The gentle creak of heavy hardwood axles and the rhythmic, ground-shivering thud of massive stone footsteps shattered the breathless stillness of the Great Marsh Plain.
Through the wide-open gates of the Myriad Spirit Safe hall’s forward stockade, a convoy unlike anything ever witnessed on a mortal battlefield rolled out onto the thawed, tender spring grass. It wasn’t a vanguard of armored war chariots, nor was it a finger bone of spiked siege rams. It was an armada of thirty huge timber food wagons, each measuring over a hundred feet in length, hewn from polished mountain hardwood and heavy with glowing brass brackets.
Propelling these massive timber platforms were not sweating draft oxen or chained war-beasts, but Da Shi and his eleven fellow First Epoch Obsidian Golems. The twenty-foot titans of polished black dark rock stepped forward in perfect, timed together peace, their broad stone palms resting effortlessly against the rear chassis of the wagons. Carved onto their broad granite faces were broad, cheerful stone grins, their sapphire rune-eyes twinkling with pleasant warmth. Beside the rolling wheels trotted teams of white-tailed foxes and agile gray river otters, balancing woven baskets of deep bamboo bowls and carved birch chopsticks on their shoulders like seasoned banquet runners.
