"We are close to the gate, my lord."
"Hm."
The soldier bowed once and retreated. General Lionhead didn’t move. He stood like a statue made of muscle and worn steel, his red hair a stark banner against the grey sky. His column of soldiers, the hardened veterans of the Great Wall, waited behind him in perfect, patient silence.
He didn’t look like a man who remembered another life. He looked like a force of nature that had been carved out of this world’s stone.
The past didn’t haunt him. It lived in him. The whispers of ’bastard,’ the memory of his father being dragged away, the cold discipline that replaced a childhood—it was all fuel. On Earth, that fuel would have burned the world down. Here... it just made him colder. Sharper.
A tremor ripped through the air ahead of them. Not a sound. A tear.
Soldiers shifted, hands going to weapons.
Black gashes ripped open in the middle of the road, ten paces ahead. They didn’t look like magic. They looked like wounds.
Things came out.
They weren’t beasts. They weren’t demons. They were wrong. Limbs bent in places limbs shouldn’t have joints. Mouths opened in rows where eyes should be. They moved in a jerky, twitching scramble, like puppets with cut strings.
"Formation," Lionhead said. His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
Shields slammed into the ground. Swords were drawn. The column became a wall.
The creatures didn’t roar. They whispered. A hissing, chittering chorus that grated on the ears. "For mother... for mother..."
They charged.
The first wave hit the shield wall. Claws scraped on steel. A soldier grunted as something too-fast bit into the gap between his helm and pauldron. He fell, gurgling.
Lionhead moved.
He didn’t run. He walked forward into the chaos. A creature leapt at him, all teeth and claws. He caught it by what might have been its throat and slammed it down into the hard-packed earth. The impact didn’t just crush it; the thing’s body folded, collapsing in on itself with a sickening crunch of too many bones.
Another came from his left. He didn’t turn his head. His left arm shot out, his fist connecting with its center mass. It didn’t fly back. It stopped dead, the force traveling through its twisted frame in a wave that made its limbs snap and go limp before it hit the ground.
He was methodical. Brutal. Every movement was efficient, with no wasted energy. A creature tried to swarm over the shields to his right. Lionhead took two steps, grabbed it by a spindly leg, and used its own momentum to swing it in a wide arc, smashing it into three others. They went down in a tangle of broken limbs.
"For mother! For mother!" the whispers grew louder, more frantic.
More portals were opening, further back, spilling more of the twitching horrors into the field. They were trying to flank.
Lionhead saw it. He pointed. "Second line, wheel left. Archers, high arc, fire at will."
His orders were clean. Instantly, a portion of his soldiers disengaged and reformed, cutting off the flanking attempt. Arrows whistled overhead, thudding into the advancing mass.
He kept walking forward, into the thickest part of the swarm. They clawed at him. Their teeth scraped off his armor. One managed to latch onto his arm. He grabbed its head and twisted. It came off with a dry pop.
He wasn’t just fighting. He was imposing. Where he walked, the chaotic, scrambling charge of the creatures broke down. They slowed. Their movements became clumsy, uncoordinated. It was as if the very idea of a successful attack fell apart in his presence.
A larger creature, a pulsing, multi-limbed horror, pushed through the ranks, shoving its own kind aside. It loomed over him, a dozen needle-like mouths gnashing.
Lionhead looked up at it. He didn’t raise his weapon.
He raised his hand, palm out.
"Stop."
The creature froze. Not from magic. Not from force. Its limbs locked. Its many eyes widened in confusion. It tried to move, to finish its strike, but its body wouldn’t obey. It was like its own muscles were arguing with each other.
Lionhead stepped in close. He placed his other hand on its heaving chest.
"You are out of place," he said, his voice low.
He pushed.
The creature didn’t fly back. It unraveled. Its limbs detached in sequence, its torso splitting along seams that shouldn’t exist, collapsing into a heap of inert, twitching parts. It didn’t bleed. It just... came apart.
The whispers turned to shrieks. The remaining portals flickered violently.
Lionhead turned his gaze on them. He clenched his fist.
"Close."
The black gashes in the air shuddered. They didn’t vanish smoothly. They snapped shut, like a trapdoor slamming, severing two creatures that were halfway through. The severed halves dropped to the ground, dissolving into black sludge.
Silence fell, broken only by the heavy breathing of his soldiers and the slow drip of the dissolving monsters.
Lionhead lowered his hand. He looked at the black stains on the road, then ahead, toward the distant spires of the capital.
A soldier approached, his face pale. "General... what were those things? They weren’t from beyond the Wall. I’ve never seen..."
"Scouts," Lionhead said, cutting him off. He wiped his gauntlet clean on his cloak. "Something is testing the edges. Seeing what breaks."
He turned back to his column. The veterans met his eyes, their fear held firmly in check by their trust in him. "The capital. Now. Double pace."
As they reformed and began to march, Lionhead’s mind wasn’t on the monsters. It was on their words.
For mother.
And on the cold, certain feeling in his gut that something was wrong in the heart of the empire. And the monsters were just the beginning.
A/N
I made a school for this Novel, if you want to listen it, just let me know.