The battle lines wavered and reformed like a living thing. Arrows loosed in disciplined volleys, darkening the sky in brief, lethal swarms, while the earth itself seemed to tremble beneath the mounting carnage. Near a modest, forested rise, a threefold struggle raged on. Unyielding and insatiable, it's as though the land itself demanded blood in tribute.
There, nine thousand soldiers of a Ba Sing Se garrison assembled with grim intent. Rank upon rank of spearmen and halberdiers aligned in austere precision, their formation tightening in anticipation of a crushing advance. Yet the intermingled forces of Jian Xin and Xiao Zhong, heedless or perhaps fatally obstinate, remained entangled in their own bitter contest. In doing so, they committed a cardinal sin of war by allowing themselves to be consumed by the immediate foe, blind to the greater peril gathering at their respective flanks that faces the third army in armor distinguished by their golden coin insignia.
Thus, they offered their neutral neighbor the perfect moment to strike.
As the two armies quarreled and bled one another thin, the waiting force descended with ruthless clarity of purpose. No quarter was given, just as no retreat was permitted. The opportunists fell upon the exhausted combatants like a closing vice, intent not merely on victory, but on annihilation.
War drums thundered. Horns bellowed across the din. Beneath banners emblazoned with the golden coin, the Ba Sing Se formations surged forward in lockstep, their cohesion unbroken. Spears levelled and halberds angled, they crashed into the fractured melee with devastating force. The impact rang out like a great iron bell, steel striking steel, bone splintering with men screaming. Its echo shuddering across the blood-soaked field.
A nameless Jian Xin soldier was run through by a charging Xiao Zhong cavalryman, only for the rider himself to be hewn from the saddle moments later, dragged down by the hooked blade of a Ba Sing Se dagger-axe. Such scenes unfolded without pause, commonplace in this war-torn corner of the Earth Kingdom yet no less harrowing for their familiarity across the wider realm with unsatiable wars. To the unseasoned eye, the sight of severed limbs and the relentless spill of blood remained a vision of unmitigated horror.
"General Xiang has taken to the field!"
From the rear ranks of the Ba Sing Se host, a contingent of heavy cataphracts thundered forth. Their charge a storm of iron and flesh. Disordered and reeling, the Jian Xin and Xiao Zhong forces could not muster a coherent defense. The unfortunates were ridden down, trampled beneath armored beaks or skewered upon the lances of the advancing cavalry.
At their head rode the architect of this calculated slaughter, the general who had answered this farce with cold, decisive force. With both hands, he bore a great changdao, its sweeping blade as lethal to steeds as it was to man. With each arc, it carved a path through the chaos, a grim reaper amidst the tumult, heralding the utter ruin of those who had dared trespass upon Ba Sing Se's domain.
Despite the spectacle of their entrance, the seasoned soldiers of the two quarrelsome states were no mere pushovers before the Ba Sing Se garrisons, who are troops long derided across the warring realm as little more than glorified lawmen untested against those who had clawed their way out from mountains of corpses. Such mockery may prove hollow. Regardless, veterans from both Jian Xin or Xiao Zhong do not yield easily, and many sought to cut through the advancing chaos by striking directly at the heart of command, launching reckless chariot charges or hurling stones from hastily assembled traction trebuchets toward the Ba Sing Se vanguards.
The cost was immediate and severe. Garrison troops upon the field perished amid the ceaseless roar of battle, swallowed by the thunder of iron and the ragged chorus of dying voices. But their lines of infantry locked together in savage proximity, spears and polearms darting and withdrawing in a deadly rhythm, each side refusing to concede even a foot of blood-soaked ground. What had begun as a contest of two rivals devolved into something far more ruinous. A threefold struggle in which no army could fully commit without exposing itself to the others.
Amidst this maelstrom, both Jian Xin and Xiao Zhong still found their attention fatally divided. Their enmity, long nurtured, proved too consuming. Each of their commander seemed more intent on crushing his rival than on reckoning with the encroaching third force poised to exploit their feud. Jian Xin's elite axe infantry on the right flank was ordered forward in a decisive push against a weakened segment of the Xiao Zhong shield wall guarding several traction trebuchets, an advance that left their own archers dangerously exposed. Seizing the moment, a Ba Sing Se detachment of humble spearmen surged through the gap, descending upon the unprotected bowmen with ruthless efficiency.
The same blindness afflicted Xiao Zhong's ranks. Their soldiers, driven by equal hatred, struck with greater fervor at foes clad in light green, scarcely heeding the formations advancing upon them in armor of mingled gold and green. That disciplined force pressed steadily onward, grinding their numbers down with implacable resolve.
It was in this moment of fragmentation that the Ba Sing Se general, who had led the earlier audacious cavalry charge, managed to force a path through the chaos and crashed into the Jian Xin commander's guard. Heavy cataphracts smashed against the defensive line, splintering shields and scattering men like chaff before the wind. At their head, the general's great blade carved wide, terrible arcs, each stroke stirring a crimson haze in the air.
Then with a single unerring swing, the changdao sheared cleanly through flesh and bone. The head of the Jian Xin general, alone with that of the ostrich horse, fell. His death was swift and absolute, felled not by a famed war hero or a high ranking commander of the city, but by one whose name had yet to echo beyond the ranks of the Ba Sing Se garrison.
For the Xiao Zhong soldiers, the sight ignited a fleeting surge of triumph. Some, carried away by desperation and superstition, dared to imagine that Ba Sing Se had somehow turned to their favor, and that the long tide of misfortune had at last broken the city's supposed neutrality and aided them. Thus, the Heaven had chosen their cause!
The illusion did not endure.
A single arrow, loosed from afar, found its mark. That fragile hope was extinguished as swiftly as it had risen.
Skimming over the braced shield wall that guarded the Xiao Zhong commander, the arrow found its mark with cruel certainty. It punched clean through the man's throat, felling him from his armored steed in a graceless collapse. For a heartbeat, the formation wavered, and discipline buckling under the shock. As always, hesitation proved fatal.
They were struck before they could steady themselves.
Another surging mass of Ba Sing Se soldiers bore down upon them, halberds lowered, spears thrusting forward in ruthless synchrony. Their advance was deliberate, almost ritualistic, as a low chant of death rolled through their ranks. Steel rose and fell in unison, carving through the disordered Xiao Zhong lines, leaving no space for recovery save for eradication.
The gold and green ranks, so often derided as pampered wardens hiding behind their walls, revealed a harsher truth. Well-fed, well-equipped, and drilled within the safety of their bastions, they possessed a discipline that belied their reputation. Against them, the Xiao Zhong soldiers found that experience alone could not compensate for inferior numbers, nor for the iron weight of a city's full garrison brought to bear.
Blood seeped into the earth, darkening the soil beneath trampling boots. Banners marked with the golden coin surged forward without pause, cutting down any who dared attempt a stand. Even the most stalwart men in dark green armor could not withstand the intermittent thunder of boulders crashing against their shield walls, shattering cohesion with every impact.
And then, the breaking.
It came not as a single moment, but as a collapse from within. The Ba Sing Se general, ever the opportunist, drove his contingent of cavalry into the most vulnerable flank of the Xiao Zhong host. They struck with predatory precision, like carrion birds descending upon the wounded, tearing apart what little order remained.
Sensing the fracture, the general gave the order. A volley answered him with crossbow bolts and hurled stones arcing skyward until they blotted out the light. They fell with merciless force, pulverizing those who dared to flee. The fortunate few, whether of Jian Xin or Xiao Zhong, scrambled into the nearby forest, throwing themselves beneath the dense canopy in desperate hope of shelter.
The pursuers did not commit their cataphracts to the tangled undergrowth. Instead, they advanced on foot, measured and cautious, cutting down stragglers and rooting out those who lingered to spring ambush.
Among them, a young soldier of the city garrison pressed deeper than the rest, driven by the momentum of the hunt. He pursued the fleeing shadows into the thick of the forest, only to lose them in an instant. Something unseen struck his helmet from above, a jarring blow from the low-hanging branches.
Or perhaps, not a branch at all.
The young soldier lifted his gaze, still dazed. Looking up was certainly a mistake. Whatever fragile composure he possessed gave way to a deeper, colder horror.
A grizzled veteran of the Ba Sing Se garrison stepped beside him, his presence steadying in a way words alone could not. He followed the young man's stare to the shapes suspended from the branches above.
"Bandits," the veteran said at last, almost offhand. "Used to prey on caravans, or worst, fleeing folks making for the walls."
The much older man raised his halberd and gestured toward the nearest corpse, the iron tip nudging it with a dull creak. The body swayed gently, its features long surrendered to decay and the bugs.
"Members of the Hanging Tree brigands," he continued, voice weighed down by a grim, almost ceremonial gravity. "Fitting, in a way. Years ago, they strung up defenseless village women just like this, after…"
The sentence withered on his tongue, as though even the memory itself recoiled from what followed.
The veteran's voice lowered, edged with something harder. "Whoever did this made certain such vermin lingered, slowly."
It took time for the young soldier's eyes to adjust to the forest's gloom. What at first seemed a scattering of corpses soon multiplied. Dozens emerged from the shadows, then scores, until the full enormity of it revealed itself.
Thousands.
They hung in silence, gently swaying from thick, ancient branches. Some still bore the sagging remnants of flesh. Others had been reduced to bare, grinning skeletons, picked clean by insects and carrion beasts. The forest itself seemed to breathe around them, indifferent and eternal.
Indeed, a rather grotesque gallery.
The men of the Ba Sing Se garrison stood in uneasy stillness, their earlier confidence leeched away. No one spoke above a murmur. Whatever hand had crafted this display, it had done so with a patience and a cruelty that unsettled even hardened soldiers.
Still, a grim thought lingered among them. Better the bandits than the innocent.
"This… is not the work of a hero," the young soldier, not even over twenty, said at last. His voice hushed, as though the architect of this macabre spectacle might yet be listening.
"No," the veteran replied, exhaling slowly. A pause lingered. "Good thing, too."
The forest thrived all the same. Its soil, dark and richly nourished, drank deeply from what had been given to it. Strange birds nested among the branches, weaving rib bones and sinew into crude cradles for their young. Life persisted, quiet and unbothered, feeding upon the ruin of the damned.