Sol came to a sudden halt at the edge of the blood circle he had just carved out, the Dreadwing blade held out to his side, dripping with thick, dark gore.
A heavy, suffocating silence descended once more, infinitely colder than before.
The remaining Coalition warriors... who hadn’t joined the shout... stood frozen. Their faces were pale as sheets, their bodies shaking hard.
Sol slowly turned his visor back toward the crowd.
"What about you guys?" Sol asked casually, tilting his head. "Anyone else feeling particularly proud today?"
The crowd flinched as one.
Near the front row, a Zerith warrior stood rigid, eyes locked on the shredded remains of the powerhouses lying only a few feet away. His throat worked as he swallowed hard.
Just then, the severed head of a Marauder ... still wearing an expression of fanatical rage... rolled across the blood-slicked stone and came to a stop against the Zerith’s feet.
The warrior flinched violently.
His mouth opened on pure instinct, some half-formed word of panic or plea rising in his throat.
But before he could even say something.
SWIFT!
Sol didn’t even turn his body. With a flick of his left wrist, a tiny, razor-sharp needle of compressed Golden Essence shot from his index finger like an invisible sniper round.
PLUCK-THUD!
The needle drove straight through the warrior’s forehead, blowing out the back of his skull in a violent mist of grey matter.
The man’s eyes went wide for a fraction of a second, then emptied. His body collapsed instantly to its knees before flopping forward into the mud with a dull, final sound. Dead before he fully hit the ground.
Sol blinked,letting out a small, dry cough.
"Oops," Sol rasped, his voice completely devoid of remorse. "My mistake. My hand slipped. I had been on edge since earlier."
He adjusted his grip on the Dreadwing blade, his neon-crimson eyes narrowing as he stared directly into the eyes of the surviving line.
"So... let me ask again."
His voice remained calm, almost polite.
"What about you guys?"
The remaining Coalition warriors looked at the headless corpse of Grand Chieftain Bruga. They looked at the shredded pile of forty proud veterans. They looked at the guy who had just been executed for opening his mouth.
Then, they looked at each other.
CLATTER! CLATTER! CLATTER!
As if synchronized by a single, desperate instinct of absolute self-preservation, every single warrior in the Coalition ranks released their grip.
Spears, poison-coated daggers, bone axes, and reinforced wooden shields slammed onto the limestone floor in a deafening, chaotic cascade.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Without waiting for another command, the entire remaining host... dropped heavily onto their knees, slamming their foreheads directly into the blood-stained chalk dust!
"WE SURRENDER!" a thousand panicked voices shrieked simultaneously, their frantic pleas echoing off the canyon walls.
"WE YIELD! WE SURRENDER TO THE VEYNAR!"
"DON’T KILL US! WE DROP OUR ARMS! WE SUBMIT!"
"WE SURRENDER! PLEASE, SPARE OUR LIVES!"
They hit the ground so hard that several warriors bruised their own faces against the slate bedrock, remaining completely flat, not daring to raise their heads even a fraction of an inch toward the black-armored reaper.
Sol stood atop the mound of corpses, staring down at the hundreds of kneeling enemies covering the clearing.
He let out a long, dramatic sigh, slowly lifting the heavy Dreadwing blade back onto his shoulder.
"See?" Sol muttered, his raspy voice echoing over the quieted, weeping host. "That’s how it should have been from the start. Why did you idiots have to make such a damn fuss?"
Beneath the suffocating pressure of his aura, a collective, silent scream erupted inside the minds of the surrendered warriors.
(IT’S NOT LIKE WE DIDN’T WANT TO SURRENDER, YOU ABSOLUTE PSYCHOPATH!)
(YOU DIDN’T EVEN GIVE US A CHANCE TO SURRENDER! YOU JUST STARTED DECIPATATING EVERYONE WHO STEPPED FORWARD!)
(YOU SLAUGHTERED OUR CHIEFTAINS IN SECONDS AND THEN KILLED A GUY JUST FOR OPENING HIS MOUTH! HOW WERE WE SUPPOSED TO TALK TO AN UNREASONABLE MONSTER LIKE YOU?!)
(WHY IS FATE PUNISHING US WITH SUCH A LUNATIC?!)
Of course, not a single one of them dared to utter a single word of their internal agony out loud.
They could only squeeze their eyes shut, pressing their foreheads deeper into the cold, blood-slicked mud, weeping silently at their absolute misfortune of running into such an utterly terrifying, completely unhinged monster on the battlefield.
At the rear of the valley, the Veynar loyalists stood completely frozen.
Commander Thauren’s broadsword slipped slightly in his hand, his mouth hanging half-open. Beside him, the remaining Veynar warriors... men who had been preparing to fight to their absolute, bloody deaths just twenty minutes prior... looked at the scene in a state of surreal, stunned shock.
The alien races... the terrifying forces that had terrorized the Great Orrath for decades, the army that had ambushed their clan and pushed them to the absolute brink of total annihilation... was currently kneeling in the dirt, begging for mercy from a single, black-armored outsider.
Thauren slowly looked toward the tall, dark figure standing atop the pile of dead warlords.
Sol turned around slowly, his neon-crimson visor cutting through the haze of battle as he locked eyes with the stunned Veynar commander.
"Thauren," Sol called out, his voice calm, steady, and carrying the unyielding weight of a ruler who had just rewritten the destiny of the entire region. "Bring up your men. Secure the prisoners. Bind their hands and collect their gear."
Sol paused, looking down at the bloody Dreadwing blade resting on his shoulder.
"The war is finally over."
...
Thauren stood frozen for a full three seconds after Sol’s order.
Then training and instinct finally overrode the shock.
"You heard him!" the commander roared, his voice cracking slightly before steadying. "All squads forward! Secure the prisoners! Bind them properly, strip their weapons, and collect every piece of usable gear! Move!"
The Veynar warriors surged into motion like a dam breaking. What had been a stunned, exhausted group of survivors only moments earlier now moved with renewed purpose... and more than a little fear of the black-armored figure still standing amid the corpses.
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