Neogon winced as flames licked around the outer edge of his shield and crisped his hair.

  An Eschal invasion. Timed perfectly with an incursion? Coincidence? He didn’t think so, but he had no way to explain the attack otherwise. Somehow, Eschal had discovered a way to predict the rift.

  That was a nightmare on its own, but the creeping feeling in his skin as the rift creatures seemed to focus more heavily on his soldiers made it even worse.

  The uneasy alliance the five nations had over the past two decades was predicated on the existence of the rift. In a way, he’d been grateful for the rift’s appearance. It had swallowed a sizeable chunk of his homeland, but once it was there, no one had any time to fight each other anymore. Rechin had tried, but they’d been soundly crushed.

  By the time each nation had corralled its own monster problems, new borders had formed around the rift’s outer edge. The treaty had just made it all official, since by then no one had any hope of figuring out where the rift had come from or what its purpose was.

  Eschal had always been a steadfast ally against Rechin Amut, though. Why would they turn their back on that now?

  He supposed it didn’t really matter.

  As soon as the torrent of flames ceased, he lowered his shield. The soldiers to his left and right immediately burst into action, leaping impossibly high in an effort to reach the dragon. Fools.

  One of them landed on its back and stabbed a spear straight into the creature’s green scales. A great hit, but alone it was more like being poked with a toothpick. The other took an arrow at the apex of the jump and plummeted back to the earth.

  Neogon rushed forward and cleaved his axe into the helmet of a terrified Eschal soldier.

  “Do not engage the dragon! Defend! The men are the threat! Forward Tacuria!” He shouted for what felt like the millionth time, his voice booming with magical enhancement.

  The battle was going poorly. His army was not prepared to fight other people. They knew exactly how to repel the dragon, but they were shot down by Eschal bows or spells each time they tried. Long habits had them dying in droves as they attempted to combat the familiar enemy, only to be cut down by the new one.

  All the while, war trolls and goblins escaped by the hundreds, rushing past the beleaguered Tacurian forces to infest the woods and beyond.

  Eschal advanced.

  Eschal was not Rechin. They didn’t have the same intimidation factor that the drums of the Rechin War machine did. What they did have were numbers. True to form, the Eschal forces felt less like an army and more like a massive collection of mercenary companies.

  At least it was easy to tell who was friend and foe. Anyone not wearing the Tacurian Red and Silver.

  He stared down the lines, trying to get his bearings. They were close.

  They’d long since abandoned their fortifications on the rift, backing up into the plains. To the east, company after company of uniformless Eschal men and women engaged his soldiers. The west fared better. War trolls and goblins were everywhere, but those that engaged were cut down quickly by his experienced rift soldiers.

  Looming over them all was the dragon. Thankfully, at least that monster was indiscriminately attacking Eschal and Tacurian alike. Every time the monsters tried to attack the Eschal, though, they would fall back and give them free rein. The monsters ended up pushing on his frontlines, while more and more of them spilled from the rift to fill the gap.

  The mercenaries had planned this, and he’d been caught almost entirely off guard. Not completely, though.

  “Pyromancers! Light the wall! Full retreat!” He commanded, his voice carrying over the entire battlefield.

  His soldiers were well disciplined. They’d only been fighting for a short hour, and they were already exhausted, but they were disciplined. Most that he could see disengaged quickly and turned in time, making sure to cover their allies as they began to back away. A few immediately began to sprint to safety, abandoning even the pretense of a structured retreat. He tried to make note of the names, but he doubted they would matter.

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  Tacuria was known for its pyromancy. It had the best fire magic academy in the known world and produced more pyromancers than the other four countries combined.

  An invisible barrier was crossed as the soldiers began to retreat into the plains, whose line only Neogon knew.

  Suddenly, a great plume of fire erupted on the far eastern side of the battlefield. There were too many tall ogres and war trolls in his way to see, but he knew that far to the west, a similar phenomenon was playing out.

  Blasting inwards he could hear the screams as the explosions roared closer. A wall of fire burst up out of the soil. A trap laid years ago, only intended for use as a line of defence against a devastating rift break. Oil, buried in a line of drums fifty miles long. Lightable only by the acting general with a specific command.

  Light the wall.

  Men, horses, walls, trolls, and all were chucked into the air and lit aflame as the burning trap separated the two armies with a wall of fire.

  Fifty miles was a long fucking way. Big as this battlefield seemed, it wasn’t even a quarter of the full trap. The line of explosions would continue on to the west, far beyond the range of the rift break, all the way to the Rechin Border.

  Other generals who might not know about the fighting further down the border might be caught between the rift and the flames. If that happened, all the better! They had their own pyromancers. They weren’t facing an army of people, like he was, but at least they might be alerted and send aid.

  Fire burst from the ground alarmingly close to him as his squadron backed away. Screams of dying goblins and dying Eschal soldiers caught in the death line pierced the air, but were soon drowned by the exploding barrels, and flying dirt and debris.

  This wasn’t the end of the trap. Each squadron had at least one pyromancer, and as the fire became available in massive quantities, they took advantage.

  Fire swam forward like a wave, washing over the lines of Eschal soldiers and Riftborn monsters alike. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, and Neogon grimaced, knowing that many of his own troops were surely lost on the other side of that wall of flame.

  Pockets of resistance erupted throughout the enemy army. Water mages, wind mages, and less traditional skills created barriers that shielded much of the opposing army from the lick of the flames. He was almost certain someone over there had summoned darkness and somehow used it to shield against fire. That was new.

  The dragon flew overhead, avoiding the conflagration. Neogon wasn’t sure if fire would hurt this particular dragon. Odds weren’t good since it was already breathing fire.

  He felt separate from it all. Adrift in the feelings of his talent cashing in on the blood of his men. A solid cordon of soldiers had formed around him, separating him from the heat of the front line, and giving him time to think.

  War had been declared, but now there was a barrier between his broken army and the Eschal line.

  He didn’t lift the retreat, but that didn’t mean his army turned and fled. A slow retreat, never turning his back to the enemy.

  Enemies.

  Temporarily protected by the pyromancers, his soldiers grew bold and began to lash out at the dragon with magic and arrows. Shards of ice and arrows imbued with void filled the sky. His mages and archers desperately grasped at the opportunity to end the threat from above while the Eschal army fled the death line.

  It worked, partially. At least one very powerful mage conjured a bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky, and it blasted into the dragon’s wing with an explosion that dwarfed everything else, leaving his ears ringing. Neogon made a mental note to find out who the hell had been hiding that little gem.

  The dragon roared and fled to the west, quickly lost to view in the afternoon light cast by Big Brother. One of its wings was burning, but it was not falling. Neogon cursed, wishing the damn thing had flown toward Eschal, but put it out of his mind.

  Every quest in its time.

  General Maulander would have his hands full with that thing soon enough, but it was out of his hair for the moment.

  His army kept retreating. There were fallback positions he could reach, but none of them would prevent the Eschal army from rampaging across the countryside entirely, let alone stop the horde of monsters this attack had unleashed.

  He dreaded to think what might have happened to the lightly defended forts along the Eschal border, but he couldn’t do anything about that now. All he could do was regroup and determine the losses.

  “Pyromancers! Hold the flames as long as you can while following the retreat! When the fire fails, full retreat!”

  Manipulating elements became exponentially harder the further the caster was from the source. He had no talent for magic himself, but he was well aware of the capabilities of his soldiers.

  The battle was over, for now.

  For the actions of your soldiers, you have gained seventeen free points!

  Only seventeen. His rare talent gave him a minuscule fraction of all talents gained by his soldiers during combat as free points. Full battles – successful battles – usually earned him at least twenty-five.

  Battles where a large portion of his soldiers died…?

  This had been more of a failure than he’d thought. Thousands had died, but Eschal was in for a rude awakening if they thought mighty Tacuria would just roll over. He could see it in the eyes of his men and women. They were furious.

  He could do a lot with a furious army.

  MB