The next morning dawned crisp and bright over Oakridge. After a night of true rest in warm beds, the party felt a fraction of their profound weariness begin to lift. Downstairs at the inn's tavern, they gathered around a breakfast table loaded with buttered bread, scrambled eggs, and the town's famous spiced apple sausages. The comforting aroma was a small anchor of normalcy in a world that had become anything but.
As they ate, they planned their next move. Silverkeep was still over a week's journey away, and now their path would follow the well-traveled King's Highway. Before they left, Captain Roland had given them a crucial piece of intelligence.
"The Crown has already responded to the earliest whispers of trouble," he had told them in his office. "They've dispatched one of their best field commanders, Captain Merek, to patrol the King's Highway and secure the approach to the capital. He's a veteran of the Velkor border wars, a tough man with the King's ear. Your best course of action is to find him. Consolidate your forces and report your findings to him directly. His authority will add weight to your words when you reach Silverkeep."
Darius set his tea down, a flicker of grim recognition in his eyes. "Captain Merek," he repeated, the name carrying a heavy weight. "I know of him. They call him 'The Iron Gryphon of the East.' He held the Velkorian border for three years with a force a tenth the size of the horde sent against him. If the King has sent Merek to secure the roads, then the whispers in the capital must be far more dire than we imagined."
"An elite patrol will lend us legitimacy," Azaël noted, her voice a quiet murmur, "but it might also draw curious eyes, or enemy eyes."
"Either way, we keep our guard up," Lyra said firmly, her hand instinctively patting the satchel at her side that contained the necromancer's journal.
After breakfast, they resupplied in Oakridge's market. By noon, they set out once more on the road to Silverkeep, bidding farewell to the townsfolk who now looked upon them with a mixture of awe and reverence.
Traveling eastward, the landscape began to change, the wild frontier giving way to more tended lands. By the second day out of Oakridge, they joined the King's Highway proper, a broad, well-paved road of ancient stone. Here, they encountered other travelers more often, but the memory of the razorclaw and the fallen guards kept them in a state of constant, heightened vigilance.
On the third day, Azaël, scouting ahead, signaled for them to halt. "Military camp, half a league up the road," she reported, returning to the group, her movements silent as a falling leaf. "Looks organized. Banners of Astoria. It could be him."
They approached with caution. The camp was a professional affair: a perimeter of sharpened stakes, disciplined sentries in gleaming Royal Guard armor, and a battered but sturdy supply wagon. As they were hailed, Darius stepped forward. "We are the Iron Wolves, from Blackstone Outpost. We seek Captain Merek on orders from Captain Roland of Oakridge."
The sentry's eyes widened slightly at the name, and he quickly sent a runner into the camp. Moments later, the man himself emerged. Captain Merek was a grizzled officer with a hawk-like nose and a measured, penetrating gaze that missed nothing. He wore practical, battle-worn steel over his uniform, and the authority he carried was palpable.
"The Iron Wolves," Merek said, his voice a low rumble. He looked them over, his veteran's eye assessing their strength in an instant. "I was told to expect you. Roland sent a fast rider. Come. Walk with me."
He led them into the camp. After introductions, Darius recounted the grim fate of Alain's squad and the details of their battles, including their harrowing encounter with the corrupted razorclaw. Merek listened intently, his expression hardening into a mask of cold fury.
When Darius finished, Merek was silent for a long moment, his penetrating gaze moving from one member of the party to the next. "A corrupted razorclaw," he said finally, his voice a low rumble of disbelief and respect. "Roland's report mentioned a beast, but he failed to grasp the specifics. A standard razorclaw is a death sentence for most Gold-ranked teams. A corrupted one…" He looked at their Steel-ranked insignia, then back at their faces. "The Guild ranks accomplishments, not strength. It's a distinction lost on most. To not only survive such an encounter, but to prevail… A feat like that will earn you a reputation that precedes you." He gave a curt, respectful nod, then went on. "Dire news, but it confirms my own intelligence. The King is not blind to the shadows on his borders. My orders are to secure this road and escort any persons of interest to the capital. You, and the evidence you carry, are now my highest priority. We'll travel together. My men will form a perimeter, and you will be our vanguard. Agreed?"
Darius agreed after a brief, silent consultation with the others. They merged with the small, elite troop, who now looked upon the Iron Wolves with a new, wary respect.
During the journey that followed, spanning several days, the Iron Wolves shared their full findings with Captain Merek. In hushed conversations around campfires and during quiet marches, they meticulously detailed the necromancer's cult, the chilling contents of the journal, Lyra's profound connection to the Light, Erik's own inexplicable surge of power against the razorclaw, and the grim implications of the 'Herald of the Abyss' and the 'Lord of Whispers'. Merek, a veteran accustomed to strange reports, absorbed their every word with a grim fascination, his initial skepticism replaced by a deepening concern, recognizing the patterns of a larger, more insidious threat.
On the sixth night after Oakridge, tension finally broke. The company had set camp by a stone watchtower ruin along the road, a landmark indicating they were only two days from Silverkeep. The mood was hopeful; nearly there, they thought. Perhaps too hopeful.
The attack came in the deepest part of the night, during the second watch. Erik was awake by sheer luck, a restless energy, a phantom echo of his own internal turmoil, had driven him to a silent, solitary patrol at the edge of the camp. That's when he heard it, or rather, felt it, a subtle shift in the air, a wrongness that made the hair on his arms stand on end. His Battle Sense rune flared with a cold, urgent pulse.
He turned his head and froze. Silhouetted against the faint moonlight, a massive, brutish form was dragging a limp body behind a bush. A guard's body, judging by the glint of chainmail. They were already inside the perimeter.
Erik's blood ran cold. He didn't hesitate. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed, his voice a thunderous roar that shattered the night's calm. "TO ARMS! WE'RE UNDER ATTACK! BREACH ON THE WEST FLANK!"
His warning saved lives. In seconds, the camp erupted into motion. But it was almost too late. From the shadows, a war party of hulking, green-skinned Orcs exploded into the firelight, their guttural war cries a symphony of bloodlust. This was no common raiding party; they were Uruk-hai, an elite breed of Orc, larger, stronger, and crueler, their armor a patchwork of crude iron and stolen steel, their eyes burning with a savage, intelligent hatred. Yet, there was something subtly wrong about them, a disconcerting blankness beneath the fury in their eyes, and their movements held an unnatural, almost programmed aggression. Orcs, even Uruk-hai, rarely ventured so close to the heart of the kingdom, least of all in such organized numbers, which only heightened the sense of a hidden influence. They were led by a towering War-Chief adorned with a grim cloak of flayed skins, and at the rear, a gnarled Orc Shaman chanted in a guttural tongue, his staff glowing with a sickly green light that seemed to muffle the sound of their advance, explaining their horrifying stealth.
The campsite became a frenzy. Soldiers stumbled from their bedrolls, grabbing weapons. One Orc warrior lunged at a still-dazed soldier, its jagged cleaver raised to strike. An arrow, silent as the night, sprouted from its throat. Azaël was already on the roof of the ruined watchtower, her bow a blur of motion.
Captain Merek and Darius, not even fully armored, barreled into the fray, their swords a blur of silver. They were two lions amidst a pack of hyenas, their voices roaring commands, rallying their men into a desperate, chaotic shield wall. "FORM UP! SHIELDS FRONT!"
Erik sprinted into the center of the camp, his mind a whirlwind of cold, tactical calculations. Two Orcs rushed him together, hoping to overwhelm. Erik didn't meet them with a blind rage. He met them with a cold, calculated gaze. He activated Berserker's Rage. The familiar, hot fury flooded his veins, but this time, he noticed it felt different. Beneath the wild inferno that always threatened to consume him, there was now a core of cold, clear focus. The rage is not drowning him; he was directing it, sharpening his senses to a razor's edge. He parried the first Orc's wild swing with the haft of Erythrael, the force jarring but manageable. He didn't retaliate. Instead, he used the parry to pivot, bringing the side of the axe head into the second Orc's shield, staggering it. He had created a half-second opening.
Lyra saw it. She was no longer just a healer. She was a battle-cleric, her face a mask of fierce, righteous fury. Her experience battling the corrupted razorclaw, where she had strained every fiber of her being to call upon the Light's full power, had profoundly deepened her connection to her faith. She had always known the sacred words for Sunlance, a potent spear of pure light, a far more demanding spell than her usual Purge bolts. Yet, a deep-seated hesitation, a doubt in her own capacity to wield such raw divine force, had always held her back. Now, witnessing Erik's commanding stand and feeling the desperate urgency of the moment, that doubt shattered. The Light within her, awakened and amplified by the prior battle's intensity, surged with an unwavering conviction she had never truly trusted. This was not a test of what she could do, but of what she must do. The time for whispers was over. The Light demanded to roar.
"Sunlance!" she commanded, her voice ringing with newfound authority. A spear of pure, white-hot sunlight, far more concentrated and impactful than a simple bolt, shot across the camp, passing through the chest of the staggered Orc. It shrieked as the holy energy incinerated it from the inside out.
The Orc War-Chief, seeing its warriors falter, roared a challenge and charged Erik, its massive, gore-stained axe raised high. Erik met the charge. The two axes clashed with a deafening clang that sent sparks flying. The Orc was immensely strong, but Erik, was stronger. And Erythrael much stronger. So much stronger. He held the line, their weapons locked.
"Finn, now!" Erik roared.
From the shadows of the supply wagon, Finn moved, his face a feral grin. As he surged forward, faint sparks, the smallest trail of ozone, marked his path, a restless energy constantly simmering beneath his skin since the Razorclaw encounter. He didn't attack the War-Chief. He attacked the Shaman. He moved with a speed that was not quite running, not quite teleporting. The Shaman, focused on its foul incantations, barely had time to turn before Finn was upon it. As his daggers plunged into its chest in a desperate, wild thrust, a weird, jarring reaction occurred. It was less pronounced than the raw cataclysm he'd witnessed with the Razorclaw, an uncontrolled surge of his accidental connection to the abyssal darkness. But it was enough. The unexpected jolt of raw, chaotic energy immediately severed not only the Shaman's connection to its dark gods, but something more, as if a vital, unseen thread had snapped. The sickly green light around the camp sputtered and died.
With the Shaman down, the tide turned. The Orcs, their magical stealth gone, their morale broken by the loss of their leaders, faltered. Their eyes lost that unnatural gleam, their movements suddenly less coordinated as if a puppeteer's strings had been cut, unlike the relentless fury of the Razorclaw, which had only intensified when cornered. Azaël's arrows rained down from the watchtower, each one finding a throat or an eye socket. Captain Merek's elite soldiers, now able to fight on an even footing, held their shield wall with grim, professional efficiency, their spears a bristling hedge of death.
The Orc War-Chief, its eyes wide with shock at the loss of its Shaman, was all the opening Erik needed. He broke the weapon lock with a guttural roar and swung Erythrael in a devastating, final Power Strike. The Orc War-Chief's eyes, momentarily wide with shock, seemed to lose that unnatural gleam, or perhaps even regain something akin to a flicker of awareness. For an instant, as Erik's axe descended, a subtle relaxation passed over its brutish features, as if, for a beast driven by unseen strings, death was a strange relief. The axe, glowing with the crimson light of his contained fury, seemed to hum with an ancient, malevolent cold as it sheared through the Orc's crude iron helm and the thick skull beneath as if they were parchment. The War-Chief collapsed, its reign of terror ended in a single, brutal blow.
A horn suddenly sounded from the woods, a low, mournful note of retreat. The remaining Orcs hissed and broke, fleeing into the darkness, a disorganized rout now. Azaël's arrows chased them until they vanished from sight.
For several moments, the only sound was the labored breathing of the living and the groans of the wounded. "Report!" Captain Merek called hoarsely.
A headcount commenced. Two of Merek's soldiers lay dead, including the one Erik had seen dragged off, their throats slit in the first, silent moments of the ambush. Three more were injured, one seriously, but Lyra was already at his side, her hands glowing with a soft, steady healing light.
The ambush had been swift, brutal, and utterly professional. It had failed, but only because of Erik's preternatural warning and the impossible new powers of his team.
Come morning, a sober mood hung over the camp as they buried the fallen. As they broke camp to move on, Captain Merek approached the Iron Wolves. He looked at Erik, his veteran's eyes holding a new, profound respect. "That was a good call, Thorne," he said quietly. "You saved us from a massacre."
"We all did," Erik replied, his gaze sweeping over his friends, his family. They were battered, but they were whole. They had been tested, and they had held.
"Aye," Merek agreed, a grim smile touching his lips. "But your warning gave us the chance to fight. Whoever this Herald is, he's recruiting all manner of dark forces. And he's getting bolder." He looked toward Silverkeep, his expression hardening. "We must get to the capital. The King must be warned. The war has already begun."