmetal gray. Its chest was a cockpit of reinforced glass, glowing with the inner light of a demigod pilot. Its arms were cannons, and its shoulders covered with missile pods.

  Behind it, more came. Smaller, faster, but no less deadly.

  The Tharnell vanguard was done. The real army had arrived.

  Gods of steel, Amon thought. To kill gods of flesh.

  The Caregivers in the mist shifted, agitated. They sensed the power of the new arrivals, and they sensed the hunger. These machines weren't just here to conquer; they were here to eat.

  To eat Cores, to eat the realm.

  Amon pulled his consciousness back down into the dark, into the safety of the earth.

  He looked at his fox, who stared back, its tar-eyes unblinking.

  "We cannot fight them," Amon said softly. "Not like this." He turned, and began to walk again, deeper into the dark. "We will not charge the guns," he vowed to the silence. "We will be the rust that jams them."

  The war for the surface was lost. But the war for the soul of this realm… that had only just begun.