Solarynth reached toward Grimwatch's extended arm.
Then a sudden whistle came.
It split through the air from somewhere above sharp, piercing, angled downward toward the front line like something falling with purpose rather than gravity.
The sound grew louder in the span of a breath one soldier in the formation heard it, looked up, found it and didn't have time to do anything else.
A arrow bolt punched through his skull and buried itself there he dropped straight down into the dirt with a single heavy thud, the kind of sound that carried further than it should have the bolt was still sticking out of his head when he hit the ground, crackling faintly with something unstable a magical residue still burning through the wound even after impact.
One shot and one man down before the battle had even been called.
The front line went rigid eyes moved to the horizon.
A figure stood there alone in the distance, dressed in black and red, motionless against the dark skyline, mask he wore didn't belong to any kingdom.
Anyone who recognized the design already knew exactly which legion had sent him.
Pandemonium Legion, not a standard soldier an elite one, that soldier is one those enhanced ones.
His right arm told the whole story a crossbow hadn't been placed in his hand it had been built into it fused to his skin, shaped into his body the way a limb is shaped, the machinery and the flesh no longer separate things.
His body had been engineered into a weapon the same way a sword is engineered into steel.
The resemblance to what Asura carried in his own body was there but where Asura's ability had been refined into something controlled, this had been refined into something else entirely.
Pure warfare.
The bolt that killed that soldier hadn't just pierced it had detonated on contact, the unstable magical charge inside it doing the rest, one shot is enough.
He was announcing something the war hadn't waited for dawn...
Everything moved at once.
The Spartans snapped into formation, shields locking together in a single practiced motion up on the walls, fifty archers drew and aimed at the figure on the horizon, fingers steady, waiting for the signal nobody fired yet nobody moved out of line.
Grimwatch pulled his hand back and walked to the front.
His sword came out slow and certain he stopped at the head of the formation and fixed his gaze on the lone figure standing in the distance.
The energy coming off that soldier was wrong in a way that was difficult to name unstable at its edges but controlled at its center, like something barely contained inside a body that had been rebuilt to hold it.
Then the drums started.
Deep, rhythmic, coming from somewhere beyond the horizon where the road leading to the kingdom disappeared into darkness.
Then the right wall exploded...
The blast tore through the stone without warning, debris hurling outward in every direction, chunks of the wall crashing into the buildings below dust and fire rolled through the gap.
People inside who had no warning took the force of it directly civilians, soldiers, anyone standing too close to that side of the kingdom, screaming started before the smoke had even settled.
The drums didn't stop...
Black Banners rose from the horizon. Moving steadily forward ground itself began to tremble beneath the weight of marching feet, a low vibration felt in the chest before it was heard through the ears.
Dark smoke crept along the road ahead of them like something being dragged forward.
Then the scouts started screaming.
"Sound the alarms!"
The great gate groaned and began to close, someone put the alarm horn to their lips and blew it once a long, full sound that rolled across the entire capital and left nothing quiet in its wake.
Inside the walls, civilians who had been holding themselves together broke. Screaming and running the explosion had done what explosions do it had made the war real in a way that preparation never could.
The Pandemonium Legion filled the horizon.
Two thousand five hundred soldiers stood in motionless formation, a wall of black, yellow and white stretching across the road, still it patiently waiting.
Then a figure stepped forward through the center.
A cape moved with the wind behind her. Golden eyes swept across the kingdom walls without hurry.
Belladonna smiled.
"Let's finish what we started."
Up on the walls the archer commander didn't wait.
The mages moved first hands raised, lips moving, the tips of every drawn arrow beginning to change, red bled into yellow. Yellow into white, white into blue.
Then the flames merged into something that had no business existing on an arrowhead neon purple, burning at a temperature that made the air around each tip ripple and distort.
The archers held their draw, protected by specialized equipment built exactly for this, the heat washing past them without touching skin.
Sixteen thousand degrees Celsius engineered flame, pointed at an army.
"FIRE!"
The release came as one a massive rushing sound as hundreds of arrows cut through the night air simultaneously, tips blazing purple against the dark sky, trajectories locked on the Pandemonium Legion's position.
The shafts were coated to survive the heat only the tips burned.
Belladonna felt the temperature change before she saw them coming.
"Shields up."
The Pandemonium Legion's mages raised their hands in unison a temporary force field shimmered into existence across the front of the army translucent, rippling slightly at its surface, absorbing the incoming light before the arrows arrived.
The volley hit...
Purple fire bloomed across the barrier in waves, spreading and crawling across the shield's surface like it was looking for a way through.
It hadn't found one yet the ground didn't just shake it was pulsing.
Not from marching feet this time from something else something heavier coming from deep within the Pandemonium Legion's formation where the ranks had begun to part.
Loud mechanical hisses cracked through the air one after another as heavy metal doors positioned throughout the army unlocked in sequence, chains dropping into the dirt with heavy clanks as sections of the formation split cleanly to either side.
The soldiers nearest to the opening moved back without being told to no order given no hesitation in the retreat.
They simply didn't want to be close to whatever was coming through.
A colossal iron transport cage rolled forward through the gap.
Thick wheels ground against the road under its weight, the reinforced black steel bars layered over magical seals that pulsed violently across every surface flaring, stabilizing, flaring again a cage was built to hold something that didn't want to be held.
Inside it, something moved.
A hiss erupted from within deep enough to resonate through the metal itself, through the ground, through the chest of anyone standing within range.
Then a slam one of the reinforced bars bent slightly inward from the impact before the seals surged brighter and forced it back into place.
The Spartans tightened their grips on there spears without being told to.
Even Grimwatch's eyes narrowed.
Whatever was inside that cage wasn't human it crouched low in the darkness behind the glowing restraints, barely visible, until two red eyes opened slowly from within the black steady and patient, like embers that had been waiting a long time to burn then...four more eyes opened it had two more heads...
Then the four figures emerged from the smoke behind the transport.
Project X.
The atmosphere changed the moment they stepped into view all four of them.
Over seven feet each, bodies refined past anything natural muscles that looked carved rather than grown, veins running neon blue beneath pale skin, magical energy moving through them in steady rhythmic pulses like a second heartbeat that had replaced the first.
One dragged a massive cleaver along the ground behind him, sparks tracing a continuous line through the dirt.
Another carried nothing his arms alone made the reason obvious.
The one at the center raised his head toward the kingdom walls slowly, taking his time with it his eyes carried the same unnatural blue as the substance still flowing through his system.
Then he smiled not like a person smiles like something that had observed the gesture and decided to replicate it.
Belladonna watched the walls watched the formation behind them stiffen, watched the torchlight flicker across faces trying very hard not to show what they were feeling.
She let the silence do its work a moment longer before her voice came through it, calm and unhurried beneath the drums and the distant screaming.
"Advance."
Two thousand five hundred soldiers stepped forward in perfect unison.
The ground shook under the synchronized weight of the march, shields raised, formation locked, closing the distance between themselves and the kingdom with mechanical patience.
Behind them, the Project X soldiers followed.
Slow, heavy-duty, deliberate.
Not like soldiers moving toward a battle.
Like weapons already certain of the outcome...