Chapter 719: Forward
They came over a ridge of black stone on the morning of the second day and found another army waiting in the valley below.
It was a force nearly as large as their own, banners raised, ranks already formed for battle, spread across the valley floor with the patience of soldiers who had chosen their ground.
"That is not a trial monster," Aryan said, reading the enemy at a glance. "That is a kingdom. A real one, and a strong one. And they have been waiting for us specifically."
Almond studied the force below, the way a whole army had positioned itself across the only clear path through the valley, and understood the play immediately.
"They are not racing the peak anymore," he said. "They have decided they cannot win the crossing, so they are going to win by stopping everyone else from finishing."
His eyes narrowed as the pieces fell into place. "Cut down the strongest kingdoms, thin the field, and let the peak sort out whoever is left standing."
"A blocking force," Rudra said, cracking his knuckles. "They do not want the mountain. They want to bleed us before we reach it."
A figure walked out from the front of the enemy army, tall and armored in dark bronze, and his voice carried up the ridge with easy confidence.
"Ananta Regalon. We have heard the stories. The kingdom that took ten worlds and beat an empire." He spread his arms wide. "But stories are cheap, and this is a trial, not a resource planet. Here, everyone starts equal."
He lowered his arms, and his voice hardened. "Turn back, or we make sure you never reach that peak at all."
Almond looked down at the man, and at the army behind him, and felt no anger, only a cold and familiar clarity.
"We do not turn back," he called down, his voice carrying clear across the valley. "We have never once turned back. Ask anyone who tried to make us."
He drew a card, and behind him the ridge filled with steel. "You can step aside, and live, and finish your own climb. Or you can stand in the road, and learn why the stories are true."
The enemy commander laughed, and raised his weapon, and gave the order to charge.
The two armies met in the valley, and the second great fight of the trial began.
It was harder than the glass horde. These were real fighters, a whole kingdom’s strength, and they came with power and purpose and the desperation of people who knew they could not win any other way.
But Ananta Regalon had spent a whole campaign learning to fight exactly this. The exotic army held the line and pushed, Dread-Reavers and Ember-born and Sentinels grinding into the enemy ranks.
The Generals cut into the heart of the enemy force like a blade finding a gap, and each of them fought the way only they could.
Rudra broke their strongest fighters, unmaking the structure of everything they raised against him, walls and weapons and armor all ceasing to be at his touch. Their champions came at him one after another, and one after another they fell.
Ainen burned corridors through their center, his flames learning and adapting to every defense they tried, so that no barrier held against him twice.
Lily’s Dreadlings poured across the valley and pulled the enemy formations apart, while she moved through the chaos herself, unseen, ending their officers one by one before they even knew she was among them.
Silvester and Hiroshi fought back to back at the front, two old blades carving through everything that reached them, while Marcus held the line beside them and Maya hunted the flanks.
Almond fought at the center of it all, his Grimblades falling in torrents, severing the enemy’s power from its source wherever it gathered. Nothing they threw held together long enough to matter.
And above the valley, Kexell descended in his true form and simply landed among the enemy’s heaviest units, a mountain of scale scattering them like leaves, Gopu loosing tiny fierce roars from his horn all the while.
The enemy kingdom fought bravely, and it fought hard, and it did not matter. Within the hour, the valley belonged to Ananta Regalon, and the blocking force was broken, its survivors scattered across the black stone.
Almond stood over the beaten enemy commander, who had fought to the last and lost, and offered him the same thing the kingdom always offered.
"Your people live," Almond said. "Gather them, and finish your own climb if you still can. We take no more from you than the road you tried to close."
He turned toward the distant peak. "But you will not stand in it again."
The commander, bloodied and beaten, looked up at the kingdom that had cut through his blocking force in a single hour, and understood at last that the stories had been true after all.
"Go," he rasped. "Take the cursed mountain. You have earned the road."
The kingdom formed up once more and marched on, leaving the broken valley behind, the great peak still looming impossibly far ahead under its churning violet sky.
As they went, Marcus fell into step beside Almond, glancing back at the scattered enemy survivors already gathering their wounded.
"You could have taken their whole kingdom out of the trial," he said, not quite a question. "Ended their climb for good. Made the road ahead that much emptier."
"I could have," Almond agreed. "But a kingdom that owes us its second chance is worth more up there than one more broken rival down here." He looked ahead at the peak. "We are not just climbing to the upper layer, Marcus. We are climbing to live there. It pays to leave friends behind us instead of graves."
Marcus considered that, then nodded slowly, the way a man does when he has followed someone long enough to trust the shape of their thinking.
"Two days gone," he said instead. "Eight left. And that hill has not moved an inch."
"It will," Almond said quietly, eyes on the distant summit. "One step at a time, it will."
Two days gone. Eight days left. And somewhere across the bowl, the rest of the field had just heard that Ananta Regalon was still coming, still winning, and would not be stopped by anything less than the mountain itself.
