The screech tore through the air like a jagged blade, high and piercing, echoing off the ridge and down into the valley where AshenVale lay besieged. Roland Tenebrae's hand tightened on his sword hilt, his shield already raised in instinctive guard. The column of one hundred and five militia men—his brothers' squads woven seamlessly among them—halted at the crest, boots grinding into the dirt road. Below, the settlement's timber walls stood defiant but battered, splinters flying as harpy talons raked the ramparts. Thirty of the winged horrors wheeled in the sky, their feathered bodies twisting with unnatural grace, beaks snapping, eyes gleaming with feral hunger. At the gates, a horde of lizardmen pressed forward, their scaled hides glistening under the afternoon sun, forked tongues tasting the air as they thrust crude spears and swung rusted blades against the faltering militia line.
"Form up! Shields high—" Roland's command cut short as the lone harpy broke from the flock. It had spotted them, perhaps drawn by the glint of Levithoro steel or the disciplined march that screamed threat. Wings folded tight against its torso, it plummeted like a feathered arrow, claws outstretched—long, curved talons that could rend flesh from bone in a single pass. The air whistled around it, feathers ruffling in the dive, its screech rising to a fever pitch as it targeted the front ranks.
Time seemed to slow for the Tenebrae brothers. Chris barked a warning to his squad, shields snapping up in unison. Tom drew his bow in a fluid motion, but the harpy was too fast, too close. It aimed for the center, where a young militiaman from Eldermere—barely out of his teens—held his shield high but trembled visibly. The creature's shadow fell over him, claws gleaming like polished obsidian, ready to hook into the wood and yank him skyward.
But Matthew, the youngest brother at thirteen, moved like lightning forged in their father's drills. Positioned just behind the front line, he lunged forward, sword whipping up in a precise arc. The blade, etched with the black-sun crest and honed to a razor's edge, met the harpy mid-dive. Steel cleaved through feathers, muscle, and bone with a wet crunch, splitting the beast cleanly in half from beak to tail. Gore sprayed across the shields, hot and foul-smelling, as the two halves tumbled to the ground in a heap of twitching limbs and blood-soaked plumage.
"Got it!" Matthew shouted, his voice cracking with adrenaline but steady in triumph. He shook the ichor from his blade, eyes wide but fierce, the youngest sergeant's mettle proven in that single, decisive stroke.
The column erupted in a brief cheer, but Roland quelled it with a sharp gesture. "Reassemble! Shields front, bows rear! We charge on my mark!" His voice carried the authority of their father's legacy, cutting through the chaos like a clarion call. The squads reformed seamlessly—front ranks interlocking shields into a mobile wall, spears and swords protruding like thorns; the rear peeling back under Tom's command, nocking arrows with practiced hands. Chris and Sam flanked the edges, ensuring no gaps; Harold and Jeffrey murmured quick wards, faint glows of everyday magic reinforcing straps and steadying nerves.
The harpies noticed them now, a chorus of shrieks rising as several peeled off from the ramparts, wheeling toward the newcomers. Below, the lizardmen horde—perhaps a hundred strong, with armored elites at the fore—hissed in response, some turning to face the approaching threat while others redoubled their assault on the gates.
"Forward!" Roland roared, his squad surging ahead at a controlled jog, shields high to deflect dives. The column moved as one, boots thundering on the downhill slope, the road's fresh gravel crunching underfoot. Dust kicked up, mingling with the acrid scent of blood and sweat already wafting from the battlefield. Tom, at the rear, raised his bow arm. "Archers! Loose on my count—aim high for the wings, low for the scales! One… two… loose!"
A volley of arrows whistled skyward, shafts fletched with goose feathers arcing gracefully before descending like lethal rain. The first wave struck true: harpies mid-dive convulsed as arrows pierced membranes and joints, sending three plummeting in spirals of feathers and screams. One crashed into the lizardmen below, crushing a spear-wielder under its bulk. On the ground, lizardmen hissed and staggered as shafts found gaps in scales—throats, eyes, underbellies—felling a score in the initial barrage. Bodies slumped, tails thrashing in death throes, green blood pooling on the trampled earth.
"Reload! Steady advance!" Tom commanded, his voice calm amid the din. His own bow sang again, an arrow embedding in a harpy's eye socket, dropping it like a stone.
The distance closed—two hundred yards, one hundred. Harpies dove in retaliation, talons slashing at exposed helmets and shoulders. One grazed Chris's squad, ripping a gash in a militiaman's arm before Sam's spear impaled its wing, pinning it to the ground where boots and blades finished the job. "Hold the line! No breaks!" Chris yelled, shield-bashing another harpy aside, his sword following in a thrust that gutted the beast mid-air.
Closer now, the lizardmen realized the peril too late. Their rear ranks turned, hissing challenges, but the Tenebrae column hit like a battering ram. Shields slammed into scaled backs with bone-jarring force, the impact reverberating up arms and into shoulders. Roland led the charge, his kite shield crushing a lizardman's spine as he drove forward. "Through them! Swords out—necks and joints!"
Like a well-oiled machine, honed by weeks of drills and their father's unyielding standards, the squads executed. Front ranks bashed and stabbed in unison: shields pushing foes off-balance, swords flashing through exposed necks in clean, decapitating strokes. Blood sprayed in arcs, hot and coppery, as heads rolled and bodies crumpled. Chris's squad flanked left, Tom's arrows providing cover from behind; Sam's men drove a wedge right, Harold's wards glowing faintly to deflect glancing blows.
A lizardman elite—taller, armored in rusted plates—lunged at Roland, spear thrusting for his throat. Roland parried with his shield, the impact jarring his arm, then countered with a low sweep that hamstrung the creature. It fell hissing, and his boot crushed its windpipe. "Push! Reinforce the gates!"
Jeffrey, weaving through the melee, channeled a burst of everyday magic—a stabilizing spell that mended a squadmate's cracked shield mid-fight, allowing the man to block a harpy's dive. "Steady your grips! The gods favor the prepared!" he called, his voice a beacon amid the chaos.
Harold's squad clashed with a knot of lizardmen, spears clanging against shields. "Flank them—left and right!" he ordered, his own blade dispatching one with a precise thrust to the eye. The air filled with the wet thuds of steel on flesh, the guttural hisses of dying reptiles, and the triumphant shouts of men.
Matthew, not far behind, parried a harpy's talons with his sword, spinning to slash its underbelly open. Guts spilled in a steaming pile, and he pressed on, his youth belying the ferocity. "For Eldermere! For home!"
The battle dragged on, a grueling symphony of steel and screams. Harpies dove relentlessly, forcing the column to alternate between ground assaults and skyward defenses. One harpy snatched a lizardman ally by mistake, carrying it aloft before dropping it in a bone-shattering fall. Lizardmen countered with poison-tipped darts, but the Tenebrae shields held, wards from Jeffrey and Roselda's distant enchantments turning aside the worst.
"Archers—focus the skies!" Tom bellowed, his volley felling another four harpies, their bodies crashing like feathered meteors. On the ground, Sam's squad encircled a group of lizardmen, shields forming an impenetrable ring as swords darted in for kills. "No mercy—end them quick!"
Roland's voice rose above the fray: "Brothers! Squads! Hold formation— we're breaking through!" They did, cutting a swath of carnage, lizardman corpses piling like felled logs. The gates loomed closer, the AshenVale militia visible now—bloodied, exhausted, their line thinning as comrades fell to spear thrusts and talon rakes.
Finally, after what felt like hours but was mere minutes of brutal intensity, the Tenebrae force reached the front. "Reinforce! Shields to the line!" Roland commanded, his men slotting seamlessly beside the wounded defenders. The militia—faces pale with fatigue and fear—rallied at the sight, fresh steel bolstering their flagging resolve.
The final push was a whirlwind. Harpies, sensing the tide turn, shrieked in fury, diving en masse. Tom's archers loosed a desperate volley, arrows blotting the sky and dropping half a dozen in a feathered cascade. Lizardmen pressed, but the combined line held—shields interlocking, swords and spears reaping a grim harvest. Chris beheaded one with a sweeping strike; Harold impaled another through the chest; Jeffrey's magic steadied a faltering militiaman, allowing him to fell a foe.
One last harpy horde descended, but Matthew's squad met them with upraised spears, impaling three mid-dive. The remaining lizardmen broke, hissing retreats as they scattered into the woods, leaving their dead behind.
Silence fell, broken only by ragged breaths and moans of the wounded. The battlefield reeked of blood, bile, and charred feathers—some harpies had caught fire from stray torches. Roland surveyed the carnage, his chest heaving. Not a single Tenebrae man lost; their drills, their unity, had forged an unbreakable phalanx. But among the piled corpses—lizardmen twisted in death, harpies splayed with broken wings—he spotted the grim toll on AshenVale: dozens of militia bodies crushed beneath the monsters, limbs mangled, faces frozen in agony.
"Clear the dead!" Roland ordered, voice hoarse but firm. "Get these monster corpses off the AshenVale troops—honor their fallen! Move with care—check every body for signs of life. Drag the beasts to the side, pile them for burning later. No one leaves a brother under filth."
The squads moved with disciplined efficiency, the same precision that had carried them through the fight now turned to grim labor. Men paired up, gripping scaled limbs and feathered torsos. Lizardman bodies—cold and heavy, tails dragging furrows in the mud—were hauled aside in teams of four, their weight leaving deep grooves in the churned earth. Harpy corpses proved lighter but messier; wings flopped limply, trailing broken feathers and trailing entrails as they were pulled away. One particularly large harpy, its wingspan nearly ten feet, required six men to lift; its talons scraped the ground, leaving furrows like plow marks.
Beneath the heaps, the AshenVale fallen emerged slowly, heartbreakingly. A young archer, barely twenty, pinned under a lizardman's bulk—his bow still clutched in rigid fingers. A veteran sergeant, armor rent by talons, face peaceful in death despite the gaping wound across his chest. Others lay in twisted poses: arms outstretched as if reaching for comrades, legs bent at unnatural angles from the weight that had crushed them. Blood soaked the ground in dark patches, mingling with the monsters' greener ichor to form a sickly slurry.
"Here—still breathing!" one of Sam's men called. A militiaman, leg shattered, groaned as the corpse atop him was rolled away. Two others lifted him gently, supporting his weight between their shoulders. "Easy now—lean on me."
Roland walked the field himself, kneeling beside bodies, checking pulses with callused fingers. Most were gone—eyes staring blankly at the sky, mouths open in silent screams. He closed the eyes of one, a boy no older than Matthew, whispering a quiet Tenebrae prayer under his breath: "Rest in the black sun's shadow, brother."
When the last monster corpse was dragged clear—piled in a grotesque mound twenty yards from the gates—the field lay open. The dead of AshenVale numbered nearly forty, their bodies laid out in rows by the Tenebrae men, cloaks draped over them where possible, weapons placed beside them as marks of respect. The injured—perhaps twenty more—were carried on improvised litters: shields lashed together with belts, cloaks stretched taut between spears. Moans rose from the wounded as they were borne toward the gates.
"Inside—quickly!" Chris commanded, helping carry a man with a gashed leg. The gates creaked open, held by surviving guards, and the column poured in, bearing their burdens.
Within AshenVale's walls, the air was thick with the scent of woodsmoke and fear. Timber homes huddled around a central square, elders—gray-haired men and women in simple robes—waiting with anxious eyes. They rushed forward as the gates sealed, offering water skins and bandages.
"Blessings upon you, strangers!" an elder woman cried, her voice trembling. "You saved us—the gods sent you!"
Roland stepped forward, wiping blood from his brow. "We're from Eldermere, under Captain Dane's orders. Sent to secure the road, bolster your defenses, train your militia. The wilds press hard—we came as fast as we could."
The elders bowed deeply, gratitude etched in every line. "Command as you see fit," an old man said, his beard streaked with ash. "Our defenses are yours. The monsters came at dawn—overwhelmed us."
Sam, scanning the square, noted clusters of young men—able-bodied, sturdy from farm or forge work—huddled in doorways, eyes wide but weapons absent. "Many strong lads here," he said pointedly. "Why weren't they on the walls?"
The elders exchanged glances, sorrow deepening. "Our trained militia led the defense—veterans from the capital's call. They fell first, cut down in the initial rush. The rest… untrained, fearful. We couldn't risk them breaking the line."
The brothers shared a look—nods of understanding, resolve hardening. Roland's eyes met Chris's, then Tom's, down the line to Matthew. They knew what came next: forging these raw recruits into fighters, turning fear into steel. The battle for the gates was won, but the true work—building a defense that would endure the next assault, and the one after that—had only just begun. AshenVale would stand, not because of luck or divine favor, but because the Tenebrae brothers had arrived, and they would not leave until every man who could hold a spear was ready to do so.