The first signs of daylight were beginning to show.

The feeble sun had dragged itself beyond the horizon, slowly beginning to banish the night’s oppressive darkness. The frigid mist still lingered, but the landscape was beginning to revitalize once again, as if it were thawing out.

It was the exact time in which the morning twilight was chased away by the dawn, illuminating the thick wood with a distinct orange-white hue.

It was in this moment of ethereal beauty that the aggressors marched forth.

Weaving in between the tangled willow, the band of brigands pushed their way forward with staunch discipline. They were arranged in several smaller cohorts, columns eight men wide and several more long. These vaguely independent, yet still coordinated tendrils snaked throughout the uneven terrain, bending around the abundant obstacles littering the landscape. One never strayed too far from the other, and though they were decently spread out, each remained within eyesight.

The men amongst the edge columns were noticeably more nervous than the ones en center, and the reason for which was obvious. The enemy were known to be natural ambushers and savage guerilla fighters. It was no surprise then that the flanks and sides would be particularly juicy targets.

Luckily though, in these high-danger areas marched several veterans, scarred bastions amongst the seas of quick-to-flee greenhorns. There was no shortage of these hardened vets around camp. It’s said that the older one grows in a Bruk’bar regiment, if one is lucky enough to do so, the more their relative lack of worth as a pawn becomes apparent. Plenty an old-timer had taken a single look at Dagridge, that cursed thorn of a keep, and immediately began planning their escape. The northern front was a meat grinder like no other, and that was saying something considering the paradigm of their clan.

These older soldiers gave the men around them confidence, as well as a sense of calm that would hopefully stop them from fleeing once the scuffle had started.

And if it didn’t, well, let’s just say that them being positioned near the flanks served a double purpose.

The woodland only grew thicker the further into the forest they trudged. A proper canopy had begun to take shape a couple meters above, only allowing the faintest bit of light to fall upon the now trampled forest bed.

The commander had anticipated this though, and with every cohort marched one soldier with a crudely made horn, one that emitted a sound loud enough to be heard by those nearby, yet low enough as to not echo too far.

Additionally, at the head of the center cohort was a sergeant that had a makeshift standard hanging from his spear. He was the head so to speak, and through his judgement were they to navigate the impossible brush. His head scanned the canopy with a crazed vigour, paranoia emanating from his attitude.

He came to an abrupt stop.

Those behind him did the same, clutching their spears with white knuckles. All ears were open, listening for a snapping twig, a rustling branch, anything.

After a few moments, a quiet creak emanated from somewhere in the dense canopy. Just a tiny, innocent noise, likely to have come from a bird, or maybe a squirrel, but the paranoia was so palpable that the source no longer mattered.

“Formation!”

A single flurry of movement, and every man in the cohort had their shields skyward and the tips of their spears braced toward the heavens. A mixture of mind numbing rehearsal and crippling fear spurred them into stance.

A short blast from the horn, and adjacent cohorts could be seen doing the same, all scrambling for any sense of safety available.

“Eyes on the trees boys…” The sergeant's head jerked across his shoulders as if he were a madman “...eyes on the trees.”

A second of painful silence passed. Then another. Then three, four, the lack of assault was both relieving and simultaneously unimaginably stressful. Every man was tensed like a spring, breathing in shallow, ragged breaths so as to not miss a single sound.

After what seemed like an eternity of suffocating silence, the sergeant took a step forward.

“Continue forward.”

The horn-bearer blew two short bursts, which was reciprocated by adjacent columns.

Their cohort crept forward, shields and spears still pointing skyward. They were moving at only a fraction of the speed before, but the sergeant cared not. He knew that if he’d riled any more angst amongst the men, they’d snap.

This tension and irritability only grew worse as time went on.

One man in the back snapped out in a low voice,

“I swear on my grave you whoreson, if you tap my should one more fucking ti-”

A yelp.

The entire column snapped their gaze toward the sudden exclamation, and simultaneously froze.

The man who’d spoken had his shield arm raised completely in the air, leaving him completely exposed. A twine noose sat latched onto the poor man’s wrist, the tether extending far into the demented canopy overhead.

It was as if he were a child being pulled along by his parent by the hand, completely and utterly helpless against a seemingly unwavering force; and his expression reflected this.

He opened his mouth to speak and was abruptly cut short.

A javelin sank so far into his collar that the jagged bone tip ripped free messily from his hip, exposing his bare pink flesh for all the world to see. Those around him hadn’t even the time to blink as warm strings of crimson splattered across their faces.

The man’s final breath was unceremoniously cut short as both his lungs were literally torn to shreds within his own torso.

Before his mangled corpse could even go limp, all hell broke loose.

An eruption of impossible violence. A flurry of mindless blows and unaimed thrusts. Blood curdling screams. Panicked sobbing. Death throes. All melded together in a symphony of pure, utter chaos.

The dark outlines of countless figures streaked across the barely-illuminated canopy with uncanny, transhuman speed. The canopy shook with all the ferocity of the rampaging sea amongst a raging tempest, creating a torrent of leaves and branches, coming down like jagged hail upon a band of ragged travelers.

A dozen more nooses dropped from the heavens, as if to signal the end of times. Some latched onto shields or spears, others onto arms and legs. One even snagged around a poor boy’s throat, moments away from punishing him for his crime of existence.

With a great creak accompanied by the bouncing of the branches above, all these unfortunate victims were dragged nearly off their feet. They screamed at the canopy, begging to it as if it were some cruel beast and they were the virgin sacrifices to the stake.

But it was much too late. The enemy they faced wasn’t human, and couldn’t be reasoned with. Fighting them was like fighting the forest itself - it was beginning to look like there was no way for them to escape it, let alone beat it.

Not a second later, another volley of javelins crashed from the sky like a cometfall, skewering men where they stood to the ground in morbid death poses.

The sergeant looked around at his men, both arms limp to his side.

He was in hell.

He’d seen many a battlefield, and thought to himself the same thing multiple times before. But those times seemed churlish in comparison.

He saw his men impaled like morbid sculptures upon the gore laden forest bed. He saw greenhorns, not even of age, hung like rapists at the gallows; their eyes bulging and their tongues protruding as if they were rotting fish. He saw hardened veterans screaming, sobbing to the heavens for salvation, despite the fact that atrocity after atrocity had led them to forsake their gods and deities decades ago. Needless to say, their fervent prayers were rewarded with painful demises.

He dropped his spear.

He’d been broken. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally.

And as he looked upward and saw the faint outline of a figure above, rearing their arm backward, he knew that he would soon be broken physically as well.

But he fretted not. For he preferred anything to this hellscape.

And so he lifted his arms up in acceptance, and dropped to his knees; he offered himself like a sinner to be smitten down by his furious all-father.