Chapter 101: The Fire and the Fury
The night was preternaturally still, the thin mountain air as sharp and cold as a blade. The only light in the vast, bowl-shaped valley came from the hypnotic, pulsing blue glow of the great chrono-crystal, which cast long, distorted shadows that danced and writhed like living things. The chanting of the thousands of human cultists had risen to a feverish, ecstatic pitch, a disquieting symphony of devotion to a silent, alien god.
Then, from the north, came the sound of a single, brazen war horn, its defiant Roman call shattering the night.
The diversion had begun.
The effect on the camp was instantaneous. Shouts of alarm and confusion erupted from the sprawling tent city of the cultists. The main body of The Traveler's human army, caught completely by surprise, scrambled to form ragged battle lines. From his vantage point, Alex watched as Maximus and Prince Tiridates' small force crashed into the rear of the enemy encampment like a tidal wave of desperate fury. It was a glorious, hopeless charge, a suicidal explosion of Roman discipline and Armenian ferocity. The chaos was immediate and absolute. The entire northern flank of the camp dissolved into a maelstrom of screaming men and clanging steel.
"NOW!" Alex roared, his voice cutting through the din.
It was the signal. He, Cassius, and the twelve giants of the Fire Cohort burst from their rocky cover. They did not shout. They did not scream a war cry. They ran. Fueled by a full, undiluted combat dose of Aeterna Ignis, their bodies surged with a tidal wave of raw, unnatural power. They moved with a loping, ground-devouring stride, crossing the open ground towards the now lightly-defended circle of pillars with the speed of hunting wolves.
Their sudden, silent charge from the south caught the inner ring of Unfallen guards by surprise. A line of the obsidian-armored constructs turned to meet them, but it was too late. The Fire Cohort smashed into their line like a falling meteor.
The battle was a whirlwind of savage, close-quarters combat fought in the eerie blue twilight of the humming pillars. This was not a battle of tactics and formations. It was a raw, primal explosion of violence. This was the Fire Cohort finally and completely unleashed.
They fought with their Ignis Steel gladii, but some, like the massive Gisco, had brought heavy, two-handed sledgehammers taken from the Garni forge, weapons designed not for cutting, but for pure, brutal shattering.
The scene was a vision from a blacksmith's nightmare. An Unfallen guard lunged with its black glass spear, only to have its weapon, its arm, and half its torso obliterated by a single, horizontal swing of Gisco's hammer. The warrior let out a roar of pure, ecstatic rage and charged the nearest glowing pillar. He swung the hammer again and again, the impacts creating thunderous cracks that echoed through the valley. The pillar, made of a material harder than granite, began to splinter, spiderwebs of fracture lines spreading across its smooth, dark surface until, with a final, deafening blow, it shattered, unleashing a shower of arcing, harmless blue energy and silencing its low hum.
The other Cohort members fought with a similar berserker fury. They were a force of nature, a whirlwind of steel and rage. Their Ignis Steel blades, which could cut through Roman iron, bit deep into the Unfallen's composite armor, sundering limbs and shattering torsos. The Unfallen, for all their speed and precision, were being physically overwhelmed. Their fighting style was too clean, too logical, to cope with the sheer, unpredictable ferocity of twelve demigods high on combat stimulants.