“FORMATION…. HAAAAALT! CAVALRY… FRONT LINE, MOVE!”

A proud general sat upon his horse adjacent to Duke Vermillion, their army gathered around a hill overlooking the River Cairn, on the other side of which they could see the Barony of Reims. So far, they had seen no movement from Count Horatio or his forces.

Duke Vermillion eyed the river carefully as his troops moved in to position. Only one large stone spanned the water with barricades just visible on the other side.

“Magus! Tell me, have you been able to find anything through scrying?”

“My lord, they have set magical barriers to counter any attempt to break through. While they are strong, given some time, perhaps a day, we can break through them.”

“We will do this the old fashioned way then. Have your mages reinforce the cavalry, and then prepare for bombardment. We give them no time and we give them no quarter! ATTACK!”

“Yes, my lord!”

Magus Francois raised his staff and green light flashed in to the sky.

As the cavalry begin to rush forward, a call went up from the mages on the back line.

“Light of the goddess, Myra protect us. Barrier!”

“As fast as the wind, swift as thunder, grant us the speed of Apollo. Haste!”

“Rage overwhelming, endurance never failing, strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. Berserk!”

Each spell cast began to reinforce and strengthen the cavalry on the frontline. The thunderous cacophony of their hooves striking the earth reverberated across the river basin, their formation picking up a terrifying speed. Shields of energy spiraled out from the lead knights, rolling towards the forest below.

Within the forest line, Angelina watched the cavalry charge. So far, everything was going just as Count Horatio predicted.

Her role was simple. Last night, the count sent their geomancers to make a huge trench and to disguise it with mundane materials. The idea was for the enemy to focus on their anti-scrying defenses and assume they were going to buy time, and therefore egging them on into attacking. As soon as the cavalry approached, she would pull the trigger, revealing the pitfall and startling the horses. In the moment before they fell into the spiked hole, the mage line would launch a fierce barrage, weakening the cavalry’s defenses so that the spikes below would finish them off.

Afterwards, their melee fighters would rush forward to clear up any survivors, before forming a phalanx round the bridge and awaiting the enemy infantry. They were to hold on as long as possible, luring in as many infantry as they could, before they retreated across the bridge.

The bridge was primed with mana bombs and would be detonated as the enemy forced their way across it and got stuck on the barricades on the other side.

The whole goal of the strategy was to buy time, as, according to the count, he had allies prepared to meet up with him at nightfall to launch an assault on the duke’s flank.

In order for the plan to proceed correctly, they would have to weather the first barrage of magic from the duke’s army without retaliating.

It was almost time. The enemy backline lit up with a rainbow of reds, yellows, and whites, and a powerful wind gusted down from the hillside. Then, the bombardment launched.

Lightning tore through trees, fireballs exploding and frozen spears of ice stabbing into the ground. They wavered as adventurers and knights on the front line were impaled, shocked, and melted.

“Angelina! Hit the trap now! Go!”

Boris called out to her from the hole he had been cowering in before the bombardment.

Mosey seemed entranced, watching the destruction as if it were a fireworks show.

Grimran stood tall, facing the incoming bombardment, reading the flow of attack. He dodged an Ice spear and then tanked a fireball. The flames licked and burst around his red scales, emphasizing his bared fangs.

“NOW!”

At Angelina’s shout, Grimran charged forward, and Mosey laughed and hopped along behind him, ready to heal her front line at a moment’s notice. The concealment around the trench dropped. It was the moment of truth.

Boris could hear the horses whinnying as the trench was revealed. He closed his eyes tightly.

“DAMN IT ALL! BRIMSTONE AND ROCK, DIE WITH A DROP! BURN WITH THE HATRED OF A THOUSAND SUNS. HELLFIRE!”

At the cost of a large amount of his mana, dark flames gathered around Boris’s hands. He waited for them to coalesce before he thrust them forward at the enemy cavalry.

The black fire scorched all the trees in its path, before striking the barriers in front of the faltering cavalry. The screams from the mounted knights, with their skin and bones melting under the withering flames, created a sick song of pain and suffering.

A few bold knights leapt off their horses and dashed furiously across the ditch. They were greeted by the onslaught of furious adventurers and frenzied knights. The mages hiding on the other side of the river began to launch their counter-bombardment, and shields were being raised across their whole line. It was too late to turn back now.

With a sputtering fury, the general commanded the main army forward. Countless peasant conscripts mixed with trained knights marched towards the Cairn.

Everything was proceeding just as the count had planned.

Deep within the Barony of Reims, Count Horatio watched the battle intently through a clear crystal ball, set atop a plush black and gold pillow atop a marble pedestal.

His vampiric father had taught him long ago the importance of the masquerade. In ages long since passed, undead had fought alongside humankind and the other races to defeat the dragons. The undead of that era were the product of mages seeking to transcend the bounds of life. Soon after the dragons were defeated, Ishtar declared the acts of those sorcerers an abomination, and she declared that they too must be exterminated to preserve the divine, along with the fey and elves who she had declared complicit in spreading such profane knowledge.

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Since that moment, necromantic magic was banished and its practitioners driven underground. They had their rights stripped and were enslaved by man, or were slaughtered by the thousands at the hands of the emergent demon lords. The only reason they were able to persevere at all was due to using their magical prowess to hide themselves in the farthest reaches of the world.

As for the masquerade? It was the method developed by vampires to blend into society. Only a select few, the inquisitors of the church, actively hunted them these days. The masquerade was an unforgiving system. It forbade the use or discovery of any of their vampiric abilities before the general public. Any slip-ups were punished harshly to prevent indiscretions or investigations.

For a long time, Horatio had hated this system, but he stuck by it as he had no other choice. He had always conspired and planned for a way to change it, but he never had the willingness to take overt action. However, fifteen years ago, he found his reason.

As his face contorted at the unpleasant memories of all he’d been through, a pair of slender, soft arms slid across his shoulders and over his chest. He could smell the pleasant fragrance of cherry blossoms as her brown hair brushed against his cheek.

“Maria, my sweet Maria, what brings you down here? You know I don’t want you to have to see these unsightly things.”

The count turned his head and saw her deep amber eyes and brow furrowed in concern. “Even if you don’t want me to see them, I can see you suffering. I can see you are in pain. Is it wrong for me to want to comfort you?”

“No, there is nothing wrong with that. Thank you, Maria.”

He turned around and took her in his embrace as a resolute expression came onto his face. He would forge his own destiny, no matter the price he had to pay. He would live together with his beloved in peace. Ishtar, the council, and the demons be damned!

Duke Vermillion glared at his generals. Each and every damn one of them, incompetent fools!

First, they lost his cavalry. Then, they marched under a withering barrage of magic fire to assault the bridge, yet they couldn’t break the ranks of the adventurers for almost two hours. When finally, they forced them to retreat, he had lost nearly another thousand when the area on and around the bridge blew sky high! The hands of one of his soldiers even flew all the way to his position atop the hill and struck him in his face. Then, fearful of more traps, his magicians changed strategy to one of attrition and bombarded the enemy positions with their superior numbers. However, the enemy had the advantage of swathes of forest cover.

Now, his mages had spent most of their mana. Crossing the Cairn would have to be done the hard way. At this point, noble pride be damned, he would manage his forces personally.

“Tell me, are the boats ready yet!”

“Yes, my lord, but why do you insist on leading the offensive across the river in boats? We should continue to wait on this side of the river as our mages recover their mana, and strike when they are ready.”

“You damned fool! This entire time, you have been playing into Horatio’s hands! All his attacks, all his strategies… he is trying to hold us here as long as he can. He is up to something, and it is as clear as day!”

“But sire, boats can’t hold up under a barrage of magic fire—”

“Do you mean to tell me that our division of mages are capable of running out of magic, but theirs aren’t? Our sheer numbers have clearly taken their toll on them as much as us. How many of their original three thousand are left? One thousand five hundred? A thousand? We still have another twenty thousand troops, and here we are, cowering with our tails between our legs! I, for one, will not stand for it! Prepare the archers and have the mages put all their power in to shielding our forces. We strike immediately under the cover of night.”

Duke Vermillion stormed out of the meeting as he returned to his carriage. It was time for him to join the battle, no longer to sit as an inspiring figurehead. A pair of squires knelt before him, and at a nod, they opened a large chest in the rear of the carriage and pulled out the fabled armor of the Culaine family. Its ornamental gold plating was reinforced by dwarven mythril and orichalcum, a prize stolen long ago from the once powerful orc tribes of the Northsreach Mountains.

To supplement it, he wielded a quicksilver blade of elvish origin. For a species despised by the gods, they sure made decent weapons.

Unbeknownst to the duke, his change in temperament would save his life this night.

As the last light of the sun faded, Count Horatio had gathered his personal court far up the Cairn.

Nearly a dozen vampires and a lich approached the river.

“Archimedes,” the count said, nodding to the lich, “please halt the waters so we may cross.”

The lich offered a small chuckle before acceding to the request.

“You vampires and your constraints. In all these thousands of years, you haven’t figured out how to overcome such simple things like crossing running water and a little bit of sunlight?”

“The art of such ancient magic has been lost to time itself. If finding and modifying such spells were so easy, I’m sure a lich such as yourself would have figured out how to make a humanoid body without all your flesh rotting off.”

“Hahaha! Feisty as always, my dear Horatio. Don’t forget your end of the deal. All the bodies of the duke’s men will belong to me!”

“Just make sure to wait until after I take the remaining adventurers away from here. As long as they believe my knights gave the soldiers a proper burial and my reputation stays intact, what you do is your business.”

“This is why I like you! Such a shrewd man!”

An evil glimmer shone from Archimedes’ eye sockets, filled with priceless gems and small souls screaming to be free. One such soul disappeared, feeding the Lich’s evil magic. It made Horatio’s skin crawl, but he had no other choice if he wanted to survive and win.

With him, he had also brought two nosferatu, vampires whose faces would give even adults nightmares. He also brought a vampire muse, whose beauty and illusion magic could sow confusion deep amongst the hearts of men, and the rest were vampire beast masters.

The plan was simple. The beast masters would call upon the forces of darkness to unleash a stream of hell and shadow hounds upon the flanks of their enemy, while Archimedes would raise the fallen soldiers of the duke to create an army and launch an assault of the dead from the rear. Once the ranks fell into confusion, the muse would use her illusion and mind magic to cause the soldiers to fall upon one another, and the nosferatu would assassinate any of the leaders who tried to restore order.

It began shortly after he boarded the boat. Duke Vermillion felt he had finally turned the tide of the battle, as boat after boat of his troops landed on the shore, driving the weary adventurers back. There was hardly any magic bombardment to affect them, and the adventurers were soon falling back in a full retreat.

But the duke’s elation was short lived, as his nightmare was just about to begin. Howls, most foul and deep, began to echo across the river. Shadows of fire and flame came racing out of the hills into the flanks of his troops.

Screams of horror and agony abounded, as sharp teeth shredded flesh and bone. A cold green light began to glow in the field morgue, where their fallen were being prepared for the long rest. Flesh rotted and fell off the bone, other deceased soldiers sputtered incoherently as they choked out a wail through their blood-filled lungs. Soon, the army of the dead was descending from the rear, over ten thousand strong and counting.

Incorporeal visions flitted about, friends turning into horrible monsters astride each other. Terrible monsters, diving from the black night sky, grabbing any who dared resist and carrying them into the deep darkness, only for a rain of blood and guts to fall below.

“What in the damned hell?”

Duke Vermillion, for the first time in an age, felt fear as a dark cloud descended on his army.

“Sail down river!”

A timely command, as other boats slower to launch were sunk beneath the weight of the surging bodies. This didn’t stop screaming soldiers from leaping into the waters and grabbing at the side of his boat.

“Don’t hesitate, cut down any who are holding us back!”

With a swift swing of his sword, fingers, arms, and hands were cleaved from the side, blood filling the river as his men sank below the darkened waters.

As the darkness began to drift across the river, Duke Vermillion could see a shadow, slicing through the wall of bodies and scattering a rain of blood on the water. A pair of cold eyes met his, those of a hunter who had found his prey.

Without hesitation, Duke Vermillion launched his most powerful spell.

“Fire, raging hot as the sun, fierce as the flow of earth, I call upon thee to smite my foes! Eruption!”

“Darkness eternal, shadows of night who disappear into the void, rend my foes and leave only ash. Dark Impulse!”

A raging white and red ball of flame and magma.

A sphere of darkness from which no light could escape.

They collided above the river, the resounding explosion toppling the remaining trees near the shore and whipping the river into a furious froth, capsizing, shattering, and sinking all the unfortunate boats too close to the epicenter. Horatio took the brunt of the blast, preventing him from chasing down Vermillion.

As each of the king’s brothers backed the other contender in the war, it would soon devolve into a bloody proxy war of attrition that would bring devastation and famine across the kingdom for the years to come.