“You underestimate them.” Tenisent said to her side, watching through her eyes the report feed. “They’ll find a way to break past your chokehold.”

To’Wrathh waved him away. “I think not. Four surface savages can’t escape an entire army. Not for long.”

Of course it had to be the surface savages being a thorn to her side again. It seemed from the moment they appeared on the walls of the Tower, they’ve been nothing but an issue to deal with.

She turned her attention to the logistics of equipment. The behemoths were due to arrive soon, and their armaments needed to be seen to. Runners were moving around her improvised camp, bringing supplies and setting up fallback points. Serpents coiled around, floating through the air, rib cages exposed as the mechanical bodies slithered through the air. The machines available to use in combat on the first three levels were eclectic. But To’Wrathh would weave their strengths together to minimize their weak points. All it needed was proper planning and some creative ideas.

“Would you wager on it, girl?” The ghost scoffed.

Ah. Gambling. “Tamery has warned me of gambling. It broke her family, and it was something she frowned upon if taken out of moderation. It seems ill-advised that I should follow in those footsteps.”

Tenisent raised an eyebrow, arms crossed. “Do you lack faith in your toy soldiers?” He didn’t smile, nor grin, but To’Wrathh had a feeling the man was thinking it.

The feather took steps back to the center of the camp, to her improvised throne. “I grant that surface knights are… effective at defeating humanoid enemies like my Chosen knights. Against machines, they fare only mildly stronger than the Undersiders from past aggregated historical records, despite the years of additional training the surface techniques demand compared to the more straightforward Undersider schools of combat.” She pointed at the replay, the last known location of Kidra’s bodyguards. “Thus, logistically, I can count them as equal to a common footsoldier. And four common soldiers will not change the course of a war.”

The ghost grunted. “They don’t need four. All it takes is one. The right time, and the right place. Watch. You’ll see.”

Kidra hadn’t been among the raiding forces as she was still returning to the city as part of the escort for the diplomat, but the rest of her band hadn’t been idling. They’d been sent ahead to the frontlines, as part of one of the raids on her mite forges, part of that premeditated attack To’Wrathh had predicted and correctly countered.

Those battles had all died down in her favor, except for one theater of war that was still technically in motion.

While the rest of the army there had correctly chosen to surrender in the face of overwhelming defeat, the surface savages that had accompanied that assault had been far more stubborn and slipped the noose. Retreating back into the underpass and forcing To’Wrathh to divert forces in catching them.

She considered letting them go free, as it would be too much of a hassle to hunt down four low-priority soldiers.

That was up until the four reappeared at one of her jamming sites, trashed the place, broke the machinery and vanished back into the underpass like wraiths.

They were promoted from a non-issue to a nuisance for that. One jammer only covered a certain radius, they’d need to break three or four before any transmissions could be sent through.

When a second jammer was ripped out of its mooring and tossed into a river, they were officially elevated from nuisance to outright threat. Only then did To’Wrathh dispatch forces to corner the rogue terrorists before the hairy apes broke more of her delicate instruments.

She had an army still assembling, and while she was loath to spend a few hundred of her runners to reinforce the remaining jammers in the sector, she saw little choice. That had been an hour ago, and still no sign of any further attack on the jammer sites.

Heavy footfalls broke her concentration, she turned to watch as the three behemoths approached. Massive lumbering titans, five times the size of a Runner,and armored with plate after plate of metal and shield. These were the siege breakers, the engines she would use to crush the city walls.

The mite forges had allowed construction of ship cannons, which these monsters would carry into battle. A few rounds into the city would quickly break apart any defense. All she had to do was get the behemoths to traverse the cramped territory into a good enough line of sight.

A sudden flood of reports arrived all at once. Two more jamming sites had gone dark - at the same moment. The first had a massive cave in, slabs of metal and rock falling down and crushing the whole area, including the hastily assembled defense force of machines guarding the site. The second had a crevice split apart under the jammer, where it fell down into an explosive of some kind that detonated, ripping apart the structure.

The result was a transmitted encrypted message being sent out almost the moment after, from one of the surface knights who had hiked close enough to the city, likely having been sent out while the rest of the team worked on the alternate sites.

To’Wrathh groaned, hands holding her head up. She shouldn’t have ignored them. On hindsight, it seemed obvious. Had it been personal pride? That four random humans should not be considered a threat on principle?

She’d gambled. That’s where she went wrong. Weighed the odds of four humans breaking past her communication barrier, against the cost of spending a disproportionate amount of firepower to chase down four lone soldiers. It looked like any kind of gambling could be a pain to deal with.

No matter. She would have to adapt. The city had less than a day before the barrier went down, what could they change in that time?

The city itself was well hidden away. This area of the underground was cavernous as mites liked to build, except instead of one ever expanding fake city, it was slabs of metal that filled the space, some floating higher up, disconnected from all others, while the majority of these slabs were piled on one another, forming a lopsided topology. Occasional massive circular pillars, with miles of diameters extended from the ground all the way to the hidden ceiling. Dark clouds covered the upper layer, obscuring all details except the silhouettes that flashes of lighting within lit up. Like a metal forest, except blown into truly titanic proportions.

Some of these pillars were a solid wall all across the face, hiding anything within. Others were cut apart with wide openings, sometimes outright unconnected to any other part. They revealed small glimpses of the golden artificial sunlight within, which was all but swallowed up the moment it left the safety of the pillar interiors.

Outside, only pale blue lighting lit the world, constantly rippling apart in between the slabs of metal. Dangerous even, if anyone were to walk too close to the lighting rods that dotted the landscape haphazardly.

As if to make the whole land even more hostile, it was cut apart with large fissures across the titanic slabs, some leading all the way to the ceiling of the next level down. Across these fissures were bridges that spanned hundreds of meters to the other side, like connective tissue holding tightly to both sides. Some of these bridges were large enough to allow her behemoth to walk across, others were so small even a single Runner would be hard pressed to pass over.

Most of the massive pillars were hollow on the inside, revealing a protected space where green grass fields grew, a stark difference from the dark gray metal landscape just outside. All of these would be prime locations for any city, but only one pillar contained a barrier tower.

The mites that had built this landscape had been granted miles of room to work with, anywhere To’wrathh looked showed the same world held up only by those massive pillars reaching to the obscured ceiling, deep past the cloud layer.

She couldn’t imagine what the mites had been thinking when they’d constructed such a land. A hellscape broken apart by small oasis kept hidden within the pillars, inside those would be protection from the land’s lightning and gloom, where nature overflows, massive lakes spin around lazily and life flourishes with wild abandon.

The city had only one entrance, a massive widened crack at the base of that pillar, which the Undersiders had build a more convenient gate. All other cracks had been filled out with plates of metal, piled up over generations until the cracked pillar looked more like one of the more unyielding ones, even the golden light within didn’t leak from any of the original cracks.

To break into the city, she would need to break through the central gate. And to do that, she would need the Behemoths to have a clear line of fire. Of course, with their size, there were only so many bridges within the land that would allow them passage. And the Undersiders were well aware of that, having setup heavy outposts by each bridge. Others they had already outright broken apart with explosives, forcing her to funnel the behemoths through paths the humans were well prepared for.

On the other hand, the city no longer had access to food. Over the years, the humans had learned to expand out to the other pillars, planting crops there and leaving them to grow wild. It wasn’t feasible to hold and protect any of these pillars for too long, given they didn’t come with a true machine barrier. So instead, the city would send expeditions each month, where knights escorted farmers to each pillar, to tend and recover fruits, vegetables, grains and other food sources.

Those outings had been curbed, the pillars seized and kept under machine control. If To’Wrathh had more time, she could indeed starve the city into submission. They had grown large and fat within the safety of their barrier, and that was all hinged on their access to the other pillars within the land. Their central lake could only supply so much fish before it was depleted, and their food storage was equally on a timer.

But the envoy had been correct - To’Wrathh only had a few weeks to take the city. Her elder brother was already on the move above, and it was only a matter of time until he crushed the surface tribe. If the city was not under her control by then, To’Aacar would most certainly find some way to punish her for it.

She bit her nail, going over her plan and contingencies, watching the current skirmish idly. Everything lined up, but the real question was what the humans had prepared. Neither To’Wrathh or the humans were throwing out their real cards just yet. Those needed to be rationed for the true push. Realistically, she had only two attempts to take the city, as the barrier dropped only once a week for a few hours.

An alert chimed in her mind, a few subroutines all calculating the optimal time to attack was now, within a few hours of accuracy. The barrier had not gone down yet, but it would within the next twenty hours. By the time it had, To’Wrathh’s forces needed to have crushed everything in their path up to the very gate in order to maximize their time assaulting the city proper.

She took a breath, mentally spreading her mind out to her army. They were in position. All were waiting. One last message to send out. She opened the channel. The humans didn’t keep her waiting for long.

“Machine.” A man said through the channel. Voice patterns indicated this was the junior squire, Alef Bronston. The older man they’d sent to negotiate. Odd that their system would ping him for the call.

“I wish to speak to General Zaang. Patch me to him.” She said.

“You’re speaking to him.”

Ah. It made more sense now why they’d brought Kidra along. After all, the other three guards wouldn’t have been able to stop To’Wrathh had she decided to kill the envoy.

“Was the deception necessary?”

“I like to meet my opponents face to face first. Keep things personal. I can trust other humans, the rules and traditions of the white tent are well known and followed through. Can’t say if they’re followed through by machines, so I took some… precautions.”

“I followed all the core tenets of your traditions. I gave my word.”

“Indeed you did. Color me surprised at that, machine. Now, I take it if you’re calling me on this line, it’s because you’re about to begin your attack. Nice of you to warn me ahead of time.”

“I am offering you one more chance to surrender. You cannot win against me.”

“I, respectfully, refuse. But thank you for asking. Now get on with it.” The line cut.

She saw the difference on her sensors, the human camps were moving. They’d already been on high alert, not much changed, but a subtle shift showed her they’d been given the alert. It seems all sides were standing by. Across their trenches, the soldiers gave one last prayer, different priests of their sects walking by, offering blessings. Others turned to more proven comforts, from stimulants to swallowed slips of paper. Still more simply kept their rifles close, and their helmets sealed. Some seated against walls, silently waiting.

The humans didn’t have enough knights left over after the failed raids, so their military police and general draftees had been brought out. Equipped with common rifles and little armor.

On the other side, her Runners remained hidden away, observing with violet eyes. Twitching. Anticipating. The idea of death was not quite pronounced in their simple minds. They simply wanted to run. To gallop across those trench lines, and let their instincts go wild. Held back by willpower, remembering their orders. This fight would be different from all other fights, and they knew that. Their lady expected better of them. Better of them all. They would not disappoint her.

It felt like the world was holding a breath to To’Wrathh. The moment was coming.

She opened a timer. Twenty hours until the barrier was scheduled to go offline.

“The city must fall.” She called out from her stone throne, finger tapping to the side. “Begin the assault. Destroy the human defenses.”

The sounds of war rose up all at once, in every trench the humans hid behind. Death raced across the land.

Machines struck out from their hidden positions, leaping from the shadows. All across the land, outposts and defensive lines were ripped apart, kneecapping the humans. That had been expected - outside and exposed from all directions, the humans couldn’t hold for long against standard machine practice - let alone To’Wrathh’s pre-trained forces.

Bullets were dodged, grenades thrown back, enemy turrets seized and turned against the enemy. Sneak attacks, metal shields, environment tricks and a greater synergy between her forces made the machine advance nearly unstoppable.

The first few minutes were a massive victory in To’Wrathh’s favor.

The next few hours became a slog in the mud with little progress.

Her army was a spear, straight and destructive. But the human army was like water, moving around, adapting. They didn’t hold ground, instead they circled around, taking a far different tactic. Delaying her advance. Striking out at the bar of her spear, forcing her to truly take and hold ground for good, rather than keep pushing forward to the city gates.

Collapsing bridges at the worst moment, striking back with feints from all kinds of holes and sapper tunnels, forcing her army to react to dangers that didn’t exist. Trench lines crumpled in, the terrain a trap. Entire rock slabs floating above were blasted apart by premeditated explosives, raining down chunks of metal on the machine advance, crushing hundreds of Runners and Spiders under with no counter.

Her shield wall tactic quickly saw issues not present in the raids. Tanks from different eras, hidden among the defensive lines, rumbled into position. Driving over the lines, pausing to aim their turrets and opening fire. The heavy munitions broke apart machine shields no matter how thick, with thunderous shells that outright lifted the front of the tank treads by a few inches with each trigger.

Mortar fire would be launched out as waves, landing behind the approaching army, shattering the Runners. To’Wrathh was forced to retire the tactic until the entrenched tanks and mortars could be dealt with.

Her timer continued to tick down. Sixteen hours now until the barrier went down, and her advance hadn’t yet made it a quarter of the way.

It was a knife fight done at a distance, except each lunge forward was an order sent to her army, each dodge was a retreat, and each twist and twirl of the blades were clever misdirections. To’Wrathh could be everywhere all at once, sending hundreds of orders and micro movements. The human general seemed to either match that ability, or have a dissociated chain of command that could adapt just as quickly to his general orders.

The land was ravaged with bullet fire, artillery, and exotic weapons brought forward by the humans. Lighting struck her lines again and again from weapon platforms she’d never seen before, forcing her Drakes to remain held back lest they be taken out early from the sheer range of those weapons. That lasted hours until spiders climbed up behind the human position from one of the crevices. Each spider carried dozens of runners, all holding on as the long legs swiftly climbed the sheer cliff sides.

The humans noticed too late, bullet fire and screams lighting up the rapidly climbing spiders, and her spiders made use of their arm shields to protect their more vulnerable cargo. Some were blown apart by rockets regardless. Others fell down into the abyss, their footholds loosened up by the weapons barrage. But the majority of her forces climbed over the lip of the crevice and swarmed the humans. Burning the lighting makers to the ground and breaking the human foothold.

Ten hours until the anti-machine barrier is offline. Her army was starting to make headway.

What bits of unencrypted comms floated around showed a visage of war in the human lines. Shouts and screams for reinforcements filled the different channels at all times, all punctuated by the occasional calm and suspicious orders from their commanders. Bait, likely meant to be overheard by her.

Soon the tunnel wars turned as her own Runners began to swarm through them and map the newly dug terrain, seizing their drills and equipment. She turned their advantages against them, using the network system to transport her soldiers in safety from the human artillery, striking in places they shouldn’t have been able to reach. Machines emerged from underground, swarming the tanks, breaking their engines, and slowly ripping open the sealed bulkheads of immobilized tanks, now stranded in the middle of a machine swarm. What had initially begun as a human advantage swiftly turned into a liability, which the humans collapsed and sealed.

With the lighting machines broken, her drakes sliced through what was left of the human tanks, ripping them up in violet beams, which caused the vehicles to explode outwards when the ordinance was breached.

She brought back her shield walls, and without the tanks to hold them off, only the mortars could deal damage. For those, To’Wrathh had her runner use makeshift palanquins which ferried Nest Turrets on top. The barnacle like machines quickly shot down the morar shells in midair with little difficulty. Her walls now reached the human army and the hooks began doing their work.

The humans had brought a plan against that. Hastily made metal wedges, held up by a few dozen knights, began to appear on the field of war. Those would charge into the shield wall, the massive weight of the wedges ripping past the defense while keeping the knight safe from the abducting hooks. Now behind the shield wall with their coordination intact, the knights struck out and broke through the machine ranks, rescuing stranded knights and turning the tide, using occult weapons and rifle fire.

To’Wrathh bit a nail again. Those surface savages had alerted the city early enough for their general to have these made. The tanks and mortar fire had bought the engineers time to weld them all together.

Her assault stopped once more, as the humans continued to force her hand. She’d need to counter this, now.

To’Wrathh redirected her Drakes into position behind the shield advances, using their cutting beams to slice apart the wedges and force the human frontlines into a retreat, lest they be overrun by the Runners. It took time to get her forces in the right array to target all of the wedges, but finally her assault continued taking ground as the human army fell back.

The humans seemed to have anticipated that. Long broken tanks that had long ago been left abandoned in machine taken ground rumbled back to life. Sneaking engineering groups had somehow crawled behind her lines and brought them back online, waiting inside the broken shells for the moment their commander needed them. Most couldn’t move from the damage they’d taken early in the war, but their turrets still turned and struck her Drakes from the rear, ripping apart too many of them before the tanks were once again swarmed by Runners and properly destroyed for good.

Those engineers wore grins as they raised their hands up to the approaching machines. They’d never intended to hold the tanks, rather they planned to surrender the moment the machines came to put an end to it all. They hadn’t even come with weapons, only a soldier or three at most to escort the fragile humans and help carry their tools. She had her forces transport the prisoners off to where the rest of the captured humans were held down. At least these ones didn’t make a fuss.

Her advanced turned into a crawl now that the number of Drakes wasn’t enough to put a stop to all the wedges the humans pulled out.

Which made it all the worse when the next ping arrived on her timer: The barrier was now down.

Time seemed to have moved too fast. Twenty hours had passed since the start of the full machine-human war, and her forces were nowhere near the gates. The human general lived up to his reputation.

To’Wrathh screamed in rage, hand crushing the sides of her stone throne into pieces. The city was finally vulnerable to full assault, and To’Wrathh’s forces weren’t there. Which, of course, was clearly the general’s intended goal this whole time. She predicted reaching the gates with only two hours left to take the city at this rate. An unacceptably short amount of time to destroy the barrier pillar.

She could unleash her trump cards early in order to storm past the last few miles of ground. But that would only give the crafty human some additional options. So To’Wrathh held her behemoths in reserve right by her side, unwilling to give the enemy general even a chance at dealing damage to the more core aspects of her plans. The serpents were equally held back for that same reason, they coiled and curled above her, snapping at the air. They were impatient to fight, but a hand from To’Wrathh silenced them. She needed every serpent for her plan, and couldn’t afford to have any broken down in this early game match. The real fight would come at the gates.

Their time would come. Even with the reduced amount of Drakes she had, each wedge they destroyed was one less the humans had to use. Eventually they would run out.

The war turned into a throat game of strategy, where if she didn’t pay attention, the human would buy the time the city needed until the barrier returned online again, minute by minute, position by position.

Barriers only remained down for twelve hours in total. A half day. To’Wrathh focused her mind, trying to streamline her tactics. Both her and the general moved forces around with more surgical precision now, anticipating where the next battle would be and planning a few steps ahead. All while remaining safe behind their respective fortresses, the soldiers on the frontlines paying the price for their orders. Fighting for a full day and night without sleep was taking a toll on the human army. But every minute they held her forces off, was a minute the machines wouldn’t have to attack the city gates proper. Obscuring smoke began to riddle the battlefields in all parts of the map. Any human not hidden away by smoke or metal was cut apart by Drake long range fire at this stage of the war, now that she could use those units with impunity. The only ones spared were those waving white flags as their cover was blown away.

Occasional wedges would leap out of that smoke, crashing into walls and causing destruction. It wasn’t enough to stop the advance like before. But it was enough to slow her down.

Armored knight and unarmored soldier alike fell, crushed or cut apart. Sensible ones gave up, throwing themselves on the ground in prayer to whichever gods they were devout to as the machine swarm stepped around them. The majority fled, retreating again and again to fight for different ground.

Eventually, the last wedge was split into three by two simultaneous Drake lasers. The mortars were brought back into the city, to be reused for later. The last bridge was knocked down, and they were unable to break the new bridges the machines brought. Knights remained on field, moving under cover of the smoke, while the regular foot soldiers were fully recalled behind the city gates.

Twenty nine hours into the war, To’Wrathh finally stood with the city gates in striking distance. The victory didn't bring her any joy.

There was only three hours left to take the city.

Next chapter - Into the city heart (T)