Aurum-Titan (2)

  The three impact sites glowed with an intense violet light that transformed the churned-up dust into toxic clouds. Sk?ll Wolfsgrund adjusted his position in the cockpit and recalibrated the Night-Howler’s optical sensors. The ground-radar displays flickered wildly as they recorded the massive displacements occurring beneath the surface.

  At three points across the plain, the earth rose simultaneously. There was no hesitation, no slow build-up. The three new Aurum Titans burst from the ground with a synchronized violence that turned the battlefield into a wasteland of upended rock and deep fissures.

  Sk?ll monitored the status of his units. He looked for signs of faltering, a drop in morale, or a tremor in the radio transmissions. But what he found was the opposite. The pilots' heart rates, fed through the neural network, were rising, but they remained focused. House Wolfsgrund did not react to the tripling of the threat with fear, but with a cold, almost mechanical aggression. The golems lowered their centers of gravity, claws dug deeper into the mud, and the energy levels of the shields rose to 115 percent, fed by the uninterrupted line from Drymon.

  "Pack split!" Sk?ll’s father commanded. His voice was calm and devoid of any pathos. "Group Blue, under the General’s lead: Titan West. Group Yellow: Titan East. My pack takes the one in the center. Objective remains identical: fix the joints, breach the back armor, neutralize the core. Move!"

  The General confirmed with a short, monosyllabic signal. "Understood. Group Blue moving out. Eisenfaust batteries stand by."

  The golems split into three precise groups. Fifteen units per flank, sixteen under Sk?ll’s direct command in the center. The golems did not charge blindly; they used the debris of the first Titan as cover and moved toward their targets in wide pincer maneuvers.

  Sk?ll targeted the central Titan. This specimen was slightly more massive than the first and possessed a deep, golden luminescence in its shoulder areas instead of violet veins. The Titan was just hoisting itself fully out of its birth-crater when Sk?ll gave the order to attack.

  "Primary weapons to the back of the knees!" Sk?ll commanded.

  Four Wolf-golems from his pack shot out from the flank. They fired kinetic harpoons equipped with reinforced wires of refined iron. The tips bored deep into the soft earth between the massive stone plates of the Titan's legs. The golems anchored themselves to the ground and pulled the wires taut.

  The Titan swayed. It attempted to lift its right arm to crush the pesky attackers, but two more golems leaped onto its forearms and immediately began working on the joint connections with their claws.

  "Maintain pressure!" Sk?ll shouted. He drove the Night-Howler into a full sprint.

  To his west, he saw Group Blue already forcing the first Titan onto the defensive. The General utilized a combination of heavy artillery and coordinated shield-ramming. Whenever the Titan tried to strike, three Bear-golems with activated front-shields moved into the way and absorbed the kinetic impact, while the Wolf-units shredded the tendon plates from behind.

  Sk?ll refocused on his opponent. The central Titan shook itself, and a shower of sharp rock splinters slammed against the Night-Howler’s armor. The warning displays flashed yellow, but the structure held. Sk?ll activated the jump-jets on his golem’s heels and catapulted himself over the Titan’s outstretched arm directly onto its chest.

  The plasma claws dug into the golden veins with a hissing sound. Molten rock splattered against the viewports as Sk?ll worked his way upward. He felt the Titan beneath him try to grab him with one hand, but two of his wingmen covered him by firing targeted mana volleys into the giant's wrists.

  "He’s losing stability on the left!" a pilot from Sk?ll’s pack reported.

  Indeed, the central Titan slumped slightly to the left as one of the harpoons blasted out a load-bearing rock layer in the knee joint. The grinding sound of breaking granite could be heard for miles.

  Sk?ll reached the neck. He knew the pattern now. He looked for the specific shimmer of the core. "There it is," he muttered. He tore off an outer rock plate with a hydraulic wrench, exposing the Titan’s pulsating heart.

  At that moment, a shock hit him from the right. The eastern Titan had hurled a boulder the size of a golem. The projectile hit one of the Wolf-golems from Sk?ll’s group on the arm. The armor was crushed, but the system reported no structural instability. The affected pilot recovered the machine and immediately fired back with the remaining arm cannon.

  "No time for games!" Sk?ll cried. He rammed both of the Night-Howler’s claws into the core of the central Titan. The energy discharge was so violent that the golem’s external microphones briefly cut out to prevent hearing damage to the pilot. A blinding beam of plasma and Atherium shot through the giant's body.

  Within fractions of a second, the light in the golden veins extinguished. The central Titan stiffened, then deep cracks began to run through its entire body.

  "Retreat! It’s collapsing!" Sk?ll ordered.

  The Night-Howler pushed off from the giant’s body and landed safely twenty meters away. Behind him, the Titan collapsed. The sound was different than the first time; it was drier, as if the energy had completely burned out the rock. The mountain of rubble left on the plain was massive, but lifeless.

  One of three defeated. No losses. Time elapsed: four minutes and twelve seconds.

  Sk?ll rotated the upper body of his golem to the west. "General, status?"

  "Titan West is at sixty percent integrity," the General replied. His voice sounded strained but controlled. "We have him in a pincer, but he’s regenerating rock layers from the ground. We need more heat!"

  "Support is on the way!" Sk?ll said. He switched his pack to the western target. "Group Yellow, keep Titan East at a distance! Bind him with long-range fire, but do not engage in melee until we have finished West!"

  Group Yellow, which had previously only circled the eastern Titan and provoked it with targeted shots from mana cannons, intensified the suppressive fire. The eastern Titan lashed out wildly, but the agile golems evaded every attack with calculated precision.

  Sk?ll raced toward Titan West with his pack. This Titan had fashioned a kind of club from a massive boulder and was battering the shields of the Bear-golems with it. Every time the club impacted, a pressure wave was released that kicked the mud of the plain meters into the air.

  "Flanking in three seconds!" Sk?ll announced.

  The Night-Howler and its sixteen companions reached the flank of Titan West. While the General maintained pressure from the front with the Iron-Bite, blocking the Titan’s arms with kinetic strikes, Sk?ll’s group attacked from the rear.

  Seven golems simultaneously fired their thermal cutting beams at the Titan's left leg. The rock began to glow, turned liquid, and finally gave way under the immense weight of the torso. With an ear-splitting crash, the leg snapped. Titan West fell onto its side.

  "Now the spine!" Sk?ll commanded.

  Five golems pounced on the fallen giant. They worked like surgeons of steel. They tore away the protective plates on the back while Sk?ll concentrated his golem’s plasma blades on the arm joints to prevent the Titan from righting itself.

  The Titan swung blindly backward with its remaining healthy arm. It caught a golem on the shoulder and hurled it aside, but the pilot used the momentum for a controlled landing and returned to the fight immediately.

  Sk?ll tore out a two-meter-wide section of the back armor. Beneath it, the violet veins pulsed in an irregular, frantic beat. "The core is exposed! General, deliver the final blow, I’ll hold him down!"

  The Night-Howler rammed its claws into the Titan’s shoulder blades and pressed the giant's head into the ground. The General moved the Iron-Bite into position. The golem’s heavy main cannon, a barrel of impressive caliber, lit up brightly.

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  "Fire!" the General ordered.

  The high-energy beam hit Titan West's exposed core with absolute precision. A violet jet of flame shot from the Titan’s back, followed by a series of internal explosions that tore the massive stone body apart from the inside out.

  Titan West was severely injured. It was no longer a functional opponent. Its left leg was melted, its back torn open, and the core unstable. The light in its eye-sockets flickered only weakly.

  "Final report Titan West: Neutralization imminent," the General reported. "No significant losses. Structural integrity of the pack at 92 percent."

  Sk?ll took a brief breath. He looked to the east. The third Titan stood there. It was undamaged and seemed to have learned from the mistakes of its predecessors. It maintained a deep defensive stance and began manipulating the ground in front of it, creating a rampart of rock.

  Sk?ll grinned grimly in his pulpit. The battle-lust within him was unbroken. He felt the energy from Drymon pulsing through his golem’s systems as if it were his own bloodstream.

  "Group Blue, finish this with Titan West," Sk?ll commanded, turning the Night-Howler toward the last opponent. "Group Yellow, get ready. We’re going in now. I want to see this third bastard in the mud before the next load of lightning arrives."

  The golems of Wolfsgrund regrouped. The plain was marked by the remains of two Titans, which now served only as lifeless obstacles. The third Titan awaited them, its golden veins glowing challengingly in the darkness.

  Sk?ll Wolfsgrund pushed the lever to full speed. The Night-Howler’s engines roared. Three more violet bolts of lightning struck the distant earth at that very moment.

  -

  Reyn stood upon the plateau, but his body was little more than a static shell. His consciousness was submerged deep within the energetic fabric of the plain before Wolfsgrund. The effort of warping the earth’s matter and manifesting three more Aurum Titans simultaneously demanded a high toll, even from a being of his power. He felt the resistance of the soil, the inertia of the cold rock, and the malevolent resonance of his patron, which tugged at his mind like a black parasite to provide the necessary creative force.

  The death of the first Titan had been calculated—a test run to gauge the defenders' reaction time. However, the fact that House Wolfsgrund had suffered no significant losses while already pressing the fourth of his giants into the mud was a variable that displeased Reyn. Through his connection to the Titans, he felt every strike of the plasma claws, every bursting of the stone skin. The tenacity and the almost mechanical bloodlust of the Northmen were developing into a strategic anomaly. If forty-six golems were enough to keep an army of mountain-giants at bay, the siege of Wolfsgrund would last for months. Time he did not have.

  He felt the third Titan in the east faltering under the coordinated fire of Group Yellow. Reyn sent out a mental impulse to artificially stabilize the creature’s structural integrity, but it was like trying to hold a shattering glass together with bare hands.

  He needed a different solution. One that would tear the battlefield apart from the inside out.

  After the three new bolts of lightning had struck and initiated the birth phases of the next Titan wave, Reyn withdrew a part of his consciousness from the trance. He reached for the ether crystal hanging at his belt. The stone pulsed with a nervous, reddish light. After a few seconds, the projection stabilized, and the face of Pyrax appeared in the smoky light of the ether.

  Pyrax, the head of the Heartfire Legion, was in his magnificent tent before the gates of Drymon. His face was etched with deep furrows; the scales at his temples gleamed metallically in the candlelight. He looked like a man dancing on a razor's edge.

  "Pyrax," Reyn began, his voice a hollow whisper that nonetheless possessed the authority of a gathering storm. "The moment has come. Wolfsgrund is distracted. They have exposed their backs while trying to tame my creations. Now you can have your revenge for the years of condescension from the northern Houses and your exile. Send the order to attack to your commander at the northern front. Now."

  Pyrax hesitated. His eyes, yellow slits full of greed, wandered over the tactical reports lying on the table before him. He rubbed his chin, and the sound of his hard skin against his fingertips was clearly audible through the transmission.

  "Thivan’s coronation may be canceled or postponed, Reyn, but that doesn't change reality," Pyrax said slowly. In his voice lay a deep distrust. "We have sworn loyalty to House Sothar. My legion officially stands under the banner of the crown. Furthermore, I am receiving reports via my commander's ether crystals on the ground that are... less than flattering for you. Wolfsgrund is butchering your troops and your Titans. They haven't lost a single golem so far."

  Pyrax leaned closer to the crystal, his face now filling the entire projection. "Tell me, Lord of Shadows or Storms: Why should we side with the losers? If we strike now and you still fail, House Pyrax is extinguished before the sun rises. And more importantly to me: Are you pleading for my help? Or are you demanding it? Are you calling for the Heartfire Legion out of desperation because your stone gods are crumbling, or because we truly matter to you?"

  Reyn narrowed his eyes. The dragon-man's arrogance was predictable but tedious. He felt the patron's energy rising within him, a desire to simply crush Pyrax’s mind, but he held back. He needed the Legion as a tactical wedge.

  "Do you truly believe that the destruction of a few stone puppets marks the end of my strategy?" Reyn asked with eerie calm. "Wolfsgrund is exhausting its energy. They are celebrating a victory over the shadow of a mountain while I have already undermined the foundations of their realm. I am not pleading, Pyrax. I am offering you the opportunity to reorder the hierarchy of this continent. If the Heartfire Legion falls upon Sk?ll’s back, the northern front will collapse within minutes. This is not an act of desperation, but the execution of a plan that will bring you to the top of Caleon—perhaps to the top of the world."

  Pyrax shook his head; a short, wooden laugh escaped his throat. "You forget our position, Reyn. I and my main force are here, at the gates of Drymon. We came here to attend the coronation and protect the capital. If my commander in the north commits betrayal now while I stand here under the eyes of the Arcane Guard and the other Houses... what do you think happens then? The walls of Drymon are studded with mana cannons that can burn my entire main force to ash within an hour. We would be annihilated at the capital's walls before we could even utter the name of your New Order."

  Pyrax traced the map of Drymon lying before him. "Thivan Sothar may be young, but he is no fool. He is holding us here. We are hostages to our own declaration of loyalty. If I give the order to attack Wolfsgrund, I sign my own death warrant here in the south. I need guarantees, Reyn. I need more than just vague promises of power."

  Reyn took a step closer to the edge of his plateau, his gaze sliding down to where the three new Titans had now fully broken from the earth. He saw Sk?ll Wolfsgrund already bringing the Night-Howler into position to bring down the next giant, tireless and efficient.

  "The Arcane Guard will have no time to turn their cannons on you, Pyrax," Reyn countered. "The moment the northern front falls, the panic in Drymon will stifle any coordinated reaction. Thivan will need his Guard to protect the city, not to punish your Legion. He will have to pump every available resource into his palace because he knows I am heading straight for it."

  Reyn lowered his voice until it sounded only like the rustling of dry leaves. "You speak of loyalty? The Heartfire Legion was always regarded as an auxiliary force at best, rivals at most. Do you truly want to remain the watchdog of a boy who only uses you to keep his own walls clean? If you hesitate now, you will go down with him. If you act, you are the new master of the Drymon Basin."

  Pyrax seemed to struggle with himself. The greed in his eyes was a physical hunger that Reyn could almost taste. The dragon-man knew the opportunity was unique, but the risk of annihilation by Drymon’s defenses weighed heavy.

  "My commander in the north reports to me that Sk?ll Wolfsgrund is fighting like a man possessed," Pyrax interjected once more. "He is the darling of the people. Killing him will spark an uprising."

  "A people without a head do not rise up, Pyrax. They look for a new master," Reyn replied coolly. "The order must be given now. The three new Titans will bind the golems' attention. When your legionaries thrust their spears and flamethrowers into the unprotected flanks of the Wolfsgrund machines, the overloading of the shields will be inevitable. Forty-six golems can fight three Titans, but they cannot simultaneously stand against three Titans and five thousand dragon-men whom they believe to be allies."

  Reyn felt the connection to the ether crystal beginning to flicker. The energetic strain of the Titan summoning was now demanding the stability of the communication as well.

  "Decide, Pyrax," Reyn demanded one last time. "Either you remain the servant kneeling in the dust before the capital's gates, or you become the architect of the new Caleon. If you decide against me, I will treat you and your Legion the same way as House Sothar after the fall of Drymon. There will be no place for the undecided."

  Pyrax’s face contorted in the projection. He breathed heavily, his nostrils flaring. He looked away for a moment, presumably toward his advisors or at the towering walls of Drymon rising in the distance. Then he turned back to the crystal.

  "I will give the order," Pyrax said finally, his voice now hard and firm. "But woe to you, Reyn, if your shadows do not hold what you promise. My commander will give the signal as soon as the golems bind the next Titan. We will make the north bleed. But ensure that Drymon is distracted. If I see even a single mana cannon aimed at my camp, I will withdraw my troops and side with anyone who promises your head on a pike."

  "You won't have to," Reyn replied, and a shadow of a smile flickered across his features. "Prepare yourself, Pyrax. The era of the wolves ends tonight."

  The ether crystal’s projection vanished with a sharp pop. Reyn took a deep breath and refocused his entire concentration on the battlefield below him. He felt the three new Titans intensifying their attacks, driven by his direct will. He saw Sk?ll Wolfsgrund already positioning the Night-Howler to bring down the next behemoth.

  Reyn observed the ranks of the Heartfire Legion on the flanks of the fortress walls. They began to form up, inconspicuously at first, but their movement patterns changed. They were not retreating; they were positioning themselves behind the golems. A betrayal waiting like a blade in the dark.

  The Lord of the Storm closed his eyes. He felt the pulsating heart of the earth beneath him and the distant hum of the Portal in Drymon. Everything was moving toward the critical point. The tenacity of Wolfsgrund would soon have to face the treachery of their own allies. Reyn would watch as they tore each other apart.

  In the distance, the golems struck again against the stone of the Titans, unaware that the true enemy had not crawled out of the ground before them, but was already standing directly behind them.