Dreadlings poured out of his shadow in the hundreds, then thousands.

  The savage horde swarmed across the stone floor like rushing tide.

  A hundred Stone Lords formed a thin line anchored by the hulking relic machine in the center.

  One part tomb, one part mech, it loomed like a stone god.

  The oldest of their kind ready to defend their futures.

  Behind them a Lord of Stone in resplendent, master-crafted armor that revealed nothing of their true appearance raised an arm-mounted cannon and intoned.

  “Grant them the Silence.”

  Thunder boomed.

  Dreadlings vanished by the hundreds in a storm of metal and fire.

  The relic machine lumbered forward on thick, stumpy legs akin to a pair of stout tree trunks to bathe the front ranks of dreadlings in waves of black flame.

  The field cleared.

  Shadows danced around the patches of lingering fires.

  “Show yourself, demon of shadow,” The Lord of Stone said with a voice like a rumbling landslide. “Face my champion in single combat.”

  Dread grew as the silence stretched.

  Not all the Stone Lords were aged veterans with hearts like stone, impervious to the strength of emotions.

  Most were young, with flesh like any Earthian, if thicker and more resistant to damage.

  They had yet to even begin growing their true selves.

  Decades left to go that they would never live.

  Black fog billowed out of the shadows.

  Thick as night it spread quickly, engulfing the Stone Lords.

  Hands grew slick inside gloves.

  Hearts beat faster.

  Breaths became louder.

  Dread grew.

  “Give me light.”

  A Stone Lord near the Lord of Stone raised an ornate banner.

  One made out of thin metal, so fine that it fluttered as if it was cloth.

  The symbol flared bright, banishing the shadows from the middle of their formation and pushing the black fog back.

  The Dread Paladin forced down the surge of irritation for that led to anger, which led to the darkness he constantly leashed.

  And he had just been about to have his dreadlings emerge in their midst.

  “My braves. I grant you courage. Heart of the Mountain.”

  The flow of dread and fear slowed to a trickle.

  Not ideal.

  And then the chamber began to shake.

  …

  Bolder worked as quickly as he could.

  His spell work was slow and less efficient when drawing mana from the gems in his armor.

  It slowed even more when he had to start pulling gems from his compartments.

  Still, stone bridges and stairs crumbled one by one until only a handful remained.

  He glided around the artfully carved outside of the command chamber on a wave of stone.

  Oops… he was ruining the Stone Lords’ work… even more… he was ruining it even more.

  To complete his work he left ticking time bombs in the stonework waiting for the unlucky few to step on them first.

  “Copy, Dread Paladin? Are we helping?”

  “Would it be sufficient to collapse the command chamber?” Doomborer said.

  “Their big guys can survive that without a problem.”

  “Defeat the Lord of Stone and force the rest to retreat or be destroyed,” The Dread Paladin said.

  “I’d like to know how the dynasty’s doing. I don’t like the idea of us three fighting here while they’re retreating out there. They need to breach or we’re going to have the rest of the stonoids collapsing on us.”

  “Communications to the outside are currently nonfunctional,” Doomborer said.

  Of course it was.

  Hard enough to get through meters of stone and earth. Add on jamming, whether magical, tech or Skill-based. And comms became unreliable beyond a certain range much too short for his current liking.

  “We fight, but prepare to collapse it all as a back up plan,” the Dread Paladin said.

  Not ideal, but he and Doomborer were also equipped well to survive said collapse.

  It did send a shiver up his spine to think about being buried beneath a mountain.

  Well, as long as he had mana he could dig them all out or Doomborer could on account of his being a behemoth of a metal mole.

  The Dread Paladin could take them through the shadows, but that was a last resort.

  He parted stone like water to enter the command chamber, staying in a cocoon with only two tiny holes to take stock of the internal situation.

  Black fog filled the space.

  Well… shit.

  The Skill proved difficult to pierce with his helmet’s enhanced visual and audio systems.

  He caught bursts of light.

  Muzzle flashes from the Stone Lords’ projectile weapons and the heated edges of their poleaxes.

  A massive form appeared briefly, highlighted by the activation of its… something?

  What little he saw provided enough context to make an educated guess at the location of their defensive line.

  He touched the stone and tried to drop the floor out from under them.

  The spell fizzled as he drained a mana gem.

  All he got out of it was a spike added to his headache.

  Too far and too close to the Lord of Stone and their strongest.

  The walls of his cocoon rumbled and began to close against his will.

  Oh… good…

  They had a stoneshaper.

  It could have been based on a mage or priest or fighter or any class type, really.

  The end result was the same.

  They always had a stoneshaper.

  And he hated going up against them.

  Made him feel inadequate with how instinctive and natural their work felt compared to his own.

  He changed the composition of a thin layer of the stone around him to confuse the stoneshaper long enough for him to part the wall in front of him and create distance in the hope that he could lose the lock.

  The black fog looked more appealing.

  False dark one!

  The words appeared in the air in front of him.

  He couldn’t see the dreadling beyond the eerie eye shine slipping in and out of his vision.

  Follow! For dread! For the real dark one!

  The dreadling seemed to be holding a miniature version of a—

  Light flashed.

  The rocket’s engine cut an orange trail through the black before impacting the side of the hulking tomb mech like a blooming orange and yellow flower.

  Well… shit.

  Closer than he had expected.

  A dreadling that seemed to be wearing fluttering green robes flipped its way to the Stone Lords in a poor approximation of a cultivator for it lacked both the grace and the actual cultivation.

  Flailing limbs and high-pitched battle cries ended with the sudden finality of a falling poleaxe.

  Except, it wasn’t truly final with the dreadlings, was it?

  A seemingly identical cultivator dreadling emerged and planted a two-footed kick on the Stone Lord’s helmet-covered face before Bolder lost them in the black fog.

  Dreadlings surrounded him.

  A tactical squad geared in a poor approximation of his own armor and wielding busted-looking miniature recoilless rifles.

  They gibbered words that sounded like tactical speak as they tried to usher him deeper into the fray.

  He trusted that Cal trusted the Dread Paladin.

  But, there was no way he was going to trust the horrid little creatures.

  He launched micromissiles toward where he thought the Lord of Stone was.

  Then he used his thrusters to reposition.

  “Where you at, D.B.?”

  “Awaiting an opening to strike enemy command group.”

  “Don’t do that. They’ve got a trap ready,” the Dread Paladin said.

  “Acknowledged. Requesting alternate tactic.”

  “Engage the mech. Draw it away from their line and the Lord of Stone. I’ll spring their trap and The Boulder will hit them.”

  “Hey, just want to remind you that I’m not at my best right now.”

  “Just attack them with your best. It’ll be enough to give me an opening.”

  “I could use something more concrete.”

  “Battle is chaotic. Plans don’t last past the first exchange. The coordination required isn’t possible without Cal here. And we’re already badly outnumbered and understrength. By throwing everything into chaos we mess them up more than us. Aim for separating the Lord of Stone from their elites. If you can’t do that then take out the banner bearer. Disrupt that light banner. Wait for my attack, then you have free rein. Our goal is the Lord of Stone.”

  Bolder tried to cast, but the mere presence of the Lord of Stone made him waste mana.

  He thought fast.

  The stone in the Lord’s aura was beyond his ability to reach.

  He couldn’t even conjure within it.

  Eyes darted to the very, very high ceiling and massive wall behind the Lord and their elite guard.

  Was a few hundred meters outside the aura?

  Only one way to find out.

  “Falling Rocks.”

  They materialized near the ceiling.

  Rocks fell.

  No Stone Lords died.

  “Stone Avalanche.”

  The chamber wall crumbled, adding stone to what his spell created out of mana.

  No Stone Lords died.

  The bastards reacted quickly, deflecting hundreds of tons of falling rocks and stone or turning them into a protective dome over their heads.

  The Lord of Stone intoned words and the stone responded.

  Bolder’s weapons became theirs.

  Stone missiles poured into the black fog.

  He covered his faceplate and let his armor take the hits as the barrage knocked him back.

  Dreadlings all around him were crushed and shredded by the stone storm.

  What of their master?

  Shadows swirled around the Lord of Stone and their elite guard.

  Bolder hadn’t harmed them, but he had succeeded in knocking the shining banner out of the bearer’s thick fingers.

  Dreadlings surged out of the shadows at their boots.

  Larger and armed with all kinds of weapons.

  A man-sized dreadling in thick plate armor whirled a two-handed greatsword over its head in circles without stopping.

  It cleared space for man-sized dreadlings wielding automatic guns and grenade launchers to spray without regard for their own safety.

  The Stone Lords shrugged off the damage.

  If not their mastercrafted armor or their Skills and spells, then it was their own stone flesh.

  As enduring and durable as the mountains.

  The Lord of Stone cleared a wide swath with a blast from their arm-mounted cannon. A mechanical arm swiveled from their armored back and sprayed molten stone in a wide arc to clear one side.

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  The Stone Lords were splattered, but their armor ignored the magma.

  Even their armored boots waded through as though the inferno sludge was a cool stream.

  “Advance into the darkness. Clear my chamber,” The Lord of Stone said. “Leave their champion to me.”

  Bolder figured the lord had to be not an idiot to live as long as they had and to rise to their rank and level.

  The standard Stone Lord warrior had the decided edge on a dreadling.

  Even with the latter’s swarming numbers.

  Even with the black fog.

  He could see dreadlings being wasted by the dozen each second at the cost of a handful of Stone Lords in total.

  The HUD made it clear.

  Less than ten Stone Lords had fallen, whether killed or injured enough that they weren’t combat capable.

  Their line broke apart, pushing forward into the swarm of dreadlings as their elites joined them.

  Bolder had to give it to them.

  The black fog freaked him out and he was completely safe in it.

  He repositioned farther behind the dreadlings.

  The Lord of Stone pulled a massive poleaxe from the stone and slammed its hammer head into the floor.

  The ripple spread out, surging faster the farther it traveled.

  Bolder saw that the banner bearer was the sole elite guard that remained near the lord.

  They strode toward the fallen banner and its fading light.

  That wouldn’t do.

  He reached out and pulled.

  A stone hand emerged from the floor, grasping the banner’s pole.

  “Damn it!”

  His stone hand refused to move and carry the banner to him.

  Someone fought him, probably the banner bearer judging by their outstretched hand.

  His stone hand began to crumble, so he followed the first thought that came to mind.

  He hurled the banner as far from the bearer as he could.

  It was the moment the Dread Paladin had been waiting for.

  Clad in dark plate and astride a massive demonic horse as black as his shadow, he surged like a breaching shark from the depths.

  Hooves thundered against the Lord of Stone’s armored back.

  Bolder lost sight of what came next as the lord’s wave reached him and buried him beneath the floor as though it was an ocean rather than solid stone.

  …

  Doomborer erupted out of the stone like a metal mole slightly taller than a polar bear and twice as wide, which made them slightly smaller than the walking tomb.

  They latched on the Stone Lord’s broad back. Shovel-shaped claws in barrel-thick arms dug into the ancient Stone Lord’s armor.

  Defensive enchantments sparked as the Threnosh engaged the drills hidden in the palms of their clawed hands.

  The Stone Lord stomped, rotating their torso independently of their broad, stumpy legs. They trampled dreadlings by the dozen, but couldn’t dislodge the Threnosh.

  Younger Stone Lords charged into the black fog, drawn by the crystal lights on their ancient forefather’s tomb.

  The honor, glory and love they felt to fight and die in an ancestor’s presence gave them courage to battle the fog’s effects.

  Weapons thundered, showering Doomborer’s broad back with molten metal shards.

  Energy shields flickered, failing after the third barrage.

  Dark gray Threnium threw back the spittle.

  Small spheres, like eyeballs emerged from their hiding places on the Threnosh’s second and true skin.

  They rolled into position on magnetic technology, targeting every single Stone Lord.

  Mechanical irises opened, glaring red light.

  Lasers cut through the black fog.

  Thick armor glowed hot quickly, but the Stone Lords craftsmanship and enchantments were without comparison.

  Even the basic frontline warrior received gear that many civilizations across the multiverse would spend enormous sums of points to possess.

  The young ones lacked the tough, stone skin of their elders, but their armor gave them the time to move and attempt to break away from the lasers.

  Ultimately, it worked for Doomborer.

  If they were running and seeking cover behind raised sections of the floor then they weren’t firing.

  The ancient Stone Lord entombed in their relic machine released a pulse that washed over the Threnosh.

  Useless.

  All Threnosh tech was shielded by default.

  Saw teeth all over the Threnosh whirred to life.

  Sparks lit up the blackness.

  Warning lights flashed in Doomborer’s HUD.

  Diamond hard teeth blunted on the ancient Stone Lord’s armor.

  The Stone Lord suddenly burst into a run.

  Like a charging rhino, it headed straight for a wall.

  Doomborer released their claws’ hold, but the Stone Lord clamped pincer-like hands on one thick, barrel-like arm and refused to let go.

  At the last second they rotated their upper torso and slammed Doomborer into the stone.

  They let go, stepped back and in, whipping their torso back around.

  Blades emerged from their arm, sparking across Doomborer’s armor.

  Black flame washed over Doomborer.

  Warnings blared in their HUD as the flame obscured their view more than the Dread Paladin’s black fog.

  The Threnosh dived forward, in a low tackle, sweeping the multi-ton Stone Lord off their stumpy legs and flipping them over.

  They rolled forward on tank-like treads in their torso, firing a Kynnro Sphere in their wake.

  The Stone Lord rumbled through the laser net, scattering the reflective particles and emerging with thin scorch marks all over their reddish armor.

  Doomborer knew from past battles that an ancient Stone Lord was like a mountain.

  Both would take about the same amount of time to destroy.

  Time they didn’t have.

  They moved their laser spheres to shoot into the stone floor.

  The Stone Lord charged into melee.

  Digger claws punched into the ancient’s torso, breaking the magic shield. Drill whirred to life, sparking against armor.

  Bladed arm the size of a tree trunk pounded against Threnium.

  Once, twice, thrice with speed that belied its size.

  Doomborer blocked the fourth on a raised tree trunk-sized arm of their own.

  Molten shards sprayed, bathing the Threnosh’s front.

  They shifted their arm, twisting over and cinching an overhook.

  Doomborer pulled the Stone Lord tight and activated their saw teeth.

  Blunted and dulled in seconds as the Stone Lord pushed, driving Doomborer back.

  They resembled two sumo wrestlers the size of giant bears as they fought to keep their footing.

  All the while, Doomborer’s lasers cut into the stone at their feet.

  One tried to drive the other back into the thick of the fog-shrouded battle, while the other struggled to keep the two of them within the carved circle.

  The stone began to crack under their combined weight with each thudding step.

  The ancient Stone Lord discharged arcs of blue-white lightning that played across the Threnosh’s armor.

  The magic-based attack shorted out their systems long enough for the Stone Lord to lift them up and slam them down.

  Darkness in Doomborer’s secure cocoon of warm gel, metal and artificial muscles, but only for a second as his HUD flickered back to life.

  Cybernetic interface translated thought into action instantaneously.

  Armor plating on their back slid open to reveal sonic weapons derived from Frequency.

  The ancient Stone Lord mounted the Threnosh and rained thundering blows, slowly, but surely beginning to crack their Threnium shell.

  Sound waves spread through the cut and cracked stone.

  Doomborer had started the work of disrupting the strengthening magic.

  The Stone Lord helped.

  Frequency’s tech finished it.

  Stone liquefied.

  The behemoths sank, then fell.

  Many meters until they reached the outer wall of the command chamber suspended high above the bottom floor of the fortress hewn from the cavern.

  Impact warnings flashed.

  Doomborer felt nothing.

  Unlike the Stone Lord, who was stunned long enough for the Threnosh to push them off.

  A barrage of minimissiles at point-blank range bought distance and time.

  Feet thundered.

  Treads rolled.

  Minimissiles and flechettes rained on the ancient Stone Lord’s armored front.

  Doomborer would’ve preferred a vital point to target, but the Stone Lord lacked one.

  No head, nor anything exposed really.

  Even if they managed to crack the near-impenetrable armor the ancient Stone Lord entombed within was akin to a stone statue that rivaled Threnium for its durability.

  No.

  They had already achieved their objective.

  The ancient Stone Lord was no longer on the battlefield.

  Doomborer engaged their thrusters, rocketing toward the hole they had created.

  Burning metal shards and beams of hot light streaked after them.

  The long trip up to the command chamber was made longer by the bridges and stairs that they and Bolder had destroyed.

  …

  Unlike the Dread Paladin, Cooper didn’t want to kill.

  He didn’t mind the fight.

  His entire existence was a fight and he had found peace in that by fighting for good things as he judged them.

  Fighting for the Bat People in their underground encounter challenge home had given him the strength to continue living while keeping the Dread Paladin firmly under his control.

  The Phoenix Dynasty Empire, on the whole, was less sympathetic than the Bat People in his eyes.

  He only fought for them because Cal had asked. And it helped his conscience that the Stone Lords were an aggressive invader tied to the false gods with designs on the Earth.

  He would never finish atoning for the murders he had committed even though so many years had passed.

  Repentance and redemption were his eternal duties.

  There was no other road if he wanted to remain Cooper above the Dread Paladin.

  The Lord of Stone fired a blast from their arm-mounted cannon.

  The metal ball the size of human fist spun, releasing molten metal from tiny slits that opened mid flight.

  The Dread Paladin deflected it with his shield at a cost of bits melting away at both shield and armor plate.

  Shadows shifted.

  Damage fixed.

  The Lord of Stone revealed nothing.

  Their armor concealed all of them.

  Not even their eyes were revealed by their faceplate.

  Cooper wondered what they looked like.

  He had seen a few Stone Lords without their helmets after battles with their skin partially turned to all different types of stone.

  Not stone in the sense that he knew it.

  From granite to basalt to sandstone.

  The older Stone Lords’ skin merely resembled natural stone in part. It was so much more. It had to be to be able to function in a biological sense.

  Broad nose with large nostrils to match the large, round, wide-set eyes.

  A stoic line for a mouth with barely any lips.

  The Lord of Stone’s armored mask gave away nothing.

  Neither did their heart.

  The Dread Paladin received no tithe of fear and dread from his adversary.

  What he received was an earthquake that threw even him off his feet.

  He rolled backwards, expecting a follow up attack, but saw the Lord of Stone standing impassively.

  A head shorter, but twice as wide the outworld invader clenched a fist.

  The stone beneath the Dread Paladin’s armored boots turned into sand.

  He sank down to his knees before he noticed.

  The Lord of Stone fired.

  The Dread Paladin hid behind his shield.

  Thunder hammered him with the strength to topple a building.

  “Go.”

  Shadows writhed beneath the Lord of Stone.

  They turned. Armored hand mid-swing.

  A poleaxe the color of brass materialized as they buried its head in the demonic horse’s forehead.

  She opened her too-wide mouth with braying laughter.

  Her mane lashed out, becoming shadow tendrils to wrap around the poleaxe’s haft.

  Arm-mounted cannon blasted a hole through her broad chest that closed as the burning ball passed through her body.

  She reared on her hind legs as the Dread Paladin ripped his legs out of the stone and charged.

  The Lord of Stone fired another burning ball without looking at him.

  Dark shield finally shattered.

  An exertion of will and power drew a replacement from his shadow.

  His demonic steed lashed out with front hooves.

  The Lord of Stone blocked the blows with an armored arm as thick around as a grown man’s thighs.

  She had pounded armored vehicles to scrap before, yet they stood as unmoved as though they were like unto the mountain.

  They grabbed her foreleg, snapping it with a twist of the wrist.

  She roared and snapped her mouth down.

  Sharp teeth snapped on the thick, enchanted metal helm.

  Light flashed.

  Arcs of blue-white light flickered up and down the Lord of Stone’s armor.

  She fell away, melting back into the shadow.

  The Dread Paladin reached stabbing range.

  Black shadow turned into a dark spear in hand.

  Armor the color of old blood turned the dark spear point.

  Thunder boomed into dark shield.

  The Dread Paladin felt a crack.

  Spikes erupted from his shadow, striking the Lord of Stone.

  He turned the ineffective spikes into grasping hands to bind arms and legs.

  The Lord of Stone’s poleaxe began to vibrate, sending visible ripples through the air and into the floor.

  Feet sank once more.

  He manifested a handcannon of his own from his shadow.

  Bullets rocked the Lord of Stone’s thick head back.

  He called forth his best dreadlings.

  Hulking things bigger than him.

  Lithe things that moved with greater agility and quickness.

  Wizened things that copied his magic.

  Dreadlings that rode other dreadlings that mimicked his demonic steed in miniature.

  The Lord of Stone tore free of the shadow hands and slammed the butt of their poleaxe into the stone.

  The entire chamber shook violently as though the very mountain had suddenly grown angry at the trespassers.

  The floor undulated in waves as the stone became like water.

  Dreadlings fell and drowned buried.

  The Stone Lords stood unbothered as they cheered their lord.

  Bulges grew across the chamber.

  From the floor, walls and ceilings.

  Man-sized to elephant-sized.

  Egg-like shapes.

  Their stone shells cracked then burst in a split-second to reveal golems.

  Perfect copies of a Stone Lord.

  The Dread Paladin felt the fear and dread bleed out of the Stone Lords to be replaced by relief and eagerness.

  His Vow of Dread Sown had nothing to use, while his Vow of Atonement had only the most tenuous of links to his work with the dynasty.

  Perhaps, if this battle had taken place in the Bat People’s home things would be different.

  In any case, the protocols were clear.

  He stepped back and leapt many meters away, landing in the black fog’s comforting embrace.

  “Doomborer, The Boulder… we’re retreating,” Cooper said.

  …

  Bolder sat on a cot in one of the medical tents.

  Doomborer stood guard outside.

  The Threnosh hadn’t left their power armor.

  The Phoenix Dynasty hadn’t been pleased about their retreat.

  He supposed many among them secretly and not so secretly would’ve rather they had fought to their deaths.

  For honor or something like that.

  Shadows stirred at the foot of his cot.

  He watched them warily.

  He wasn’t about to get taken by surprise aga—

  “The Boulder.”

  “Gahhh!”

  The Dread Paladin stood at the side of his cot like the tall, plate-armored juggernaut of a so-called man was the stealthy one.

  “Why? You know what… never mind,” he muttered.

  The scary bastard was messing with him.

  Probably, softening him up for some soul taking.

  “You don’t talk unless you have a reason. So… what is it? Battle still going on?”

  “In many ways, we succeeded. The dynasty warriors gained a significant foothold inside the Stone Lords fort due to our occupying their command and elites. We damaged their ancient tomb mech and forced the Lord of Stone to expend a not insignificant amount of personal resources.”

  “So… they can’t complain… but they will anyway.”

  “Irrelevant.”

  “What’s relevant then?”

  “The Stone Lords retreated. The fort belongs to the dynasty. Your time here is done.”

  “No. Wait—”

  “A shuttle will be waiting for you and Doomborer on the surface. I’ve already talked to Cal.”

  Bolder let out a long breath.

  “Right… yeah… going home.” He laughed nervously.

  For a moment there he had thought—

  No.

  No way would Cal put him on the same team as a team-killer.

  Still, one couldn’t fault him for thinking in that direction.

  One look at the glowing yellow-green eyes behind that narrow helmet slit had a way of making the pee dribble and the butt clench.

  Which was doubly crucial in Bolder’s case due to the sketchiness of his current stomach situation.

  “I understand your reluctance, but you have a serious case of mana poisoning. Further magic usage could lead to long term damage and death.”

  “Wait. It sounds like you aren’t coming?”

  “No. I’m still good to fight. I will wait for your replacements and move to the next battle.”

  Bolder shrugged lamely.

  “Good luck… I guess…”

  “Thank you. It’s been good fighting with you and Doomborer. Much less annoying than most.”

  With that the Dread Paladin actually walked out of the medical tent to speak with Doomborer.

  Bolder turned his head to regard the wounded dynasty warriors sharing the tent with him.

  “Yeah, he’s not that bad.” He recalled the protocols. “But, he’s super scary!” he added hastily. “Definitely, terrifying! You can’t run, can’t hide! All you can do is dread his arrival.”