The dead air sat stagnant in the trenchworks, the silence broken only by the scurrying of rats and the distant echoes of shovels against rancid dirt caked thick with yesterday’s blood. The night was growing old, the moon looming far overhead like a cruel god observing our fall. Men were short, the endless tides of hapless dregs wore against our wits like crashing waves against a bay. Trench after trench we ceded to them, pushed ever closer to the looming shadow of Verazzo’s bastion walls. Contemplation was all we had, me and the few others shivering on the damp, scattered hay that we called beds. I alone was awake this night, haunted by the memories of nights gone by. Some had said the Golden Age would last forever, that the Tizzonian king like all those prior would level peace across the land. That was a lie, it seems, as the Golden Age had been stained red.

What had been hours of contemplation was broken by a surge of light and the snap of thunder. My sparse compatriots groggily dragged themselves to their feet, the motley crew of haggard souls hastily donning what little we had in arms and armor and hurrying to the exposed lines of excavated earth to await the coming swarm. A second bolt rippled overhead, striking a nearby tree and splitting it to its stump as flames danced along its length. The fire did well to illuminate the fields of dead and those who clambered amongst them to reach our lines. I made my way down the line to a shallower battlement that gave me better view as my peers readied crossbows to meet the coming wave.

Conflict was under way, well ahead of our lines, a conflict which had soon crested the hill of scattered dead that defined the midway between today’s trench and yesterday’s defeat. A man adorned in thick armor riddled with charms and messy strokes of paint soon stood along atop it, another crack of lightning striking him at his shield which he effortless brushed off, his blade swinging forth at a yet unseen foe to vicious retort. Blood sprayed back and down the mound as the armored man was slowly pushed. He dived down the hill, discarding his shield and clenching his shaky fist as tendrils of white-hot flame danced down his arm like snakes slithering from the gaps in his plate. A wave of occultists, defined by their tattered rags and bloodied faces clawed their way after him. What had started as flames roared into an inferno, the spellsword’s hand erupting into a pillar of hungry flames that twisted itself outwards, blanketing the pile of dead and introducing new bodies to rest alongside them. What was left in the wake of the flames was the spellsword, his body shaking as labored breaths struggled to push past his stuffy helmet. It was growing difficult to see him, the air around his body twisting and writhing like heat rising off desert sands. He forced himself up, grabbing his shield and bracing in time for the flames to part and give way to a sorcerous foe, hastily armored and lined in gruesome scars and charred flesh. His twitchy, emaciated frame doing well to hide the power that surged beneath his sagging flesh.

Lightning danced down from this one, his hands searing in the wake of his spell, a hideous cackle dripping from his chapped lips as the blackened skin flaked away of its own accord. The spellsword met the lightning as he did the last, his shield claiming the bolt and casting it awry. The bolt cracked aside the occultist, striking one of the massed dregs that was coming to his aid and forking its way well behind the line of battle only to be followed by a cascade of brilliant explosions that gave way to further bolts of hungry, forking lightning. The spellsword surged ahead, driving his shield into the body of the occultist with a resounding crash, fire emerging from its face and bursting through the chest of the sorcerer with little delay. Dropping his shield again, he reached into a satchel at his side to gather metal scraps, his clenched fist soon leaving them molten. He cast the mass overhead as it whistled and popped, scattering slag in its wake, the sound carrying across the fields of dead.

Crossbows were hefted as I alongside the rest clambered to the side of the lone bladesman, his silence never breaking as he ushered us forth. We took place amongst the nameless dead, mostly comprised of the dregs that sought Verazzo burying the few militias who fled the trenches following yesterday’s defeat. Rippling electricity danced forth from the trench, each of which met the same fate as the last against the knight’s shield. He charged ahead, the fumes rising from his body growing hotter as he fought past sizzling heat that built in his plate as he crashed down into the occupied earthwork, the heat that built in his armor rapidly venting and coursing through the line, hideous screams following as several cultists clawed their way up only to be met with a volley of bolts that stopped them in their tracks. We were unaware of what was going on deep in that trench, only that the explosive flames that broke up the melee were rapidly moving to and fro only to be broken up by a similar expulsion of hot, acrid fumes that scattered cultists like gnats out of the trenches into the sights of our weapons.

I had known well what this was, a legend amongst us all who prayed for relief against this endless horde. The Campestrian, or rather, one of seemingly many who hid from the eyes of common men and gallivanted amongst the woods and frontiers in pursuit of glory. The melee continued for what seemed like an hour, dozens upon dozens of scattered souls met an end by our hands as the campestrian knight scattered the bravest of their smoldering remains against the walls of the embankments to make his way to the next.

We would live another day, it seems. The voiceless knight, our savior, unwilling to bear the gift of thanks had pulled himself up from the reclaimed trench to flee to the safety of the thicket due east.