Re:Ant Lord-Chapter 111: Irontide’s Stand

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At the ridgeline General Irontide planted his frame, legs braced wide enough to anchor a siege-tower. Lava-orange light flowed through seams of his armour, pulsing to the beat of a heart that had carried him through centuries of war. His compound eyes narrowed, tracking the Blood-Scythe Mantira that vanished beneath the dunes with Kai and the rib of A’zhorath. A cold oath hissed between his mandibles yet he dared not dive after the Kai.

"Priorities," the grizzled general reminded himself. "The corpse first, the army second, That boy is just a worker ant. It doesn’t matter if he dies." For a commander, sentiment was a luxury paid for with lives.

The main threat demanded his attention. The Night-Leopard King, seven metres of lean, obsidian-spotted muscle, stalked in a widening circle about the crippled column. Each step cracked the vitrified crust left by its own emerald breath-cannon. All wagons were still hitched to the Ruler’s torso. If that leopard lacerated even one segment the interior stasis-runes would fail and mile-long shockwaves of decaying aura would tear the convoy apart.

Irontide snapped open the copper grille of his command horn. "Third Pike Phalanx, on me!" His voice boomed with the unmistakable resonance of an eight-star warlord; its shockwave rolled along lines, rousing dazed pikers from shell-shock.

Thirty veteran heavy-pike ants or six star rank surged forward, eight-metre shafts angling into an iron forest. Irontide calculated distances like a mathematician: wind speed ten knots, dune incline seven degrees, leopard gait four strides per breath. Perfect.

The predator tensed, emerald embers swirling in its throat once more, its intent was clear. Workers ants knelt helpless at the wagon, their world narrowing to the death-beam’s green glow.

"Now!" Irontide bellowed and he leapt, covering twenty metres in a single burst of rune powered speed. His gauntlets, each forged from the condensed shells of three extinct colossi, crackled with sun-bright sigils as he smashed them together launching himself into the leopard’s incoming lunge.

THROOM!

Mid-air collision. Fist met jaw, runes met shimmering hide. A sound like a church bell rupturing rang across the desert; the leopard’s skull whiplashed, emerald beam shooting wide and carving a smoking trench two hundred metres long but it never reached the corpse train.

Both behemoths landed in an explosion of blackened sand. Pikes closed in from three sides, tips hissing where residual beam-acid touched them. They stabbed in perfect cadence: belly, hip, flank, haunch. Greenish ichor sprayed fans of corrosive droplets; pike-hafts smoked but soldiers held formation.

The Night-Leopard shrieked, tail lashing, shattering four spears in a single whip. It pounced again only to find Irontide already inside its guard. The general’s left gauntlet hammered the beast’s sternum, fracturing ribs like a brittle shell. His right fist, glowing with compressed rune-plasmas, drove between star-spots and buried itself through nape, gripping vertebrae.

"Yield, carrion." Irontide’s voice thrummed. He wrenched one brutal motion tearing the spine with a bloody crack. Leopard limbs jerked, then sagged. The corpse dropped like a felled obelisk.

A cheer rose, ragged, weary... then died to trembling silence. Nearly two thousand workers lay dead or writhing, eaten by acid or crushed under flipped sledges. The price of a single beam. Shields had been ash, armour slag.

Irontide knelt to close the nearest soldier’s fading eyes. He forced rage into cold iron discipline. "Triage lines! Breachers, salvage intact wagons, swap ruined axles. We move in ten minutes!"

A harried lieutenant stammered, "But sir, the scouts of princess Mia’s team, Kai, he is missing. Shouldn’t we look for him?"

"Silence," Irontide cut. "I saw direction, he is dead or he will die soon. We can’t waste our time on some worker ants. Our oath is the corpse. Any worker that still draws breath chains them up and pulls the wagon, or we’ll lose more than a boy."

Regret flickered but never softened his stare. "Compassion is best served by victory," he told himself, then turned toward the empty dune where Kai had vanished. "The sting of failure hid behind stoic plates of uncharted grief for a recruit too brave for his star-grade."

"Form a long column! Double pace," he barked. "If we tarry, predators will gather like flies to sweet rot."

The half-legion trudged onward between holes of cooling emerald glass, leaving behind a silent red-and-green battlefield and the anonymous stain of their worker ants and low level soldiers.

The morning after the leopard fell, sunrise painted the desert in blood-peach streaks. The convoy wound into Needle Canyon, a crooked gash where ochre spires jutted like the fangs of some sleeping titan. Echoes of rattling chains bounced between cliffs; workers hauled A’zhorath’s torso on sled-runners greased with melted quartz. For every twenty steps they paused to cough up dust or retighten harness vines.

Night found the train camped beneath a leaning butte that cut the scouring wind. Fires burned small, tiny blue nubs of heatless mage-flame to avoid scavenger attraction. Many commander ants walked the perimeter, checked each wounded worker, handed out extra water ration despite the quartermaster’s scowl.

A few days later...

Twilight finally bled across the sand. In the purple distance rose Amber Bastion, twin towers glowing like furnace mouths above the border wall. Watch-fires on parapets flashed gold signals; bronze bells rang a thrumming welcome heard for leagues.

As final companies limped through colossal resin gates the street-lamps lit. Citizens cheered, flinging petals of dried lotus. They have returned with the ruler body.

Mia was standing on the walls. She scanned every face, every arriving squad. When the gates sealed behind Delta-19 company and still no ragged scout straggled in, hope guttered.

Irontide delivered casualty reports to scribes; healers swarmed triage carts. Mia dismounted, stiff legs numb. She glanced skywards, stars wheeling too fast. "Where is Kai? Why can’t I find him?"

The resin gates of Amber Bastion yawned open with a groan like a wounded giant. Banners drooped in the sunset breeze; the air tasted of resin smoke and wilted lotus petals scattered by well-meaning citizens who expected a parade of glory, not a procession of ghosts.