The horns to recall the survivors were reluctant but loud, and the Gotrok flowed away from the wall as rapidly as they could. Only one more Thunderbolt came down onto a cluster surrounding a particularly stubborn Tukora, who never got back to his feet before being pincushioned by a dozen arrows made of solid lightning.

The surviving thousands of Summons formed up beyond arrow or throwing range once more, looking down at the appalling sight of nearly half of the Mayoi wall’s frontage stained white by the vanished corpses of Summons and Burning bodies of the formerly-living. Grass and ground stained a soft white, occasional misty flames still Burning and generating ground-covering fogs, contrasted with the green of the grass like tributes to the fallen and warnings to the living.

The infantry attack had folded up and nearly obliterated the entire northern side of the attack. There were less than four thousand Gotrok left of an army that had mustered over ten thousand!

The lugian commanders weren’t totally dumb, knowing that such horrific losses played merry havoc with the morale of any army… any NORMAL army.

Summons, however, didn’t have those issues. They just did what they were ordered to do, and if they died, it was just to be sent back to a spawn point and recycled.

However, there were whispers about the stanza of that Song that had been beating at their resolve, alluding to the fact that those of their own who fell… were not coming back!

This power wasn’t unknown to exist. Oswald the Green Hunter had been infamous for his ability to kill people and sever them from the Lifestones, before the Fall. The way the white fire Burned away the bodies of the slain was fascinating and unsettling, reducing them to white dust and leaving their gear behind.

Gear that should have been transported away with the soul of the living Gotrok who fell!

A laugh echoed through the sky, and if they had hackles, all such rose on the Gotrok as they heard it, cutting through their conversations with bloodthirst, scorn, and a murderous thirst for more, more, more-!

At the end of that nerve-twisting laugh, a horn blew. It rose high and proud and defiant, dipping and extending in a specific manner. Even the Summons seemed to stir as the stones seemed to reverberate around them at the call of that horn, definitely wrought by lugian hands, and all eyes turned to the Tukora leading the attack.

From the ranks of the elite infantry who had massacred so many Summons, a lugian stepped forth.

He wasn’t clad in traditional lugian armor. The plates he wore covered him from head to toe in metal, making him look as much like a machine or golum as a lugian. The square shield he wielded was massive, and the design of the Axe he wielded was not one of lugian make or style… which did nothing to forestall the ominous threat it obviously posed, crackling there with silvery Lightning crawling all over its surface.

It was not a Weapon most lugians could even bear to handle, and yet he held it with perfect confidence and iron skill.

“I am an Axe of King Kresovus, the rightful ruler of the lugian peoples!” his deep voice rang out, somehow covering hundreds of yards without fading in the slightest. “I call for a combat of champions, in accord with the ancient rules of war!” His Axe rose at full extension, light as a willow wand, pointing at the Tukora officers in clear disdain. “Come forth, traitors! Show me the warrior arts you corrupted so! Show me the frailty of the armor you wear! Show me the weakness of the Virindi Weapons you wield and dare to call our own! Come forth and show your ineptness, or cower behind the spirits of the dead you have enslaved and quit the field!”

The living Gotrok scowled at the words, but it was a Tukora Commander in his deep maroon armor who pounded forward, waving his great chorozite axe in response.

“Worm of a heretic-” he began.

“Advance, you blasphemous cur! I cannot hear someone with such weak lungs!” came ringing back the contemptuous call of the challenger.

The commander scowled, but what could he do? He looked up at the brooding, silvery Light inside the clouds there, and was suddenly struck by a realization.

Those clouds extended well over the Gotrok lines. They, they weren’t actually outside the range of the magic of the weak-willed defenders…

Swallowing, but attempting to hide his sudden unease, the Gotrok officer straightened his back and bulled his way forward through the lines, which parted to let him pass, eager to see this fight.

A challenge of champions was truly the best way to resolve a battle, the legends all said so!

He stumped his way up to a mere forty yards away from the fully-armored defender, glaring in contempt at the archers up there on the walls… whose bows were all resting, not even bothering to aim in his general direction. His eyes were keen enough to see the smirks on their faces as they looked back at him.

There was no way they could overcome the defenders on those walls. In an open-field fight, things might have been very different, WOULD have been very different, yes, the spirits of the valiant returned warriors giving them all the edge they would have needed…

“I am a Commander of the Tukora, a defender and holder of the great and ancient warrior traditions of the lugian clans!” he began proudly, and everyone in front of him, save the armored lugian Axe who had challenged him, promptly broke out laughing.

Laughing! Not scorn or insult, straight out laughing at him!

“You use a style of armor one hundred years out of date, kept only for ceremonial purposes, and call it traditional,” Kopf ground out, his voice not raised, yet clearly audible to all the Gotrok. “You wield a weapon made of metal using a method devised by the despicable Virindi, and call it our heritage. You do not wield the earthpower to infuse your armor and weapons that has been the right of our people for three thousand years, because that idiot Muldaveus and his cohort of traitors were unable to wield it for themselves, and so forbid you from learning it.

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“You raise our children to be weak, ignorant, inept, and poorly equipped, and call it tradition.” The seething scorn in that word was almost palpable.

“Lugians wield the earthpower and the power of the forge. We grow. We improve, we stand on the shoulders of our forebears and build higher and greater!

“You think we don’t know of Muldaveus visiting the Walls of Failure, trying in vain to wrestle the secrets of the Earth from them? His fits of rage and frustration that he can’t wield the most basic magicks of the forge?” Kopf spit at the Commander, who could only bristle at the knowledge that outsiders knew of such rumors. “He is weak! YOU… are weak! And you pass only weakness on to our children, spitting on our traditions with your blasphemous lies!

“RAISE YOUR AXE, false Tukora!” Kopf roared, clearly working himself into a frenzy, his Axe shaking in his rage. “You insult all our ancestors with that rank you profane, with the traditions you warp and twist and bend to your heresy! Come forward and die! Not back to a twisted Stone or spitting circle! This day is the day of your death!”

The Commander couldn’t take the shame of the insults hurled his way, striking at the core of his warrior’s pride. Even if he was gravely uncertain of his ability to overcome the superior gear of his opponent, he still raised his axe and charged.

Kopf surged into motion, a living missile of metal weighing over a half-ton. Most pointedly, he moved FAST, far faster than he had a right to bearing that much weight, and his feet seemed to crush into the ground, yet barely left the faintest track as he did so.

The two lugians slammed fully together. The semi-transparent great axe chopped down on Kopf’s Shield Bulwark, and rang as it bounced off, the arm beneath it taking the impact, while, to the Gotrok officer’s shock and dismay, the metal of the Shield was not even scuffed by the magic-cutting hollow alloy of his axe!

Then he was hurtling backwards, his weight and momentum clearly beaten, barely keeping a grip on his Axe as he tried to get his feet, half-stunned by the crushing impact into that Shield.

The crackling Axe came around, and smashed into his breastplate.

The metal was hard and strong, in the ancient style, meant to take massive physical punishment… but it didn’t provide the protection against electricity that it could have, with the proper alchemical treatments and undergarments. Such was not the ancient way…

A guttural scream forced its way out of the Gotrok’s lips as a massive surge of voltage discharged through him, ravaging his nervous system and causing his great heart to palpitate in shock. His armor was smoking and sparks were dancing as he tried to fend off the Axe that was moving. The Shield smashed into his axe, pressing him back as it was forced to the side, and the Axe came across with impossible speed for something so massive, clearly aided by magic.

The simple Swift Hunter magic, making a powerful weapon faster and easier to wield. Chorozite did nothing against such basic superiority…

The blow took him in his side, right on the seam of his breastplate, which crumpled and caved in under the terrific force of the blow. The Gotrok officer didn’t even have the ability to scream as lightning ravaged his system, his Axe falling from nerveless hands as he fell over, his dark eyes and lobeless ears smoking from within.

He hit the ground stiffly, nerves locking up and muscles with them in the typical lugian manner of death by lightning, hard and tense as a carved statue.

Vivus ignited over him as Kopf glared down at him, then looked up at the silently watching lines of Gotrok opposite him, shocked and stunned at how quickly a great Tukora Commander had died.

“You told your young you were strong, and you LIED.

You told them their armor was mighty, and they DIED.

You told them to dare the wrath of Heaven, and they fried.

They speak now with their forebears, who have cried

At the lies and the hate and the blood-mad fools

Who have betrayed all that lugians are.

Come, you Gotrok liars! Come, false Tukora tools!

The doom you have sought out so far

is Waiting!

TREMBLE!

TREMBLE, and COME!

COME TO DIE!”

Great hands trembled on chorozite weapons, warring against the shrieking voice riding on waves of Thunder, twisting and turning in their hearts and souls of the Gotrok elite as the Truth riding those words beat and lashed at them. They could see the doubts and fears rising in the younger lugians with every spiteful syllable, and the words seemed to draw up all their own fears and insecurities and lay them out for everyone to see.

The first Gotrok officer screamed in fury, unable to take the insult and shame, and pounded forward in a zealous fury, determined to prove his courage and the rightness of their cause in pitched combat, unafraid to die.

Like a bursting damn (it all), the other senior Gotrok voiced their own challenges, and rumbled after him, only the army’s general Kodaetus managing to retain his wits in the face of such contempt for them and what they were.

Over two hundred incensed living Gotrok pounded forwards towards that line of elite infantry waiting outside the walls, determined to run them right over, pound them into the ground, and reclaim their honor.

Silver Lightning hissed and crackled over those defenders, and if the incoming Gotrok did not dare to falter in their charge now, their hearts skipped a beat at seeing the voltage seething over all of their foes… including the lugians, and doing no harm!

There was only the quietest of countercharges, the show of dancing Silver sparks making all the crackling noise that was necessary. With unseemly speed, the defenders of Mayoi counter-charged the incoming Gotrok, who could only widen their eyes at the speed of their foes as the two forces closed.