Garth's axe came down hard.
The Alpha moved.
That same blur — that infuriating, familiar blur — and then it was gone, reappearing behind him before the blade had even finished its arc.
"He did that again—!"
The Alpha didn't give him a moment. It slammed into him from behind, full body weight, driving Garth face-first into the stone with enough force to crack it beneath him. Dust exploded outward. The impact rattled through every existing wound on his body like someone had struck a bell made of pain.
He lay still for exactly one second.
Then he got up.
No theatrics. No speech. Just hands pressing into cracked stone and a body that refused the alternative.
He found his axe. Gripped it. Turned.
The Alpha was already coming.
Garth met it with everything he had left — no finesse, no strategy, just a man with a weapon and the stubborn refusal to go down again. He swung wide, forcing the beast to adjust, then cut the swing short and drove the axe upward in a brutal underhand arc that caught its jaw. The Alpha's head snapped back. Garth stepped in close — inside its reach, where its size worked against it — and hammered the axe sideways into its ribcage.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
The beast swiped at him. He ducked, felt claws part the air above his head, and drove his elbow into its leg to break its stance. It stumbled. He moved with it, staying attached, refusing to let it reset. Iron Lunge — his full weight thrown behind the axe, punching the blade deep into the Alpha's shoulder.
The snarl it let out shook the ruins.
Garth pulled the axe free and stepped back, breathing hard, eyes scanning.
Then he saw it.
The Alpha's neck — exposed for just a moment as it straightened, still recovering from the last hit.
He didn't think.
He ran.
Not at the Alpha.
At the nearest dead Shackled Hound.
He hit it at full speed, using the carcass as a step, planting his boot and launching himself upward. His hand caught the Alpha's fur — matted and damp with blood — and he hauled himself up with a grunt, legs scrambling for purchase as the beast immediately began to thrash.
He didn't stop moving.
Axe rising. Falling. Rising again.
Strike after strike into the Alpha's neck — not elegant, not precise, just relentless. Each blow drawing blood. Each one landing harder than the last as Garth found his rhythm atop the writhing beast, legs locked around it, left hand buried in its fur, right arm working the axe like something mechanical and unstoppable.
The Alpha bucked violently.
Garth held on.
Theo blocked a hound, kicked it aside, and looked up.
His eyes found Garth on top of the Alpha — still swinging, still holding — and something shifted in his chest that he didn't entirely have a name for.
"He's going to do it!"
The thought arrived plainly, without argument.
Kairo watched from the rear, still and composed, but behind his eyes something had loosened just slightly — the particular relief of a calculation resolving cleanly.
(Perfect. Looks like we don't need a plan at all.)
Nearby, Fallon stood at the edge of the formation, arms folded, watching Garth with an expression that was almost — almost — a pout.
(Looks like I won't get a chance to dance.)
She sighed internally and said nothing.
Onyx stood further down the line, lance at his side, hollow eyes fixed on the orc atop the Alpha. He didn't speak. He didn't move. He simply watched, with the quiet attention of someone witnessing something worth remembering.
The tension pulled taut across the entire battlefield.
Every eye drawn to that single point — a bleeding, battered man on top of a dying monster, axe rising one final time.
The Alpha wrenched sideways — a desperate, full-body lurch that would have thrown anyone else clear.
Garth drove the axe down.
The blade opened a deep gash across the top of the Alpha's neck — long and final, the kind of wound that didn't argue. The beast's legs buckled beneath it. It swayed once, massive and silent, like a tower deciding whether to fall.
Then it fell.
The ground shook when it hit.
A beat of silence — stunned and absolute — and then the cheer broke across the formation like a wave. Rabbitmen hollering, weapons raised. Shiri letting out a booming laugh that echoed off the ruins. Renn exhaling shakily, a quiet, genuine smile crossing his face.
Garth stood atop the fallen Alpha and raised his axe.
"This is for Ham, you stupid mutt!" His voice cracked with exhaustion and didn't care. "For Lord Kairo! For Lord Varen!"
He climbed down, legs unsteady beneath him, and crossed the battlefield without ceremony — straight to where Ham lay on his side, ribs rising and falling in slow, heavy breaths. Garth dropped to a knee beside the boar and pressed a hand to his flank.
Ham opened one eye.
"Ham, you ok, buddy."
Then huffed.
Low. Deeply unimpressed.
Garth laughed — a real one, rough and tired. "Yeah. I know. The name's not intimidating." He patted the boar's side firmly. "You did good anyway."
Ham snorted and closed his eye again.
Kairo turned his gaze across the remaining Shackled Hounds. They had slowed — milling aimlessly, the coordinated aggression draining out of them as they registered the Alpha's fall. Disoriented. Leaderless.
"This is over."
For the first time since the battle had begun, something loosened in his chest — slow and quiet, like a knot coming undone thread by thread. He hadn't realized how heavily the Alpha had been sitting at the back of every calculation until the weight of it finally, carefully, lifted.
He exhaled once.
Short. Controlled. Almost imperceptible.
Somewhere in the wasteland, hidden from every sight line, a figure watched.
Laughter — quiet, delighted, entirely genuine — clapping through gloved fingers and pressed his smiling mouth.
"Marvelous!" Jeeves murmured, to no one. "What a wonderful show!"
His eyes — bright with something that had no business being called admiration — swept across the battlefield. The rabbitmen cheering. The fallen Alpha. The battered orc laughing beside his boar.
The rabbit's morale raised high.
He tilted his head, still smiling.
Why was he laughing? He lost. His lord Leon lost.
The thought passed through him and didn't seem to trouble him in the slightest. He simply watched for another moment — appreciative, almost fond — and then composed himself with the practiced ease of a man straightening his collar before entering a room.
His fingers snapped.
Clean. Quiet. Deliberate.
"Well then," he said softly.
Fallon's eyes drifted toward the Alpha's body.
She wasn't sure why. Some instinct — the particular sensitivity that came from years of reading battlefields — pulled her attention there and held it.
She stilled.
Then smiled, slow and quiet.
(Looks like this isn't over)
The wounds on the Alpha's body moved.
Not dramatically. Not obviously. Just a subtle, wrongness — the torn flesh along its neck beginning to pull at itself, edges drawing inward, the deep gash Garth had carved slowly, silently sealing.
No one else had noticed.
The cheering continued.
Kairo stood with his back to it, already thinking ahead.
Then the red flash came.
It crossed the battlefield in an instant — a streak of deep crimson that hit Garth across the back with a sound like tearing canvas. He left the ground. Sailed backward. Hit the stone hard and slid.
The cheering stopped.
The battlefield held its breath for one horrible second —
And then the Alpha rose.
It stood slowly, deliberately, like something being reconstructed from the inside out. The wounds were gone. Every cut, every gash, every mark Garth had carved across its body over the course of this entire, brutal fight — gone. And around it now, a veil of deep red energy pulsed at its edges, low and steady, like a second heartbeat.
Chaos broke across the formation.
Garth pushed himself upright from the stone.
His back was bleeding again — fresh, deep, immediate. His axe lay a few feet away. His boar was still down. Every part of him that had felt something close to triumph thirty seconds ago now ached with a very different feeling entirely.
He stood.
Looked at the Alpha.
Looked at the red veil surrounding it.
Huffed once through his nose.
"Looks like this bastard's too tough to stay dead." The corner of his mouth pulled up despite everything — that same grin, battered and completely unrepentant. He reached down and picked up his axe.
Turned to face it fully.
"Alright then."
He raised the weapon.
Ready.
To be continued.....