It was huge.
Leon's brain tried to categorize it- something like a bear, maybe, if bears were eight feet tall at the shoulder and covered in chitinous plates instead of fur. Its head was wrong, too many eyes, a mouth that split vertically instead of horizontally. It moved on six legs with unsettling grace.
It took three steps into this world, head swiveling.
Then it opened its mouth and shrieked.
The sound was nothing like any animal Leon had ever heard. It vibrated in his chest, made his vision blur, set his teeth on edge. Around him, soldiers flinched. Someone dropped their weapon.
And as if the shriek was a signal, the mass beyond the gate surged forward.
Night had fallen hours ago, and now the fires lit around the thirty-meter-wide gate reflected off countless eyes. Hundreds of them. Thousands. The eyes caught the light like mirrors as the horde rushed through—a writhing mass of flesh and things Leon assumed were hair and appendages that seemed to be fitted into random places on bodies that defied all logic of anatomy.
The first traps sprung into action.
Light from the explosions illuminated the horde for a brief, terrible second. Leon saw the full scope of what was coming- bodies upon bodies upon bodies, layered so deep he couldn't see where they ended. Then the blast tore through them, monsters thrown into the air, torn apart, scattered across the killing ground.
It didn't slow them down.
The monsters hit the spike fields at a full sprint. The traps did their work- Leon heard the screams of impaled monsters, saw some fall into the pitch trenches. Soldiers on the ramparts threw torches, and the trenches erupted in flame.
Burning creatures stumbled forward anyway. Some made it through. Others fell. The ones behind trampled the dying and kept coming, using the bodies of their fallen as bridges over the obstacles.
The first defense had been breached.
Lord Casimir's voice cut through the chaos. "ARCHERS!"
The first volley of arrows darkened the sky. A thousand shafts launched in near-perfect synchronization, arcing up and then down into the approaching horde.
Creatures fell. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
The horde kept coming. Leon chanced a glance at the gate and his stomach dropped. The opening was darkened- completely filled with creatures milling and writhing to get through. There was no end to them. No pause. Just an endless tide of alien flesh pouring into his world.
"MAGES!" Vera's voice from further down the rampart. "RED FORMATION!"
Leon saw it happen- the eight mages wearing red armbands snapped into position, their identifying markers visible even in the chaos. The circle he'd spent two days optimizing activated with a flash of blue light. Fire and lightning erupted from the formation in a concentrated cone, and where it struck, creatures simply ceased to exist.
The formation held for three seconds of devastating output, then flickered and died as the mages' reserves depleted.
They'd killed maybe fifty creatures.
Thousands more were coming through.
"THE AIR!" someone screamed.
Leon's head snapped up. Flying creatures were diving now- forty, fifty, maybe more, plummeting toward the defensive lines with talons extended and wings that blotted out the stars.
This was it. The moment his aerial formation either worked or thousands died.
"GOLD FORMATION!" Leon roared, pouring every ounce of command he could muster into his voice. "AERIAL GRID, ACTIVATE!"
The twelve mages wearing gold armbands snapped into position- they'd drilled this exactly three times, and Leon had made damn sure they knew the sequence by heart. The detection sphere bloomed to life- invisible to most, but Leon had spent enough time studying it that he could almost see it in his mind. A spherical grid of magical awareness, tracking every aerial target, calculating trajectories, feeding targeting data to-
The mages fired.
Not randomly. Not pointing up and hoping. But with perfect, calculated precision. Twelve spells launched in perfect synchronization, each one striking a different diving creature at the optimal intercept angle.
Twelve flying monsters fell from the sky.
Before they hit the ground, the formation had already recalculated. Twelve more targets. Twelve more precision strikes.
The aerial creatures kept coming- no coordination, no strategy, just primal hunger driving them down. The gold formation cut through them with mechanical efficiency, bodies falling like rain.
It was working.
Something vaguely ape-like, twelve feet tall, with arms that ended in bone scythes the length of swords, tore through the trenches like they weren't there, hit the wall of soldiers with the force of a battering ram.
Three men died before anyone could react. The creature's scythes carved through armor and flesh like paper, and it was already moving to its fourth victim,
"PLUG THAT BREACH!"
Soldiers flooded in from the reserves, swords and spears stabbing desperately. The creature went down under the weight of numbers, but more were coming. The rest of the horde had reached the defensive line.
Flesh crashed against shields. Screams and shouts filled the air- human and inhuman mixing into a cacophony that drowned out thought. The war had reached them.
Leon watched from the rampart, his mind racing through calculations. The formations were working. The defenses were holding. But the sheer volume of creatures pouring through the gate was overwhelming every advantage his careful preparation had created.
"GREEN FORMATION, FIRE!"
Another group of mages- green armbands visible as they moved into position- activated. More devastating fire carved through the horde, clearing a wedge of space that filled again within seconds.
The casualties were mounting on both sides. Leon could see bodies- human and monster- piling between the gate and the defensive lines. The smell hit him suddenly, carried on the wind. Blood. Burning flesh. Something acrid and wrong that came from the alien biology of the creatures.
He was going to be sick.
No. No time for that. He had to see this through.
"WHITE SHIELDS, REINFORCE!"
The mages with white armbands moved. The shields activated. The section that had been starting to buckle under pressure stabilized.
This was war.
And Leon had never felt more like a fraud or more desperate to prove he deserved the faith these people had placed in him.
A creature broke through on the left flank. Then another. Then five.
"RESERVES!" Casimir's voice, raw with strain. "CONTAIN THAT BREACH!"
The battle had just begun.