Chapter 45: the strangest damn thing happened

With a ground-shaking roar, the Draken Commander charged. He brought that black-iron greatsword down in a brutal, vertical cleave. The High Warden raised his longsword in an angled parry, channeling his Vitre into his forearms to reinforce the steel.

The collision was cataclysmic. A horizontal shockwave of displaced air exploded outward from the clash, shearin’ the bark off the surroundin’ pine trees and blowin’ a ring of leaves and dark dirt fifty paces away. The High Warden’s boots sank three inches into the bedrock, the sheer kinetic weight of the Draken’s strike threatening to crush his joints.

The Draken Commander laughed, a muffled, metallic sound behind his terrifying visor, and immediately spun his weight, launching a savage horizontal follow-up meant to take the Warden’s head off.

The High Warden dipped beneath the blow with fluid grace, his longsword snapping upward in a counter-thrust aimed at the commander’s pauldron joint. The blade’s tip pierced deep, slicing through leather and releasing a spray of dark blood—yet the Draken Commander didn’t flinch. Driven by raw, predatory instinct, he slammed his spiked knee into the Warden’s breastplate.

The impact rang out like a smith’s hammer on an anvil. The High Warden was hurled backward, his boots skidding over wet moss as he struggled to keep his footing, a single line of blood trickling from his plumed helmet.

The slaughter went on and on until the valley grew terribly small. Bodies were piled high, trampling the pristine white-and-blue banners of Morvayn into the mud alongside the torn crimson standards of the Draken Host. It was a battle of absolute attrition. A Morvayn High Sergeant went down swingin’ his pick into a scout’s skull before a secondary glaive took his head from behind.

Eventually, the roaring stopped. The grand armies had ground each other down to near nothing. Only about ten men remained standin’ on each side—the weaker, bleedin’ stragglers clingin’ to life, and the strongest ones, battered but still breathin’, includin’ the two Orange-tier commanders who were heavily pantin’, covered in soot and blood.

Just when the bloodshed seemed over,itappeared.

The silence that fell over the valley was instant and terrifying. The brush right across from our position—where Keren and the others lay hidden—didn’t just rustle; it seemed to rise up on its own.

Out crept the Briar-Ghoul. An-Gidheamh.

It was a massive, low-slung, quadrupedal nightmare, stretchin’ a good eighteen feet from its muzzle to the base of its tail. It had the shadow of a prehistoric panther, but its shoulders had the raw, heavy mass of a giant wolverine.

Its coat was a mess of Needle-Bristles—coarse, hollow hairs that looked exactly like dead pine needles. And growin’ straight out from its spine were long, flexible, vine-like tendrils covered in a natural, razor-sharp bark chitin. As the beast moved through the undergrowth, it naturally wove the surrounding briars and brambles into its own hide, making it look like a rolling, shifting mound of sentient, thorny brushwood.

When it cleared the tree line, I caught sight of its face. It was long, lupine, and entirely hairless—just a smooth, pale-bone carapace with four bead-like, lidless black eyes starin’ down at the survivors.

The bastards didn’t even have time to patch their wounds before the thing was on ’em. The survivors from both houses tried to band together, pack-tactics style, to ward it off as they started retreatin’. But that thing... it was like tryin’ to stop a movin’ landslide with toothpicks.

It lunged into their ranks, using oversized, hook-like claws to snap a Morvayn regular’s hamstrings before he could turn. As the lad fell, the beast clamped its jaws on a Draken spearman, crushing his mail and weapon like twigs. Heavy and brutal, it killed three more before the rest retreated, hacking futilely at its thorny hide.

"They fought like cornered rats as they fled through the trees. I’m tellin’ ye, m’Lord, they were dead men walking. If that scrap had lasted two minutes more, no one would have survived to tell the tale."

Keren continued speaking in detail about the absolute nightmare that had appeared, and Bramm could see the fear in Keren’s eyes. The Briar Ghouls were one of the most nightmarish beasts to roam the northern forests.

Bramm nodded along, his expression solemn as he continued to sit in silence and listen.

"But then, right mid-clash... the strangest damn thing happened."

The beast simply froze. One moment, it was about to tear into the Draken Commander, and the next, it went rigid as rock. Its four black eyes widened, and it let out a low, trembling huff. It no longer watched the soldiers. It was as if it sensed something deeper in the woods—something that chilled it to the bone. It stood there, petrified, glancing back before it slinked away into the depths of the brush.

"As soon as the monster vanished, what was left of the two houses didn’t even look at each other—they just scattered into the trees, runnin’ for their lives in opposite directions, not even carin’ about the feud anymore."

"Once the coast was clear, I didn’t need to be told twice. I looked at the lads, told ’em to pack it up, and we made the decision to haul arse back here as fast as our legs could carry us. Whatever turned an eighteen-foot mountain horror around like a whipped pup... we didn’t want to be anywhere near it when it showed its face."

He nodded in grave exasperation.

’A large-scale battle from both Houses? If this keeps up, a full blown war may erupt, especially now... but for a Briar Ghost of the orange tier to be frightened of? I don’t even want to think what may have laid ahead’he rationalized once he sifted through every piece of information he had just obtained.

"Well done, for now, keep away from that area. I want you to still check up on the other areas, but be careful, with Orange level primals appearing we should be extra cautious." Bramm continued, his voice soft and full of concern, "You did good with not interfering with the battle, getting involved will do us no good. Now, go and get some rest."