The true test of Leo's dual-world existence arrived not with a whimper, but with the thunderous tremor of the earth itself.
It started at dusk. The birds in the surrounding forest went silent, a sudden, heavy quiet that made the hair on the back of Leo's neck stand up. Then came the sound—a low, rhythmic thumping that grew into a roar. The Blood-Tusk Bandits, a ruthless army of marauders whose name was whispered in fear across the Western Marches, had descended upon the valley.
They didn't come alone. Lumbering beside the leather-clad warriors were armored trolls—massive, grey-skinned creatures of muscle and rage, standing twelve feet tall. Heavy iron chains rattled as they walked, goaded into war by handlers wielding electrified whips.
Oakhaven was in panic. The town bell tolled a frantic, uneven warning. Mothers grabbed their children, slamming shutters and barring doors. The town's militia, brave but woefully under-equipped with rusted iron spears and basic elemental magic, scrambled to man the rotting wooden palisades.
The Captain of the Guard, a grizzled veteran named Kael, stood by the gate, his face pale. "We can't hold them," he muttered, gripping his sword until his knuckles turned white. "Not with trolls. They'll smash the gates like kindling."
Fear hung thick in the air, palpable and suffocating, smelling of sweat and impending death. They were hopelessly outmatched.
Leo stood atop the town's highest watchtower, the wind whipping at his flannel shirt. He looked down at the gathering darkness, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. His hands were shaking, not from cold, but from adrenaline. He wasn't a soldier. He couldn't summon a meteor. He didn't have a platoon of tanks or a squadron of F-16s on speed dial. He was an engineering student with a backpack full of consumer electronics and a C-minus in thermodynamics.
But he knew something the people of Astra didn't. He understood the terrifying power of the unknown.
"Psychological warfare," he muttered to himself, his fingers dancing over the touch screen of his drone controller. "Fear is the mind-killer. And I'm about to become the nightmare."
As the first wave of bandits charged the gates, screaming their bloodcurdling war cries and banging their axes against their shields, Leo launched the quadcopter. It buzzed into the night sky, a silent predator invisible against the dark, storm-laden clouds.
On his screen, the thermal camera painted the world in shades of predator-orange and victim-blue. He could see the heat radiating from the trolls, the cool steel of the bandit weapons. He pinpointed the bandit leader, a hulking figure wearing a helm made from a wyvern's skull, shouting orders from the rear.
"Showtime," Leo whispered.
He flicked a series of heavy-duty toggle switches on his makeshift control board, which was wired to a cluster of car batteries at his feet.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Four industrial-grade, 20,000-lumen LED floodlights—mounted strategically on the watchtowers and concealed by canvas—snapped on simultaneously.
The effect was instantaneous. The battlefield, previously shrouded in the soft, flickering, comforting glow of torches, was suddenly bathed in a blinding, clinical white light. It was an eruption of artificial daylight, harsh, shadowless, and unforgiving. It was the light of an interrogation room amplified a thousand times.
The bandits stumbled, shielding their eyes, their momentum shattered. They screamed as their night vision was instantly bleached away. The trolls roared in confusion, pawing at their faces, blinded and disoriented by the "sun" appearing in the middle of the night.
Before they could recover, Leo cranked the dial on his amplifier to maximum volume. He had wired a concert-grade sound system to the tower walls. He pressed play on his smartphone.
A sound never before heard in Astra tore through the air.
Wooooooooooooo-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The deafening, distorted wail of a recorded World War II air-raid siren screamed across the valley. To modern ears, it was a warning of bombs. To the bandits, who knew only the sounds of beasts and thunder, it was the roar of a mechanical god. It was the sound of the sky tearing open.
Panic, raw and primal, seized the marauders.
"The Sky Demon!" one bandit shrieked, dropping his axe.
"Sorcery of the Void!" another cried.
The trolls, terrified by the unearthly noise that vibrated in their very bones and the blinding light that seared their eyes, snapped. They tore at their chains, turning on their handlers. They smashed through the bandit ranks, trampling their "allies" in their haste to escape the wrath of the unknown deity in the tower.
The bandit vanguard broke rank. Discipline evaporated. Men who would face a dragon without flinching threw down their weapons and scrambled over each other to get away from the "Archmage's" terrible light.
The Oakhaven militia, initially stunned, rallied behind the dazzling display of their protector.
"For the Sorcerer of Steel!" Captain Kael roared, drawing his sword. "Charge!"
They poured out of the gates, chasing the fleeing, blinded bandits into the forest.
Leo watched from the tower, his knees finally giving out. He slumped against the wooden railing, turning down the volume on the siren.
"That," he exhaled, wiping sweat from his forehead, "was loud."