A rusted, serrated blade meant for his throat came in a clumsy, overhand arc. Michael didn't think; he moved. A dip of the shoulder, a pivot on the ball of his foot—the movements felt unnaturally fluid, his body responding with a speed and precision that still surprised him. The Second-Rank Aura thrumming through his veins was a tangible force, a current of heightened perception and amplified strength he had desperately cultivated. The blade whistled past his ear, close enough to stir his hair. He could smell the attacker—a hulking, sun-blistered man with wild eyes—a mix of stale sweat, bloodlust, and rotten teeth.
His own weapon, a factory-sharp katana, felt feather-light. He didn't parry; he riposted. A reverse, upward slash opened the man's side from hip to ribcage. The sensation was not of cutting flesh, but of dragging the blade through tough, wet leather. A grunt, more of surprise than pain, escaped the raider before he toppled backward from the wall-walk, vanishing into the cacophony below.
There was no time for triumph. Before Michael could even draw a full breath, a bald, desiccated head popped up over the parapet two yards to his right, eyes gleaming with feral intent. Gritting his teeth against the drain on his core—the Aura was a finite resource, burning away with every enhanced movement—Michael lunged. The mantra of the defense was simple, brutal, and absolute: prevent a foothold. If the wave of attackers established a single stable bridgehead on the wall, the fragile line would shatter, and the town would be drowned in a tide of steel and savagery.
The 'human wave' assault was the most primitive form of siege warfare, a tactic devoid of finesse. Yet, its very simplicity made it terrifyingly effective. From his precarious vantage point, Michael saw that the plain below was a seething, dark mass of humanity. The coalition commanders, safe in their distant center, seemed to have an endless supply of lives to spend. Probing attacks, mere feints, were also underway on the other three walls, pinning down his reserves. He couldn't spare a single soul.
His eyes kept darting back to that central reserve. Perhaps two hundred figures remained there, surrounding two dozen individuals who carried themselves with a palpable air of menace. These were the elite, the Aura-wielders, the chiefs and their personal guards. They were the true hammer, waiting for the anvil of common raiders to soften them up. The temptation to unsling the M16 rifle from his back was a physical itch. A single, sustained burst into a densely packed group of those elites could change everything. But the memory of the few, precious boxes of 5.56mm ammunition in his strongroom stayed his hand. It was a trump card, to be played at the absolute last, most critical moment.
"Zach! Now! To the wall!" Michael bellowed, his voice raw.
The response was immediate and earth-shaking. "YES, MASTER!" A roar that cut through the battle's din was followed by the sound of a small building collapsing. Zach the Ogre, the settlement's living siege engine, had been contained in the courtyard below, a beast of burden and battle kept in reserve. The wait had been agony for him. For Zach, combat was a higher form of feasting.
He took the wooden stairs to the wall-walk not with steps, but with concussive impacts that made the entire structure shudder. In his hands, he wielded a length of railway axle, a crude, hundred-pound bludgeon that no ordinary man could even lift. He didn't so much fight as he conducted a form of industrial demolition. He didn't aim for individuals; he aimed for spaces occupied by enemies. The axle swept in great, horizontal arcs. Men with shields were simply erased from the wall, their defenses splintered, their bones cracking audibly. One raider, either brave or foolish, attempted to block the blow with a thick, metal-reinforced buckler. The shield held for a microsecond before the force behind it launched him into a backward somersault, his arm bent at a grotesque, impossible angle. In the medical calculus of the Wasteland, he was already dead.
Zach carved a path of pure, unadulterated destruction from one end of the battlement to the other and back again. His presence was a psychological shockwave, momentarily stunning the attackers and giving the exhausted defenders a second wind. The line, which had been bending to the point of breaking, stiffened.
In the relative lull created by the Ogre's rampage, Old Gimpy appeared. He now wore a crude, white armband with a red cross painted on it—a concept Michael had introduced days earlier. Behind him trailed a squad of women, their faces set in grim determination, carrying stretchers woven from scavenged cloth and poles. They moved with a practiced efficiency that spoke of a life accustomed to triage. They ignored the slick, bloody planks underfoot, quickly identifying Cinder Town's wounded and loading them onto the stretchers. The journey to the three-story tavern, which now served as a field hospital manned by the female attendants, was a frantic race against time.
Yet, these women were products of the Wasteland first, and medics second. As they worked, their free hands held an assortment of homemade weapons—heavy wrenches, sharpened rebar, meat cleavers. Any enemy wounded writhing too close received a swift, merciless dispatch. It was a chilling, pragmatic brutality that made Michael's stomach clench, a stark reminder of the world he now governed.
Time had become a meaningless abstraction. Had it been ten minutes? Thirty? The sun's position seemed frozen in its cruel, midday zenith. Michael's world had shrunk to the next dodge, the next parry, the next desperate slash. His Aura was fading, a lamp running out of oil.
Then, abruptly, he realized the pressure had eased. He risked a glance over the parapet. The sight below was a charnel house. A mound of bodies, three or four hundred strong, formed a grisly ramp against the wall. The remaining attackers, perhaps a similar number, had pulled back a dozen yards, their advance faltering. The sheer carnage had finally overridden their greed and fear of the overseers. Their morale was cracking.
Gathering the last of his breath, Michael leaned over the blood-slicked stone and spat—a thick, red globule mixed with dust and exhaustion. Then, with a defiance fueled by utter fatigue, he raised his left hand and extended a single, rigid middle finger towards the distant cluster of raider chieftains.
The response was not immediate. The chiefs conferred. Then, as one, they began to move. The ground seemed to tremble as the entire elite reserve, the two hundred hardened warriors and their twenty-plus Aura-enhanced leaders, started a slow, deliberate advance. The message was clear: the fodder had done its job. Now the professionals would finish it.
A chorus of voices, amplified by Aura or sheer lung power, boomed across the field, each announcing a name that was a legend of terror in the badlands.
"I am Blackhand, of the Black Hand warband!"
"I am Snaggletooth Anrai!"
"I am Jack the Ripper, of the Greenwater scum!"
"I am Audra, the Iron Rose!"
The litany of nightmares complete, Blackhand, a mountain of a man whose right hand was indeed stained a deep, permanent black, roared his offer. "You have fought well! Your strength earns respect! A bargain, then! Give us the one called Harry Potter Michael! Kill him, and the town will be spared! No slaughter! Keep your goods! Refuse, and when this wall falls, not a soul draws another breath! Not a child, not a crone! You have until we reach the ditch to decide!"
A cold dread, far colder than any fear of steel, gripped Michael's heart. This was the true test. Loyalty built on full bellies and clean water was one thing; loyalty when faced with the annihilation of one's family was another. He held his breath, waiting for the knife in his back.
It never came. Instead, a forest of middle fingers rose from the wall-walk, accompanied by a volley of curses and spat phlegm. The vote was unanimous, visceral. They had tasted life under Michael, and they would rather die defending it than return to the hell that was the alternative.
Blackhand's face contorted in fury. "So be it! The town is forfeit! Kill them all! Every scrap of plunder is yours for the taking!"
The promise of unrestricted loot reignited the raiders' bloodlust. But the real threat was the vanguard of chiefs. As they broke into a run, closing the distance with terrifying speed, their bodies began to glow. Auras of varying hues and intensities flared around them—crimson, amber, venomous green, icy blue—a spectrum of death. They were a walking battery of enhanced killers, a force capable of shredding his weary defenders in minutes.
The time for melee was over. The time for the trump card had come. With a calm that felt alien, Michael finally unslung the M16. The cold, synthetic polymer of the stock felt like an artifact from another universe. He worked the charging handle with a familiar, mechanical clack. The sound was small, almost insignificant against the war cries and the thrum of gathering Auras. But for Harry Potter Michael, it was the sound of a door closing on one world, and opening onto the desperate, violent future of another. He raised the rifle, nestled the stock against his shoulder, and placed the iron sights squarely on the center of Blackhand's glowing chest. The calculus of survival had just changed.