The rumble of boots and heavy footsteps spread across the plain like a drum beating a funeral rhythm.
Maggie, standing on a raised mound of earth, watched the scene unfold:
Count Martissant's awakened troops—hardened mercenaries, veterans with strange weapons, and elite soldiers clad in dark leather—advanced in flawless ranks.
There were at least a hundred of them, stark silhouettes against the gray horizon, and behind them, further back, waited the ordinary soldiers, mere pawns held in reserve for now.
Opposite them, as if in a mirror, Pilaf's forces deployed in the same formation:
the awakened and mercenaries in the front lines, the common soldiers in the rear.
And at the center of this human tide, two figures Maggie couldn't miss.
Pilaf.
A massive man, tall as a watchtower, muscles hewn as if from raw stone. His shaved head gleamed under the dull light, a deep scar running across his skull like the signature of an ancient battle.
