The silence in the aftermath of the battle was a heavy, suffocating thing. The main courtyard of the Enclave outpost was no longer a pristine plaza of ancient stone; it was a charnel house, littered with the bodies of Voss's soldiers and the shattered remains of two of their own priceless golem sentries. The smell of blood and ozone hung thick in the air. The victory had been absolute, but the cost was etched into every broken stone and bloodstain.
Draven stood on the parapet, his body a single, screaming ache, and surveyed the grim tableau. There was no triumph in him, only a cold, hard process of analysis. He was already running a post-battle diagnostic, cataloging their losses and calculating their next move. Voss's army had pulled back, their initial charge broken, their morale shattered. But they were still out there, a sea of angry, determined enemies. This was just a lull in the storm.
"Draven." Kara's voice was a soft, weary sound beside him. He turned to see her, her face smudged with grime, her bow held loosely in one hand. But her eyes were fixed on the courtyard, on the still form of Kael. The wolf was lying near the gate, a deep, ragged gash in his flank, his silver fur matted with dark blood.
They moved as one, the larger strategic problem momentarily forgotten, replaced by a single, urgent priority. They knelt beside the wolf, and Kael let out a low, pained whine, his tail giving a weak thump against the stones.
"He took a blow that was meant for me," Kara whispered, her voice thick with a guilt that Draven understood all too well.
"He did his job," Draven replied, his voice firm, but his hands were surprisingly gentle as he inspected the wound. "And now we do ours."
The next hour was a tense, focused exercise in triage. While Kara, with a surprising knowledge of field medicine, cleaned and stitched Kael's wound with supplies from their kit, Draven was in command mode. He directed Umbra and the Rune-Hound to drag the enemy bodies outside the shield, a grim but necessary task to prevent disease. The Thornling was tasked with gathering the smaller, shattered pieces of the fallen golems. Every piece was a priceless resource, a fragment of lost technology they could not afford to waste.
He scavenged the bodies of Voss's soldiers himself, his movements methodical and detached. He found little of value—crude iron weapons, thin leather armor—but he also found a series of marked stones in the pouch of a lieutenant. A simple, coded messaging system. He pocketed them. Intel. A new way to understand his enemy.
He returned to find Kara finishing a tight, clean bandage on Kael's flank. The wolf was already looking stronger, his Stalwart Vanguard durability aiding his recovery. Draven and Kara sat beside him, a shared, silent moment of relief and exhaustion.
"That was too close," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
"The killbox worked," he countered, though he knew what she meant. "The strategy was sound."
"The strategy was brilliant," she corrected, her eyes meeting his. "But we're still just two people. We can't hold them off forever."
He knew she was right. His mind turned to the other casualty of their victory: the destroyed golems. They were their front line, their irreplaceable heavy infantry. He stood and walked to the largest remaining piece of a shattered sentry—a massive stone torso, its internal, glowing runes now dark and cold.
"Kara," he called. "I need you in the fabrication unit."
The humming chamber of light and energy was their greatest hope. They dragged the golem's torso inside, and Draven began the painstaking process of analysis. He couldn't build a new one from scratch; the technology was far beyond him. But his INTJ mind saw another path. He could reverse-engineer it.
"The fabricator can break down materials to their base essences," he mused, his hands flying across the control panel. "If we can isolate the core components of the golem's matrix, we might be able to create… repair modules. Patches. We can't build a new wall, but maybe we can fix the holes in the one we have."
While Kara worked on the complex task of interfacing the ancient golem technology with the fabricator, Draven returned to the command center. He brought up the long-range scanners, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed Voss's camp. The enemy was not idle. They were adapting. Crude, massive trebuchets were being constructed, siege engines designed to hurl massive boulders at the walls. They were shifting from a direct assault to a true siege. They were going to try and pound his fortress into dust.
A new, cold dread settled in his gut. They had won the first battle, but Voss was already preparing for the second, and it would be a battle they were ill-equipped to fight. Their shield was weakened, their power reserves were critical, and their front line was broken.
He was running a new series of desperate, low-probability simulations when a new alert flashed on the main console. It wasn't a red threat warning. It was a soft, pulsing blue light, emanating from the icon for the long-range communication array.
[Incoming Transmission Detected]
[Source: Unknown. Enclave Encryption Signature Matched.]
His heart gave a single, hard jolt. The signal. Their desperate, one-shot broadcast had been answered. He opened the channel. The screen flickered to life, showing a grainy, static-filled image of Jaxon's face from the command center of their keep, miles away.
"Draven?" Jaxon's voice was a crackle of static, but it was the most beautiful sound Draven had ever heard. "By the realms, you're alive! We got your signal. We're coming."
Hope. A new, powerful, and entirely unexpected variable had just entered the equation.
"How long?" Draven asked, his voice a tight, controlled rasp.
The signal flickered. "…heavy resistance… Voss has patrols everywhere… five days. Maybe four if we push it."
Four days. Draven looked at the scanner, at the image of Voss's army constructing their siege engines. He looked at the status of his own failing power grid. Four days might as well be an eternity.
He met Kara's gaze across the command center, a new, grim resolve hardening his own. The cavalry was coming. But first, they had to survive the storm.