There was no explosion, no shower of sparks, and no noise as spacetime cracked. The red light on the transmission dish flickered and died. The machine slumped forward, its six limbs splayed across the ground, becoming a dead lump of metal.
Garrick twisted his pommel, shattering the brain vat of his pinned target, while Esmeralda drove her blade into the second machine's processor, ending its erratic twitching.
The skirmish lasted less than ten seconds.
Silence rushed back in, broken only by the howling wind. Jordan and Erethemor stood ready near the overhang, having woken the moment Garrick moved, but the fight was over before they could join the fray.
Orion knelt beside the Crawler he had disabled, prying the sheared brass plating apart with a quick [-g] as he dismissed the System notification. He reached inside and pulled out the bisected brain.
The copper spools attached to it were broken, but the structural array around it remained intact and seemed larger than those he’d seen in similar-sized machines so far.
He ran a quick analysis of the transmission dish and the residual data loops bleeding from the cut wire, and once he’d gotten all he could, projected a small [Holographic Containment] field to parse the encrypted signals trapped in the buffer.
"They weren't here to map the area," Orion whispered, dropping the broken core.
Garrick walked over, peering at the mess. “What were they doing, then?”
“Acting as transmitters for a sharing of processing power," Orion said, looking out into the fog. “It seems the Centurions down there aren't following bare protocols anymore. Without anything to dictate their path, they have begun networking. Every Crawler, every Walker, every Centurion is pooling its capabilities into a single hive mind. The last bit of data I found was a calculation of the fastest route around the border choke points. They are learning as a collective.”
Esmeralda made a face. They’d faced Amalgams together, and they were never fun to deal with. This particular kind seemed less unified than the usual, but it didn’t mean it’d be any easier to destroy.
"Then they will know these three went dark,” she muttered.
Orion nodded. “From what I could tell, the network uses handshake protocols. When a node stops responding, the collective will notice the loss of the asset and pinpoint its exact location within five minutes.”
Garrick stared down at the glowing red lights in the valley, visibly counting the sheer numbers and deciding it’d be too much. His jaw tightened, and he reached down to pick up his pack, slinging it over his shoulder.
“Then we are out of time," he growled in a low voice. “Let’s go.”
They left the broken scouts on the ground, knowing that any attempt to hide them would only erode their head start, and stepped back into the freezing dark. There would be no more rest.
They ran through the night, a silent line of shadows moving across the treacherous high ground, and didn’t even glance back when the great mass of machines behind them began buzzing angrily.
Fortunately, any pursuer was quickly lost in the howling winds, and days bled into a continuous cycle of exertion.
The landscape offered no comfort; the path demanded constant attention, punishing any lapse in focus with a twisted ankle or a scraped knee. Orion kept pace with his companions, forcing the wind around him to circulate cleaner air and ease the strain on his newly healed lung. He leaned into the rhythm of the march, refining his magic to be even more efficient, turning [Gravity Step] into something he could keep active even in his sleep, if he wanted to.
He sipped sparingly from his canteen, allowing only enough water to wet his cracked lips.
Not because he couldn’t summon more, as even without having dedicated himself to the element, crafting water was simple enough for a tier-three mage, but the necessary mana was so scarce in the wastes that the risk of channeling it was too great to bother, especially since his Body was strong enough to go without.
Below them, the dry riverbeds gradually widened into cracked plains, where the swarm of machines crawled across the desolation in an unstoppable tide.
Because Team Obsidian moved without needing to clear paths or coordinate thousands of units, they gradually began to outpace the main body of the Iron State army. The glowing red of optical sensors gradually fell behind, swallowed by the gray smog of the northern wastes.
Yet the victory brought no relief. The army’s absence only underscored a far more urgent problem.
“No silver," Erethemor rumbled on the third day, scanning the horizon ahead with his slitted eyes, which saw far more than anyone else’s.
They had seen no sign of the third-generation Mage-Killers since leaving the hidden grove. The sleek, Silence-alloy machines had taken the lead early, unencumbered by the Centurions’ grinding logistics. Their disappearance, even this far into the wastes, meant only one thing.
"They must already be at the border," Jordan said through gritted teeth.
They’d all seen what the Mage-Killers could do, and while the third generation was less oppressive than the fourth, they’d be nigh on unstoppable against an unaware force.
“Keep moving," Garrick grunted, setting a harder pace.
The transition from the wastes to the allied borders was gradual. The sheer limestone cliffs sloped downward, the pale rock giving way to dark, compacted earth. The biting wind lost its edge, broken by the sudden appearance of towering trees.
When the Silence began to wane, they knew they had reached the Ironwood Forest.
The air here was cool and crisp. The ground softened beneath their boots, covered in a thick layer of fallen needles and dead leaves. After the unforgiving starkness of the Iron State’s territory, the forest’s chaotic sprawl felt jarring.
Garrick slowed his pace, raising a hand to halt the group. He surveyed the dense tree line, searching for something.
“We’ll move east," he eventually directed, pointing toward a dense cluster of massive ironwoods with several scars on their trunks. "There is fresh sign that a forward camp is just ten miles from here. We’ll use their communication crystals to contact the Speaker and warn the main force.”
Even though they were back in technically safe lands, none dared lower their guard, not with the Mage Killers still unaccounted for, and they moved with stealth.
Esmeralda took the point, flitting between the trees without making a sound, using her life senses to avoid the few monsters that lingered this far north. Erethemor trailed slightly behind, blending into the deep shadows beneath the forest canopy with his dark red scales.
Though he trusted the vampire to know if they came across monsters, Orion still kept his sensory field active, scanning the immediate perimeter for magical or mechanical presences.
He expected to hit a layered defensive net, the standard protocol for any border installation facing the wastes.
Yet even as they drew ever closer, he found nothing.
“This might be dangerous," he murmured, flitting over a rotting log. “I sense no alarm spells or scrying sensors.”
Jordan frowned deeply, just as unnerved. "A forward post should have at least three overlapping detection nets. The border is supposed to be on high alert.”
"Be ready in case we encounter hostiles," Garrick warned, his voice dropping to a whisper.
The dense brush thinned, revealing a wide, man-made clearing nestled among the trunks of several towering ironwood trees. The camp coordinates were clearly correct, yet nothing moved.
It was almost like a graveyard.
There were no tents standing, no campfires burning. The stone barricades erected to defend the perimeter were pulverized, reduced to scattered chunks of gravel and dust. The fabric of the command pavilions hung in shredded ribbons from the branches above.
Scattered across the packed dirt were bodies.
Team Obsidian fanned out across the clearing, weapons drawn, scanning the tree line for movement. The forest was utterly still. No hum of machinery, no glowing red sensors in the brush. Just the smell of blood and scorched earth.
Orion approached the nearest casualty. It was a young mage wearing the blue robes of a Collegium apprentice. He lay on his back, staring blankly at the canopy. Orion knelt beside him, examining the fatal wound.
A single, razor-thin cut bisected the mage's torso, shearing clean through his ribs and spine. The edges of the wound were perfectly smooth, displaying none of the jagged tearing caused by a sword or an axe.
“It was them,” he declared grimly.
Jordan moved among the dead, his face tight with grief. He knelt beside a fallen druid, then beside a pair of witches whose hands were clutched around moonstones. "They are all scouts. Lightly armored, relying on stealth and early detection.”
"They never stood a chance," Esmeralda observed, her crimson eyes tracing the deep gouges carved into the surrounding tree trunks. "The hounds bypassed the wards entirely. Magic-immune assassins striking a camp of casters in the dead of night, with no one aware of it.”
Garrick kicked aside a shredded piece of canvas, revealing the shattered remains of a communication crystal. The arcane device lay crushed into glittering shards.
"They hit the comms too," he noted without emotion. “They wanted to isolate any survivors. The main base won't know this post has fallen until too late.”
Erethemor sniffed the air, nostrils flared. "The blood is dry. The attack happened last night. The hounds are long gone.”
Jordan stood, gripping his sword so tightly his gauntlets creaked. "This is just one camp. There are dozens of outposts scattered along the eastern border. If the hounds are hunting them down systematically, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of casualties.”
He turned to Garrick as holy light flickered intensely around his blade. "We have to intercept them. If we move now, we might save the next camp.”
The thing was, they probably could. Not necessarily the next one, since the Mage Killers moved so fast they’d likely already have fallen, but the one after? And those beyond? Yes, they probably could help save many lives.
"We cannot track them," Orion found himself saying instead. "The hounds must already have reached the next camp. If we try to chase them, we will always be one step behind, finding nothing but bodies.”
"We can't just leave our people to be butchered!" Jordan argued, wild-eyed. The loss of Daus had reopened an old wound, and no amount of talk could make him ignore such a threat.
"We are not leaving them," Garrick interrupted, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. He stepped over the fallen mage and looked Jordan directly in the eyes. “This is part of our mission, remember? The hounds are a distraction. They will bleed the border to draw the main army out of its fortifications. If we stop to fight a guerrilla war in the woods, the swarm will hit an unprepared, disorganized front line. And no one will have warned the Speaker of the traitors in our midst.”
Jordan looked at the dead scouts, his jaw clenched tight. The desire to protect the innocent visibly warred with the pragmatic necessity of the mission. The cost of their intelligence was measured in the blood soaking the dirt beneath their boots.
"Garrick is right," Esmeralda said softly. "Our priority is the intelligence. We have to reach the main base and deliver what we know. It’s too important.”
Jordan let out a long, shaky breath and lowered his sword. He offered a brief, silent prayer for the fallen, then nodded once. “Alright. Alright, damnit. Let’s go.”
“We’ll have to keep off the main paths," Garrick ordered, turning back toward the dense tree line. "The hounds might be circling back or waiting in ambush. We’ll move through the thickest brush.”
And so they left the ruined camp behind, plunging deeper into the Ironwood Forest. The shadows of the ancient trees closed over them, offering concealment but no comfort, for they all knew too well that their choice had cost many, many people their lives.