Steam burst from the black coffins like geysers, and a silver-white cross shot out, spearing the night like a comet’s tail and setting the human ranks to a boil.
It was the Holy Lion Knights’ flare from the Gospel Church; each flare meant an armored knight had arrived, sixty in all, sixty stars hammered into the war-torn sky.
Men who had been dying on their feet wept like rain on stone; they snatched up their weapons again, hearts drumming, and fired at the monsters ahead.
Their shots were small sparks against the abyss, but fear had fled like fog before dawn, because the Holy Lion Knights of legend had descended.
For humans, it was salvation; for the Dark World’s spawn, it was a nightmare flipped like a table in a storm.
They had always dealt nightmares to men; now this field would be the dream-turned-knife that hunted them.
Twisted werewolves lunged to tear the nearest black coffin, but the coffins detonated outward like black blossoms, plates of steel whipping wide with crushing force.
The steel slabs slammed the wolves back in a spray of sparks, and the iron giant inside had already dropped from its rack, finger tightening on the trigger like a judge’s gavel.
A knot of heat hit her first; then her body moved on instinct.
Aphelia’s eyes drank in the field, and her armor carried her forward like a wave that wouldn’t break.
This was a true battlefield; the stink of blood hung like rust in rain, and even without trying she felt the storm of gore skimming past her skin.
The iron giant booted a lunging beast aside, then flowed in with predatory grace, a bull that danced.
She hit the gap as defenses opened, rammed into the knot of monsters, and her twin, arm-thick guns locked to her forearms hissed steam like breath in winter.
“God said, let there be light.”
And the darkness split like a curtain.
The weapon was named First Day, a high-caliber energy arm that burned out its magazine of special warheads and its reserve of Arcane Power in a heartbeat.
Its purpose was simple: become divine wrath, like the day of anger the Gospel preached, and let steel apostles administer the sentence.
She squeezed. White steam roared out like vented clouds, and pale Thunder poured in sheets, a flood of light sluicing from her guns.
Monsters ringed her, thinking she had blundered into their snare; instead, they found their own jaws closing on steel.
Human firepower had never been too weak to kill the Dark World’s beasts; there were magi-heavy cannons and Solomon turrets, hammers made to smash night.
But the price was ruinous, the size a chained mountain; once a line broke, those giants were lost like castles to the sea.
And human bodies could not bear the kick; great output meant great recoil, and truly recoilless cannons lived only in tales told over cheap wine.
No engineer shrank such weapons for flesh and bone—until the armored knights arrived and rewrote the world’s craft in iron script.
No one knows the genius who gave them form; they only know the first suit came from the Gospel Church, and the Holy Lion Knights’ first descent turned war like a plow turns earth.
It was a new war, a sending of angels with brimming wrath; when God bids mankind advance, a road opens like a riverbed, and those who block it are traitors fit for dust.
Aphelia drove the giant knight-armor through steam and white glare like a dancer behind a silk screen, steps light, shadow untouchable.
There was no drag, no lag; the suit felt like a second body, or rather, her only body made of steel.
She swung the blade and spilled fire, a storm from two hands.
The first time she “wore” this skin, the world slipped unreal, like a stage set; hell receded like a tide, and everything before her felt like toys she could crush.
Now her body and mind felt like two people walking the same beat, two drums in one cadence.
Where her thought reached, the knight-armor arrived, and First Day was only the first chorus of full fire.
She clamped the trigger, and with the suit bearing the blow, recoil that would pulp a man became a shove against a mountain.
The scattered light became a rain of bolts, a curtain of hail that blocked the beasts charging the human lines.
The Holy Lion Knights were strong, but the monsters were no fools; if they couldn’t crack Aphelia fast, then they would maul the soldiers like wolves cutting sheep.
The troops saw the shift like a shadow turning; they dashed to the alchemical machine guns, hands on belts, ready to feed iron like grain.
But the Dark World’s eyes had fixed on those guns; heavy alchemy could kill them, and they pounced like hawks on a hare.
“Ahhh—help me!” a soldier screamed, fingers jelly, a maw at arm’s length blowing carrion breath.
He fumbled the belt, courage splintering; his comrade bit down on fear like a bit between teeth and drew his bayonet to trade blood for time.
We’re warriors too, not just the Holy Lion Knights, he thought, a spark in a gale.
Blinding white swallowed the lunging beast like snow over a firepit, and a huge metal slab smashed in from the flank, sweeping their front clear in a single clang.
“Dream on,” a cold voice cut the smoke. “I’m Aphelia, Senior Colonel and Commander of the Holy Lion Knights.
All regulars, fall back with your heavy weapons. Extra hands, support the Holy Lions. Repeat.”
The slab was her spent First Day, an empty thunderhead now dead weight, hurled aside like a shed shell.
She gripped her other First Day crosswise and brought it down on a giant bat’s skull; the blow crushed the head like fruit and shattered the weapon like brittle ice.
She was far from done.
The Holy Lions carried their own storms, and Aphelia carried hers doubled.
Twin large-bore hand-cannons lay hidden along her vambraces, barrels seated with a breath of space, and at a thought her artificial spine pulsed the firing order like lightning down a tree.
Watching the troops start their withdrawal, she finally let go of restraint, like a hunter slipping the leash.
A tentacled giant loomed ahead, twice a knight’s height, a tower of meat in moonlight.
She took a short run, the suit’s engines howling, then leaped; a nearly one-ton mass arced like a meteor and slammed down like judgment.
The giant howled, caught off balance amid its own pack, and toppled like a felled oak, crushing lesser beasts into paste.
Aphelia wasted no breath; she leveled both arms and fired wild as a storm, stitching fire across anything that twitched.
The huge beast never got the bite; twin flamethrowers unfolded from beneath her ribs like fangs, and azure tongues lashed its weak points.
It shrieked, but the armor’s weight pinned it like a boulder on a snake, and the fuel burned hot and strange, charring its head to coal in heartbeats.
Meanwhile, another iron giant strode from a black coffin, its steaming gun shouldered like a thunder-rod, sights set on twisted shapes.
A massive trigger finger tightened, a final knell.
“She’s here, she’s here!” voices rose, a wave rolling the line.
