Chapter 111: Irontide’s Stand
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At the ridgeline General Irontide planted his frame, legs braced wide enough to anchor a siege-tower. Lava-orange light flowed through seams of his armour, pulsing to the beat of a heart that had carried him through centuries of war. His compound eyes narrowed, tracking the Blood-Scythe Mantira that vanished beneath the dunes with Kai and the rib of A’zhorath. A cold oath hissed between his mandibles yet he dared not dive after the Kai.
"Priorities," the grizzled general reminded himself. "The corpse first, the army second, That boy is just a worker ant. It doesn’t matter if he dies." For a commander, sentiment was a luxury paid for with lives.
The main threat demanded his attention. The Night-Leopard King, seven metres of lean, obsidian-spotted muscle, stalked in a widening circle about the crippled column. Each step cracked the vitrified crust left by its own emerald breath-cannon. All wagons were still hitched to the Ruler’s torso. If that leopard lacerated even one segment the interior stasis-runes would fail and mile-long shockwaves of decaying aura would tear the convoy apart.
Irontide snapped open the copper grille of his command horn. "Third Pike Phalanx, on me!" His voice boomed with the unmistakable resonance of an eight-star warlord; its shockwave rolled along lines, rousing dazed pikers from shell-shock.
Thirty veteran heavy-pike ants or six star rank surged forward, eight-metre shafts angling into an iron forest. Irontide calculated distances like a mathematician: wind speed ten knots, dune incline seven degrees, leopard gait four strides per breath. Perfect.
The predator tensed, emerald embers swirling in its throat once more, its intent was clear. Workers ants knelt helpless at the wagon, their world narrowing to the death-beam’s green glow.
"Now!" Irontide bellowed and he leapt, covering twenty metres in a single burst of rune powered speed. His gauntlets, each forged from the condensed shells of three extinct colossi, crackled with sun-bright sigils as he smashed them together launching himself into the leopard’s incoming lunge.
THROOM!