A few shouts from somewhere in the rear broke the silence that befell the human formation. Time came to a crawl as Raegn waited for the enemy to approach. His mind wandered to idle thoughts. Would Ulrich bother with a speech this time? Likely not. A second round of motivating words wouldn’t hold the same weight now that their line had already bloodied the Void. A drip on his nose had him look upward. Dark clouds swirled above and blocked what little daylight remained, but they carried no rain. It had been sweat from his hair, he discovered, after licking the salty drop that rolled down onto his lips.

“What in the bloody Heavens is taking so long?” Landon asked.

There were other small grunts and murmurs echoing the same. Raegn gave a small smirk and slid his helm onto his head. At least the others had the same difficulty finding patience when a dance with death grew near. He lit the embers within and what was left of his peripheral vision blurred entirely. The dust masked much of what he could see, but through the churned up earth he could make out movement. He strained, eyes watering from the Light that focused them, but ever so slightly the picture came more into focus. His gut knotted at the sight.

The Void were moving deliberately. No reckless charge. No uncontrollable bloodlust. The human formation swayed restlessly, shifting feet and craning heads plaguing each company. Yet when the enemy came to a full stop, so did all other movement within the valley. Raegn had never known the Void to take any action not directly related to spilling blood. His mind reeled, searching for an explanation. The Void did not show restraint. Their ability to organize was limited to how many could mass together in the Scarred Lands before attempting to breach one of the two Shield Cities. The fact that they were broken enough to attack in waves had already demonstrated their inability to function as a cohesive force.

“Paratus!” Ulrich bellowed.

The shield wall formed, but Raegn kept his eyes over the top so he could watch the opposing formation. The voidlings jittered back and forth, but they did not advance. Behemoths stood further back, maybe two hundred paces away—too far away to hit accurately. Most intimidating, though, were the voidborne intermingled within the formation. Only three dozen or so were visible, but there were likely many more hidden deep in the enemy’s ranks. They looked human, some in small pieces of armor and wielding weapons, while others wore nothing but tatters of clothing.

It had been seven trips to the Ridge since Raegn had last fought one and, despite his desire for glory, the thought of fighting one again brought a moment of hesitation. Against an average warrior it took nearly half a dozen voidlings attacking at once to be considered equal strength, but voidborne were an unknown. In Raegn’s case, he had won his last encounter in single combat, but other Sentinels had periodically reported that it took two or three men to down a single of the foe. By all accounts they, much like humans, came in wildly various ranges of strength and ability.

The archers began to rain arrows down on the enemy, but the Void made no effort to protect itself. Voidlings yelped and crumpled if they took a good hit, but the small projectiles did little more than prick the Behemoths. The usefulness of their archers had always been limited by their volume of fire. If the battle continued on long enough running out of arrows would become an actual possibility rather than an afterthought in planning.

“Are they just going to wait for our arms to fall off?” Landon asked, “Or maybe they’re rethinking the whole thing? What do we think the chances are they just turn around?” he heckled, receiving several chuckles from the rest of the company.

A nervous habit. The jests were a distraction and not a welcome one. Raegn hissed a quiet, “Focus,” and kept his eyes forward.

His company was strong, he had made sure of it. He had personally selected each man and woman to serve alongside him. In his three years of command he became as confident in their abilities as they were in his. Despite their prowess, however, a ripple ran across the front line as the warriors flexed in anticipation. The Void moved.

It was a slow advance to close the distance, this time halting no more than one hundred paces away. Hands tightened around weapons and the shield wall stiffened as arms readied in expectation.

“Well, shit, maybe they just can’t see.” Nervous laughter, more like coughs, responded to Landon’s banter. “Need a better look, ya bastards?” he called out to the Void.

Raegn wanted to scold his friend, but an abnormal motion caught his attention. His eyes widened as nearly a third of the voidborne raised their arms.

He screamed over his right shoulder and down the gap towards the small groups between the first and second lines. “Obice!” The Light carried his voice through the formation, the word as loud as Ulrich’s commands had been and distorted by a similar static.

Crackling lances burst forward from the Void formation. The air around them gave off a deep-violet hue but the lances themselves were devoid of light, sapping what little life the air carried as they sped forward. Moments before they filled Raegn’s vision a golden shimmer appeared several paces ahead of the front line. The blasts washed over the barrier like waves on rock. As the shimmer faded Raegn looked through hazy air and found several voidborne with arms still raised, orbs forming at their hands.

“Obice!” he cried out again.

The shimmer reappeared, this time preceding the blasts by several seconds.

“Collapse my spot!” he ordered Landon and stepped out of the front line. As the shields shifted to cover his absence, Raegn paused. Leaving his company in the midst of battle would set a poor example. He felt a fool to seek a revision of the battle plan now, yet he still sprinted around the back of Ulrich’s unit and turned up the right side at the very moment Ulrich stepped out. Had the Old Bear known he would come?

“Our clerics won’t stand against this forever. We need to advance and disrupt those volleys!” Raegn urged.

“I appreciate your counsel, but we will not attack,” Ulrich replied.

“What?” Raegn shook his head. “You would wait until our barriers fail and we’re cut down?”

“Even the Void will tire, boy,” Ulrich said with a staying hand. “If we advance, we give up our geographic advantage. Your attack would spread the formation to its limits when the pass widens ahead.”

“I’m not willing to bet the stamina of our souls against their foulness!” Raegn argued. “I am willing to bet on us in close quarters!” His words were nearly drowned out by another wave of crackling violet spreading across the barrier, the clerics now reacting on their own to the attacks.

“We can hold.” Ulrich clasped his hand on Raegn’s shoulder. “We always have.”

Raegn searched his mentor’s eyes for a fault in the old warrior’s confidence but did not find it. He returned to his unit, shoulders tight and lips drawn in a thin line.

More than two dozen volleys were met by the barrier. The repetitive attack carried on long enough that Raegn might have found himself bored were it not for the flinch that came with every impact. The barrier dropped after another group of blasts and he was abruptly blinded by a flash next to his head. While he blinked to recover his sight a spear fell against his back and clattered to the ground. He turned to find its wielder and when the bright spots faded he saw Landon staring back at him, eyes wide in terror. What was left his friend’s throat and mouth gurgled as he and several others behind him toppled to the ground.

Raegn stood, stuck in a half-turn, unwilling to turn away from the shield wall yet frozen from the sight of death behind him. It was not the first time he’d seen a comrade fall, but he was unable to decide between anger at the Void or his inability to protect his men. The warrior that had been behind Landon groaned and pawed at the stump of an arm sticking out from his shoulder.

“Luo,” Raegn whispered. The word came as a far-off thought, called from memory by little more than instinct. Still, the quiet instruction broke the fog from his mind. “Purge it! Cleanse the wounded!” he barked.

His order spurred others into action. A dozen members of his company reached down to purify the wounds of those still alive. Clerics wove their way through the ranks and as they pulled away the dead and wounded Raegn was left with a sizeable gap to his rear.

“Collapse inward!” he ordered. The company would be slightly deformed from the usual strength offered by the rectangle, but the back and edges being even were of much less importance than keeping the integrity of the front. Raegn tightened his grip on his shield and constantly held the Light within, ready to manifest his own barrier should it be needed. The volleys dissolved into a barrage of void blasts with no particular timing that left them under constant threat.

Another beam made it through, finding a weak point and piercing into what Raegn reasoned would be the rightmost company. The clerics couldn’t maintain the barrier’s strength. They were unable to swap fast enough to stay fresh. The Void was either reacting to their tactics or had already anticipated them. Raegn flinched and ducked behind his shield some as another beam punctured through the barrier to his left. There was no glory in this—standing and waiting to die. Visions of the broken bodies from the first wave played in his mind and were mixed with those of his recently fallen men. He would not die, he would not have his warriors die, without a fight.

“Adire!” he yelled.

The company responded with slow, synchronous forward paces. The other units were forced to do the same to maintain the integrity of the shield wall.

“Plenus adire!”

The front line took to a fast jog, the other companies creating a small ripple in the front as they lagged behind his. The clerics must have followed in turn as the barrier held just ahead of the shield wall. Periodically, a beam would slip through to be followed by cries of the wounded, but each pained scream served only to fuel Raegn’s fire. He fought his own battle, stifling the urge to break formation and outrun the barrier.

As they approached within a dozen paces, he could hold back no longer. He roared a cry of war and his vision became perfectly crisp as his eyes blazed white beneath his helm. Racing forward, he forced the Light through his legs and generated small barriers with his feet to take several bounding strides upward. He cleared the front line of voidlings and leapt from the sky, driving his spear into a voidborne wearing little more than rags. He rolled with the landing and rose in a shockwave of Light to knock away the Void bearing down on him. The front caught up and the battle became chaos. White streaks and glimmering steel flickered through the dust, the myriad combatants barely visible in the tumultuous movement as hundreds fought for their lives.

Raegn continued his assault and targeted a nearby voidborne. He sent a lance of Light that left a hole through its chest. The Light surged from his hand again, but the next raised a black heater shield that scattered the beam. Unfortunately for it, another blast of golden-white came from its left, leaving nothing above its shoulders. Raegn hazarded a glance from behind his shield to see Ulrich towering above a mass of dead voidlings, eyes glowing white beneath his helm.

Raegn pushed forward, sweat pouring from his face as he cut down the voidlings that continued to charge him. His chest pressed against his half cuirass with each heavy breath, the metal fighting back against him. Every cry of a fallen comrade to his rear spurred him further into the enemy formation until a wall of stale air gave him pause. Another voidborne stood in his path, though this one was covered in armor dark as the night. It stood with two hands on the pommel of its sword, the point resting against the ground. When it repositioned slightly to focus its attention on him, Raegn noticed that it seemed more natural, more human, than the others had been. It made no difference. A more equal opponent only meant a greater victory.

The tip of Raegn’s spear radiated as he rushed the foe and hurled the weapon as a bolt of Light. The voidborne hefted its sword and deflected the projectile, sending it careening into the mass of creatures beyond. Raegn closed the remaining distance and drew his own sword from his side. He struck out with an arcing slash, the voidborne’s blade rising to meet it. With weapons locked, Raegn got a closer look at the length of his foe’s sword. An opponent with longer range would be difficult if given the opportunity. He stayed close, stepping to the side and delivering a powerful blow with the edge of his shield to the gut. The dark knight gave no reaction to the hit and lazily stepped away. Its counterattack came nearly unseen. Raegn’s footwork carried him below and away from the cut aimed at his throat and the steel whirred over his head.

Rarely in all his sparring had his speed been rivaled, yet each time he danced in to close the gap the voidborne parried the attack and absorbed the shield bash. He tried again, this time feinting hard at a grapple. It was a tactic Ulrich had taught him—draw the opponent in, make them fear an attack high while tripping or slashing their legs from below. The move was intended to be done with a spear, however, and Raegn’s blade didn’t have the length to sneak in behind the leg. The sharp edge slid harmlessly along a greave and he received a gauntleted fist to the side of the helm for the attempt.

Now on the defensive, Raegn’s legs adopted the workload as he avoided the length of the dark blade. The voidborne showed a hard overhead cut—an opportunity. He prepared to deflect the attack and positioned his feet to step inward and thrust his blade into the neck. The sword rang against his shield as intended, but the power behind the blow staggered his stance and jarred his hold on the Light. The voidborne followed through and delivered a shoulder to his chest. Raegn managed to maintain his footing after stumbling backward, but it made little difference—the voidborne refused to allow him to recover.

Raegn was driven back, retreating as his shield began to splinter from tremendous swings of the sword. He shed the broken wood to free his off-hand, but the voidborne’s attacks were sequenced together so that he was constantly off balance and unable to counter. Every meeting of their blades broke his hold on the Light. His vision blurred with the jolt of each attack. Maintaining the dance became a burden. The anger that fueled him faded beneath stress as the voidborne came closer to drawing his blood.

Two thundering strikes nearly knocked him to the ground, the black blade disappearing against the dark sky overhead as the voidborne raised its sword for the third. It had to be now. The blow crashed downward, but Raegn braced the end of his blade with his free hand and crumpled to a knee as he absorbed the hit. His muscles and joints felt as though they might seize, but he willed himself to counter.

Still crouched, he re-lit the flame and slid out from under the block. The pivot added momentum to a powerful cut aimed at the torso. His blade struck true and sunk into a gap in the chain just below the voidborne’s armpit before biting into the breastplate. Raegn’s shoulders dropped and he took a much needed breath. The finishing blow could be delivered in a moment, once his lungs caught up to the effort.

He started to rise when the voidborne collapsed its sword arm over the blade. Raegn attempted to pull away, but his weapon refused to slide free. The voidborne raised its free arm at Raegn’s head and his eyes went wide at the sight of the sputtering sphere forming at the gauntleted hand. Desperate, he released his grip and left his sword stuck in the voidborne’s chest. Terror fueled the firestorm of Light that erupted in his chest and surged through his arms.

In the midst of the valley Light and Void met in pure form. Violet death spilled over the essence of life and lapped at the edges of Raegn’s armor. The discharge from both manifestations exploded upward into the sky and the resulting shockwave cleared the air as Raegn collapsed to the ground.