Zhulong had long since realized that the universe favored destruction over creation. It was a truth that always vexed him. He readily accepted the other absolute certainties of life, but constantly contemplated this matter. Why were people willing to sever lifelong relationships over a single dispute? What was the point of making a name for oneself when legacies were so easy to tarnish? How could a creator stand to live in a world so fragile and flawed?

These questions once again gnawed at his mind as he watched a hail of projectiles reduce one of his newly raised kasai rexes to a steaming pile of purple mulch.

“Whelp, there goes three weeks of my life,” Zhulong chuckled.

Sovereign, one of the three monarchs that ruled over the BLACK coalition, did not take the loss nearly as well.

“What was that moron thinking?” The armored warmonger’s grip on his greatbow tightened as glared at the scuttling fool responsible for the dinosaur's pointless death. Thankfully, enemy culverin fire ripped the idiot apart before Sovereign did anything rash.

Literally glowing with rage, Sovereign’s displeased voice resonated throughout the minds of his devourer subordinates.

“The next person who overextends will be on latrine duty for a month!”

“Your threats won’t be too effective, boss,” Zhu informed his leader. “Most of those guys were part of Vlad’s crew.”

“I’ll talk to them,” Vlad sighed. Shaking his head, the monarch of Pandemic ambled off to harangue his followers.

Sovereign took a deep breath before he addressed his subordinates.

“I get that you all want to wrap this up, but we have to stay organized. If we rush things, we’ll just lose all the progress we’ve made so far. Get in loose formations and stay out of range of their artillery. We’ll begin the attack when the grootslang gets here.”

“We should start now!” Garm, a humanoid devourer with a helm shaped like a snarling dog’s head, declared. “They’re probably already begun porting out resources. If we don’t crack through their defenses soon, we’ll end up with nothing.”

Sovereign’s rebuke came quickly. “Our chief priority is securing our territory. We’ve been fighting these bastards for a week straight; I want them off our moon!”

Sion, the coalition’s head architect, raised a long double-jointed finger to get the others’ attention. Though the transmuter was a diminutive figure, being two heads shorter than an average man, he was an experienced combatant and one of Sovereign’s most trusted tactical advisors.

“While I agree that loot is a secondary concern, it is in our best interest to wrap this up soon. The Thunderbolts will be back with reinforcements if we don’t take down the Empyrean in the next few hours.”

“We’ll push them off by then,” Sovereign declared confidently. “In the meantime, we should patch these warbeasts up. Zhu, are your ammuts juiced up?”

“Most are bone dry.”

“Damn. I guess we’ll just have to make do. Prioritize healing the shantus and quillgores. I think we have enough fresh tyrants.”

Shantu

“Got it.”

Whistling a whimsical tune, Zhulong escorted the injured dinosaurs behind the safety of a hill where a cluster of ungainly beasts with porcine bodies, hooved hind legs, bear-like forearms, and vaguely crocodilian shaped heads rested. The top-heavy brutes stood at rapt attention when they spotted the pseudowyrm.

After a cursory inspection, Zhulong waved half of the entelodonts over. The ones with the most prominent shoulder humps galloped over to the battered dinosaurs and began secreting a sticky red fluid from their skin. The hadrosaurs and ceratopsians eagerly lapped up the strange substance. They uttered relieved groans as their gaping wounds sealed. By the time the ammuts’ once proud humps were reduced to deflated sacks of skin, nearly a third of the shantus and all the quillgores were relatively fit for battle.

“That’s all the healing they’ll get until it gets dark and they can suck down some lernaean brew,” Zhulong told Sovereign.

The ground shook right after he made that statement. Zhulong swung his head around, searching for the source of the disturbance. It didn’t take him long to find it.

Supported by four pillar-shaped legs as thick as trees, a grootslang lumbered in from the north with the subtlety of a shifting continent. Clad in tons of metal, the armored behemoth was a literal walking fortress. Dozens of crocodilian zobaka gunners occupied the house-sized howdah strapped to its back and scores of serpentine archers were coiled around the iron poles jutting from its shoulder pads and the sides of its elongated neck.

Zobaka

Yet, formidable as these armaments were, the most destructive tools at the enormous creature’s disposal were its natural weapons. A flick of its immensely long tail or neck could scythe through rows of merlons and its thunderous stomps could level stone walls. Of course, the grootslang had to get close to accomplish those feats of destruction, a prospect that was complicated by its ponderous gait and the amount of attention it would receive.

“The grootslang is here,” Sovereign announced unnecessarily. “Time to get the big guns prepped. Varan riders get ready to scale the eastern and western walls. Caustic, Sanguine, Garm, when the walls go down, I want you guys to lead cavalry forces into the breaches. Make sure you get a foothold, no matter the cost. Monstrous cavalry move in after them. Infantry, get ready. Keep blackdreads and any other aquatic warbeasts in the river until we can force the southern garrison to thin themselves out. Flyers, as always, stay out of the fight until their basilisks are taken out.”

Varans:

Knowing that tedious tasks would be delegated to idle hands, Zhulong searched for something to do. His plan backfired when a transmuter snapped him up and brought him over to a battery of colossal bombards. He exchanged a knowing look with a hulking six-armed devourer. Sighing, the two wordlessly began fitting massive iron balls into the oversized guns.

They had just loaded the last gun when an explosion rang out. Deeply acquainted with the perils of gunpowder, Zhulong jerked back. He relaxed when he realized the grootslang had simply stepped within the Empyrean’s firing range.

Every artillery piece capable of reaching the titan focused their fire upon it. Just before the volley of iron struck the grootslang’s torso, the crystalline batteries installed throughout the titan’s armor activated, wreathing the sauropod in a field of blue light. Cannonballs either bounced off or shattered against the energy barriers. Undeterred by their initial failures, the Empyrean artillery crews continued to launch their payloads. The grootslang’s overshield deflected the next three salvos as easily as the first, but one of the power gems cracked and steamed after the grootslang absorbed a fourth deluge.

“Right, let’s see if we can take some of the pressure off our titan. Calvary, move in!” Sovereign commanded.

Eager to shed blood, Caustic, Sanguine and Garm sounded the charge. The three devourers rode atop impalers, sexually mature kasai rexes that were stuck in a neotenic state. Although they were only a fraction the size of a fully grown kasai or a briar queen, they were just as fierce and twice as fast.

Each of them led a unit of a hundred male ophidian lancers. Special accommodations had been made for the legless rider. Two ghozels—upside-down Y-shaped structures—formed the frame of their saddles, with one placed over an impaler's neck while the other rested atop its hips. Criss-crossed side rods held the two pieces together. The ophidians remained seated by coiling their lower bodies around the ghozels' reinforced pole-like protrusions.

Complex as these serpent saddles were, creating them was more than worth the effort. Few creatures could strike as far as a lunging ophidian, and equipping them with staggeringly long shatterglass lances helped the serpents capitalize on their already insane reach.

Ophidian and impaler

An equally large force of carakhan pistoleers accompanied the heavy lancers. The eight-foot-tall terror birds functioned as a versatile blend of heavy infantry and light cavalry. Their speed and incredible endurance enabled them to soften up less mobile targets with their wheellock guns before they closed in with war picks, scimitars, javelins, and devastating oblique kicks. Their aeronite armor was somewhat weaker than iron, but the alloy provided excellent protection for its weight and didn’t trap nearly as much heat.

Carakhans

A few of the Empyrean artillery crews diverted their attention to the impalers and carakhans, but most continued to blast the grootslang.

“Super bombards fire!” Sovereign ordered once the cavalry force got within two hundred yards of walls.

As Sovereign’s latest command resonated in his head, Zhulong tore his gaze away from the grootslang’s advance and issued an order of his own. “Sarin, pick me up,” he shouted right before the battery of forty-ton cannons unleashed their deafening roars.

The fortress didn’t stand a chance. Giant iron balls sailed through its walls, slaying the scores of homo sapiens and neanderthals manning them.

The coalitions’ cavalry stormed the breaches before the Empyrean’s transmitters could patch them up. It was a phenomenally perilous task, and Zhulong was very glad he hadn’t been assigned to do it. Frankly, he was tempted to abstain from going in at all, but he knew that wasn’t an option.

As if she detected his hesitance, his synthetic minion, Sarin XVI, came into view. Donning an immaculately polished plate armor that exposed nothing save her long black hair, golden eyes, and resplendent silver wings, the conjurer could have been mistaken for an angelic warrior descended from heaven. That was until she crested the hill, revealing her serpentine tail and the monstrous tarrasque that bore her weight.

While nowhere near as big as the grootslang, the crocodilian-like beast was easily the heaviest carnivore on the field. It bore a two-floor howdah lined with steel pillars. The sturdy poles served as anchors for ophidian archers and pike fighters. A crew of zobaka streltsy was stationed within the howdah’s first level. Sarin, who had been using the upper roof as a crow’s nest, slithered down and offered Zhulong a hand. Accepting her help, he climbed onto the unusual-looking throne placed over the tarrasque’s neck. Wrapping his tail around the seat’s backrest and its long forked saddle horn, he steered the mighty tyrant into the fray.

Special thanks to Spaghettibastard for the amazing cover art.