[The First Day of Destruction, 21:08] [The Inner Wall: The Throat of the Gate]
The commander's roar shattered the momentary relief across the parapet, a command swiftly swallowed by the tearing, discordant shriek of a hundred thousand dead throats answering from the abyss.
That vanguard wedge had completed its grim, bloody work. Now, the final toll was coming due.
From the elevated vantage point of the command tier, the true scale of the battlefield revealed itself as a portrait of apocalyptic desperation. That glowing pocket carved by the Paladins formed a fragile, dying teardrop of blinding white light, surrounded by an ocean of suffocating viridian green.
The Outer and Middle Districts were gone. In their place churned a sea of the dead stretching to the horizon. This force no longer resembled an army. It moved like a geological event.
Above the wall, the sky fractured. The celestial canopy of the Seraphim was dying. Those high-tier Principality Peace angels, entities woven from pure light, were losing their war against the atmosphere.
Concentrated necrotic miasma rising from the endless horde acted as invisible acid upon their divine forms. Geometric flight patterns degraded into chaotic swarms, their blinding wings turning a sickly yellow. An Archangel Flame plummeted from the clouds, extinguishing into foul gray smoke before striking the ruined cobblestones. The heavens themselves were falling.
While the center bled, the flanks of the Inner Wall faced methodical dismantling. Shifting his focus to the eastern masonry, Vane watched feral zombies and multi-jointed ghouls swarm over the merlons like a plague of locusts. Heavy iron cauldrons tipped over the edge to pour payloads of blessed pitch down the vertical drops. Boiling liquid melted dead flesh straight to the bone.
Yet the undead offered no screams, nor did they halt their ascent. They climbed directly over the burning bodies of their own kind to breach the parapet.
Militiamen fought a losing battle of attrition using shattered spears and bare fists. Nearby, a battered priest swung a heavy brass censer to crush a leaping ghoul's skull, only to be dragged screaming over the precipice by three more rotting corpses. The defensive line became a fraying thread snapping in a dozen places at once.
Turning away from the dying parapet, Vane drew his broadsword. The commander descended the narrow, blood-slicked stone stairs toward the plaza, a lethal chokepoint known as the throat of the massive gates.
Deep within the yawning mouth of the subterranean tunnels behind him, the last of the civilian evacuation convoy rumbled downward. Draft horses coated in thick froth hauled overloaded wagons into the earth, sheltering weeping children and shivering merchants huddled together in the dark. Above them, the massive ironwood vault doors groaned, slowly grinding shut on heavy hinges.
Reaching the cobblestones of the plaza, Vane leaned heavily against the splintered, iron-shod frame of a broken supply wagon wedged in the corridor. Jagged spasms racked his chest. The air inside the throat tasted of burnt ozone, sulfur, and the sharp copper tang of total physical exhaustion.
Looking out through the shattered outer gates into the killing field, he watched the green fog swirl anew at the edge of the Paladins' collapsing perimeter. The previous reprieve had been a lie.
Towering silhouettes of the black iron giants rose from the pulverized pavement where the angels had previously struck them down. Exhibiting neither anger nor pain, the entities methodically reformed their monolithic line.
Jagged cracks ruined their massive interlocking shields, and heavy dents marred their obsidian armor. Yet their malice remained untouched. Behind those towering bulwarks, hundreds of multi-jointed ghouls and heavily armored skeletal warriors stacked up, preparing to flood the corridor.
We bought them five minutes, Vane noted internally, wiping a thick smear of soot and foreign blood from his eyes. Glancing back over his shoulder at the slowly closing vault doors, he measured the grim reality. We need ten.
Reaching down with a trembling gauntlet, the commander touched a small wooden symbol of the Earth God tucked securely into his heavy leather belt. The polished grain evoked memories of the warm bread Martha used to bake on the eve of the Solstice festivals.
The kitchen had been reduced to ashes, and Martha was destined for the same fate.
Neither his determination nor any sudden spark of vengeance was ignited by this discovery. Instead, the revelation drained him of all emotion, leaving an icy, desolate emptiness where only the harsh calculations of obligation remained.
"Signal the line," Vane croaked. A ruined, gravelly rasp constituted his voice, barely carrying over the roar of the fires. "We are not retreating to the wall."
His adjutant lieutenant, a boy barely twenty with a deep scalp wound bleeding into his left eye, stared back in sheer disbelief.
"Sir? The carts are clear of the immediate combat zone. We hold the throat. We can pull the survivors back and drop the portcullis."
"If we pull back now, the Death Knights will breach the outer gates before they can be barred," Vane said softly.
Tracking movement in the fog, the commander watched a massive, bloated Blood-milk Hulk knitting its flesh together, regenerating a half-melted face with sickening, wet squelches.
"They will chase the tail of the convoy straight into the tunnels," Vane explained in a flat, clinical tone. "We have to close the door from the outside."
The lieutenant's breath hitched. Closing the door from the outside meant abandoning everyone currently standing in the plaza to the unending tide of the Sorcerer Kingdom. No retreat remained. No rescue would arrive.
Surveying the heroes standing amidst the plaza's carnage, Vane noted the regular infantry. Men of the city watch and the local militia fought side by side with the heavy rearguard. Bodies trembled with primal terror, and tears cut through grime as they thrust their spears, yet every single man held his ground.
"Hold the choke points," Vane ordered, speaking into the command crystal at his collar. The words felt like heavy lead stones in his mouth.
"Spend everything. Do not let a single dead thing pass this line until the sanctum is sealed."
He pointed his glowing broadsword toward the vanguard front of the wedge.
"Vanguard. Keep the center rigid. Take the heavy impacts. Do not step back."
Tilting his head toward the viridian sky, he issued his final tactical request.
"Seraphim. Drop the hammer. Clear the air for the final rites."
Finally, Vane turned his gaze back to the exhausted, bleeding casters huddled near the gaping mouth of the subterranean tunnel.
"Seal the earth behind us. When the last wheel turns, when the vault doors lock, you close the throat."
Drawing his standard-issue longsword, the young lieutenant snapped to a crisp, flawless salute. Hot tears cut clean tracks through the thick grime coating his face.
"For the Six, Commander."
Vane adjusted the grip on his broadsword. After hours of brutal, muscle-tearing combat, the heavy steel felt bizarrely weightless in his hands. Rolling his shoulders, he accepted the comforting, familiar burden of his armor.
"Spend them well," Vane whispered to the howling smoke.
Stepping forward, the commander left the safety of the broken wagon behind. He walked past the weeping militiamen and the bleeding priests to take his place in the direct center of the vanguard line. Raising his blade, he pointed the steel directly into the heart of the creeping dark.
"Spend us all."