On the ramparts of the Meseros stronghold, the commander of the Rees garrison wore a grim expression. His eyes swept across the crude breastwork, finally fixing on a dark, slowly moving shadow on the distant horizon.
The Imperial Combined Forces were advancing.
A chill crawled up his spine when he caught sight of the towering war elephants lumbering forward, each beast seeming like a living mountain. With every ponderous step, the earth groaned beneath their weight. Even from miles away, the oppressive force radiating from them made the knees of many new soldiers tremble.
"Hold your ground! Hold your ground!" the commander roared, attempting to force courage into his troops with nothing but his voice.
At the front line, Zora raised a hand, expressionless. Behind him, the phalanx of New Ghis citizen soldiers clicked in perfect rhythm, their massive tower shields slamming into the ground in unison to form an impenetrable wall of steel. Spears protruded from the gaps like a forest of death, poised and lethal.
On the flanks, the soldiers wore Volantine tiger cloaks. Their eyes burned with a mixture of excitement and hatred, veins bulging as their hands tightened around scimitars. Today, they would settle the blood feud over the disputed lands.
"Reload!" came a cold, commanding voice from behind.
The massive war machine assembled long ago began to shift slowly into position. It was the Huihui Cannon, painstakingly recreated by master craftsmen following Damian Thorne's exact specifications.
The Rees commander's gaze fell upon the massive wooden frame and its lethal throwing arm. A primal fear gripped his heart. He did not fully understand the contraption, but he instinctively knew it spelled doom.
"Put!"
The huge counterweight slammed down with a deafening crash. The throwing arm snapped upward with impossible speed, slicing through the air with a shrill whistle. Stone projectiles the size of millstones arced high into the sky, tracing deadly parabolas toward the city walls.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The first volleys exploded in the open ground outside the stronghold, sending dust, rubble, and flying mud cascading over unlucky soldiers. Though no one was instantly killed, the terrifying impact left them wailing and scrambling for cover.
The defenders on the city walls widened their eyes in disbelief. Such range… such destructive force… it surpassed any catapult they had ever known. Before they could even recover from their shock, the artillery crew had already recalibrated their aim.
"Reload!"
"Put!"
Again, the mechanisms groaned, whistling stones arcing high, this time landing squarely among the densest clusters of defenders. The first casualties screamed as their bodies were crushed under the sheer force of the stones. Bones snapped, and screams of agony pierced the air. The shockwave of destruction churned the battlefield into chaos.
Commander Rees's pupils shrank to pinpoints. He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged.
It was over.
The range, the destructive power, the speed of reload… there was no hope. This was no longer a battle; it was a massacre waiting to happen.
Under the relentless barrage of Huihui artillery, Meseros' outer fortifications were reduced to loose soil and shattered stone. The defenders, huddled behind remnants of bunkers, dared not lift their heads. They could only pray that the next crushing projectile would miss them.
A horn sounded.
"For the Empire!" Zora cried, raising his sword and pointing forward.
The citizen soldiers of Xinjis surged forward in perfect unison, a moving wall of steel and determination. Ahead of them, two hundred armored war elephants charged with a deafening roar, tusks like battering rams, hooves pounding the earth into submission.
Those who had begun to muster courage were scattered instantly. The elephants' tusks lifted men and shields alike, and their iron-shod feet flattened all obstacles.
A Lys officer swung his sword, aiming for an elephant's legs. The beast merely twitched its trunk. With a crack that echoed across the city, the officer's body was hurled against the walls, broken beyond recognition.
Amid the chaos, the New Ghis citizen soldiers demonstrated their terrifying discipline. Rather than chasing fleeing soldiers, they infiltrated in small, precise groups, cutting and surrounding scattered Rees forces with cold efficiency.
Behind them, the tiger-robed warriors with their crimson eyes let out guttural roars, exacting vengeance with every strike. Scimitars slashed, blood sprayed. Even a soldier attempting to surrender was met with a swift, brutal death. Mercy was foreign to them; this was retribution incarnate.
Meseros had transformed into a hellscape.
---
Miles away, at the Myr border, Officer Mill inspected his defenses with pride. Thousands of well-equipped crossbowmen stood in tight formation, ready to unleash a storm of bolts. "Let the barbarians on the grasslands see the might of Myr," he boasted to his adjutant. "Cavalry charges will be nothing but a joke."
The confidence was warranted. The Three Daughters Kingdom's repeating crossbows were renowned for their rate of fire and armor-piercing capability, turning light cavalry and infantry alike into easy prey.
Yet, a shrill whistling sound froze Mill mid-sentence.
Looking up, he saw a black dot rapidly enlarging in the sky.
"Boom!"
The first stone from a distant Huihui Cannon struck the crossbow formation like an explosive bomb. Soldiers were obliterated instantly, bodies and debris flying everywhere. The formation shattered.
"Catapults! Scatter! Scatter!" Mill barked in panic.
But it was too late. A storm of stone bombs rained down, tearing the crossbowmen's disciplined ranks to pieces. Chaos erupted.
Amid this turmoil, a distant war cry split the air:
"Woo-la!"
Ma Zhuo raised his arakh scimitar high, leading the Dothraki cavalry like a black tide of death. Their horses galloped at terrifying speeds, riders drawing bows as they moved, unleashing wave after wave of arrows into the disoriented Tyroshi spearmen.
The crossbowmen were pinned by catapult fire. The spearmen were decimated by arrows. The supposedly impenetrable front line of the Three Daughters Kingdom was exposed.
Seizing the moment, Ma Zhuo's cavalry scattered, revealing hidden heavy cavalry behind them. These men, armored head to toe, carried long lances and rode powerful warhorses—the loyalists of Kao and masters of the new cavalry tradition.
"Charge!" Ma Zhuo bellowed.
The heavy cavalry thundered forward, lances aimed like a torrent of steel. They struck the broken crossbow lines with the force of a battering ram. Soldiers were pierced, hooves trampled, screams drowned beneath the unrelenting roar of war.
Attempting to flank the cavalry, Tyroshi spearmen found themselves met with even more Dothraki arrows. The battlefield erupted into chaos once more.
Officer Mill could only stare, numb. His pride, his crossbow arrays, his iron defenses—everything shattered in a matter of moments. A single flaw, created by those infernal trebuchets, had unraveled the entire battle line.
Ma Zhuo surveyed the battlefield, recalling the words of Kao before the battle:
"Even with 130,000 cavalrymen, we can crush them with a single charge."
Now, he witnessed the truth of it. The combination of long-range siege weapons, disciplined infantry, and unstoppable cavalry had reduced the Three Daughters Kingdom's army to rubble in moments.
The thunder of hooves, the shrill whistling of stones, the roar of elephants, the clash of steel—it all merged into a symphony of chaos. On the battlefield, discipline and pride could not withstand the perfect orchestration of destruction that Damian Thorne had envisioned.
Meseros, once a bastion of confidence, now teetered on the edge of annihilation. And the army of the Empire pressed forward, unstoppable, a relentless wave of vengeance, steel, and fury.
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