...
A shadow vaulted over the battlements.
It landed with a heavy, earth-shaking metallic clang that briefly drowned out the din of the battle. It stood over two meters tall, clad in jagged, obsidian armor that bled a freezing, necrotic mist. In its left hand, it held a massive tower shield wrought from blackened steel, the metal screaming with the shifting, embossed faces of the damned. In its right, A black mace crowned with twisted iron spikes, radiating an aura of concentrated darkness.
It slowly turned its head. Beneath its horned helm, two pinpricks of hateful, cold red light flared.
"Contact!" Gerrick screamed, desperation ripping the command from his throat. " 1St Shield formation! Mages, focus on the giant-Undead!"
The exhausted soldiers of the Theocracy obeyed their training. They surged forward, locking shields with a deafening clatter. A dozen spears thrust forward at the towering monstrosity.
The Death Guard did not bother to block.
It stepped into the spear wall and swung the black mace.
SHING.
The sound of the mace moving through the air was a horrific sound. The three iron-wood spears were sheared in half. The mace continued its smooth, inevitable arc, smashing through the iron-banded shields, the chainmail, and the three men behind them as if they were nothing.
Blood sprayed in a thick arc across the pale stone. The top halves of the soldiers slid to the floor.
"Fire! Burn it!" Gerrick shouted.
A surviving mage hurled a desperate, concentrated lance of pure flame [Flame lance] at the Death Guard's chest. But the Death Guard casually raised its tower shield. The flame splashed against the dark metal and instantly snuffed out. A pulse of necrotic energy rippled from the shield, throwing the mage backward with such force that his neck snapped against the watchtower door.
"Monster!" Varkas roared, his grief overriding his fear. He lunged, stabbing his shortsword precisely toward a gap in the Knight's armored ribs.
The blade struck the obsidian plate and shattered with a harsh ping. The Death Guard didn't even look at him. It simply backhanded the lieutenant with the edge of the screaming shield.
The impact sounded like a dropped boulder. Varkas's ribcage powdered instantly. His broken body flew off the wall, tumbling down into the swarming mass of undead below.
Gerrick stood alone. His men were dead, dying, or fleeing down the stairwells. The skeletal horde was pouring over the walls behind the towering Death Guard, but the monster waved them back with a slow flick of its mace, claiming the commander for itself.
Gerrick's breath came in shallow, jagged gasps. He tasted copper and ash.
He thought of his wife, Martha, sleeping in their bed two miles away. He thought of his son, laughing in the garden, play-fighting with a splintered wooden sword just that morning.
I won't see them again.
The thought was clarifying. The frantic, exhausting calculus of survival vanished from his mind, replaced by the freezing resolve of a man who was already dead. There was no bargaining left. No tactics. Just the weight of the iron in his hand.
If I am going to die here today, I am taking you with me, monster.
"Come on then!" Gerrick roared, raising his sword, his voice cracking with the last of his humanity. "For the Theocracy! For the Six! And For my Son's Future!"
He charged, throwing all his weight into an overhead strike.
The Death Guard simply raised its black mace. It didn't mock him or answer his challenge. It simply stepped forward to execute him with the burning hatred for living.
The parry was a bone-crushing collision. Gerrick felt his wrists shatter instantly from the sheer kinetic force, the jolt traveling up his forearms in a hot gout of blinding pain. His sword spun away into the dark.
Before Gerrick could even scream, the black mace reversed its arc.
Metal ground against bone. The blackened strike cleaved through Gerrick's collarbone, biting deep into his chest cavity with a wet, heavy thud. The sheer weight of the weapon crushed his lungs, filling his throat with boiling blood.
His vision widened, the colors bleeding out of the world, leaving only the cold red stare of his executioner.
Martha, his mind whispered, a single, fraying thread of love lost in the dark. Run.
The Death Guard ripped the mace free, and Captain Gerrick fell backward into the suffocating green abyss.
The gate was undefended, and the dead poured into the Middle city.
.
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The Next 15 Chapters + 10 Bonus Chapters
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