The Grieving Plains drank the sound of war. The battle began not with a clash of steel, but with a single, guttural roar that was less a sound and more a physical wave of malice. It erupted from the throats of ten thousand dead things, a chorus of eternal hunger that rolled through the narrow valley. Maghri Vex’s legion charged.

  It was a chaotic tapestry of reanimated horrors, a tide of black that surged between the canyon walls. Skeletal elves with eyes of cold red fire ran alongside hulking, four-limbed beasts cobbled together from the parts of a dozen different creatures. They were a wave of splintered bone and rusted iron, a frantic, desperate stampede whose only purpose was to drown my legion in their sheer, overwhelming numbers.

  From my throne in the Obsidian Fang, I watched the tactical feed, a mailstrom of data observing a collision of worlds. The red icons of the enemy flooded the wireframe canyon, a river of death. My own blue icons held their ground, a dam of cold, unfeeling steel.

  “Execute Protocol Scythe,” my voice was flat, a simple command to unleash a hurricane.

  The Mark IV Automata, silent until this moment, responded as one. They raised their integrated plasma cannons, and the valley floor was bathed in a storm of azure light. It was not a single, overwhelming blast, but a sustained, chattering fusillade. Tes, guided by my parameters, had recalibrated their firing solution. The rifles spat smaller, more rapid bolts of energy, a staccato roar reminiscent of the automatic weapons from my forgotten world. Each burst was a controlled, calculated spray, an algorithm of death designed for maximum coverage and lethal efficiency. A scythe of blue-white light reaped through the front ranks of the undead, turning bodies to ash and bone to superheated dust.

  The enemy’s response was primitive but potent. From the rear ranks, a thousand skeletal archers drew their bows in eerie unison. A cloud of black fletched arrows eclipsed the bruised purple sky, then fell like a synchronized, metallic rain, covering the land in a carpet of crude wood and iron. The sound was a deafening clatter as the projectiles struck my legion.

  It accomplished nothing. The arrows tinked and ricocheted from the angled carapaces with insulting ease, deflected by geometry and superior materials. My Automata did not even register the assault. They simply continued their relentless, methodical extermination.

  The battle devolved into a brutal, grinding equation. The undead horde had the advantage of numbers, an endless supply of bodies to throw into the meat grinder. But my units were individually superior, each one a walking fortress of pinpoint lethality. It became a grim, repetitive cycle.

  Whenever the front line of Mark IVs registered a drop in power below the optimal combat threshold, they would disengage with perfect synchronicity. The line would part, creating channels for a fresh, fully charged platoon to advance from the rear and fill the gaps. The depleted units would fall back to the rear echelons, where the six-limbed Mark III-B Engineers waited like metallic pit crews. With inhuman speed, they would pop the spent power core from an automaton’s back, slot a new one in with a heavy, satisfying clunk, and send the refreshed unit back into the reserve line. It was a system of seamless, efficient rotation I had designed after the Cobalt War, a living, breathing engine of continuous combat.

  But even with this efficiency, a cold, gnawing frustration began to build in my chest. The enemy was adapting. They began piling the bodies of their own fallen, creating a moving rampart of broken bodies and shattered bone, a gruesome shield that advanced inch by agonizing inch. My Automata’s plasma fire, devastating against exposed infantry, struggled to melt the sheer mass of the corpse-wall fast enough.

  I watched the tactical display, a flaw in my grand design laid bare. My army lacked variety. It had no answer for this crude, yet effective, tactic. I had infantry and engineers. The Leviathan, my only other true asset, was a king in its own domain but useless here, hundreds of miles from the sea. I wished I’d had more time. A year. Six more months to design artillery, to build specialized siege units.

  Time was a luxury I no longer had. My mind raced, sifting through a thousand rejected designs and battlefield simulations. Then, a flicker of impossible, beautiful madness sparked in my mind, a concept ripped from a forgotten life.

  “Tes,” I commanded, my voice sharp with sudden, urgent purpose. “Recalibrate the Leviathan’s upward torpedo tubes. Access ordnance schematics from my personal database—search query: Mortar. Design a plasma-based, wide-area-denial munition. The onboard weapons forge is to begin production immediately. I want twelve rounds, ready to fire in ten minutes.”

  A beat of silence as Tes processed the absurd command. [Acknowledged. Calculating trajectory from the Maelstrom Sea to the Grieving Plains. Probability of successful long-range strike: 92.7%. Initiating production.]

  The perspective on my main screen shifted.

  In the crushing, silent abyss of the Maelstrom Sea, a predator stirred in its lair. The Leviathan, a ghost of black steel, hung motionless in the crushing dark. Inside its hull, the silence was shattered by the roar of its internal forge. Robotic arms, moving with a speed that would tear a human limb from its socket, began shaping the new munitions. Molten plasma was poured into specially designed adamantium shells, each one inscribed with runes of contained energy and directional force. In minutes, twelve new weapons, each the size of a man, were loaded into the dorsal tubes.

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  With a deep groan of ballast tanks venting, the sixty-meter submarine began its ascent. It broke the waves in a surge of white foam, its black hull stark against the churning, storm-tossed sea. Twelve armored hatches along its spine slid open with a hiss of hydraulics, revealing the deadly new gifts within.

  There was a deafening, percussive roar that momentarily deafened the storm itself. One by one, twelve pillars of fire tore through the storm-wracked sky, launching the mortar shells on a high, graceful arc. They were a dozen falling stars, arcing inland, their destination a valley of death where a wall of corpses was slowly, inexorably grinding my legion down. My answer was on its way.

  From my command center, I watched the heavens answer.

  Twelve descending stars, trailing streaks of angry red light, grew from pinpricks to spears in the bruised purple sky. They did not whistle as they fell; they were silent, harbingers of a new kind of fire. The undead horde, driven by a singular, mindless aggression, did not look up. They did not comprehend the judgment that was about to fall upon them.

  The shells did not explode on impact. They detonated a dozen meters above the corpse-wall, bursting into globes of incandescent, azure plasma. A viscous, superheated gel rained down upon the enemy lines. The effect was immediate and horrific. A sickening, wet sizzle echoed through the canyon, the sound of flash-boiled ichor and instantly cremated bone. The plasma clung to everything, turning the gruesome rampart into a slag heap, a flowing river of molten gore and dissolving flesh. The front ranks of the undead legion were simply erased, their reanimated forms no match for the fury of a contained sun.

  The path was clear.

  “Advance,” I commanded. “Concentrate fire. Carve a path.”

  The Mark IV Automata marched forward in perfect unison, their heavy footfalls crunching on the cooling, glassy slag. Their plasma rifles, no longer firing in suppressive bursts, now discharged in concentrated, lance-like beams. They focused their combined firepower on the melting remains of the corpse-wall, vaporizing what the mortars had only liquefied, carving a clean, sterile channel through the carnage.

  The enemy answered, not with arrows, but with titans.

  From the rear of the undead army, the ground itself began to heave and shudder. Five colossal shapes rose from the earth, their forms a grotesque mockery of life. They were Fell-flesh Golems, each one a ten-meter-tall monstrosity stitched together from the corpses of giants and demonic beasts, their massive bodies pulsating with a sickly green necrotic energy. Their giant, misshapen hands scooped up amalgamations of rock, shattered bone, and compressed ash, forming them into crude, house-sized boulders.

  With guttural roars that shook the very canyon walls, they hurled their payload. The boulders flew in high, clumsy arcs, crashing down among my front-line units. They did not just crush; they shattered on impact, pinning automata beneath tons of rock and reanimated bone.

  The front-line units were trapped, their plasma fire now uselessly scorching the underside of their stony prisons. The Golems were already preparing another volley. It was a crude tactic, but brutally effective.

  “Rear echelon,” I ordered, my voice a blade of ice. “Overcharge main cannons. Target the Golems. Eliminate them. Acceptable losses: ten percent.”

  It was a cold, brutal calculation. The back lines of my automata obeyed instantly. The blue light of their optical sensors flared as they diverted all non-essential power to their weapons. Their plasma cannons glowed with an almost white-hot intensity, discharging beams as thick as tree trunks, unsubtle spears of raw annihilation.

  The lances of light tore across the battlefield. Three of the Golems were vaporized instantly, their massive forms disintegrating into clouds of ash and sizzling green mist. But in the chaotic exchange, one of the overcharged beams went wide. It tore through a Golem’s chest and continued on, its trajectory clipping the pauldron of Unit 7-23 on my front line. The automaton’s energy shielding flared for a nanosecond before being overwhelmed. The azure lance slagged its entire upper torso. Its optical sensor went dark.

  For the first time, a blue icon on my tactical map flickered and turned a permanent, final black.

  My first casualty. The moment was noted, logged, and filed away for later analysis. There was no time for sentiment.

  The last two Golems fell, but their final volley had already landed, trapping another dozen of my front-line troops. The tactical problem remained.

  “Engineers, advance. Clear the obstructions. Triage all damaged units.”

  From the rear, the Mark III-B units scuttled forward, their six-legged chassis moving with an unnerving, insectoid speed. They swarmed into the active battlefield, ignoring the remaining skeletal infantry that clattered uselessly against their thick plating. They were field surgeons of steel and logic. Plasma cutters extended from their articulated arms, slicing through the bone-boulders with contemptuous ease, carving them into manageable chunks. Manipulator claws reached into the wreckage, pulling trapped automata free. Diagnostic tendrils plugged into the damaged units, assessing their status in milliseconds.

  The triage was ruthless. Units with superficial damage were repaired on the spot, their limbs hot-swapped, their armor patched with quick-hardening metallic foam. Those with more significant damage were stripped for usable parts, their power cores and weapons salvaged before their chassis was marked for reclamation.

  A new element then entered the symphony of war. From the mouth of the valley, a silent procession of Dark Elves emerged, driving heavy-duty, reinforced skiffs. They were my supply line, the living tissue that connected the battlefield to the heart of the mountain. They moved with a grim, practiced efficiency, collecting the inert, slagged chassis of the automata the engineers had designated as total losses.

  In my army, nothing was ever truly lost. There was no death, only reclamation. The broken bodies of my steel soldiers would be delivered back to the Obsidian Fang, where they would be melted down in the great forges and remade. The war was costly, but the furnace was always hungry, and the legion would be whole again.

  You Asked. I Caved. (Please don't kill me...)

  BUT! Let me be PERFECTLY clear. I can't even touch them before either Book 1 of AS or SGE is finished. Think of these as a super-early sneak peek. You can check them out there and also vote on which one will be next by following them!

  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, do NOT send them to Rising Stars! I seriously can't write another novel right now. XD It would just be a dead book on RS with only one chapter, and that would be embarrassing.