The sky tore open with a shrieking tear.
Carric was done playing games. The trap had cost him his vanguard, and his grief had already hardened into something entirely devoid of mercy. He didn't order a charge. He simply drew his sword, leveled it at the immovable human shield wall, and dropped the blade.
A hundred high-mages stepped forward from the Elven rear. As one, they drove their staves into the ash. The air pressure plummeted. A violent vortex of arcane artillery ripped through the clouds, vomiting blazing meteors of raw mana. They slammed into the human tower shields with the crushing weight of falling anvils.
Ulric watched his vanguard buckle. Steel folded. Men were pulverized where they stood under the relentless bombardment. Yet, the General didn't so much as twitch. He just watched the slaughter with dead, unblinking eyes, waiting for the ground to erupt.
He had no idea that sixty feet below, the earth was losing its battle.
The magical bombardment up top wasn't just shaking the tunnel; it was liquidating the bedrock. A continuous, bone-rattling roar drowned out the dark. Timbers snapped like kindling. The ceiling fractured, vomiting blinding sheets of soil and fist-sized rocks onto the desperate sappers.
Captain Fenn choked on a lungful of grit. Snarling through his burn scars, he swung the heavy hammer-end of the Trench-Biter, driving a thick iron spike through a bowing crossbeam. His chest heaved against his canvas duster.
"Keep digging!" he roared, tearing his ruined vocal cords to be heard over the collapse. "Push through!"
But the earth had other plans. A massive fissure unzipped the ceiling just yards ahead, dumping a sheer ton of loose soil and burying the front of the tunnel entirely. Two sappers barely threw themselves backward in time to avoid the crush.
His lead engineer scrambled backward, eyes wide and white in the dim, bloody glow of the explosive scrolls clutched against her chest.
"It's choked out!" she shrieked over the rumble. "The whole ceiling is coming down! We can't make the last twenty!"
Fenn slammed his dirt-stained hands against the wall. He knew the deep. He knew the weight of the stone pressing down on them. Sixty seconds more, and they'd be flattened into a bloody smear.
"Where are we?" Fenn grabbed her shoulder, shaking her out of the panic. "Right now. What's directly above our heads?"
She glanced at her tarnished compass, then up at the failing roof, all the blood leaving her face. "We're short. Captain, we're directly under the vanguard."
The tunnel bucked violently. A timber cracked in half directly over Fenn, showering his shoulders in splinters.
If they ran now, the scrolls would be buried under tons of rock rendered useless. Carric's mages would turn the human army to ash, and the war would be over. The only way to break the Elven line was to detonate the payload right here. Right beneath their own brothers.
Fenn squeezed his eyes shut. He thought of the heavy infantry standing their ground up top, taking the bombardment, trusting the Moles to do their job. Then he pictured Ulric Stone's dead, unblinking stare. Ulric only ever cared about the math.
Fenn opened his eyes. He slammed the wicked spike of the Trench-Biter deep into the dirt floor, anchoring himself against the trembling earth.
"Strip the seals," he rasped, staring at the pulsing red parchment.
The engineer recoiled in horror. "Captain, we'll blow our own frontline to hell. General Stone
"Stone sent us down here to break the Elves!" Fenn roared, the scar tissue on his jaw pulling taut. "He'll trade his vanguard for Carric's mages! He'd trade us all! Strip the damn seals and run!"