The ground beneath the forward outer edge didn’t merely shake. It hummed with the angry, thrumming shaking of five hundred armored Obsidian Void Rhinos charging at full tilt.
Each beast was thirty feet of walking, living siege engine. Their hulking frames were sheathed in natural plates of black star-fallen iron three feet thick, studded with jagged fiery nodules that crackled with arcs of violet void-lightning. Their twin nasal horns, shaped like massive tuning forks of dense black glass, channeled the entropic static of the deep pit, invisible the dust clouds behind them into boiling purple sparks.
From the castle walls five miles back, Commander Zhao gripped the castle walls in sheer despair. “Black glass Void Rhinos!” Zhao shouted, his voice hoarse. “Their natural iron armor is fully immune to mortal swords! Even the lightning-magic charms of our elite elders will do nothing—they feed on lightning! Spark strikes only speed up their charge! If they hit the timber palisades, the entire castle foundation will be shattered like peanut shells!”
Behind him, Regional Envoy Wu, clutching his jade seal of power, backed away from the castle walls with trembling knees. “It’s over! Flee! Sound the retreat to the country inside! What can a bunch of farm boys with shovels and wire do against five hundred walking mountains of star-fallen iron?!”
