The second phase of the war began without a declaration. It bled into the first, a seamless escalation from psychological terror to physical destruction. As General Kaelen's legions pushed past the contaminated oases and into the network of canyons that guarded the approach to our valley, our war of a thousand cuts began.
The first major blow was struck against their supply train. Kai and his twenty Ashen Rangers, now operating as a truly elite unit, had shadowed the legions for days, noting the predictable patterns of their vanguard and rearguard. They chose their moment perfectly. In a wide, exposed basin, as the supply wagons lumbered several hundred yards behind the main infantry column, Kai gave the signal.
His horse archers burst from a series of hidden ravines, a whirlwind of dust and arrows. They were not after the guards; they were after the mules and the wagons. They galloped in wide, daring circles, firing volley after volley. Arrows pierced the canvas covers of the supply wagons, shattering jugs of oil and wine. Flaming arrows, a terrifying new weapon we had developed, lodged in the sacks of grain, which began to smoulder and burn. The panicked mules, stung by arrows and terrified by the fire, bolted, crashing the wagons into one another and spilling their precious contents onto the sand.
By the time the legion's heavy cavalry could be dispatched to respond, the Rangers were gone, melting back into the canyons, leaving behind a scene of chaos and burning devastation. They had destroyed a quarter of Kaelen's remaining supplies in less than ten minutes.
The next day, it was the Sappers' turn. Ulf and his Ironpeak warriors, using the intelligence from our scouts, had identified a narrow, winding pass the legions had to traverse. For two days, they had worked, using their engineering knowledge to weaken the canyon's northern wall. As the vanguard of the Second Legion marched into the pass, Ulf gave the order. With a series of deep, guttural booms from carefully placed explosive charges, half the canyon wall slid down in a colossal rockslide.
It did not just block the pass. It buried the vanguard. Hundreds of men were crushed in an instant, a testament to the brutal, impersonal power of physics. The legion was forced to halt, spending two precious days digging out their dead and clearing a new path, their morale plummeting further with every shovelful of bloody earth.
My Oakhaven Vanguard and Borin's Dragoons were the blade held in reserve, used for precise, overwhelming strikes. We received a report from Ren that a large foraging party, nearly five hundred men, had been dispatched from the main army in a desperate search for clean water. They were isolated, vulnerable.
We moved with a speed the legion could not comprehend, living off our hidden supply caches. We intercepted them in a small valley. The battle was a perfect execution of our doctrine. My infantry pinned them from the front, their shield wall an unbreachable barrier. Then, Borin's Dragoons slammed into their rear. The charge of our twenty heavy horsemen, clad in their gleaming plate, was a thunderous, terrifying spectacle. The foraging party, composed of tired, demoralized soldiers, shattered instantly. We took two hundred more prisoners and scattered the rest to the desert winds.
The effect of this ceaseless, multi-pronged assault was catastrophic for Kaelen's army. His soldiers were now in a constant state of high alert, exhausted and paranoid. They saw enemies in every shadow. Their supply situation was critical. Their numbers were being steadily whittled away, not in a grand battle, but in a hundred small, bleeding cuts. The desert was swallowing them whole. General Kaelen, the King's Hammer, was being methodically dismantled by an enemy who refused to fight him. He was a master of the chessboard, but his opponent was playing a different game entirely, a three-dimensional game of shadows and mirages on a board the size of a continent.