The first hour on the stone bridge was a storm of adrenaline and flashing steel. The second hour was simply hell.
The tempest had slowed to a freezing, miserable drizzle. The cobblestones were gone, replaced by a slick, shifting carpet of goblin corpses. Yet, the chittering horde kept coming. For every ten that fell, twenty more clawed over the dead to take their place.
Percival Kent's golden aura had dimmed to a flickering ember. He swung on muscle memory alone, his soaked tunic clinging to him, painted black with Greenskin blood.
"Hold the gap!" Kent rasped, his voice shredded. He parried a rusted halberd, but his bare arms trembled so violently he could barely push the creature back.
Behind him, Krag and the five remaining rookies were fighting just to stay upright. Stripped of their armor like their commander, the cold rain froze the sweat to their skin. Krag's left arm hung uselessly, his hastily bandaged bicep throbbing from a rusted blade's poison.
Suddenly, the horde stopped surging. The armored goblins at the front slammed heavy iron shields down, forming a barricade over the dead.
Behind the iron wall stood a unit of archers, led by a towering commander in spiked armor. As the commander drew his massive bone-reinforced longbow, pitch-black mana crackled around the arrowhead, heavy with a sickening, supernatural weight. The archer's yellow eyes locked onto the exhausted Paladin.
At his barked command, the rest of the unit drew their strings.
Kent's eyes widened. "Arrows! Break the line!"
He tried to surge forward, but his legs finally gave out. His knee buckled, sending him crashing heavily to the blood-slicked stones.
The heavy bowstrings snapped. The commander's black arrow tore through the rain, aimed flawlessly at the fallen Lord Commander. Kent couldn't raise his sword in time.
The impact never reached him.
A shadow vaulted over Kent. One of the unnamed rookies had snatched up two discarded goblin shields, throwing his unarmored body into the path of the volley. Heavy arrows slammed into the metal, the kinetic force driving him backward.
Before Kent could shout, the rookie roared. Channeling the absolute last drop of his mana into his legs, he used the shields as a battering ram, rushing the barricade and violently smashing a gap through the shield wall.
Seizing the breach, Vane and Krag surged forward. While two other rookies dragged Kent to safety, Vane and Krag hacked their way through the gap, bringing the towering archer commander to his knees and taking his head.
The victory lasted a second. A second volley rained down from the rear ranks. Krag kicked a fallen shield toward Vane, and the two scrambled back to Kent's side, ducking behind mounds of goblin corpses for cover.
The rookie who had broken the line was left standing in the breach. A dozen arrows sprouted from his shoulders, legs, and torso.
He looked back. "Did... did we hold them, sir?" the boy choked out, dark blood bubbling past his lips.
"You held them, soldier," Kent grunted, his voice thick. "You held the line. Come back at once."
The boy gave a faint, shuddering nod. His eyes were already going glassy. He knew he wouldn't survive a retreat with his back exposed.
He dropped the ruined shields. Pulling two rusted swords from the mud, his body completely devoid of mana, he turned back to the enemy. With a ragged cry, he dashed forward, slicing wildly into the goblin ranks to buy his comrades a few precious seconds.
But every man has a limit.
Half a dozen crude spears thrust forward, impaling the rookie simultaneously. The sheer force lifted him off his feet, suspending him for a grotesque second on the wooden shafts before he slumped forward, dead.(His body formed a 'C' Shape.
The goblins erupted into feral cheers. A jagged blade flashed in the rain, severing the boy's neck.
With a guttural shriek, a spearman hurled the severed head across the bridge. It bounced off the cobblestones, rolling to a dead stop against the worn leather of Percival Kent's boot. Its unseeing eyes stared blankly up at the storm.
A suffocating silence fell over the surviving humans, broken only by the howling wind and the feral, barking laughter of the horde. The Greenskins began banging their rusted swords against their shields in a deafening, rhythmic taunt. They wanted the humans to break.
Percival Kent didn't fall to his knees. He slowly looked up from the boy's face, fixing his gaze on the chittering mass.
The crushing exhaustion drowning his lungs simply evaporated, leaving behind a cold, absolute void.
"Commander..." Krag whispered, clutching his bleeding arm.
Kent didn't answer. He gripped the hilt of his broadsword with both hands. The sickly ember of his golden mana didn't just return—it violently erupted. It was no longer the warm light of a protector; it was the searing fire of a Paladin's wrath. The magic burned so hot that the freezing rain hissed into steam the second it touched his bare skin.
The goblins' feral laughter faltered. The rhythmic banging slowed to an uneasy halt as the air pressure on the bridge plummeted.
"Step over him," Kent ordered. His voice was a low, vibrating rumble that shook the cobblestones.
Krag, Vane, and the remaining rookies stared at Kent's glowing silhouette. The terror in their chests vanished, replaced by a reckless, violent need for revenge. They tightened their grips, stepping forward to form a tight line around their unarmored Lord Commander.
"Leave no survivors," Kent growled.
With a shockwave that cracked the stone beneath his leather boots, Kent launched himself. He didn't bother parrying. He swung his broadsword in a massive, two-handed arc that sheared straight through an iron shield, cleaving the goblin behind it in half.
The rookies followed, screaming their fallen brother's name. Vane tackled a spearman, driving his blade repeatedly through its chest, while Krag used his one good arm to hack wildly into the crumbling frontline.
The bridge turned into a slaughterhouse. Fueled by Kent's burning aura, the men stopped fighting to survive. They became a meat grinder, carving a path of total devastation and pushing the Greenskin vanguard back foot by bloody foot.
But as the second hour finally bled into the third, the unnatural surge of adrenaline began to fail. The mountain of goblin corpses grew so high it became a barricade of its own, clogging the narrow bridge.
Kent's blinding white aura fractured, sputtering like a dying torch. The wrath had burned through the last fumes of his life force. With a heavy thud, the Lord Commander collapsed to one knee, plunging his broadsword into the stone just to keep himself from falling face-first into the mud.
Behind the wall of dead bodies, the chittering of the horde grew quiet. A tense, suffocating silence settled over the bridge. Hour three had begun.