Even with the blade embedded in his body...
Laurence raised his arm.
His sword cut through the air in one final movement.
CLANG!
The blade struck the Emperor.
It was not a deep wound.
Barely a cut across his side.
But blood appeared.
A single red drop fell onto the Imperial armor.
The Emperor froze.
He looked at the blood.
Then he looked at Laurence.
For the first time, his expression changed.
Surprise.
And then fury.
"I'll take your son," he said through clenched teeth.
Laurence, still standing despite the sword piercing his chest, smiled.
"When you set foot in the Duchy..."
His voice was barely a whisper.
"You will know hell."
The Emperor held his gaze.
Laurence took one final step toward him.
"And then the end of your Empire will begin."
His legs finally gave out.
The sword fell from his hands.
But Laurence Douglas did not fall to his knees.
He died standing.
Duke Douglas remained motionless for several seconds.
Then his body fell.
And the battlefield fell silent.
An eerie silence.
The Douglas knights had watched their lord die.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Laurence's body lay on the ground.
The Duke's blood mixed with the mud.
The veterans who had fought beside him for decades stared at him in silence.
They had marched behind him.
They had won battles alongside him.
They had watched Laurence return covered in blood time and time again.
And now...
he would never return.
One of the knights slowly tightened his grip on his sword.
Another lowered his head.
Then one raised his sword toward the sky.
"FOR THE DUKE!"
The voice echoed across the battlefield.
Another knight raised his weapon.
"FOR THE DUKE!"
Then another.
"FOR THE DUKE!"
Within seconds, hundreds of voices joined in.
"FOR THE DUKE!"
The roar shook the Imperial ranks.
But it wasn't the shout that frightened them.
It was what happened next.
The Douglases began advancing.
They did not raise their shields.
They did not close ranks.
They did not try to protect their weak points.
They simply walked toward the enemy.
An Imperial commander frowned.
"What are they doing?"
No one answered.
Then a Douglas veteran took a spear through the abdomen.
THUD!
The shaft pierced his armor.
The man looked at the spear.
Then at the soldier holding it.
And kept walking.
The Imperial soldier's eyes widened.
"What...?"
The Douglas grabbed the shaft with both hands.
He snapped it.
And continued advancing.
The spearman stepped backward.
Too late.
The Douglas sword pierced his throat.
The veteran kept walking.
He didn't even look at the blood covering his armor.
Another Douglas took a cut to the shoulder.
He did not block.
He did not retreat.
He let the blade sink in.
And answered with a strike that split his enemy's helmet.
A third man was struck by a spear.
Then a sword.
Then a spell.
Three blows.
Three wounds.
And yet he kept advancing.
An Imperial officer watched the scene in horror.
"Why aren't they defending themselves?!"
A Douglas veteran walked past him.
An arrow was lodged in his neck.
Blood poured from his mouth.
Even so, he raised his sword.
The officer stepped backward.
"Fall back!"
Too late.
CLANG!
The sword came down.
And the Douglas fell as well.
But before dying, he had taken down two men.
Another immediately took his place.
Then the Imperials understood.
This was not a desperate charge.
It was a doctrine.
The Douglases had been raised to serve their lord.
They lived for him.
They fought for him.
And when their lord died...
returning alive could be considered a disgrace.
The veterans knew it.
The young men knew it.
Everyone knew it.
They were not trying to survive.
They were trying to die alongside Laurence.
And the battlefield changed.
Until that moment, the Douglases had fought like an army.
They blocked.
They retreated.
They rotated positions.
They protected the wounded.
Now they did none of that.
Strikes were no longer something to avoid.
They became something they could accept.
An Imperial knight drove his sword into the chest of a Douglas.
The man didn't even stop.
He advanced with the sword still embedded in his body.
The Imperial released the hilt.
"What the hell?!"
The Douglas raised his own sword.
SHNK!
The blow pierced through his armor.
Both men fell.
Another Douglas stepped over their bodies.
A rain of spells descended upon the formation.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
Several men fell.
The survivors continued.
The Imperial mages began casting spells.
"FIRE WALL!"
BOOOOM!
Flames engulfed dozens of Douglases.
Some disappeared inside the fire.
Others emerged.
Burned armor.
Charred skin.
Swords still in their hands.
They did not stop.
"ANOTHER SPELL!"
"DON'T GIVE THEM TIME!"
Ice.
Lightning.
Explosions.
Pressure.
The Douglas line grew smaller.
But it did not retreat.
An Imperial general stared at the battlefield in disbelief.
"Pull the center back!"
"General, if we retreat, we'll lose the formation!"
"WE'VE ALREADY LOST IT!"
The Douglases had broken into their ranks.
One knight tore through a line of spearmen.
Another leaped onto a group of mages.
A third took a blow that shattered his leg.
He fell.
He drove his sword into the ground.
Used it as support.
And stood again.
"WHY DO THEY KEEP ADVANCING?!"
The question spread through the Imperial ranks.
No one had an answer.
Because it made no sense for a normal army.
An army fought to win.
The Douglases fought to fulfill their lord's will.
And their lord was already dead.
That was why there was no retreat.
No surrender.
No survival.
Only one final order that no one had spoken aloud remained.
Do not return.
The Douglas veterans advanced into the heart of the Imperial lines.
Every meter cost lives.
Every meter left corpses behind.
But it also left Imperial corpses.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
The Imperial offensive began to collapse.
Soldiers retreated as officers shouted contradictory orders.
"Hold the line!"
"Second formation!"
"Protect the mages!"
"DON'T LET THEM THROUGH!"
But it was already too late.
The Douglases had turned that section of the battlefield into a slaughterhouse.
One after another, they fell.
One man.
Another.
Another.
Until there were no longer enough of them to form a line.
The last group of veterans remained standing.
There weren't many.
Perhaps twenty.
Perhaps fewer.
All of them were wounded.
Some could barely remain on their feet.
One of them looked back.
Toward where Laurence had fallen.
Then he turned back toward the Imperial army.
"Douglas..."
His voice was barely a whisper.
The others raised their swords.
"Douglas."
And they charged.
The final attack was brief.
Brutal.
Dozens of Imperial soldiers fell before the last Douglas knights disappeared beneath a rain of steel and magic.
When it finally ended...
not a single Douglas remained standing.
The battlefield fell silent.
Hundreds of Imperial bodies covered the ground.
Thousands of men had been wounded.
And among them lay the veterans of the Duchy.
They had not won.
But they had not allowed Laurence's death to come cheaply.
From the Imperial rear lines, the officers stared at the battlefield without knowing what to say.
The Emperor remained silent.
Hundreds of Imperial soldiers lay dead around him.
Before him, the Duchy of Douglas had been wiped out.
But the Emperor was not looking at the battlefield.
He was looking at his armor.
The wound was still there.
That cut.
He would not be able to fight for some time.
The blood of Laurence Douglas.
The Emperor slowly clenched his fist.