The extraction had gone smoother than expected, up until the horizon began to burn with silver banners.
House Ornes.
Fornos saw them first through his lens-glass—dull, iron-grey formations moving like knife blades across the canyon rim, descending with the discipline of veteran executioners. Their golems carried the white-drake sigil of Ornes: an ancient crest, but worn fresh on armor that gleamed like the sun hitting sharpened metal.
"Did we achieve our target?" Fornos asked, his voice measured.
"90% of it," Konos answered, eyes still locked on the distant cliffs. "Could've been worse. Could've been better."
Fornos didn't react. "Is the beast healed?"
Roa, her coat covered in mana-glow residue, looked up from her instruments. "Relict regeneration is... frightening. Its front legs are almost good as new. It's not at full strength, but it's walking again. Slowly."
Fornos clenched his jaw. Uru-Maul's partial fall had bought them time, and they'd used it well—harvesting bone shards, gland residues, even a still-glowing cluster of spinal mana crystals. But if the beast got fully mobile again, the entire extraction force would be overrun.
"All forces, retreat to position Azac," Fornos ordered.
Immediately, the ranks began to move—without panic, but with urgency. Buster, their designated breacher frame, stepped forward like a mobile fortress. The heavy fire platform pivoted its quadruple mana cannons backward, targeting the canyon walls with deliberate aim. With every echoing blast, the ancient stone crumbled into controlled landslides, choking the approaches just behind them.
Dust rose like clouds of mourning, cutting visibility and buying time.
SPIDER pods skittered over the battlefield—small, agile cargo lifters shaped like crablike hexapeds. One after another, they sealed crates in lead-quartz coffers: everything they'd ripped from Uru-Maul's broken hide. No words were exchanged, only flashes of green-light confirmation as each pod compressed and locked down the goods.
Combat frames began erasing their tracks—automated self-powdering systems firing bursts of powdered stone, masking the convoy's true direction. Within minutes, their trail was as silent as their operators. Only dust and cracked stone remained.
Three kilometers up-canyon, Azac Ridge offered both elevation and concealment—perfect for a temporary standstill.
"Let's set up here. It'll be a good view," Fornos said, tapping his map with a gloved finger.
"A view of what, exactly?" Martin asked, still panting from the retreat.
"How an actual army fights," Konos replied before Fornos could. His voice had shifted again—deeper, almost theatrical. The switch was sudden, like someone else had stepped into his skin. "Pay heed, young ones. It will be a good lesson."
Peter shook his head. "You really need to control that personality switch."
"He's an old man. It's part of him," Fornos muttered, smirking faintly. "But he's right. Watch carefully. Not many armies have the stones to engage a city-class Relict on open ground."
The Ash Company settled behind the quartz-pocked ridgeline, their golems crouched or seated in still vigilance. Even Wraith and Martin, usually bickering, fell quiet. Park and Mark said nothing as always—but they nodded slowly, as if in agreement.
Across the divide, the true show began.
House Ornes deployed with surgical precision. The vanguard was composed of tiered wedge formations—dozens of golems layered behind rotating shield units. These weren't flashy warbeasts or noble prototypes. They were functional, brutal machines built to kill.
First came the iron-clad shock troopers—short, wide-bodied golems that pushed forward with impact drivers instead of arms. Each blast against Uru-Maul's hide rang like temple bells, shattering crystals and shaking the cliffs anew.
Then came the Scalers—thin, multi-limbed constructs that clung to the behemoth's rising flanks. They lanced into its quartz-flesh with spear drills and mana scythes, carving open vents of ether steam. Uru-Maul let out another guttural roar that made even Ash Company flinch.
The rear lines followed with artillery walkers, launching alchemical payloads designed to pierce its basalt plates. Green-tinged fire blossomed across its back like a forest ablaze.
"You see that?" Konos gestured to the second line. "Interlocking fire arcs. They aren't targeting at random. Every volley pushes the Relict toward a specific collapse vector."
"They're herding it," Mary whispered, wide-eyed.
"Exactly," Konos said, his usual sarcasm gone. "This isn't combat. It's surgery."
Uru-Maul fought back. It reared, swiping a limb wide enough to crush fortresses—but Ornes had planned for that. Every time it moved to attack, fresh groups of frame-units baited it into overreaching, then retreated into carefully laid trap zones.
Explosive glyph mines erupted beneath its legs. Mana-tether harpoons latched into its shoulders. They were shaving it down, one brutal incision at a time.
"And this..." Konos muttered, almost reverently, "is what House Ornes does best. Not politics. Not diplomacy. War. They can't charm a goat into kneeling, but they can kill a god."
Minutes passed. Then half an hour. And finally, as the sun dipped behind the jagged cliffs, Uru-Maul collapsed—its entire front folded into the ground like an avalanche of flesh and armor.
A final blast from Ornes' centerline—six golems synchronizing a siege-beam from three angles—cut straight through its neck. The titan convulsed once. Then stopped.
The canyon was silent.
From behind the ridge, no one in the Ash Company moved. Not even Roa. Even Peter was quiet for once.
"...And that's the price of trying to tame a monster instead of killing it outright," Konos said, voice low now. "They just lost ten golems doing that. And they'll call it cheap."
Fornos stared for a long moment. Then, calmly, he spoke.
"Roa. Ross. Mark. Get the data files ready. Every maneuver, every attack pattern. I want simulations running by nightfall."
"You planning to fight them next?" Mary asked, not entirely joking.
Fornos didn't smile.
"No," he said. "But someday... someone will. And when that happens, I want to know exactly how far we are behind."
As the ash from Uru-Maul's fall still drifted in the canyon wind, Ash Company turned back to their own preparations.
Because while Ornes had won the battle—they had not stolen the prize.
And Fornos Dag had no intention of letting them try again.