Leon’s unit was cornered, they had been separated from the stone giants, and they had taken heavy casualties. As a result, when Leon gave the order to charge, only a few hundred of the thousand or so that remained joined him.

It was a dismal showing, one that would’ve had Leon face-palming in shame if he weren’t so preoccupied. At the very least, none of the people that Leon interacted with regularly failed him—Marcus, Alcander, Alix, Valeria, Anzu, and Lapis all charged with him.

Fortunately, even with how few of his people were charging, it was still enough to take the advancing Octavian troops by surprise. They were forced to halt their own charge where it was, with sloppy lines and terrible formations as Leon’s unit attacked.

That didn’t stop the stronger Octavian mages from utilizing their magics, though. Even before Leon’s unit hit their foe, numerous holes were punched in their line by elemental magic, and even Leon himself was hit a few times, though his armor staved off the worst of it. He was more concerned with the weaker members of his party, but thankfully, he drew most of the magical attacks that might’ve otherwise been fired at them.

He also didn’t just take the attacks; responding in kind, Leon hurled a handful of lightning bolts at their enemies, killing three fifth-tier mages and injuring a few more as he ran.

Lapis, too, was hit by many attacks, but the stone giant took all of it and made it look easy. Without their casting formations from earlier in the day, it was much harder to take down a sixth-tier giant as strong as Lapis. Leon, however, did see a few small cracks being made in the giant’s stony skin despite Lapis’ seeming lack of concern.

The charge was short, it didn’t have far to go. A few Octavian warriors were caught without support and were swiftly cut down by Leon’s desperate, scared, and angry unit, but the balance was still firmly in their enemy’s favor. However, once Leon’s unit finally made contact with their enemy, many of those who didn’t charge began to find their nerve and ran to support their comrades, though many more stood firm on the hill.

Leon himself hit the enemy lines with as much force as he could manage. Many Octavian troops were cut down by his blade, while quick blasts of fire killed many more. His party by far did the most damage to their foe as they followed him, but the Barons did all right, too. Many mages tried to stop them, but led by Leon, the unit was like lions among sheep, slaughtering as they went with little trouble.

Leon remained silent as he pushed forward, concentrating completely on the challenges ahead, putting every ounce of guilt and sorrow at the losses sustained by the giants and others in his unit into every swing of his blade and blast of fire that erupted from his fingers. It didn’t matter who stood up to try and stop him, they fell before him like wheat before a scythe. Groups of fourth and fifth-tier mages attacked as he pushed deeper, only to fail as their attacks were either dodged outright or slid off his black Magmic Steel armor.

Behind him, he could hear the others being almost as effective. Marcus shouted incoherently with every swing of his blade, while Alcander’s war cries were slightly more understandable.

“FUCKING TRAITORS!” he bellowed, driving his ax into a hapless second-tier’s shoulder, pushing it almost down into the man’s lung.

Alix and Valeria, meanwhile, made short work in stoic silence, with Valeria covering Alix when higher-tiered warriors stepped in, and Alix covering Valeria when she was dealing with their stronger foes.

They were doing spectacularly well, but their momentum was unsustainable. The Octavian flanking force simply had too many people, and they couldn’t hew their way into their lines fast enough to stop the ranks further back from planting their feet and bracing for their charge. Consequently, up and down Leon’s line, his people were being slowed, then stopped, and then pushed back, their charge halted and then reversed.

Following a feint, Leon quickly removed the head of a fifth-tier mage, his blade sliding between the man’s helmet and breastplate, giving Leon enough room to take a second to pause, take a breath, and project his magic senses. As soon as he did so, his heart sank even further than it did when he first saw the forces that were marching on the camp.

Hundreds of his people were dead, his giants were down to a paltry dozen, and all those that were left were being inexorably pushed back. Still, it wasn’t until his magic senses spread further out that his blood ran cold. From further north, he could see the approach of thousands more people in Legion colors, with the familiar face of Sertor Arellius riding out in front of them.

For a moment, Leon was confused. He knew that Arellius had been dismissed from his command by Prince Octavius, so he had no idea why the Legate was back in command of his Legion. Given that Arellius had fought against the Augustine forces before, Leon could only assume that he’d been pardoned for some reason and given his command back with orders to reinforce Duke Duronius.

No matter what actually happened, there was only one order that Leon could give now. Unfortunately for him, he gave it too late.

—

Calerus felt nothing but sweet catharsis as he cut down Ursus’ people left and right. They had foolishly charged his retinue, and while the barbarian himself had charged at a different part of the line, Calerus still took no small amount of pleasure in killing the traitors that followed him. The Count had lost one of his few remaining sixth-tier mages already, but with the way things were going, he knew that the battle was almost complete.

Even now, at least one of the treasonous fifth-tier nobles that had charged their position had been killed at his hand, and he could see the other three were in dire straits. Ursus himself and those around him—including that damned giant—were acquitting themselves admirably, but soon, they’d be all alone.

And then, Ursus shouted something that Calerus hadn’t been expecting given the savage’s reputation for violence.

“FALL BACK TO THE HILL!” the barbarian shouted, his voice easily carrying over the roar of battle. “BACK TO THE HILL!” he repeated, and his people slowly began trying to disengage and retreat back to where their remaining people were hunkered down on the hill.

Their numbers had been significantly reduced over the past few hours. Where once they had been roughly two thousand strong, they now numbered barely a few hundred, and when Calerus glanced off to the south, he could see that the giants had been greatly reduced in number, too.

He was about to order his army to pursue—not that they needed such encouragement—when the blue-tinted giant loudly rumbled, its deep resonating call easily passing through everyone present to be heard in the distance, where the handful of remaining giants began disengaging from the rest of the main army, too. They’d been greatly reduced in number, taking at least ninety percent casualties in Calerus’ estimation, but they had still killed thousands of people in the rest of the Octavian army.

However, a smile graced Calerus’ face as he realized that they’d only managed to savage the vanguard; the armies from Lentia and Vesontio had been untouched. They had been sent out by Duronius with more than fifty thousand warriors. At least ten thousand were likely gone by now—leading Calerus to feel some small amount of respect blossom in his heart for his adversary, despite Leon killing his lover—but they still had more than enough to bring an end to Ursus and his remaining few hundred.

The giants moved extremely quickly, easily breaking off from the vanguard and falling back, though one was consumed by some kind of suspiciously demonic fiery creature that Calerus saw summoned from a spell scroll used by a sixth-tier knight. The consumed giant fell to the ground with a titanic crunch, the ground shaking even where Calerus stood watching half a mile away and didn’t move again.

The rest of the giants, however, managed to fall back, moving quickly enough that Calerus decided to take the opportunity to form back up and prepare for the charge and wait for the vanguard to catch up to them rather than moving recklessly and being hit in the flank by the giants.

But it wasn’t until Calerus’ magic senses picked up on the advancing Legion that he began to call out in panic, “HOLD! HOLD!!!”

It took a minute or two for his knights to corral the weaker and less disciplined members of his retinue, but eventually, order was restored from the chaos of battle, Ursus’ unit finally broke off, and Calerus’ retinue hung back, waiting for the rest of their assault force to reform. Calerus himself walked down his line until he was finally in front of the barbarian, though hundreds of feet of blasted, burning, and broken forest now separated them. When it came time to charge for the last time, he wasn’t going to be watching from a distance again.

No, he was going to kill the barbarian once and for all, and in doing so, allow his fallen lover to rest in peace with his Ancestors. The only complication now was that Legion, but with the army still numbering more than forty thousand, Calerus wasn’t too worried. Besides, it was probably only Octavian reinforcements, anyway, but it was prudent to let the rest of the army catch up before doing anything that would leave his forces exposed.

—

Leon stared out at the broken plain before him, surrounded by dead men, women, and giants, so far from safety. At his back were the paltry remains of his unit, barely two hundred left, and only a dozen giants. They’d fought admirably, their foe had taken so many more casualties than they had, but that would hardly matter to Leon if he wound up dead in the end.

Before him were at least ten thousand knights and men-at-arms—probably more, but it was difficult to make a better estimate right now—and a mile behind was an advancing Legion. There was no escape, no way out. August’s forces entrenched on their hill were too far away and beyond too many of their enemies. Even now, their enemies reformed their lines and assembled, taking their sweet time now that what few forces he had left had fallen back to the hill.

This was it. They’d given everything they had, as the thousands of Octavian corpses could attest, but they had still lost in the end.

“Well… **…” Leon muttered, allowing himself to feel just a few strands of despair before he clamped down hard on that feeling and suppressed it with every ounce of emotional strength that he could muster. Things were bleak, far more so than any odds he’d faced at least since the battle at Fort 127, but they could be much worse.

At the very least, Lapis and a handful of giants still stood, their bodies cracked and their auras, once as strong and immovable as mountains, flagging and sputtering. Marcus and Alcander were battered, bleeding, and bruised, but alive.

Valeria and Alix, too, were fine, relatively speaking. They had scrapes and small injuries, their armor was dented and bloody, and their weapons weren’t in great shape, either, but they remained on their feet, as strong and defiant in the face of their impending deaths as anyone else.

Anzu was a little worse for wear, but he was alive and his aura was strong. One of his wings was clearly injured—it was hanging limply at his side—but his eyes were bright, his claws, beak, and practically the entire front of his body was covered in the blood of his defeated enemies, but Leon could also see a few gashes that proved at least some of that blood was the griffin’s own.

Apart from them, three of the Barons were dead or had fallen somewhere out in the forest and couldn’t get back to the hill, leaving only Orientis and Gellius there with him. His unit was nearly shattered, and he couldn’t even see the champions he’d fought against in his duels against the Barons—his unit was truly on its last legs. They didn’t even have any of their horses left, nearly all having been killed in the opening moves the flanking unit had taken.

Leon took a few long, deep breaths, and examined his own state. His people were about as well as could be expected—though he was incensed to see any of them dead or injured, let alone nearly all of the giants or the griffin he’d raised almost from birth—so he turned his attention to himself.

He hadn’t sustained any major injuries, but he was tired and had used much of his mana. To make up for that, he began to pull as much magic power out of his soul realm as he could, trying to replenish his reserves so that he could be ready for their last stand.

“We… could always surrender…” Gellius murmured just loud enough for Leon to overhear. He sounded like he was just thinking out loud, but Leon responded anyway.

“That’s not an option, can you feel the killing intent radiating from all of them? If you throw down your weapon, the only thing you’ll accomplish is dying with empty hands.”

Gellius’ shoulders sagged, all signs of arrogance and pride that he’d possessed in the previous weeks gone in the face of certain death. Whatever thoughts he might’ve had in response to Leon’s statement were left unsaid.

In fact, no one else spoke. There were no epic speeches, no panicked shouting, everyone was just too tired. With a Legion behind them and noble armies in front, all they could do was to prepare to die with as much dignity as they could, though that didn’t stop many of Leon’s people from dropping their weapons and falling to their knees anyway.

Thereupon that hill Leon waited, his invisibility ring and flight suit occasionally entering his mind, but he couldn’t abandon these people even if he knew those were surefire methods of escape. He’d rather stand his ground than run away while the people he regarded as his own were left to die.

After a while—Leon didn’t quite know how long—the Legion to the north finally became visible as they marched through the woods towards them, while the noble armies finished their assembly in front to the south. No one came out to demand their surrender, proving to Leon that they didn’t intend to take any of his people prisoner.

And then came the horns from front and back, seeming to reverberate through the forest like it was an echo chamber, and their enemies began their final advance towards the tattered remnants of Leon’s unit.