The roar of the Gore Hounds was no longer a distant threat; it was a guttural, terrifying symphony vibrating in Lysander's teeth, a primal scream of impending doom. They were a tide of muscle, teeth, and glowing, malevolent eyes, slamming against the rickety West Gate barricades like a storm surge against a crumbling seawall. Lysander could feel the splintering wood, hear the sickening crack of failing timbers, and the desperate grunts of the few soldiers futilely trying to hold the line. The air, already thick with dust, now tasted metallic with the tang of fear and the cloying sweetness of fresh blood.
Despair was a cold, suffocating blanket, threatening to smother the tiny flame of defiance Lysander had just ignited. This was it, the inevitable end. The script, his cursed prophecy, had him dying here, lost in this chaos, a pathetic, ignoble end. His gut screamed at him to run, to drop the useless piece of lumber he was now instinctively gripping and just flee. He was a data analyst, not some muscle-bound hero. The Lysander Thorne from the book would be weeping, begging for his life, or already trampled beneath a monstrous paw.
But this wasn't that Lysander Thorne. It wasn't about brute strength alone; it was about cunning meeting raw necessity. It was about twisting disadvantages into unexpected opportunities, about seeing the hidden moves on a chessboard where he was supposed to be a mere pawn. A pawn, if played with audacious brilliance and backed by unforeseen power, could become a king.
Even as the first barricade splintered, threatening to give way completely, Lysander didn't just stand there. His eyes, sharper than ever with the desperate clarity of survival, locked onto the immediate chaos. He saw the gaping holes forming, the panic in the soldiers' eyes. He remembered the specific, minor detail from the novel about the gate's weak points and the type of lumber nearby.
"Don't just stand there, you fools! Brace it! Brace it now!" he bellowed, his voice raw but surprisingly powerful amidst the din. He didn't wait. Grabbing the length of thick rope he'd spotted earlier, he snatched the heaviest piece of fallen timber near him – a cracked crossbeam from a guard post – and, with surprising strength born of pure adrenaline, he jammed it diagonally against the collapsing wooden barricade. He quickly looped the rope around it, tying it off to a sturdy stone pillar with a knot he barely remembered from a forgotten scout badge.
It was a crude, desperate measure, a makeshift tourniquet for a gaping wound. But it worked. The splintering barricade, which was moments from complete collapse, held. It groaned, it creaked, but it didn't give. The Gore Hounds, having expected to burst through, slammed into the suddenly reinforced barrier, yelping in frustrated confusion as their claws found no purchase.
Lysander didn't hesitate. "The gaps! Block the gaps with anything! Pile it up!" he yelled, kicking a broken cart wheel into a smaller breach. His actions were so immediate, so shockingly effective where others had been paralyzed, that a few soldiers, their eyes wide with disbelief, automatically started mimicking him, grabbing loose stones, discarded shields, anything to fill the small gaps that had opened up. They hadn't consciously decided to obey him; they were simply reacting to the only person showing an ounce of effective initiative.
Sir Reginald, fighting a monstrous hound himself, glanced over, his scowl deepening as he saw Lysander actually doing something useful, something that bought them precious seconds. He didn't like it, didn't like Lysander one bit, but he couldn't argue with the results. The momentary reprieve was too valuable.
"Oil barrels!" Lysander roared, remembering another obscure detail from the novel – a small reserve kept for torches and siege engines, usually forgotten. "There should be oil barrels near the supply shed! Find them! Now! Before the Trolls hit!"
The urgency in his voice, now backed by the undeniable evidence of his quick thinking at the barricade, finally broke through the paralysis of a few more men. Private Joric, the young soldier from the novel, usually a quivering mess, instinctively broke away and dashed towards the indicated shed, desperation overriding his fear. Lysander hadn't commanded; he'd merely pointed the way to a slim chance of survival, and the men, utterly without options, grasped at it.
As Joric sprinted, Lysander saw the first true behemoth: a Brute Troll, its massive form lumbering into view, its shadow swallowing the last of the weak daylight. Its very presence made the ground tremble. It was moments from reaching their position. He knew, from the book, these things were slow but unstoppable. Unless...
Lysander glanced from the approaching troll to the ancient, unstable counterweights of the West Gate. Designed centuries ago, they were now mostly ornamental, rusted into disuse because of their dangerous unpredictability. If released improperly, they could crush anything below. In the novel, they were simply ignored, a monument to past engineering. But Lysander saw them not as decoration, but as a weapon.
"Reginald!" Lysander yelled, his voice strained as he pushed against the groaning barricade. "The main gate counterweights! They're still active! We can use them to collapse the arch!"
Reginald's eyes widened, a mixture of disbelief and dawning horror on his grizzled face. "Thorne? Have you lost your mind? They haven't been used in decades! Too dangerous, they could bring down the whole arch on us!"
"They're designed to stop something massive!" Lysander screamed back, pointing a trembling finger at the largest Brute Troll, its shoulders already past the initial, collapsing barricade. "We can bring down the arch on them! It's our only chance! Joric is already going for the lever in the upper guard tower!" He hadn't told Joric to go for that lever; he'd sent him for oil. But in his desperate state, seeing Joric's movement towards higher ground, Lysander instantly pivoted, improvising the narrative, making it sound like a cohesive plan. It was a lie, a mastermind's instantaneous adaptation, but a lie born of sheer, terrifying genius.
Reginald's jaw clenched. He looked from the rapidly approaching, unstoppable troll to the impossibly ancient, dangerous counterweights. His military mind screamed against such a suicidal, reckless maneuver, but Lysander's utter conviction, his inexplicable knowledge of the gate's hidden mechanisms, and the undeniable success of his previous, desperate improvisations forced Reginald to consider the unthinkable. They were already dead without a miracle. Lysander was offering a desperate, bloody one.
"Gods help us all," Reginald muttered, then roared, "Clear the arch! Joric! For the glory of Oakhaven, release those weights!" He was committing, throwing his lot in with the madman who was somehow keeping them alive.
Time stretched, agonizingly slow. The distant clang of Joric's desperate struggle with the rusted lever echoed faintly from above. Lysander continued to brace the last remaining planks, his muscles screaming, the raw pain a grounding force. The stench of troll breath was overpowering now, hot and fetid. He could see the gleam in its small, malevolent eyes, the crude intelligence, as it prepared to deliver the final, shattering blow against the last vestige of the gate. Lysander knew this gamble was the true turning point. If it worked, he wouldn't just survive; he'd have taken his first, monumental step on the path of reclaiming his life, not as an extra, but as a player who defied destiny. This was his first step into truly controlling the "story," rather than just reacting to it.
Then, with a deafening groan that dwarfed the roars of the trolls, the air above the gate shifted. A grinding, metallic shriek tore through the battlefield. Chain links, thick as a man's arm and heavy with centuries of rust, vibrated violently. The Brute Trolls paused, their primitive instincts sensing something profoundly wrong.
And then, with a thunderous CRACK, the massive stone counterweights, long dormant, plunged downwards.
They fell with the weight of centuries, smashing into the main gate arch with unimaginable, cataclysmic force. Stone exploded outwards, sending razor-sharp shrapnel flying like deadly, grey rain. The ancient arch, already weakened by time and the troll's relentless assault, buckled, fractured, and then, with an earth-shattering roar, began to collapse entirely.
The Brute Trolls caught directly beneath the falling rubble shrieked in a terrifying cacophony of agony and furious rage. Some were instantly flattened, reduced to mangled heaps of flesh and bone. Others were grotesquely impaled, trapped beneath tons of crushing masonry. The Gore Hounds, caught in the wider blast radius, were disoriented, yelping and scattering in terrified confusion, their bloodlust temporarily forgotten.
Lysander, thrown violently backward by the sheer force of the concussion, landed hard, pain blossoming like fire across his entire body. Dust choked him, filling his mouth with grit, and for a terrifying moment, he thought he was buried alive, his desperate gambit having failed, merely trading one death for another. But then he coughed, a ragged, hacking sound, clearing his throat. He pushed himself up, every muscle protesting, and looked through the settling debris.
The West Gate was utterly gone. In its place was a mountain of jagged rubble, a chaotic graveyard of shattered stone, splintered wood, and mangled monster parts. The main assault, the one that was supposed to claim his life and break the fortress, had been utterly devastated, turned into a scene of carnage by his desperate, brilliant, and utterly reckless act.
A stunned, eerie silence fell over the immediate battlefield, broken only by the distant sounds of fighting from other gates and the whimpers of the few injured soldiers who had survived the collapse. Sir Reginald stood there, his jaw slack, his eyes wide with a mixture of raw horror and utter, bewildered awe. "By the gods..." he whispered, staring at Lysander as if seeing a ghost, or perhaps, something far more dangerous and unpredictable.
Lysander slowly pushed himself to his feet, his entire body aching, his ears ringing from the concussive blast. He was alive. He had defied the script. He had not only survived his fated death, but he had single-handedly, with nothing but his quick wits and a piece of forgotten lore, turned the tide of the entire assault at the West Gate.
He looked at his trembling hands. They were scraped and bleeding, covered in dust and grit, but they were his. He wasn't just an extra anymore. He was a variable, a force for chaos in a predetermined narrative. The "exiled noble" had just executed his first, desperate, and undeniably successful gambit. But what would be the true consequences for twisting such a crucial plot point? And how would the "hero," Kaelen, react to this utterly unexpected turn of events, when he was supposed to be inspired by Lysander's death? Lysander had a chilling feeling his troubles had only just begun. The path of an exiled plotter was rarely smooth, and every step taken away from fate was a step into unknown, dangerous territory. The whispers of the battlefield wouldn't be about a cowardly noble's death, but about a terrifying, unexpected intervention. He'd done more than survive; he'd made a statement. And the echoes of that statement would surely ripple through this world.