The Forsaken Duchess of the Empire, Vyrrasha, stalked through her palace halls with the kind of arrogant grace only a dragonkin of her standing could manage. Her talons clicked against marble floors like angry punctuation marks that outlined her mood. But that didn’t deter the sound of running footsteps that quickly chased her from behind.

  "Your Grace! Your Grace!"

  "I know," she growled, a plume of flame escaping her feathered snout in irritation as if she needed her aides to tell her when the territory under her purview was under attack. The Duchess didn't break stride as she reached one of the bedrooms she had turned into a control center, throwing the ornate door open with enough force to knock out a few hinges and embedded the handle into the stone wall.

  The circular chamber was packed with activity. Generals and advisors crowded the center of the room, encompassed by strange magical orbs conjured by diviners. Their hands wove complex patterns as they scried on the battles unfolding countless miles away. Different sides of the sphere showed different views of the conflict—aerial battles near the rift, ground engagements further south, and reinforcements moving towards the contested territories.

  Her court mage, Anke, turned toward the doorway the moment Vyrrasha made her entrance. The high elf's long, drooping ears swayed with the movement as he fixed his liege with a grave look. "Your Grace. They've come."

  Vyrrasha's feathered face twisted in displeasure as her eyes flicked between the magical displays. Each side showed a different flavor of disaster unfolding. "So it would seem," she said, watching as one of the younger dragon thralls suddenly stiffened and went limp after being struck by... something.

  She had caught a glimpse of them, something the lesser races couldn't even hope to perceive at such speeds. White or gray, elongated and eerily smooth shapes with small fins sped through the air, adjusting their course mid-flight. They moved impossibly fast—faster than any arrow or bolt of magic she had ever witnessed, leaving a violent disruption of air in their wake. But what truly captured her attention was how they seemed to know exactly where they were going. It was as if they were tracking and following their targets even while those targets tried to evade.

  These weren't just projectiles — they were hunters. Vyrrasha watched as another salvo streaked through her forces. They moved strangely and unnaturally. It was as if these strange darts were guided by an invisible hand before striking their targets with a precision that couldn’t come from something alive. Not only that, but the explosions that followed weren't like any of the magicks she knew. These were different — sharper, more focused as if designed to erupt on proximity.

  The duchess knew this day was coming — she had warned them all it was coming — but that made watching it unfold no less infuriating after pouring over the details of the Empire's failed excursion. Vyrraasha took what she thought were appropriate precautions by fortifying positions and establishing new operational procedures. But now she couldn’t help but grit her teeth as she watched her efforts be systematically destroyed.

  It was painfully clear that she had severely miscalculated, but how was she supposed to predict these otherworlders could strike from such impossible distances? The reports had mentioned their strange weapons, yes, but nothing had prepared her for whatever in the infinite hells this was. These weren't just tools of war — they were implements of wholesale slaughter that defied her understanding.

  When Vyrrasha turned her attention to the other side of the scrying sphere, her stress levels went up a notch. She watched as the initial blocking forces near the left were absolutely hammered by repeated explosions that honed in on their fixed. Not single detonations or focused blasts like she'd seen before, but waves of synchronized destruction throughout the landscape. Everything in their path — fortifications, soldiers, even the forest itself — was being reduced to ruin.

  "Explosion magic?" Vyrrasha turned to Anke, her scaled features twisting as if she'd tasted something particularly foul. "Since when did lesser races master the employment of explosion magic? And in such... overwhelming quantity?"

  The high elf stood silent for a moment, his ancient eyes fixed on the magical display as another wave of explosions devastated their defensive lines. He'd read the same reports she had about the Empire's failed incursion, but nothing in those documents had detailed this type of weaponry. "Your Grace," he finally spoke, his voice tight with concern. "I don't believe this is magic at all. These explosions are too... consistent."

  Anke stepped forward while his elegant fingers brushed aside a few strands of bright blonde hair. He pinched his chin in thought as he examined each detonation. "Look at the pattern, Your Grace," he said, gesturing to the devastation. "Each explosion is nearly identical to the last and only varies in their arrangement."

  The duchess's eyes narrowed as her gaze shifted between where her forces were being slaughtered and Anke himself. "They are not the same. Some are clearly larger."

  "Yes, but only two varieties," Anke corrected, earning a sharp look from Vyrrasha, which he ignored. "One significantly larger than the other, but consistently so. With explosion magic, this would be impossible—not just due to the scale, but because no two magical explosions are ever truly alike.”

  Another haughty and angry plume of flame left Vyrrashas snout as she glared at this petulant elf, but stayed her hand and held her tongue as she allowed Anke to continue. “The very nature of mana makes it impossible to achieve such uniformity. Each explosion is as unique as a snowflake, shaped by the caster's visualization, their control, and the ambient magic in the area..." The high elf gestured at the display. "Yet these explosions are nearly identical and only varying in their size. Even a master mage channeling explosion magic would create wildly different effects with each cast. The mana simply cannot be controlled in such an... artificial manner."

  "And look at how they detonate," Anke traced the explosions with a slender finger. "Both sizes have splinters that showered everything around it, as if..." he paused, brow furrowing as he processed what he was seeing. "As if the explosion itself is contained within some kind of casing that fragments upon detonation. That's why we see the same shrapnel pattern with each blast. Both types never deviate from these respective patterns. It's mechanical, manufactured and in no way magical."

  Vyrrasha huffed in irritation at both at Anke's observations and her own failure to notice these details sooner. Her draconic vision allowed her to perceive what others in the room could not as her eyes narrowed and focused on the area just above where the impacts occurred.

  There — barely visible even to her enhanced sight — dark objects streaked through the air. They moved in perfect arcs, like a flock of deadly birds. The things were encased in what looked like dark green metal casings which seemed to absorb the sunlight before they began their terminal descent. As the projectiles slammed into a section of the forest, ancient trees, some older than the empire itself, snapped like twigs under the impacts. Their massive trunks splintered apart as the explosions rippled through her forces ranks, sending shrapnel and wooden debris flying in all directions.

  Silence fell over the room as they watched the soundless visage unfold below. A large group of her soldiers — the vanguard meant to act as the first roadbump — completely routed. The levimen and mana users alike scrambled from their bunker complex as the repeated impacts caused reinforced support beams to crack and enchanted walls to buckle. They emerged into daylight like ants fleeing a drowning nest, just as another wave of projectiles descended from above.

  The Duchess’ claws dug into the marble table as she watched the scene play out, leaving deep gouges in the stone. The soldiers never stood a chance. The first explosion caught their rear ranks, turning armored warriors into red mist. The second and third blasts bracketed their flanks, herding the survivors into a killing zone like shepherds driving sheep to slaughter. The subsequent strikes landed directly among them, completely annihilating everything as round after round pounded the position. Only a few survivors remained when the dust settled, scurrying or limping about and fleeing for their lives.

  Vyrrasha's expression became dispassionate as she watched the carnage unfold, her featured features settling into the cold mask she wore when processing military matters. All across the battlefield, the same style of explosions tore through different sections of the forest — methodical, precise, and utterly devastating. Her body relaxed into a deceptively casual pose with her arms folding across her chest as she considered the implications. This same scene was undoubtedly playing out across their entire initial point of contact all along the rift.

  She had organized these troops to be an initial roadblock — expendable, yes, but meant to serve a greater purpose. They were supposed to probe the enemy's capabilities, to force them to reveal their hand in a controlled engagement. Instead, they'd been reduced to less than an inconvenience, swatted aside like insects. The only insight she'd gained was far more concerning than she'd anticipated — these otherworlders could completely obliterate any position they could detect, without ever revealing themselves. They didn't need to engage directly. They didn't need to commit to battle. They simply rained death from beyond sight.

  This type of warfare wasn't entirely alien to her. The Empire had their own version of indirect warfare — ritual circles that could devastate distant targets or specialized beasts to strike distant targets with the help of a spirit eagle. But she currently lacked access to those particular... assets. And even if she had them at her disposal, they couldn't maintain this relentless volume of sustained fire. Not at this scale and most definitely not with this kind of precision.

  Turning her head slightly, the Duchess gave Anke a calculated side-eye that would have made lesser beings tremble. "How close can we get that spirit eagle to the otherowrlders' positions?" Her tone made it clear this wasn't really a question — it was a demand wrapped in the thinnest veneer of courtesy.

  Anke was seemingly immune to the Duchess intimidating gaze as he maintained his impassive expression, but the obvious signs of stress were there. His attention slowly shifted to one of the diviners — a human woman whose hands moved in intricate patterns as she maintained control of the spirit eagle she used to scry over the land battle.

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  The court mage studied her for a moment, noting the tension in her movements. Beads of sweat were dripping down her face forehead from the effort of sustaining such complex magic at such an intense distance. Fortunately, half of her load were offset by another who seemingly linked to her and conjured a display for all to see, so the scryer could focus on pushing her consciousness across an unfathomable distance.

  "Elena, redirect the eagle. Her Grace wishes to see what manner of weapons we're dealing with." Anke instructed as he approached the woman.

  The diviner’s concentration wavered at the interruption. Her fingers trembled, and the battlefield’s image shimmered as she struggled to maintain the delicate scrying spell. After stabilizing it once more, she cast a nervous glance toward the corner of the room, where her predecessor lay wounded under a healer’s care. The injured diviner clutched at her eye and groaned through clenched teeth after suffering from the backlash of her spirit eagle’s violent demise.

  “Master Anke, we’ve… we’ve already lost three eagles,” the diviner in control said. “The last time we ventured too close, they were shredded by some kind of—”

  “Then fly higher,” Anke snapped as his aristocratic patience started to fray. His ears began to twitch subtly, and his eyes tightened as his emotions began to betray the famed control high elves were known for. “But we need those eyes on their position. Now.”

  Glancing once more at her wounded colleague, the diviner in control returned to her work and resumed control of the spirit eagle, causing it to ascend. Even Anke's relatively restrained display of impatience was enough to make her nervous — everyone in the room knew the source of that impatience was the looming Seraphic Dragonkin, who looked as if she’d turn every soul in the room to cinders.

  The view through the scrying sphere shifted as the spirit eagle changed course and headed directly toward the anomaly that joined their worlds. Vyrrasha's features underwent a series of subtle changes — her eyes first widening, then narrowing to slits as she processed what she was seeing.

  Columns upon columns of... what were those? Not beasts, they moved nothing like anything that lived. These were some type of carriages or machines, similar to those rail-bound contraptions the dwarves were so obsessed with but fundamentally different. These, instead, moved freely across the landscape, their metal hides painted completely in earthly greens with some a desert tan. Some were massive, hulking things with long metal snouts that pivoted independently of their bodies. Others were smaller, carrying people in their armored bellies or mounted with strange, smaller snouts on their tops.

  "It seems the reports weren't exaggerating about this either," she muttered, watching one of the larger machines in action. Though the scrying spell carried no sound, she could see the raw power of each blast from their snouts — both the larger snouted ones that devastated the lands around it with each eruption and the smaller snouted ones that spat death in a more controlled fashion.

  But it was their ground forces that truly caught her attention. At first glance, their movements appeared chaotic, almost haphazard. Yet there was an underlying deliberateness to their apparent disorder. They moved like water flowing around rocks — breaking apart, reforming, and always advancing. One group would unleash a continuous barrage from those strange staff weapons they carried and either pin down or outright slaughter her forces. It was like watching an elite formation of the veteran levied, except these weren't elite troops - this appeared to be their standard.

  Occasionally, Vyrrasha caught glimpses of mana users breaking through and wreaking havoc among the otherworlds ranks. But such victories were fleeting - a mage might get off one spell, perhaps two if they were lucky, before the soldiers in their strange foliage-colored garb would turn as one and riddle them with holes. Warriors fared somewhat better when they managed to close the distance, but even they rarely survived more than a few moments. These soldiers seemed to operate on the principle of never fighting fair and always maintained a distance as if it were a religion.

  Her eyes swept across multiple engagements, analyzing each brief, brutal exchange. The strange staves that spat death caused a feather or two to fall out of Vyrrasha's face as it scrunched in distaste. One weapon caught her attention, though—a small spherical device they used against those who were pinned down by their constant barrage. The spheres would explode, killing or disorienting their targets, and the otherworlders would immediately swarm the position, finishing off survivors before they could even understand their surroundings.

  It was ruthlessly efficient. These weren't warriors seeking glory in combat—they were butchers and killers. Killers focused solely on the quickest and easiest path to their enemies' demise. Vyrrasha had faced similar opponents before on the battlefield, each one proving more problematic than the last. The Tauri ranked high among them, but this... this was different.

  "These are not the actions of an inexperienced force," she said disdainfully, turning to Anke. "This is a military that has mastered whatever their art is."

  "Indeed," Anke replied, his fingers tracing their movement patterns in the air. "Notice how they never fight alone — always in pairs, always covering each other. Even their seemingly chaotic movements serve to funnel our forces into prepared killing grounds. They've turned warfare into calculus."

  Vyrrasha's eyes fixed on a particular piece of elevated terrain as the spirit eagle ventured further inland. Not quite a hill — it was more like nature's attempt at a plateau, offering a perfect vantage point over the surrounding valley. However, What drew her attention wasn't the position itself but the frantic activity on it.

  More of those foliage-garbed soldiers darted around strange tubes mounted on tripods. They'd drop something into the top, and moments later... Her eyes twitched as she watched one of those very same “somethings” be violently propelled toward the horizon in the same fashion as the projectiles that decimated her troops. The same shape, the same speed, and the same explosion in the same location.

  "Incredible," she muttered, piecing it together. The design was similar to dwarven and goblin siege weapons but far more refined. Now that she studied them more closely, she realized these must be what the reports had called "barrels" — though they were far more sophisticated than the crude description had suggested. Whatever powered these weapons — be it their strange equivalent to explosion magic or something else entirely — was far more sophisticated than anything their diminutive rivals had created.

  But these smaller weapons were overshadowed by something that made even Vyrrasha pause. Larger contraptions, similar to the ones she'd seen devastating her front lines, but fundamentally different. These had broader, far lengthier barrels — at least three men laid end-to-end in length — and as she continued to study these metal monsters, she saw a radical change.

  These contraptions slowly adjusted the position of their barrels, lifting skyward at a steep angle instead of orienting them towards the frontlines. It was as if they were… mimicking the smaller siege weapons next to them but on an entirely different scale. If the smaller tubes could unleash such a power that could crush one of their positions, these larger monstrosities looked as if they were going to shatter the realm itself.

  That was when the realization hit her like a physical blow. "Eternal hells," she breathed, watching as another one fired. The blast was so tremendous that the behemoth rock backed backward from the force of its own attack. "They're turning this entire elevation into a fortress of these damned things!"

  The Duchess’ eyes started darting all over the place, scanning all over place until she saw more of these metal behemoths crawling up onto the elevated terrain. The ones that already made the climb took up a position and raised their massive barrel skyward. Soldiers scurried around them like ants, setting up their position to prepare for their own barrage. The thought of it all made Vyrrasha's stomach turn.

  She had planned for the worst-case scenario. She had accepted that they would be slowly crushed under the weight of another world and built her entire strategy around that position. But this... this was beyond even her darkest predictions. Her eyes began to swim with barely contained panic as her teeth ground against each other when the full implications became clear.

  "This is disastrous," she hissed, her voice tight with rage. "This is absolutely disastrous!" She turned sharply to her supreme general, Maldro. "Sound the retreat! Now!"

  Maldro's face contorted in confusion. "Your Grace, we still have significant assets in the area. We could hold them long enough for the other echelons to—"

  "You don't understand," Vyrrasha cut him off, her tail lashing out in agitation, slamming into the thick marble table and crushing it inhalf. "These damned otherworlders — no, these monsters — they're going to methodically blast every inch of dirt step-by-step as they advance with these infernal contraptions! They'll level everything in their path." She gestured wildly at the scrying sphere. "Look at how they operate! They don't seek battle — they seek annihilation! Every position we try to hold will end up like that first line of defense!"

  Her claws dug into the table again. "We need to reformulate our strategy in its entirety. Everything we knew about warfare, about holding ground — it's useless against weapons like these. We need to adapt, and quickly." The admission seemed to pain her physically. "We need to recenter our defenses around Anburry and use Glennsworth to properly sustain a new frontline or we won't survive long enough to—”

  Vyrrasha stopped mid-sentence when she caught on something in the scrying sphere out of the corner of her peripheral vision. One of the smaller contraptions with countless wheels was orienting what looked like a small barrel skyward. Unlike the massive tubes meant for bombardment, this looked more… purposeful.

  And it was aimed directly at the spirit eagle.

  A series of rapid and angry bright flashes erupted from the thing, causing half of the scrying sphere to flicker violently before winking out of existence. A heartbeat later, a shrill scream pierced the air as she clutched at her dominant eye while blood streamed between her fingers. She collapsed backward, writhing in agony from the magical backlash of her spirit eagle's destruction.

  "Healers!" Anke shouted, already moving toward the fallen woman. "They can see our eagles," he added grimly, looking back at Vyrrasha. "Even at that height."

  Vyrrasha's face twisted into a rage-filled snarl as she looked down at the writhing diviner. After a few moments of observing, her head then snapped toward Maldro while flames licked between her teeth as she spoke. "You dare question me?" She advanced on him, her claws flexing as if she were to swipe at his neck. The general took an instinctive step back as the Duchess loomed over him while her tail whipped violently through the air.

  "Question my judgment again…" she hissed, bringing her face inches from his, "and I will personally remove every appendage you have and roast you slowly to feed to the wyverns. Now. Order. The. RETREAT!"

  "Y-yes, Your Grace!" Maldro bowed deeply, his voice trembling as he backed toward the door before turning and practically running from the room.

  Taking a moment to calm down a little, Vyrrasha turned back to the diviner and watched dispassionately as the woman screamed and clutched at what remained of her liquified eye. Her lips curled into a dangerous sneer as she addressed her aides. "Fetch the Dragonkin healers. I want their eyes repaired immediately." Her voice dropped to a menacing growl. "We're going to need them."

  After her aides nodded and scurried out, the Duchess whipped around and stormed out of the control center. As she passed through the entrance, her thrashing tail caught the damaged door and splintered the ornate woodwork down, ripping it completely from its remaining hinges. A resounding crash echoed through the corridors like thunder, and she made her way down the hallway.