“There’s so many of them!” Clement exclaimed. Hiero put an assuring hand on the Khayo gardener’s shoulder. Clement looked up at Hiero, eyes struck with fear, trying to keep composed. “Wha-what are they?”

“Werswach Reyuseh, the people of the east calls them,” Hiero replied.

“Werswach… Decaying? Or diseased? Blighted! Blighted Giants, is it?”

“You know Tomeh?” Hiero continued to be amazed by the young magus. “Blighted Titans. A simple enough and apt name. Thousands of smaller light-forsaken join together into these walking mountains. Incredibly tedious to kill, each one. They don’t have a brain or heart to aim for. Headless, they’ll press on. Even if only their lower body remains, they’ll continue putting one of their many legs before another.”

“Have you fought them?”

“I have.” Hiero had encountered Blighted Titans in the last battles for the east when the Multitude had irrepressibly grown. Several he had killed, the last two by the crossroads to the cities of Mayrul and Sajilis. Telling Clement about it might calm the gardener’s anxious heart, at the risk of sounding arrogant.

However, this was the first time Hiero had seen more than ten on one battlefield. Saying that wouldn’t reassure Clement at all.

A dozen? More. Those in front covered many behind them.

Tellingly, Clement didn’t prod Hiero how many Blighted Titans he had killed. Eleven in total was the answer. But Clement would be disappointed to know Hiero had to retreat after each small victory, turning it all into losses, for the presence of Blighted Titans meant the Multitude was approaching.

Instead, Clement asked, “What should we do?”

“We hold,” Hiero replied with an answer that wasn’t.

Clement already knew that. But it jolted the despair out of his mind. His brows staunchly meeting, Clement nodded with renewed resolve. “Yes, Draecontyr. You’re right. We must hold no matter how many of these Blighted Titans come!”

“We must, and we will.” Hiero nodded. He may have predicted the Blighted Titans’ appearance—he had told the war princes about them—but not in these numbers. Yet, he remained confident they’d stand the assault.

At what price? He wasn’t sure.

Too high, and there’d be no chance to weather subsequent attacks. Though they were the defenders in a siege, time wasn’t on their side. Each wave grew exponentially stronger.

And time is what I need, Hiero thought, almost praying to deaf gods.

The magnicannons persisted in their angry song. Soaring fireballs above illuminated Hiero, Clement, and the soldiers crowding by the battlements. The fireballs connected with the Blighted Titans’ immense torsos, sometimes hitting their many arms in the way. Several Titans had large portions of their bodies violently carved out by the blasts.

Yet, their advance was relentless.

Closer and closer, the wall of darkness came.

The footfalls of the Blighted Titans were like the earth itself growling. Each step hammered olden rubble flat into the ground, crushing many of the smaller light-forsaken as well, mere ants to their larger kin.

“Their weak points are their limbs,” Hiero said. “But they have many. If even one arm remains, they’ll drag themselves across the ground. Render them immobile—quite a difficult order—and they’ll disintegrate soon enough.”

“The magnicannons can’t be that precise,” Clement observed.

“No. But they’re trying.”

Signal flares, horns, and drums relayed command after command to those on the walls. The lesser magnicannons lowered their angles for faster and more accurate fire as the Blighted Titans drew nearer. Following the magnicannons, the airscrew barge targeted their legs with Dust sakers. The volleys aimed several yards ahead of the Titans’ path to hit them. The Blighted Titans were only walking, but with vast strides, they were as fast as a galloping horse.

The Titan in the lead took the brunt of the attacks. Its two front legs buckled and then crumpled, the colossal body above it toppling forward like a demolished castle in a satisfying crash.

Gauntleted fists and spears struck shields as soldiers hollered. Even Clement punched the air, the chains coiling around him brightened in his excitement. The cheering intensified when another Blighted Titan tumbled down, never to rise again. The Titan behind it didn’t stop, treading on its fellow without hesitation. Feet as wide as the streets of the Escriman capital punched through the felled body.

Even as it was getting trampled, the splayed Blighted Titan clawed the ground with its many hands to pull its body along.

The Khayo and Fulguren doled another layer of punishment to those coming within reach of their spells. They changed their magic circles, prioritizing accuracy instead of widespread destruction as they blasted away the leg joints of Blighted Titans, aiming true like a veteran archer. 

More Blighted Titans fell to the bombardment. Others stumbled and got entangled with the fallen. Soon, several black hills smoldered across the battlefield, cratered by the unceasing explosions. Enchanted flames mixed with the black smoke. Only half of the Blighted Titans ambled ever closer. The Blighted Titans couldn’t hope—if they were capable of such emotion—to reach the walls with this much firepower allayed against them. Armies of the West combined proved to be a formidable force.

Hiero allowed himself to feel pride. It was High King Grammaton who did most of the uniting. But who forced the hibernating old man into action? Hiero did! An impressive feat unto itself, and not before it was too late.

Do we win this round? Hiero dared hope. It was too early to call.

The hewn-down Blighted Titans shrunk like dunes reduced by rolling desert winds. Shadowy forms detached from the giant bodies they were once part of, climbing down in the hundreds like a landslide.  

Why were the Blighted Titans crumbling early? They could still move, with many left limbs at their disposal. Those Hiero had encountered would endure even if all they could do was roll on the ground. He’d have to disintegrate them with dragon’s breath to end their stubborn existence.

The answer presented itself.

The Blighted from the downed Titans pooled with others like ants on a piece of bread. Blacker black than the rest of the ground were the points they congregated. And from behind the Titans, mostly unnoticed until their cover toppled and they had come closer, was a much bigger wave of shadows.

“What’s going on?” Clement asked amid the confused voices of the soldiers. He then answered himself. “The mounds are forming! Look at them rise!”

Red flares shoot up. Black clouds swallow them. Seconds later, they exploded, pushing back the darkness and scattering sparkling light that traced overlapping triangles and bisecting lines in the sky—the Gaolyan Urwe, the general call to attack.  

Pyres followed the deep red of the flares. Drums beat faster, and the horns joined in a deep reverberating note.

“They predicted our moves,” Hiero muttered, his lower left eyelid twitching.

It wasn’t because of his old scar or lack of sleep. One of the few things that could chisel at his collected face was when he played into the palms of others, especially monsters that didn’t show a high capacity for thought thus far.  

As Farlusen crossbowmen came forward, Hiero retreated from the battlements. The crossbowmen carried quivers packed with crystal-tipped bolts, secured with a belt by their right hips. The crystals, containing a small amount of Dust inside, would explode upon hitting their targets—projectiles provided by the Romo.

Expensive, yes. But no better time to use them than now, or there wouldn’t be a chance to use them later.

Clement effortlessly leaped on top of a merlon, displaying agility unusual for a gardener. Crossbowmen moved aside to give him space. He raised his arms as his chains unwound from his body, glowing white like fanned coals. He radiated heat that warmed the damp coldness.

Through the bustle of activity and the battle din, Hiero was lost in thought. Absentmindedly staring at the magic circles Clement constructed, Hiero wondered, Who’s in a trap? Us or them?

The Blighted Multitude—either as a whole mass or having an intelligent entity in command—foresaw the defenders would devise a strategy against the ramps and prepared measures to undermine it. Blighted Titans drew the fire and shielded the rest of the Multitude’s tendrils snaking behind them. If the Blighted Titans fell, fell, they’d have fulfilled their purpose while delivering hundreds of their smaller kin to the frontlines. Those that remained standing would protect the mounds or support the ramps themselves.

The Blighted Multitude didn’t want to overrun the Citadel. It could’ve endlessly assailed the walls, day after day, until their dead piled high to the battlements.

No, that wasn’t Blighted’s true goal.

Despair.

It wants us to defeat ourselves, Hiero grimly concluded. It wouldn’t allow them an easy victory this wave. Each attack would cut deep, bleeding their forces dearly.

The Blighted wanted them to suffer but not outright defeated. To despair for what was coming, agonize over how long they’d last until their minds surrendered. There’d be a spate of Blighted infections after this… if there weren’t some already.

“Fire!” Bollahghan bellowed in Tomeh.

“Fire!” the Farlusen captain echoed in their rigid language.

Blue puffs of smoke traced the wall as Dustgunners pulled triggers. They exchanged their spent rifles with freshly loaded ones handed by the men behind them, took aim like clockwork, and again let loose their Dust-propelled rounds. The flaming bolts of the crossbowmen landed on the mounds, peppering them with tiny bursts of light and fire.

A bright flash made Hiero think the sun had pierced the dark clouds.

It was Clement, conjuring flames from his hands, giving off unreal light. An apparition of a lava wyrm sat on his shoulder, guiding him in using nature’s aileh as the once-living creature did—it was the aileh-manipulating counterpart to Molders using the physical abilities of their Cores’ source.

Stretching his hands forth, Clement coaxed the flames to pass through a circle of amplification. A blazing tornado came out the other side, wailing as it sucked in air to feed itself. Clement let loose his mighty spell on the mound growing the fastest.

Burning Blighted fell off like grains tumbling down a disturbed pile of sand.

Yet, the mounds rose ever higher as other Blighted clambered up to replace the fallen. And more.

Apprehensive murmurings simmered among the defenders as the shadowy knolls lurched toward the walls, pulsating, contracting, and expanding with every surge, reminding Hiero of the giant slugs living near the underwater vents of the Kershek heart node.

Crossbowmen shifted restlessly, and spearmen had their bodies half-turned, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice as they relived the nightmare of the previous battle. Everything was repeating. The mounds would grow unceasingly until they collapsed under their weight, swaying forward in time to slam against the wall, settling into a ramp. The Blighted would continue piling more bodies. They’d be almost unstoppable if they ever reached the walls. And the mounds were close enough that everyone could see individual Blighted squirming among hundreds of others.

A purple fireball from the bombard came down at a low angle, hurtling at the closest mound.

“Clement!” Hiero called. “Get down!” Without any hesitation, Clement complied. “Everyone, get down!” Hiero shouted, this time in broken Farlusen.

He might’ve spoken the wrong words, but they didn’t need to understand him. Spearmen crouched, shields raised. Crossbowmen sheltered behind the parapet. Hiero remained standing.

In a deafening blast, the mound was turned inside out, collapsing into a bowl of burning corpses adorned with purple flames. Aflame chunks of the Blighted slapped the walls, giving the ancient stone new paintwork, and rained on the battlements.

One down.

The soldiers didn’t cheer as when the first Blighted Titan fell, busy with throwing off corrupted flesh falling in their midst. They coughed and gagged, some falling to their knees to vomit, as wretched, foul smoke from burning Blighted wafted over them.

With Molded eyes, Hiero scanned the battlefield. The Blighted Titans, left alone by the magi and magnicannons, had halted their march. Only the mounds continued onward.

Something was wrong.

Hiero followed the hands of one Blighted Titan pressed against its chest. It stabbed itself with poles for fingers. Curling them, it grabbed a handful of its flesh—lesser light-forsaken, about thirty-odd struggling creatures caged inside the fingers of one hand—and ripped it from its body. The other Blighted Titans did the same.

The explosion of magnicannon hitting another mound impeded Hiero’s view. All his owl king eyes could see were purple flames, impenetrable black smoke, and a shower of Blighted corpses. He tracked a severed arm twirling across the air, landing to his far left and bouncing off a Farlusen buckler.

A spark of understanding. Hiero’s head snapped back forward.

Barely visible above the receding smoke, multi-joined arms of the Titans reached for the skies with fists full of lesser Blighted. They swung their arms far back. I’m right!

The airscrew barged must’ve sighted it as well. It shot white warning flares that hung in the air and shimmered, slowly falling. Soldiers looked at each other, confused about the signals. They probably wondered if it meant the mounds. With no magnicannons shooting at the Blighted Titans, they blended with the abyssal darkness to human eyes.

“Incoming!” Hiero roared, hoping he used the right Farlusen word. “Incoming! The Titans are throwing at us!” He startled the soldiers beside him, not only by his sudden shouts but by his growth spurt. He had begun Melding.

Hiero willed his mind to focus on the spry jaggedhopper—he needed mobility.

His feet, wrapped in living moss, lengthened, heels extending sharply back at an upward angle. He stood on the front soles and clawed toes of his new feet while his legs elongated, bones painlessly cracking, repositioning themselves into new joints. Soon, Hiero surpassed the height of a Farlusen spear, and he wasn’t done growing.

He might not have correctly conveyed to the soldiers the threat, but seeing him Melding was enough warning. Their captain scanned the horizon with his telescope, spouting orders.   

Hiero didn’t see what happened next because everything went black.

He didn’t close his eyes—he lost his eyes.

The ground-dwelling tenrex next emerged in Hiero’s thoughts, overlapping the image of the jaggedhopper. He could hear his skull reforming and feel his nose extend forward into a snout. He knew his head was becoming shaped like a teardrop fleeced with bristles. His tongue had changed into a peculiar shape, fitting snugly on the roof of his sharp mouth.

He clicked his tongue.

The pop echoed in the hollow chambers of his skull, distinctive of tenrex and its cousins. The sound, inaudible to humans, reverberated outward in a dome, returning a picture of everything around him.

Hiero couldn’t see; tenrexes lacked eyes. But he could feel his surroundings.

Owl king eyes were his favored, especially in the dark. But he’d soon have both enemies and allies on all sides. He wanted to attack in every direction without turning his head around and with better responsiveness than processing minute details of what he could see.

As he Melded the jaggedhopper and the tenrex, Hiero layered the dancer mantis into the melting pot—the last ingredient.

The sensation of his fingers disappeared, the bones of his hands merging into one. His skin smoothened and hardened into a blade made of special hard chitin. It curved out and down, larger than a farmer’s scythe.

What is this? After losing track of his fingers, Hiero suddenly detected an odd feeling in his blades. How could that be? There were no nerves in them except for the grooved spine giving them shape. It must be Mitho’s handiwork, affecting his internal aileh system.

He ignored it, readying for a Split Merging—it was one of the more advanced techniques of a Melder.

Hiero mentally layered two partial morphs of the dancer mantis, the second asymmetrically interacting with his body. He willed his ribs—impossible for those who hadn’t mastered their selves—to Mold into additional limbs, two more sets of bladed arms growing out his back. Less than five breaths after he started, Hiero finished his Meld with the rest of the jaggedhopper’s lithe, muscular body.  

He wiggled his long snout, taking in a deep breath—tenrexes have a keen sense of smell for detecting the pungent scent marking of their kind. The sharp, rusty smell of ignited Dust was pervasive, mixing with the sour, almost bitter odor of decay from the Blighted.

Click, click, click, went Hiero’s tongue. He was blind one second and, the next, could see the outlines of the tower and everyone on it, including himself. He reached twice as tall as a Falrusen soldier and severalfold larger than a real jaggedhopper was. He had used his internal aileh to generate body mass his original human body didn’t have.

Click, click, click.

Something fast entered his dome of awareness.

Hiero ducked his head. The sensitive bristles of the tenrex sensed it passing over. A few fast swipes with his back blades, surely mere blurs to the Farlusens, and the Blighted landed in several pieces.

Chained clicks informed him of the situation. Blighted landed on the walls and towers. The Titans were surprisingly accurate. Or they may be throwing so many of their much smaller siblings that some were bound to hit their marks.

Hiero carefully threaded through soldiers, killing the Blighted as they picked themselves up from their great fall.

A soldier speared empty air as Hiero chopped the enemy he aimed for. Another soldier, on the floor and about to get mauled, was surprised when the Blighted above him split in two right down the middle.  

Squiggly lines wrapping the misshapen Blighted seemed to be Clement’s flames. This was the first time Hiero ‘saw’ fire in tenrex form. Sadly, he didn’t have time to appreciate the oddities of nature. Hiero cleared the rest of the Blighted on the tower, skewering many and flinging them off it.   

“Pick yourselves up!” ordered the Farlusen commander as he shoved a headless Blighted—the work of Hiero—over the tower’s edge with his shield. “Get up and keep firing!”

Hiero hopped from the tower down to the wall’s walkway. His nose twitched. The metallic stench of human blood laced the air, mixing with that of decay. The battle raged with the downpour of Blighted ceaseless. The tenrex’s sensitive ears caught all the ruckus of fighting but weren’t overwhelmed—a trait that swayed Hiero to acquire their Cores. Noisy creatures themselves, the screech of a tenrex could stun a person.

Leg muscles coiled, Hiero pushed off the floor, sprinting with such speed as if leaping from a bowstring. Weaving through humans and monsters, he masterfully controlled his blades to slice off the heads of only the latter.

It had taken Hiero a couple of years to get master controlling several limbs, each performing a separate action. And he needed mountains of practice to reach this level of proficiency in this particular Melding combination. His blades met Blighted flesh with each swing, sometimes slicing several bodies simultaneously.

Dustgunners fired at him, and the Blighted he fought. Hiero bent low, almost hugging the ground, relying on speed and momentum to prevent himself from falling. Then he arced above a group of confused Farlusens who tried to attack him, clearing their spears with one leap.

Not the first time allies attacked me, Hiero mused.

“That’s the Draecontyr, you mungbuns!” Bollaghan angrily snapped.

Bollaghan endeavored to keep his Dustgunners firing forward, over the walls, and ignore the Blighted from above. The Farlusens protected them, but the clash of languages didn’t help in coordination. Dustgunners forced into melee combat pulled out short swords or used their rifles as clubs. The Dustgun’s inventors must be stirring in the afterlife, the advantage of the new-age weapon easily neutered by enemies dropping right into the gunners’ ranks.

Hiero gave the Silver Bullets leader a nod as he passed. Bollaghan probably saw only a hazy, darkish-green form.

A Blighted got slotted into a crenel of the battlements as it fell from the sky. It struggled to escape from between merlons, its torso squeezed in by the force of the drop.

Hiero twisted himself sideways and kicked the Blighted with a snap of his powerful legs, pushing it out of the gap. The Blighted roared in gratitude. It experienced falling for the second time. Hiero then righted himself and kept going, slicing away with his six arms, his tongue incessantly clicking.

He reached the next tower, scaling it with his blades digging holds into the magical Gaolyan stone. The soldiers on top expectedly thought him an enemy. But they couldn’t land a blow on him, so he didn’t mind. They soon realized he was a Melder when he targeted the Blighted. He didn’t stop to hear their apologies, jumping down on the other side of the tower.

Walkway, tower, walkway, tower, walkway—scores upon scores of the Blighted fell to Hiero’s unstoppable stampede. This was his stretch of the walls to defend. And he wouldn’t fail.

The jaggedhopper’s muscles complemented the weapons of the deadly dancer mantis, wielding them in ways and precision the actual human-sized insect couldn’t. The senses of the tenrex held it all together, allowing for a level of awareness that eyes, no matter how many of them, could never match.

Eventually, the light-forsaken on the walls thinned.

Did the Titans stop throwing them?

The pop and whistles of signal flares—just another explosion to the human ear but very distinct to a tenrex—gave Hiero pause. He couldn’t see what was happening beyond the walls. His clicks could only reach, at most, a hundred yards out.

I can’t see colors too, he thought as he gazed upward, snorting with his long snout at his weakness. He undid his Melding fast to see what was going on.

“Draecontyr! Is it you?” someone asked in Basadhin as more of Hiero’s face became recognizable. Hiero had reached their section of the outer wall.

“Draecontyr, we fight together!” shouted another.

Basadhin soldiers, wearing scaled cuirasses and heavy vests, raised their Core-studded scimitars as they celebrated Hiero’s presence. Strict worshippers of the aileh and the dragons that can manipulate them, the Basadhin considered the Draecontyrs divine-touched.

Hiero mimicked their gestures. “We fight together,” he said, trying his best to speak their rolling words. What else was he supposed to do? It’d be awkward if he ignored them.

The cheers quieted shortly, switching to uneasy hums.

The Blighted downpour had stopped because the Titans had resumed their march, moving in front of forming mounds to protect them—that was what the flares signaled. Hiero foresaw the Titans themselves would turn their bodies into ramps once they reached the walls.

Thunderous roars sweeping the battlefield told him the other Draecontyrs were World Melding. Hiero hopped onto the chest-high crenel in front of him.

“We have the Draecontyr,” a Basadhin shouted in a choppy mix of his tongue and low Grammus. “With the Draecontyrs, we will achieve victory!”

“Aileh gives us life!” came another shout.

“Fight while living!” responded the rest of the soldiers. “Draecontyr Hiero is with us!”

“Aileh gives us life!” was the response of dozens.

Hiero inhaled deeply, ignoring the Blighted reek. He fixated on the sensation of his expanding chest, his stretching muscles, his ribs opening up. Then he exhaled. His eyes closed, he meditated even as the world-ending enemy loomed, and explosions plugged his ears, straddling the line of consciousness. The exposed Core on his chest was warm. It radiated heat through his body.

For one moment, it was as if the entire world stilled, reflected in calm water. Hiero dipped his mind’s finger in the water. Ripples spread.  

Then Hiero opened his eyes and breathed again. Everything rolled forward, but this time, he was connected with the world. He could sense natural unrefined aileh abound in the air. He drew them to him. The Basadhins cheered. They couldn’t feel what was happening, but tied to their wrists were crystals that reacted to aileh changes, each given by high priests during their naming ceremonies. The Basadhins knew he was World Melding.

And there it was again—the strange sensation where Mitho had operated on. The aileh permeating his skin harshly roiled, the muscles in his arm spasming. The aileh multiplied in power as it entered his body. Mitho’s life etchings worked, but Hiero stifled the wild aileh with his will. It wasn’t yet time.

For now, he should survive.  

Raising his fist, Hiero shouted the familiar Basadhin battle cry, “Fight while living!”

And he leaped off the walls, World Melding as he plummeted to the Blighted horde below; the writhing ground of Blighted far below rushed up to meet him as he ballooned in size, darkening the shadows with his expanding own.

---

 

“This speck right here is the First Emperor, Hiero,” Aileen Fahllyr said, as friendly as she bothered to try.

Her aileh-engraved left index finger—etched from base knuckle to tip with angled coaxing lines—pointed at the middle of a painting by some painter who was good at painting. Aileen had forgotten the details Jel, her cousin from a branch family, had explained when giving her this same tour the day she arrived in the Fahllyr House almost a year prior.

Aileen’s four guests respectfully nodded, leaning forward for a better look, the smallest of them standing on tiptoes.

The tiny figure next to Aileen’s nail was wrapped in a halo of the signature royal eight-ray design, contrasting with the rest of the artwork drenched in dark tones, showing the Siege of Aderenthyn.

“The First Emperor leading the Coalition Army of the united West,” Aileen said, “fought the Blighted Multitude on this very place… three hundred years ago.”