Everyone knew that around the Lead Cave Sect was a massive sprawling network of caves and tunnels, so ancient that whether they were man made or natural or some combination of both rarely held any real relevance. These labyrinthian subterranean networks of long abandoned ruins, natural crevices, long abandoned mines and other similar structures found their use in nearly every single war that managed to reach this point, few forces would truly be foolish enough to attack this far north precisely because it was practically suicide to march ones armies where the very earth may decide to suddenly swallow you whole as ambushers collapse ancient caves right beneath your feet. The fact that someone was leading an entire army over here spoke of the height of foolishness…
But Cobalt had a feeling it was not that simple, it was never that simple. And judging by the nervous faces of many of her fellows in the dim blue mushroom lamps growing from the sides of this tunnel the feeling was far from rare. Something screamed wrong about this whole situation. As though the Spirits of the Earth themselves were screaming at them in warning, begging them to run.
But they could not run. For if not them who would defend the mortals of the province? Who would they turn to if the ones the Empire trusted to fight for them simply refused to?
“Do you feel the vibrations?” her father’s steady voice echoed in the narrow stone halls.
“I do sir… the enemy is fast approaching… not long now… fifteen minutes at this rate at most.” One of the scouts, and a man with a particular affinity with the earth due to his strange mutations manifesting largely as extended ears and fingers, answered.
“Then we must hurry, there is no time to spare. I trust the plan is clear, one and all.”
A chorus of nods gave him the answer he desired. There were specific points in the cave network where the destruction of a single pillar could collapse many acres of earth into the caves below, rendering war machines useless and crushing many mortal soldiers. More powerful and experienced cultivators of course would likely be able to escape the trap, but that was what her father, Cinnabar and the rest of the retinue were for.
“Our presence remains firmly masked?” Her father confirmed with Aunt Cinnabar.
“As good as it can get Phagos.” she responded with a confident certainty.
He nodded and continued forth. Down the spiralling dark, a hundred heavy footfalls following in his wake through the snaking corridors of stone. Distance ceases to be something useful to consider when there is no real frame of reference besides the movement of their own feet, but they had to have been moving for several miles now, and with each small step CObalt could not shake the unjustified feeling something was deeply, terribly wrong.
They made it to the location apparently safe and sound. A vast opening which would have been likely a terrible sinkhole if not for the thin columns of rock holding up the earthen ceiling above. Her father grunted and those who were not involved in the breaking of the pillars stood back, waiting for the signal that would send the enemy tumbling down into the pit ready for slaughter.
Then Cinnabars entire centipedal form twitched, a shudder that travelled up her face splitting it unevenly down the middle. Cobalt didn’t miss it and evidently neither did her father, but before they could reasonably do anything about it…
The world shook, the ground trembled with such ferocity the sound alone would have deafened some of the weaker Wretches in the group, and the earthen ceiling fell away revealing blinding sunlight. Si, oppressive, tyrannical, streamed down with the sunlight in a blinding vision of what surely was the image of divine judgement. It was as though the Spirits themselves were wailing in agony.
Time stopped as the cause for the carnage made himself known. A towering figure easily twice the height of her already massive father, broad as one of the smaller war-machines in his retinue and every single inch nothing but coiled layers of blood red muscle. She could see the hatred in his eyes even at a distance, oppressive power tempered with a will forged through pure disdain. A devil given form, adorned with jewels, beast-hide and what looked to be severed hands, crowned with bloodstained horns.
He flicked his chin upwards, and instantly the passages that would allow them to escape into the subterranean networks collapsed, burying some of those unfortunate, foolish or plain terrified enough to be directly beneath the path of several tons of fallen rock. She did not even see the power he used to achieve this, but she felt the si leap from his fingers at a wavelength invisible to the human eye, causing her flesh to burn with a desperate attempt to siphon away excess power.
“How convenient, for you to come to me.” The monster in human flesh spoke with a deep, booming voice. “Servants of the Jackalope Empire, know the name of your doom, Iktan Kuklakan has returned to claim his birthright!”
Cinnabar attempted to teleport away but the si that should have been poured into the formation was ripped out as it exited her body and siphoned away to the crimson giant at the top of the sinkhole. Cobalt’s heartbeat was deafening, so much so that she almost missed her father’s words.
“This is what it means to be at war daughter.” He grunted. “Observe the truth of the world, and survive.”
He leaped forward through the air at a speed so great even the vast amount of enemy bullets now filling the air like a leaden fog failed to hit him, with a thunderous crash he landed not before the giant but instead in the ranks of an unseen army. She heard a chorus of screams and crunching noises as the man who introduced himself as Iktan turned and disappeared in a flash of red to deal with the man devouring his troops.
With nowhere else to run the rest of the assembled host charged up the steep walls of the sinkhole to join the Sectmaster of the Lead Cave in his hunt. Cobalt herself ran practically on all fours, transforming so fast she did not even have time to adjust the shape of her clothing and instead letting it tear and singe on her rapidly growing, burning form. The gathered forces of the Lead Cave and the few allies who joined them in this mission let out their thunderous warcries, knowing at the very least some of them were certainly not going to return.
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Mica’s father and his father before him and on and on until the beginning of time were soldiers. It didn’t matter what master they just so happened to serve at this moment, it didn’t matter who they were fighting or for what reasons. This was how they put bread on the table, generations worth of war pulsing through his blood. He thought this would be no different than the last petty Khan he served, just a little greater in scale and with a few more impressive tricks up his sleeve. The age of the Red Star was generations ago, long past the living memory of mere mortals, even he of the First Step of the Mutant Realm could not possibly wrap his mind around that timespan. A long life after all was not what awaited him.
He really should have known better, in hindsight, when he first lay eyes on the vast hosts of war machines that seemed to stretch to the next horizon. The scores of men just like him awaiting orders from men who could have been warlords themselves, held in line by the will of a singular Khan. Perhaps he should have gotten the hint when practically all things were abandoned besides amassing ever greater forces to move north, practically no downtime, barely enough pit stops to refuel the machines and rest the men. Just an endless march of conquest after conquest, on a scale Mica simply had not the imagination to understand. But he just put those useless thoughts out of his mind and resigned himself to something more effective, being a blade or bullet for his current master. Useless thoughts after all did not feed his wife and children back home in what now seemed like an entire world away, not to mention useless thoughts probably lead to being executed as a deserter.
But now more than ever the true scale of the conflict he had become a cog in had been revealed. And it was well beyond anything he could imagine.
His mutation gave him some degree of second sight, helping him become an expert marksman and scout, but he didn’t need that to see this was a fight beyond what he had expected. The enemy Khan, for what else could such a monster be, viscerally transformed into a gore-stained parody of a dragon easily the size of his own war wagon. He had jumped out just barely in time to avoid getting devoured by several gnashing, grinding jaws. His old comrades didn’t even have enough time to scream, so quickly was their vehicle reduced to scrap and their flesh a feast for the hulking, scaled, eyeless horror. Thankfully immediately after the Great Khan ran over and smashed the beast’s back with a spine shattering blow, so strong the wind from the impact alone sent several men tumbling to the ground. Unfortunately it was not nearly enough to kill the thing, and indeed by the time he turned his head away the thing had already seemed to have regenerated much of the damage and was locked in intense combat with the Khan.
And that was only the start. Deafening roars of gun and artillery fire filled the air as cultivator and mortal alike tore each other to shreds. The Marshal took flight on burning red wings of coal-black skin and unnatural flame to battle the psychic centipede abomination who even while locked in battle with an Aberrant cultivator could still turn all men near her into paste and block heavy mortar shells with what seemed to be laughable effort. He had seen Aberrants fight before, a few of the more resistant warlords had reached that stage, but never had it actually seemed like an actual battle of legend. But then again of course, the dragon had not arrived yet. They needed only to hold out a little longer and the battle would be as good as over.
It was then when he saw a shimmer of blood hanging unnaturally in the air, gone as soon as it appeared. Focusing his enhanced vision he saw a truly terrifying sight, a massive hunched over beast of razor sharp spine, tooth and claw which moved almost invisibly between soldiers, tearing them to shreds.
“Over ther-” He began to scream, but the words died in his mouth when he saw those hateful orbs shimmer out of camouflage. Two scarlet eyes full of malice piercing straight into his soul.
He had not the time to react. He did not even feel it when her jaws closed around his skull and cracked it in twain.
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A chorus of artillery fire and subsequent explosions drowned out all other sound, each shot fired from great land-ships of equal or greater scale as the Toro Rojo from what felt like a lifetime ago in this instant. Her father’s form pulsated and tore in twain as his Warp-Spasm literally ripped its way out of him, all around her were fountains of blood and gore soaring through the air and falling like scarlet rain. An overpowering smell of iron, smoke and bodily fluids filled the air, a scent that shamefully caused her stomach to rumble hungrily. This, Cobalt understood in her heart, was war. Not the controlled battles or little hunting trips she had been on before, not her father’s regular extermination missions, but a terrible expression of violence that had once so long ago burned the whole world into cinder. Even her father seemed to be struggling, the few glances she could afford to spare at his direction showed a desperate battle against a hulking mass of muscle and hate, each hit Agamemnon landed only resulted in a dozen bloody spears erupting from the fresh wound and impaling him with offensive si so potent and aggressive she could feel it even at a distance. Yet even so he would bite through his new bindings like it was nothing, and the power that burned his body to cinders where it touched was stolen to fuel his own regeneration. A pitched battle of endurance, one where the outcome was truly uncertain.
A hundred pellets of lead hit her torso and simply bounced off her armoured skin, others around her were not nearly so lucky as they were mowed down. She made a few steps forward before the artillery shells came for her position, just barely too many to dodge perfectly. She felt something explode right next to her propelling a piece of shrapnel a few inches into her side, burning hot blood singing the ground where it landed. Learning from her mistake she tore out the offending bit of metal and changed her shape and colours before the next volley. Camouflaging into the wasteland around her with a splotchy brown, white and red pattern.
But in the chaos of the battlefield her shapeshifting proved lacking. Every now and then even a bullet would find its mark, albeit to very little effect, and for every foe she tore apart splotches of blood would threaten to reveal her position until she could accommodate for the stains.
Suddenly a voice cut through the mindless chaos, a stray finger aimed straight at her cloaked form. Her heart ceased to beat for a second, her mind stilled and she could no longer hear the words spilling from the man’s mouth, but it didn’t matter.
In a fit of truly animal instinct she rushed forward and felt bone grinding against teeth, tasted warm si laden blood and brain matter wash over her tongue and to her eternal shame swallowed. She could not say she did not enjoy it, and she had no justification why even once the man was already dead she moved to his torso to rip out that little golden organ in his core, well practised actions seared into her very blood spilling into the forefront of her soul. The taste was divine, it felt right, it was awful and disgusting and perverse and before she even knew it she was clamouring for more even as stolen power started to burn in her meridians.
Thankfully she did not have to think of what she had done much longer. For at that moment Iktan’s voice shook the battlefield.
“COME FORTH MY SON, CIPACTLI!”
What was once a clear sky was swallowed by waves of blood red storm clouds. A hulking silhouette was illuminated by flashes of lightning, massive beyond imagining, a Spirit Beast of truly impossible scale. It roared with such intensity it felt like an earthquake from the ground, and sent out a beam of concentrated Si that seared straight through the ground melting earth and stone alike into radioactive glass. The real fight had now begun.