"Prepare the loader. We need to break the mountain's outer shell."
The voice carried authority without raising itself.
Outside the mountain, a group of slayers moved with practiced efficiency around a strange device positioned on the open ground. Runes covered every surface of it, carved deep and layered in a way that suggested the thing had been modified and adjusted over many uses. Heavy. Deliberate. Built for exactly this kind of work.
The mountain itself rose above them, massive and still, the force field around it visible only as a faint distortion in the air near the rock face. Like heat shimr, but colder.
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The history of how they had arrived here was not a simple one.
Humans and beasts operated in a state of permanent tension. The natural condition between the two was conflict, mistrust, and the constant negotiation of who held which ground. Equilibrium existed, technically. But it required conditions. Specific ones. And it never lasted.
In this particular case, the chain of events had started with slayers.
A group of them, reckless and underprepared, had stumbled directly into the Red Mane Lion's breakthrough. A critical mont. The kind of vulnerability that a beast at that level guarded above all else. They had blundered into it and caused damage, injuring him severely at the exact mont he could least afford to be touched.
The response had been imdiate and total.
He had killed every single one of them.
That alone might have been managed. Slayers died in the field. The beast council had chanisms for situations where humans pushed too far and paid for it. A suppression order, a formal boundary revision, sothing to contain the incident and move forward.
But the Red Mane Lion's rage hadn't stopped there.
He had gone to one of the human camps and killed indiscriminately. Civilians, support staff, people who had nothing to do with the slayers who had disturbed him. He tore through the camp and left nothing standing.
Even that might have been navigated, if ssily.
Then he had struck a mber of the Silver Fur Baboons.
That was the mistake that unraveled everything.
The beast council could step in on behalf of human incidents and shut them down. That was within their authority. But the mont a Silver Fur Baboon was involved, the politics shifted into territory the council couldn't manage cleanly. Two beast factions now. Two sets of grievances. The Red Mane Lion had handed every interested party a reason to move against him, and the war that followed was the result.
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"This is a great opportunity."
The S-rank standing at the front of the group turned and looked back at the younger slayers assembled behind him. His expression was composed. Not excited. Just certain.
"I hope you're all ready."
The group behind him ranged in age and rank but shared the sa forward-leaning posture of people who had been waiting for a mont like this. The Red Mane Lions were a high-level beast tribe. Clearing their ho base would hand out gene points on a scale that didn't co around often. Every mber of this group understood that.
They didn't particularly dwell on the humans the Red Mane Lion had killed. Those people weren't prominent. Weren't connected. Their deaths had opened a door, and the door was what mattered now.
"Yes, Master Razor!!"
The response ca back as one voice.
Behind that group, a smaller cluster of people stood equipped and quiet. Different energy. Less uniform. They weren't part of Razor's formation. They were adjacent to it, moving alongside without being folded in.
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Victoria's team had been out searching for days.
No trace of Guilliman anywhere.
They hadn't stopped. Hadn't given up. But the valley was getting increasingly dangerous to move through freely, the war between the factions pushing heat outward into zones that had previously been manageable. Staying exposed for extended periods was becoming a problem with a cost attached.
Then the King Shi family sent the call directly.
Their younger generation was being deployed to help clear the Red Mane Lion ho base. That kind of operation required supervision. People positioned specifically to ensure the younger mbers didn't die in ways that would be difficult to explain. Victoria's team, along with several others, was pulled into that role.
She hadn't argued.
But she hadn't stopped watching either.
"Lady Victoria."
A young man pulled up beside her team on a beast, slowing to match their pace before stopping. He had the look of soone who had been riding hard to deliver sothing and was choosing his words carefully now that he had arrived.
"I checked what you asked." He kept his voice low, angled toward her. "A Guilliman Naldir from the nightmare desert did enter King Shi's registry a while ago. Renewed his license."
He paused.
"But there are no traces of him coming into the valley."
He left it there. Didn't add to it. Didn't need to.
He knew the lady had history connected to the nightmare desert. He knew what this particular na ant to her, even if he didn't know all the details. And he knew what it ant if she had genuinely seen soone in this valley who had no recorded entry.
Neither of them wanted to finish that thought.
Either Jemie had been wrong about what he saw.
Or Guilliman had entered the valley through ans that didn't leave a record.
Both options were uncomfortable in different ways.
"That's okay." Victoria looked at the young man and gave a small, composed bow. Gracious. Final. She wasn't going to press the conversation further here, in the open, with everything else already in motion around them.
"Thank you for the information."
He inclined his head and pulled away.
Victoria straightened and looked forward.
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"Ready!!"
The word landed sharp.
"Fire!!"
The loader discharged.
The sound it made wasn't an explosion exactly. More like a compression releasing all at once, a deep cracking boom that rolled outward and hit the mountain before anyone had finished registering the noise. The runes across the device flared briefly, bright and then gone.
The mountain shook.
Rock fractured along stress lines that ran deep into the outer shell, the surface cracking in slow dramatic sections before pieces began to fall. The force field around it buckled, flickered, and collapsed.
The distortion in the air disappeared.
"That's it." The old man's voice carried over the noise without effort. "Everyone move in."
The group mobilized instantly, slayers pushing forward toward the mountain's fractured face, the opening widening as they approached.
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On the far side of the mountain, another group was already inside.
No cannon. No device. No announcent.
They had found the back entrance and slipped through it quietly while every eye was pointed at the front.
The mountain swallowed them without resistance.
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