The day started with some bold action. Under Mandla’s instruction, Nicola rode up the savannah to the northern Partition wall and started releasing [Flare] arrows en masse into the grass. Her task was to burn the grassland.

All of it.

Before this, they’d had the [Sappers] construct a large plough, which they had affixed onto Enhörning, Karl’s rhino and dug a sizable trench that cut off what they knew of as the elephant’s territory. Everything within that enclosed space was to be set alight.

Mandla didn’t expect all of the beasts to die, but a good number. They’d confirmed that the river wasn’t inside the Partition to the north, so there was nowhere for them to go. Hopefully it would pin the beasts all down in one place as well.

If it worked 200 years ago, it’ll work today. Thanks Matiwane.

As Nicola left the group, all the soldier Legends were outside, preparing. The Cavalry Legends were among the hyena clan, trying to fit crude wooden armour onto their bonded rides. It was barely more than token protection, but they had unlocked a skill that toughened any armour on their mounts, which they planned to exploit.

The Infantry Legends were doing some last minute drills, long improved from the ragged lines they used to make, now they stepped, blocked, thrust, slashed, in expert unison. The Classless weren’t left out either, as the [Sappers]’ [Harden] ability unlocked many new options for them.

After consulting with Kaveh and a few of the [Sappers], they’d decided to try create a phalanx. Using enough five-metre long wooden spears, empowered by the [Sappers]’ quintessence, they’d create an impenetrable wall of pikes. Even better, though most of their [Smiths] were depressingly low-leveled, they had all unlocked the [Sharpen] ability, and liberally spread it among the Classless and Legends both.

Mandla didn’t know if it’d stand up to a stampede, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

I really hope I didn’t just jinx it.

After waiting for them all to have a short breakfast, the group moved out.

Walking beside Kaveh at the head of an army of over a hundred people was… thrilling. Having a group of armed men willing to kill at your command was essentially a superpower. The only one humans had always had. He felt the weight of authority, the knowledge that your word was ultimate law in the only court that mattered. Life and death.

Of course, he was getting ahead of himself, losing himself in visions of grandeur. He was a long way away from that being anything more than a daydream. Still, this was the first step. The first Trial of his own personal Ascent. He just had to win.

As they trekked through the grass, Nicola’s handiwork started to reveal itself. They saw the smoke rising in the distance and knew she was coming their way, starting the partial ring of fire that would theoretically pin the beasts into the north-east corner of their Partition.

This first stage was admittedly a bit excessive, burning a significant portion of your own Partition was drastic, but then what option did they have? The only response to a stronger enemy was being willing to go further.

The smoke grew as Nicola continued her grim task, now Mandla could smell it in the air. The group marched its way onwards as the air grew hazier.

After an hour of walking, they came across the trench. Nicola had already been past, as evidenced by the raging veld fire roaring in front of them, so hot it scorched exposed skin from across the trench as it hissed and spat trying to reach them.

Huh. This is pretty fucking dangerous. I hope it doesn’t go through the Partition.

The thought was much too late as their course had been set. Even if they decided to abort right now, the elephant would no doubt rampage after the fire went out, assuming it survived. They had to go in as soon as the blaze had consumed enough grass to die down.

They watched the burning in silence as [Sappers] got to work constructing small wooden bridges to push across the trench. Half an hour later, they heard a gut-wrenching baying from across the savannah. Hordes of trapped animals only just now realising how fucked they were.

The silence grew uncomfortable as the inhuman screams continued, some getting louder then abruptly cutting off, others slowly weakening until they could no longer be heard. The distressed animals weren’t as close as they sounded, the savannah carried sound farther than one might expect, but that knowledge didn’t make the experience any less visceral.

One excruciating hour later, Nicola had rejoined them and was forming up with her so-called Giggling Riders as the wildfire, at least the section in front of them, had died down enough to be traversable.

Giving the nod to the patient [Sappers], they fixed the bridges across the gap, and everyone streamed across, man and hyena both. They spent a few minutes getting themselves reorganised on the other side, what little blackened vegetation remaining crumbling to ash beneath their feet. Once they were in loose formation again, they set off through the cremated bones of the grassland.

The land was completely destroyed. The once rich golden savannah was now a charred, smoking wasteland. Only a few larger trees were still burning in the distance as everything else had been consumed by the conflagration. It was almost humbling; the devastation they’d wrought to what just yesterday was a stunning natural vista. And they hadn’t even seen the bodies yet.

Still, this was man versus nature, the oldest conflict in history. Mother nature had no mercy, and neither would they.

But even against fire, she could not be denied. After a solemn period walking through the piles of ash and blackened soil, they saw a smoking red spot on the ground, like the fire had burned so hot as to turn that specific area to lava. Their path drew them closer towards it, but Mandla didn’t like its look.

“Heads up.”

He summoned his [Isihlangu] and his [Ixwa], which immediately began tugging him towards the spot.

“Guys, my spear smells quintessence. Weapons out.”

The three Ascendants moved forward while the rest of the group backed away, letting them take point.

They inched closer to the red spot and saw it was less like lava and more like a red hot bulb buried just under the surface.

Aren’t there flowers that leave bulbs to survive fi-

He didn’t get time to finish his thought as the spot erupted and a gout of flames spewed straight upwards, startling them all.

Identified: Mini-Elite – Juvenile King Pyrotea

It was a massive protea flower, the size of a car, except instead of the characteristic soft pink petals, the pendulous bowl-shaped head was ringed with large fans of flame.

“Holy shit!”

Practically everyone echoed each other as the plant revealed itself, slowly swinging its flowering head around until-

Nicola made the flower a pincushion with her [Volley], before drilling at its tough woody stem with a flurry of well-placed [Bodkin Point] shots. Mandla blew the flaming flower head completely apart with his [Assegai], before manifesting his [Imbemba] and beginning to hack away with the heavy axe head.

The Pyrotea responded by growing three smaller flowering heads on other parts of its tough stem, heads which immediately began spewing fire at them. He’d kind of expected it but seeing real fire shoot out of a flower was insane.

Kaveh, wielding his [Khanjar], stood behind them analysing the plant as Mandla and Nicola dodged jets of flame. Satisfied, he dismissed the long knife and summoned his [Scimitar]. Crouching, he blurred forward, appearing behind the plant, where he plunged his sword deep into the ground. This ended the fight, as the flames on the actual flowers sputtered out and died.

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Pulling his sword out, it was covered in a steaming ichor. Grimacing, he simply dematerialised it.

“Shall we continue?”

The group made their inexorable way forward, leaving the smoking corpse of the protea behind them. A cruel representation of their purpose here. To find any life that had survived the blaze. And end it.

They saw a couple more King Pyroteas blooming amidst the ash and destruction, shooting massive jets of flame from their main head, blessedly far from their path and they decided to leave them alone. They didn’t want to test their luck against one that hadn’t literally just been born.

Keeping to their task, they focused only on preparing for the fight ahead.

It looked like the play had been partially successful as they began to see a flock of vultures flying overhead, towards the general direction they themselves were headed.

That’s a good sign. Take us to the roasted meat.

Maybe twenty minutes later, they came across the first carcasses.

Shit. Be careful what you wish for.

Even through the pervasive, choking smoke, the sickly saccharine scent of charred meat and burnt fur cut right through and hit the Ascendants’ noses. The bodies looked about as good as they smelled, with any recognizable features burnt off. All they could see was that it had once been a four legged animal. Now, a pile of scorched meat.

Regardless, they pressed on. The extent of the massacre impressed itself upon them when they started coming across more and more mounds of charred flesh, the macabre sight stretching as far as the eye could see.

Jesus. How many of these things were there?

In the distance, they saw the man-sized vultures alight on the ground and begin ripping into the burned husks with glee. The sight only hardened Mandla’s heart.

That would’ve been us if we’d tried to attack them head-on. There must have been hundreds of them.

Still, it was hard not feeling like a monster as they silently continued on their way. Mandla understood the role of marching songs now. Not only did they help keep everyone at roughly the same pace, they lifted the vibe. This was downright depressing.

That depression quickly turned to excitement however, as they felt the ground begin to rumble. Mandla looked to Nicola, silently asking if she could see anything.

Scanning the horizon, she frowned, giving a short, sharp nod.

“Stampede. Coming directly at us.”

Fuck.

Kaveh leapt into action, organising the Infantry, the Supports and the Classless into the pike square they’d designed, making sure the Infantry’s shields were supported by the huge fifteen-foot wooden pikes everyone else was carrying. It was a kind of sandwich, with the Infantry Legends clustered at the front, the Support Legends clustered at the back, and the Classless wedged between them.

The Cavalry had formed into three distinct groups. One headed by Nicola, with one other [Heavy Charger] beside her leading a pack. The other Cavalry Legends were split between the two sides of the pike square, defending its flanks with their own contingents of yipping hyenas.

The rumbling only grew louder, the ash cloud being kicked up now clearly visible. This was the elephant’s first move, a response to their opening gambit. Now, they’d see if they were truly ready for this fight.

As the mass of stampeding animals came closer, now visible as a coalition of zebras, wildebeest, impala, all sorts of savannah herbivores that were coloured brown for some reason, maybe soot. Seeing the charging herd, Mandla sent Nicola forward to disrupt their momentum. Racing off atop Nikki, she and the [Heavy Charger] next to her swung around the side with all their hyenas.

Passing the leading edge of the rush, Nicola shot a few [Flares] at the beasts, hoping to get the ones at the front to veer off course. Her jaw dropped as the flames sputtered out after appearing.

Mud. They were all slathered in damp mud.

Frowning, she instead charged her squad directly into the flank of the approaching stampede. It almost dispersed as her massive Spearback crashed into the panicking herd, releasing a set of empowered giggles that stunned a large chunk of them. The rider at her side, empowered by his [Charge], [Pierce] and [Armoured Mount] skills essentially bisected two wildebeest with his lance as he too crashed into the moving mass. It became a massacre as the other hyenas fell upon the stunned beasts and the stragglers, tearing into the herd with glee.

The plan had worked, but it had merely shrunk the stampede down, not stopped it. The leading edge of the herd still raced frantically towards them. Kaveh called out the order.

“Brace!”

Mandla stepped in front of the group and started launching his javelins, aiming for the beasts at the front, trying to trip up the mass, as behind him Kaveh organised the brace, helping those nearer the front fix the back end of their pikes into the ground, making sure that spears from up to four ranks back were all facing forwards, and confirming the Infantry remembered their practice drills.

The spearman’s disruptions again partly worked as he created small pile-ups that slowed the stampede down, but most of the beasts simply streamed around them. Still, it would have to be enough.

He went back behind the front lines as the ground thundered with the sounds of dozens of hooved beasts all fixated on one target. Them.

“Fucking brace!”

Kaveh yelled with finality as the herd drew close enough to see the whites of their eyes, to hear their heavy panting. They came closer, and closer, and…

CRUNCH

The beasts at the very front of the stampede balked at the wall of sharp objects at the last second, right as they came up to it, but it was too late as they were crushed into the spiked wall by the pressure from behind.

Pikes snapped en masse as the weight of the stampede pressed against the suddenly struggling army, a wave of pained bellows and shrieks shoving the entire thing back several steps. The beasts at the very front were impaled on the long spears but for every death, there were two others to take their place. The crush pushed further in, threatening to split the formation completely. A few tense breaths were sucked in as the stampede’s bulk stretched their capacity to the very breaking point.

Amazingly, blessedly, it held. The youths managed to keep their pikes straight and hold their ground. Mandla, running out of the formation, signalled to the Gigglers on their flanks that now was the time.

Now that the stampede had expended its energy trying to unsuccessfully break the phalanx, the two wings of hyenas, barely held at bay by the Giggling Riders Nicola had left, were let loose. Laughing and squealing maniacally, they enveloped the rest of the herd, smashing into both sides and ripping into the soft herbivores with their jaws and claws, squeezing them in between like a vice.

Mandla ran back inside the melee, now tapping the Infantry to move forward with him, shields up and weapons ready. As the assorted beasts in front of them realised something was wrong towards the flanks, Mandla and the Infantry came out from the wall of pikes like a storm front, Mandla stabbing and hacking with his [Ixwa], the other Infantry using their [Block], [Slash] and [Thrust] skills to deadly effect. Looking up, he saw the riders to the flanks laying about themselves with their sabres, repeatedly spamming the [Chop] skill, the hyenas they rode biting and tearing with their natural weapons.

Leaping into the fray with abandon, Mandla immediately got headbutted by a wildebeest, only his shield saving him from being gored. Spittle flew as the huffing beast, five feet tall and about triple his weight, pushed against him and Mandla, second Rung Ascendant, pushed back, actually resisting the animal’s bulk. Slipping to the side to dodge a zebra’s kick, he rammed his [Ixwa] into the black wildebeest’s neck, drenching his arm in blood and causing the beast to collapse.

A notification dinged in his periphery, a notification he ignored as he had to bat away a set of impala horns, before digging the quivering spear into its gut and ripping it out in a spray of viscera. A spot of blood landed on his face, that he tried wiping off quickly before remembering his hand was covered in more blood, and he only succeeded in painting his face red with the sticky organic fluid.

Long past cringing from the messier parts of battle, Mandla just set his mouth and kept stabbing.

The combined assault from three sides was too much for the now panicked animals, but just as they began to turn and run, Nicola swept back with her squad and hammered the final nail into the herd’s coffin. She slammed into the rear of the stampede, her Spearback once again stunning the herd with an empowered giggle as her forces completed the encirclement.

The fist closed. Then the killing started.

Near-demonic laughter rang out as the ash-dusted ground grew boggy and damp from the rivers of blood spilled within the Ascendants’ trap. The hyenas were ravaging the caged beasts with a demented gaiety, ripping out entrails and chewing up flesh, practically playing in the gore, to a backdrop of inhuman screams as the herbivores tried to put up a fight.

Kaveh, still within the phalanx, gave the order to press forward, tightening the noose. The herd had an ever-shrinking amount of space with the wall of spikes now grinding forward and packs of giant ravenous hyenas on all other sides.

Mandla and the Infantry pushed up with the pikes, staying just inside their range, preventing the herd from trying to impale and kick them. His spear flashed out once, twice, three times as the weapon exulted in the bloodshed. But it wasn’t enough. The spear needed more.

Nicola was no longer even aiming, just repeatedly using her [Volley] skill and drowning the area in arrows as Nikki savaged the beasts in front of her. The air grew heavy with the scent of hot, metallic blood, one could almost taste it in the air as the Ascendants’ forces violently ground the herd down to nothing.

Like a fog had lifted, the battle was over all too suddenly. One moment Mandla had dug his spear into a braying zebra’s neck, the next everyone was cheering.

Looking around, there was a carpet of bodies blanketing the battlefield. Victorious youths jumped for joy on all sides as the hyenas were too busy filling their stomachs with the buffet laid out in front of them to make any noises.

Mandla was unsatisfied.

Where the fuck is the elephant? And the Mini-Elites?

The victory felt hollow, like they’d simply cleared the easiest part of this ordeal. Mandla was beginning to see a terrible logic to it.

The elephant’s rank-and-file must have been decimated by the fire, so it threw what remained at us all at once.

From fighting with weaker people on his side, he’d learned that you didn’t want them around if you needed to go all out, for example he couldn’t use his [Iwisa] in a formation for fear of hurting the men around him.

But sending off the chaff allows it to concentrate its strongest forces and allows it to use its strongest abilities without fear of collateral while at the same time weakening us. We’ll probably find it wherever this mud came from.

He glanced around at the broken and chipped weapons many were now forced to wield.

He looked towards the north-east with apprehension.

Now, he feared, the real fight would begin.