"We're in position. Stop," Iron said.
Elyria sharply killed her speed, and they hovered in the sky. The engineer looked down.
A colossal army sprawled before them. Rows of heavy knights, formations of spearmen, massive detachments of archers and crossbowmen. Torches burned by the thousands, turning the night into a pale day.
Elyria froze beside him, her face tensing.
"Iron, closer to the rear lines, there are a lot of mages. They're forming a unified chain."
"Lumon."
In that exact second, a crisp digital projection rendered on his retinas: the outlines of the enemy camps lit up in gray, while deep in the enemy's rear, hundreds of energy markers flared with purple light.
Iron smoothly extended his arm forward, drawing his pistol from its holster.
"Elyria, get ready," he commanded coldly.
"What?.." was all the spirit managed to ask.
Iron adjusted his grip and pulled the trigger, opening fire on the densest clusters below.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
The next second, massive explosions thundered right in the center of the guard formations. The earth surged upward along with fragments of armor, shields, and bodies.
Commanders screamed frantically, pointing at the sky:
"Attack from above! Aim at the sky!"
Elyria, meanwhile, aimed both hands downward. A second later, the soil beneath the enemy soldiers' feet began to shift. Thick, knotted roots and woody vines burst through the turf, tearing into the dense formations. It crushed armor along with the men inside, shattered shields, and tossed broken bodies aside, shattering the attackers' coordination.
Iron kept pulling the trigger. Energy bolts rained down, piercing tents and turning wooden supply wagons into splinters.
At the same time, in the central command tent, a senior officer hurriedly approached Olgerd.
"Lord Olgerd, they have launched an attack. Fire from above. We have casualties in the vanguard."
Olgerd didn't even lift his head from the map spread across the table. His palm rested motionless on a small, angular device made of dark alloy, covered in dim runes.
"It's too early," he threw out dryly. "Let the mages lock onto the targets' coordinates."
On Iron's retinas, Lumon's counter updated the data. The green numbers shifted in waves after every direct hit and root explosion. The initial number of 500,000 quickly crept downward: 499,870... 499,610... 499,100.
The panic below subsided as soon as the rear detachments reacted. The enemy mages completed the formation of their shared chain. The air around them crackled from excess energy. A moment later, a colossal purple beam struck the sky from the center of their formation. The blast radius was too large for Iron or Elyria to evade by simply shifting aside.
Iron instantly assessed the trajectory and density of the beam. He focused, intending to locally warp the space in front of himself.
At that exact moment, Olgerd pressed the button on his device.
Iron issued a mental command to the environmental atoms, but nothing happened.
"What?"
The beam was approaching too fast. Realizing that the spatial warp had failed, Iron braced for a direct hit.
Elyria, noticing his momentary paralysis and the purple glow flashing across his face, darted toward him sharply. She touched Iron's shoulder. Space compressed, and in the next second, both vanished.
The beam passed right through the spot where they had just been hovering.
Iron and Elyria materialized right in Dornheim's central square. The engineer stayed on his feet, but the abrupt spatial jump left a loud ringing in his head. He stared down in bewilderment at his hands gripping the pistol.
A dull thud sounded nearby. Elyria fell to her knees, planting her palms into the dirt. Her body trembled slightly, and a hoarse cough tore from her throat.
"This is exactly why..." she sighed heavily, trying to gasp for air, and coughed again. "This is exactly why I didn't want to... use teleportation on humans."
"My magic didn't work," he said aloud, clenching and unclenching his fingers. "Suppression?"
[Warning. External wave suppression of environment manipulation modules detected. The enemy has deployed an unknown narrow-spectrum technical device.]
"How much time to clear it?" Iron asked mentally.
[Full neutralization of the block will require time. It is necessary to initiate the system adaptation algorithm and recalibrate the background resonance frequencies.]
"Fine. Begin decryption and bypass the block in the background," Iron ordered.
At that moment, an agitated Marek ran up to them. He was breathing heavily, gripping the issued pistol in his hand.
"Iron! Well? Did you see them? How many are there?"
Iron slowly holstered his weapon and turned to the blacksmith.
"They look even more numerous in person."
Marek paled noticeably, his fingers tightening around the weapon's grip. Noticing this fear, Iron added in a more confident tone:
"But despite their numbers, we have a good chance of winning."
Without waiting for an answer, Iron turned around and walked briskly toward his workshop. He needed to reload his pistol and prep additional magazines.
Meanwhile, in the army camp, King Valdes sat in his tent, listening to the distant echo of explosions. Tensing, he pulled a communication artifact from his desk drawer—a small, angular box—and activated it.
"Olgerd, what happened over there?" Valdes asked the device with a frown. "There was a lot of noise coming from the vanguard."
A crackle sounded on the other end of the line, followed by Olgerd's even voice:
"Iron and the divine spirit Elyria attacked us. They struck from the air. But Lucius's device worked perfectly—we locked down their powers, and they retreated. Nothing critical."
Olgerd paused briefly, issuing a command to someone in the background, and continued:
"Plans are changing. We won't be making a night camp. We are moving straight toward Dornheim. Contact Edriac, tell his detachments to pick up the pace. We have to pin them down before they recover."
"Alright," Valdes replied curtly and deactivated the artifact.
Meanwhile, in Dornheim, Iron stepped out onto the workshop porch. He had fully reloaded his pistol and stowed spare magazines into his pouches.
"Noah!" he called out quietly, scanning the square.
Hovering nearby, Elyria, who had recovered some of her strength by now, said quietly:
"Noah already went deep into the forest, Iron. He took up an ambush position, like you asked him to earlier."
"Great," the engineer nodded.
He stepped off the porch and headed toward the fourth golem—which had remained in reserve per his previous order. Iron walked up to it and said:
"Move out deep into the forest, to sector three," he commanded the golem quietly. "Take up position and wait."
The golem hummed with its internal nodes, its lenses glowing dimly. It turned around and slowly walked away.
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