Chapter 422: Chapter 422: Blood on the Horizon
Blood on the Horizon
Gary’s grip on the scope tightened until the knuckles whitened, the veins prominent like cords under the skin. His jaw clenched so tight that it seemed as if his teeth would shatter. The fleeting, smug smile that had lingered upon his lips—the one that bore quiet victory—faded. Seared away in a second, to be replaced by a tempest which raged behind his eyes, dark and unrelenting.
.Impossible," he breathed, the words almost inaudible, shaking though he tried to hold them firm. All of him cried out that the apparition before him was not possible, but the horizon did not lie. The air thickened, tense and charged, the weight of incredulity hanging in it. His low, throttled voice gave the ranks a shiver, quiet as it was, and the men about him stiffened under the pressure.
A nervous cough, near smothered by the quiet, introduced a voice—Edric, one of his generals, advancing with respectful hesitation. "My lord... what did you see?"
Gary’s head twitched as though the question had just reached him. His lips opened, repeating and repeating, with each iteration tighter, harsher than the last. "Impossible... it’s impossible..." The words fell into a chant, raw and crackly, a prayer of the shattering belief that had supported him for so long.
Edric scowled, narrowing the distance between them, his voice stern but cautious. "Your Majesty, please. Tell me clearly. What did you see? What is on that horizon?"
The commanders around them shifted on their feet, the faint rasp of boots on stone ringing too obtrusively in the charged quiet. Fear had insinuated itself into their blood, wrapping like smoke around the edges of their determination. None had the courage to press on, but each look in Gary’s direction concealed the question seething in their minds. They recognized, as did each man there, that their king was not one who stumbled often. If the blaze of his eyes faltered, the object he had seen was no normal threat.
Gary’s hold shook on the scope. His fingers, now unsteady as leaves, trembled as if the burden of the world itself rested on them. Gradually, agonizingly, he brought the binoculars down, his chest heaving and falling in labored, irregular gasps. The glass flew out of his hand, spinning towards the floor as if it had now acquired the weight of lead—but before it was about to shatter, Edric’s reflexes grabbed it. Quick and keen, he grabbed the binoculars, eyes darting fleetingly to Gary, and wordlessly raised them to his own face. He stared at the horizon.
The moment his eyes fell upon the view, his body came to a standstill. His eyes widened as if life itself had blinded him. His mouth opened with a dry, guttural whisper. "...What the fuck..." The words escaped him like a wisp of smoke, a barely heard whisper, but full of incredulity. His hands trembled with rage, and the scope fell from his hands, slamming against the deck in protest.
Confusion broke out around him. Men pushed forward, twisted faces of panic and incredulity. "What is it?" someone snapped, voice harsh with fear. "Tell us, you devil!" another shouted, fists curled in the shadows. "Tell us what you saw!"
Edric had opened his mouth, then shut it, paralysed. The world had shifted on its axis and left him speechless. And then, shattering the rising chaos, Gary’s voice boomed like the crack of a cannon across the darkness.
"Aurelian."
Silence descended. Heavy, sharp, and absolute. Each man stood stock-still, as if the air had turned to stone. That one name flashed like lightning on a stormy horizon, and its weight hammered down upon each assembled soul.
From the lens, the horizon appeared to bow out unnaturally, distorting in the faint moonlight. Gradually, slowly, a figure appeared, emerging from the very texture of the world. Wearing jagged pieces of blue crystal armor, battered, bloodied, yet moving with steady confidence despite the turmoil that surrounded him. The plates were shattered, stained with dark, dried blood, but the man beneath them remained unbroken. Most of his face was concealed by his helm, but his eyes—those cold, hard, unmistakable eyes—burned through the distance like twin fires. Steel-gray fire that burned into the soul.
Gary’s breath caught. No other man, no commander, no soldier in Vellore could possess such presence, such unmitigated command of the field of battle. Every beating heart in the ranks ceased at that stare, and deep within, Gary knew the truth with the clarity of a razor cutting stone.
King Aurelian.
All Vellore soldiers recognized those eyes. All had heard rumors of his fury, his guile, his iron determination. And now, they were looking down the living embodiment of that myth.
Behind him, the horizon changed. Initially, barely a dozen soldiers came into view, walking like shadows cast by the waning light. Then a line. Then ranks on ranks. One hundred, then two thousand, ten thousand, fifty thousand, and more. They spilled from the twilight like a tide with no shore, banners flying, armor glinting, the very ground shaking beneath the tread of their progress.
Gary’s carefully constructed Moonstone trap—his magnum opus, his impenetrable castle of schemes—started coming undone under the cold, inexorable grip of reality. All his planning, all his arithmetic, all his pride were washed away by the tidal wave of living metal and flame.
A chill crept up his spine, uninvited, burrowing deep into his bones, icy and unforgiving. The battlefield was no longer his to control. It was now in the hands of Aurelian. And at that instant, looking at the impossibly swollen tide rolling forward, Gary comprehended something he had always dreaded yet never articulated: they were meeting their own demise.
Gary shivered, a creeping chill sliding down his spine, burrowing deep into his bones as if some inner voice had just whispered a warning. His heart beat once, a harsh and insistent drum, like an echo in an empty hall. Something was amiss. Horribly amiss. The trap had malfunctioned. Each element of his grand, carefully orchestrated scheme—each firestorm, each explosion intended to shatter the Moonstone forces in one, crushing blow—had failed. It hadn’t shattered them. It hadn’t even slowed them sufficiently.
And worst of all, the man he had intended to bury under that blaze stood taller than ever, a living memorial of defiance, walking ahead with a composure that gnawed at Gary’s mind. His fingers flexed, missing the feel of the scope, worthless against the magnitude of what he was seeing. For the first time in years, he saw his hands shaking, and a cold, raw panic curled in his chest.
No. This hadn’t been possible.
The plan had been perfect. The parched grass sprinkled with green eagle eggs, their unstable centers set to explode in burning death if touched. The carts, designed to entice the enemy into confusion, now lay smoldering useless. Even those who had survived should have been disabled beyond motion, powerless to lift themselves up so soon. But here he was, compelled to swallow a reality his mind would not stomach: Aurelian not only survived, but drove his men ahead, unfazed, inviolable. Every possible situation he had practiced, every equation and backup plan, crumbled into acrid, derisive dust.
Gary’s gut knotted. The trap, the masterstroke designed to destroy them before they had even taken a breath, now resembled a child’s toy. Yet Aurelian strode along with an awful elegance, his presence radiating control, command, and an almost godly serenity. The Moonstone host behind him flowed like a river of living men, synchronized, unbroken, their discipline frightening in its perfection.
Behind him, the generals muttered, a wave of terror spreading like fire. A few of them cursed silently, others dropped to their knees in frantic prayer, and a few just gazed, white, all color leached from their faces.
"Majesty..." one faltered, voice cracked and jerky. "If that is indeed Aurelian—if their troops still survive—then..."
Gary’s stare pinned him like a knife, but within, his mind hurtled in mad circles. Anger clawed at his breast, fear pinned against his ribcage, and shame wrapped around his thoughts like smoke.
Far away, the Moonstone pennants fluttered in the waning light, their crests shining dimly under the first stars. The dark sky yawned above, spangled with silver moons that shed a pale, spectral light over the marching host. They moved as if borne on night’s own breath, each pace measured, deliberate—so exact it shook the earth.
Gary’s mind whirled. They lived through the fire. They lived through the trap. And he had no clue how.
He pushed his eyes back to the site of the calamity. The tremendous eruption, the carts going up in a series of explosions which should have engulfed the whole plain, was still smoldering behind them. Flames danced in the air, smoke writhing like dark snakes, and the breeze still retained the bitter tang of wood and powder fire. By every convention of war, Aurelian and his legions should have been nothing more than ash and cries. And they were not. They were intact, unmarred, moving as one, immovable force.
And then Gary knew, with acrid certainty. He had employed it. The forbidden spell. The one that his forefathers had guarded, shielded like a holy relic, spoken of in reverent dread.
He recalled the ancient tales, the caution: a magic so destructive, so complete, that it devoured the very essence of the one who cast it. And yet, somehow, the hubris, the unyielding iron determination to use it, resided within Aurelian. He had outlived its price. Better than that—he had recovered. Ancient, valuable medicine ran through his blood, repairing sundered flesh and purging the price of forbidden knowledge.
Gary’s nails sank into his palms, skin tearing as fury wrestled with fear. He longed to bellow, to call down curses on Aurelian’s head till the skies trembled. He longed to fling himself into the burning plain and rend the world asunder with his rage. But he compelled himself to take breaths, labored, measured, though his heart pounded like a war drum in readiness to burst his breast.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement. A flicker, almost imperceptible, but it had a presence that made his gut clench. Aurelian advanced, gauntlets glinting dimly in the shadows, and spread his hands with calculated care. He clapped—once, then again. The sharp slap cracked across the field like a bolt of lightning, freezing the soldiers’ attention into stern alertness.
From among his mages, one man separated himself, moving with disconcerting quiet. The man raised his staff, and the air itself writhed, curved like cooling glass, as wind curled to his unspoken command. All eyes watched, but none could guess what came next. With a sharp, brutal motion, a tightly parcelled packet burst into the air, on a vortex of whirling currents, describing an unfettered arc straight for Vellore’s camp.
Gary’s chest constricted, a chill shiver working its way up his spine. His jaw clenched as he spat the order, raw and unyielding. "Intercept it!"
He channeled his magic into a spell, black fire that writhed like living serpent, crackling outward with deadly purpose. The flames hissed and twisted, hungry and gleaming, hungry to devour the oncoming threat. The parcel, designed to strike with deadly precision, should have been incinerated long before it reached the ground.
But it didn’t.
There was a thin, silver blaze from an etched talisman in the surface of the parcel. Gary’s black fires hit it, hissed, and shattered on some concealed barrier, sparks flying wildly into the air. The parcel dropped, intact, thudding to the ground less than twenty paces away from the king. Dust swirled about it, coiling into the shockwave of impact, as the soldiers and mages both stood frozen.
It was long, close to six feet, wrapped with the crest of Moonstone. Something metal protruded from its frame—a lance, its tip stuck halfway into the wood casing, runes darkly glowing along its length like an evil pulse. Gary’s gaze narrowed, icy suspicion gnawing at the fringes of his thoughts. There was something profoundly amiss with that lance, something that roiled instinctively against his stomach.
Then a movement, slight but unmistakable, revealed the parcel’s unnatural contents. A wet, chilling noise came after—dripping, uneven, unrelenting. Gary’s stomach rose with the bile as his eyes fixed on the red that seeped from the small fissures in the wood. Blood. Actual blood, black and shining, revealing the parcel’s deadly secret.
Gasps swelled down the ranks, a drawn-out, rising tide of shock that crested over his commanders and generals. Among them, a man usually rock-steady, retreated, white-faced and shaking, eyes wide with an intolerable realization. His words tumbled, barely heard above the uproar of incredulity, choking and hoarse.
"B-blo... blood..."
The words hung, oppressive and palpable, drenching the field in fear. All eyes turned, transfixed, unable to turn away from the bundle that had just fallen in the very center of Vellore’s army. The resulting stillness was charged, full of the understanding that this was no run-of-the-mill attack, and that the war had just turned into something much more sinister, much more intimate.