Chapter 39: The Last Stand
The sound of the gate exploding inward was a death knell. Alistair watched in horror as the tide of green-lit corpses poured through the breach, a silent, unstoppable flood of death. The battle cries of his defenders were now shouts of panic and desperation, swallowed by the eerie quiet of the Reanimates.
He was too far away. Useless. The plan, the alliance, his stewardship—it had all led to this moment of catastrophic failure.
But as he stood there, paralyzed, a new sound rose from within the settlement. It wasn't a cry of fear. It was a roar. A deep, guttural, Graxian roar of pure, undiluted fury.
Through the shattered gate, Alistair saw Grok. The massive chieftain stood like a bastion in the center of the breach, his resonance hammer a whirlwind of destruction. He wasn't just swinging the weapon; he was an extension of it. Every sweep shattered two or three Reanimates into clouds of dust. Borak fought at his side, his good arm wielding a hammer with desperate strength, protecting his chieftain's flank.
They were making a stand. They were turning the breach into a killing zone.
"To the chieftain!" Thora's voice rang out from the wall above the gate. "Protect the breach!"
The order cut through the panic. Blue-Skin hunters leaped down from the palisade, landing amidst the enemy, their spears and hammers finding targets. Graxian warriors who had been scattered by the initial surge now rallied, pushing forward to form a solid wall of muscle and rage around Grok.
They were not just defending a settlement anymore. They were defending their leader. Their home. Each other.
A new energy, born of desperation and unity, filled the air. A Graxian warrior, his arm mangled, used his own body as a shield to block a Reanimate from reaching a Blue-Skin child hiding behind a water barrel. A Blue-Skin hunter, out of arrows, grabbed a burning log from a fire pit and thrust it into the face of a corpse, the purifying fire making it stagger back.
They were losing ground, but they were making the enemy pay for every inch.
This was not the fight Alistair had imagined. It was brutal, close-quarters, and messy. But it was a fight they could win. Not with grand displays of power, but with grit, with courage, with a refusal to surrender.
The feeling broke his paralysis.
A new, clean anger washed through him, burning away the despair. He was not useless. He was the Earth-Shaker.
He stopped trying to run to the gate. Instead, he turned his focus inward, to the deep, steady pulse of the planetary core. He ignored his fatigue, his pain, the screaming wrongness of the fog. He reached for the simplest, most fundamental power he possessed: his connection to the very ground his people stood on.
He poured his will into the earth directly inside the settlement, in the space between the shattered gate and the central hut where the most vulnerable were hidden.
The ground there began to churn. It wasn't a violent eruption, but a rapid, purposeful reshaping. The soil compacted, rising into a low, steep berm, a curved wall of solid earth that arced across the settlement, creating a new, smaller defensive line behind the main breach. It was a fallback position, a place to make a final stand.
It wasn't a grand wall. It was only chest-high. But it was something. It was hope.
"Fall back to the earth-work!" Alistair shouted, his voice raw but carrying over the din of battle. "Now!"
Thora heard him. She echoed the command. Grok, seeing the new barrier, began a controlled, fighting retreat, his hammer clearing a path for his warriors.
They fell back to the berm, scrambling over the top and turning to face the enemy again, their backs now protected. The Reanimates clambered over the low wall, but they were slowed, channeled into a narrower space where the resonance hammers could find them more easily.
The tide, for a moment, was held.
Alistair stood on the outside of his own earth-work, separated from his people by the very barrier he had created. He was on the wrong side, surrounded by the shambling horde. But he didn't care. He had given them a chance.
He turned to face the endless green eyes advancing toward him. He was tired. He was wounded. He was alone.
But he was not finished.
Varg had wanted him to feel powerless. But as Alistair prepared to sell his life dearly, he felt something else entirely.
He felt peace. And a cold, certain resolve.
The duel wasn't over. It had just moved to a new arena.