The temple's interior lit with red glyphs—evac protocols flashing, sirens blaring in low pulses like a heartbeat on its final moments.
Maverick stood at the center of the command platform, the war-table pulsing with projections of Earth's airspace. Ten readings—each the size of mountains—descended through the atmosphere like wrath made manifest. Their speed? Terminal. Their mass? Unreadable.
Colossal.
"They're not troops," Riven said. "They're gods."
"No," Maverick growled. "They're weapons."
⸻
A voice crackled to life from the temple's upper relay: the planetary defense AI.
"Ten priority anomalies descending. Estimated impact in three minutes. Global defense systems compromised. Suggesting Warmachine unit extraction—"
"Override," Maverick barked. "Evac civilians only. We stay."
"Please confirm."
"All units confirmed," Valkar said beside him, fist to chest. "We hold the line."
"Begin lift-off procedures for the capital city's noncombatants," Candren added. "Use all shuttles. Stack the corridors. Get them out."
"Evacuation confirmed. Commencing transport arc…"
⸻
Outside the dome, thunder cracked.
The first of the colossi broke through the cloud barrier—miles tall, forged of obsidian and molten hatred. It landed in the southern sector, sending shockwaves that shattered mountaintops. Flames rose from the valleys like flags of hell.
Then another. And another.
Ten in all. Each shaped differently—some hunched and jagged, others long and spined like leviathans. Their roars weren't sound.
They were judgment.
⸻
Maverick turned to his brothers.
"We engage. As one."
They didn't need orders. They didn't need tactics. Each of them knew what they were. What this moment demanded.
They were Warmachines.
⸻
The shield dropped.
The sky opened.
And the six surged forth—like blades unsheathed.
⸻
Colossal Battle Begins
Maverick was first to strike, jet-boosting into the chest of the closest titan. Its hide was like volcanic rock, but Maverick's plasma hammer cracked it, sending glowing fissures through the beast's sternum. The monster reeled, a gout of magma-blood spraying into the air.
Valkar leapt skyward, landing on the spine of a second behemoth. He drove his dual impact-glaives into the creature's vertebrae, sending electric shockwaves through its nervous system. It screamed—a noise that shattered glass for miles.
Fitus and Riven tag-teamed a long-necked brute. Riven vaulted off Fitus' shoulders and launched an explosive charge into the creature's throat. Fitus caught its retaliating hand, held it, and broke every finger with a spiral twist of his reinforced gauntlet.
Mitus, healed but still burning with the will to prove himself, dropped from the air onto the horned head of another beast. He stabbed both swords into its eye sockets, using them as anchors to swing around, landing on its back. The creature bucked, but he clung on—carving burning lines across its skull.
Candren wasn't flashy. He was surgical. His shock cannon targeted the joints—the knees, the hips, the tendons beneath thick armor. He opened paths, and the others charged through them like floodwater.
⸻
The battlefield was a myth.
Ten colossi.
Six gods of war.
Each Warmachine fought like a legion.
They tore the beasts apart.
And when one fell, the earth shook.
When two collapsed, the sky turned black with ash.
When the third died—impaled on a fallen tower Maverick used like a lance—it took ten minutes for its body to stop burning.
⸻
By the end of the first hour, four were down. Six remained. Wounded. Furious. Adaptive.
But so were the Warmachines.
⸻
The city above them was gone now—evacuated. Not a single civilian remained. The only souls on the planet's surface…
Were soldiers.
And monsters.
___________________________________
The earth trembled beneath their feet—not from the aftershocks of battle, but from the weight of what still remained.
Ten.
Ten colossal beasts stood between the Warmachines and the last line of defense.
They were miles tall—monuments of molten fury and obsidian flesh, shaped by the hand of a mad god. Each one a living tower of war, spined with burning stone, crowned with glowing horns, their footsteps enough to tear cities in half.
And yet the six Warmachines did not flinch.
They stood at the breach of the city's shield, just outside the last functioning perimeter gate. Behind them, thousands of civilians were still evacuating. Screams echoed in the distance. The great dome-shaped energy shield shimmered, its surface cracking from the impact of previous assaults. It wouldn't hold for much longer.
Valkar turned to the others, voice like thunder in the storm. "We call for evac for the people. Not for us."
"No retreat," Riven said, cocking his cannon. "Not from this."
"We don't run," Candren growled. "Not from gods. Not from monsters."
Mitus, still battered but standing, grinned. "Let's clip their knees and tear out their spines. One by one."
Maverick said nothing.
His eyes locked on the behemoths, his breathing slow, steady. The hammer in his grip hummed with a hunger for war. He took one step forward and spoke only two words:
"Kill them."
⸻
The Warmachines charged.
Jet thrusters ignited, launching them skyward in arcs of fire. The colossal beasts reacted, hurling molten boulders and rivers of flame. One creature slammed its fists into the earth, sending a tectonic pulse across the battlefield. The terrain split and screamed, but the Warmachines moved like meteors through chaos—too fast, too brutal, too united.
Valkar struck first.
He slammed both fists into the nearest colossus' knee, shattering it backward with the sound of a collapsing skyscraper. As the titan stumbled, Riven leapt up its back, driving explosive charges into the nape of its neck before diving off and detonating midair.
The head burst in a spray of stone and magma.
One down.
Candren and Fitus tag-teamed the next beast, charging its flanks with synchronized strikes. Candren's shock cannon carved a molten trench down its side while Fitus vaulted up the arm, jamming his gauntlets into a cluster of glowing bone and ripping it free.
The beast collapsed as Candren fired into its chest point-blank, the shockwave liquefying its core.
Two down.
Another colossus opened its jaws and expelled a hurricane of burning ash. Mitus activated his thermal shield, diving straight through the storm with blades drawn. He carved twin arcs across the monster's throat while Valkar, from below, threw a collapsing plasma spear into its chest.
The explosion swallowed the beast from within.
Three down.
But the fourth charged through the smoke, slamming a crater into the ground and catching Candren in a spray of debris. He was knocked back—but Maverick was already airborne.
He crashed into the colossus' face, plasma hammer in one hand, shockwave gauntlet in the other.
He roared.
The hammer came down.
Once. Twice. A third time—each blow cracking the creature's obsidian skull until the fourth caved it in entirely, splattering lava and fire in every direction.
Four down.
The fifth attempted to retreat, but Riven and Mitus flanked it from both sides. Mitus darted across its spiked ribs, slicing through ligaments with precision strikes while Riven scaled the back, planting a pulse bomb near the spine.
The detonation caved in the back half of its body, sending the colossus into a spiral that ended in a smoking crater.
Five.
⸻
But the others weren't idle.
Three of the remaining five colossi converged, unleashing coordinated destruction. One pounded the ground with seismic force, another rained molten spikes from its spines, and the third howled—a psychic scream that rattled bone.
The Warmachines were battered—caught in a storm of fire and force. Fitus was knocked against a collapsing tower. Mitus went down hard, armor cracked. Candren shielded Riven from a rain of searing stone.
Only Maverick stood in the center of the blast, motionless.
He walked forward through the flames.
With each step, the inferno parted around him. His armor steamed, healed, flexed with power. His eyes burned behind the visor.
He lifted his hammer.
Then vanished in a blur of speed.
He appeared on the first colossus' shoulder—drove the hammer through its skull, twisting. It fell. He leapt to the second, carving it open from crown to jaw with a blazing blade summoned from his back. It roared, died, collapsed.
Seven down.
The third tried to crush him—but Valkar caught its arm mid-swing and held it back with both hands, feet skidding in the dirt.
"NOW!" Valkar bellowed.
Mitus, barely standing, jumped high—too high—and hurled a plasma charge into the gaping hole Maverick had opened moments before.
The titan's chest burst outward.
Eight.
⸻
The last two stood together—taller, crueler, smarter. They moved like predators, circling.
These were commanders. Or worse—spawned by the hands of Armatus himself.
The Warmachines gathered.
"No plan?" Riven asked.
"No time," Candren said.
Maverick raised his hammer, nodded once.
They charged as one.
Riven and Fitus distracted the left colossus, baiting it into a downward strike. Candren used that moment to leap through its open guard and fire a charged beam straight into its gut. Valkar followed, grabbing the beam and forcing it deeper until the creature began to convulse violently.
Meanwhile, Mitus climbed the final beast alone—fighting exhaustion, blood dripping from his side.
It grabbed him midair.
Slammed him down.
Mitus screamed.
"Mitus!" Valkar roared.
But Maverick was already there.
He launched up, shoulder-first into the colossus' throat, forcing it to release its grip. He caught Mitus mid-fall, placed him down, then activated both gauntlets and struck the creature's heart with a double pulse.
The explosion ripped through the beast like a solar flare.
It staggered.
Riven, Candren, and Fitus unloaded every weapon they had into its back.
And Maverick…
He stood over the fallen Mitus, hammer in hand, blood and light pouring from his arms.
"You want war?" he whispered.
He spun the hammer.
"Then fall to those who were forged for it."
He hurled the weapon—plasma roaring—into the colossus' face.
It shattered through skull, spine, and stone.
Nine.
The tenth staggered.
Bleeding, broken.
It turned—tried to flee.
Too late.
All six Warmachines descended on it like judgment itself—blades flashing, fists breaking, plasma and pulse tearing it apart limb by limb.
The colossus screamed one last time.
Then silence.
Ten.
⸻
The battlefield was still again.
Smoke coiled from the bodies of fallen titans. Fire glowed from distant wreckage. The shield held—for now.
Valkar looked around. "Mitus?"
The youngest stood slowly, armor cracked, bleeding but alive. "Still here."
Fitus smirked. "Barely."
Maverick walked past them all, retrieved his hammer from the final beast's corpse, and stood atop it.
He looked to the burning horizon.
Toward the moon of Vornex Prime.
He didn't speak.
He didn't have to.
The others joined him—standing in silence.
Together.
The Warmachines.
Unbroken.
Unyielding.
And ready for what came next.