The stench of spilled blood within the Veynar ranks was no longer of an honourable battle fought against an external foe; it was the foul, suffocating odor of the civil war raging inside the Veynar ranks.
Every strike between clansmen felt like an axe-blade cleaving the soul of the tribe itself.
The loyalists, though fighting with a wild, grief-stricken fury, were dying.
They were sandwiched between the merciless desperation of Thorne's traitors from within and the unrelenting, grinding pressure of the Coalition from behind.
"Hold the line!" a Veynar veteran screamed, his face completely painted in the hot crimson spray of his own comrade's open throat.
He brought his axe down with a sickening thwack, burying it deep into a traitor's shoulder, only to be run through from behind by a Coalition spear.
He didn't even drop his blade as he collapsed; his dying weight pinned his killer to the earth, giving a fellow loyalist a split second to crush the traitor's skull.
