The Last cohort

THE WRATH OF THE MOOR

The frozen platform was a precarious island in a sea of waking nightmare. Below their feet, the golden glow of the sword pulsed like a trapped star, its light barely piercing the murky, poisoned water. Above, the Water Wraith reformed, larger now, fed by their intrusion, its vortex of despair spinning faster, pulling at their very souls. The air crackled with impending violence.

“The sword is there,” Marcus stated, his voice cutting through the collective dread. “But the water is poison, and that thing…” He nodded at the Wraith. “…will not let us simply dive for it.”

“The poison I can temper,” Bran said, his breathing labored. He knelt, pressing his palms against the ice. A faint green aura spread from his hands, seeping into the frozen water. “I can create a pocket of clean air around a diver. But it will be small. It will not last long. And it will not protect you from the Wraith.”

“Then someone distracts the Wraith,” Morganna said, nocking an arrow. Her eyes were fixed on the swirling entity. “My arrows cannot hurt it, but I can make it notice me.”

“A single diver,” Valerius added, his tactical mind engaging. “Fast. Strong. The rest of us form a perimeter on this ice. We hold back whatever else the lake throws at us.”

All eyes turned to Marcus. He was the obvious choice. He was a strong swimmer, he had the courage, and the entire mad strategy had been his. But as he moved to the edge of the ice, a massive hand clamped down on his shoulder.

“No,” Hrothgar’s voice rumbled.

They all turned. The Saxon chief stood there, his beard glistening with spray, his eyes burning with a strange light. In the chaos of the crossing, he had fought his way to the front, his Dane-axe slick with black ichor.

“This is not a task for a boy who thinks,” Hrothgar said, his gaze locked on the Wraith. “This is a task for a man who endures.” He pointed his axe at the creature. “That thing is not of steel and sinew. It is of sorrow. It is a weight on the soul. My people know this weight. We have carried it across the cold sea for generations. We have sung our sorrow into strength.”

He looked at Marcus, and for the first time, there was no challenge in his eyes, only a grim, fatalistic resolve. “You are the head of this alliance, Aquila. Your mind forges the path. But this… this is a burden for my back. My seer gave her sight for this moment. My strength is the price.”

Before anyone could argue, Hrothgar began stripping off his heavy ringmail shirt. “The Druid. Give me your breath. I will bring this sword of war to the hand that can wield it.”

The interactivity was instantaneous and charged. Marcus wanted to protest, but he saw the unshakeable logic in the Saxon’s words. He was the strategist; Hrothgar was the unstoppable force. To argue was to waste the precious seconds Bran’s magic was buying them.

Bran, his face grey with strain, nodded. He placed a hand on Hrothgar’s bare chest. “Breathe deep, son of the north. And hold it as if your life depends on it. For it does.” A soft green light enveloped Hrothgar’s head, forming a faint, shimmering bubble of air.

Morganna didn’t wait. “Silures! Loose at the Wraith! Aim for the faces within it! Give them something to remember besides sorrow!”

Her archers let fly. The arrows vanished into the watery form, but the Wraith shuddered, its attention diverting towards the new source of irritation.

“Now, Saxon!” Valerius commanded. “Go!”

With a final, deep breath, Hrothgar dove. He cut through the dark water like a spear, the green bubble around his head a lone beacon descending into the abyss.

The moment he disappeared beneath the surface, the lake erupted. The Drowned Men who had been held at the dam now hurled themselves into the water, swimming with unnatural speed towards the ice platform. The Water Wraith, enraged, lashed out. A wave of freezing energy slammed into the Roman shield wall. Men cried out as rime coated their armor, their movements slowing.

“Hold the line!” Septimus roared, his sword shattering a frozen Drowned Man that tried to claw its way onto the ice. “For the Saxon!”

The battle on the ice was a whirlwind of desperation. Romans and Silures fought back-to-back, a kaleidoscope of tactics and traditions fused into a single, desperate defense. A Roman shield would block a crushing blow from a waterlogged limb, and a Silure spear would instantly dart in to pierce the thing’s skull. Marcus fought with his gladius and shield, his world narrowed to the next threat, his mind screaming with the need to protect the ice until Hrothgar returned.

Below, Hrothgar swam downwards, the Druid’s air a sweet, unnatural fire in his lungs. The water was cold enough to kill, but the magic held it at bay. The golden glow grew brighter, revealing a scene of horror. The lakebed was a graveyard, littered with the bones of the lost, all oriented towards the center, towards a simple stone altar. And upon that altar lay a sword.

It was longer than a Roman gladius, with a blade of dark, unrusted iron that seemed to drink the light, and a hilt of gold fashioned into the shape of a raptor’s wings. It was the Sword of Mars. And coiled around the altar, its form half-buried in the silt, was the true guardian—a massive, spectral serpent, a creature of pure Fomorii essence, the source of the Water Wraith above. It was the Wraith’s heart.

The serpent’s eyes, pools of void, opened. It uncoiled, its maw opening in a silent scream that Hrothgar felt in his bones. It was a scream of absolute negation, a force that sought to unmake his will, his memory, his very name.

Hrothgar did not try to fight it with thought. He filled his mind with the Song of the Sea King, the same chant that had broken the Thornsmen. He filled it with the memory of salt spray and the feel of a steering oar, with the weight of his axe and the laughter of his hall. He was a Saxon. He was a story of survival. And he would not be unmade.

He kicked forward, straight for the altar. The spectral serpent struck, its fangs of condensed despair aiming for his heart. Hrothgar twisted in the water, and the fangs scraped against his side, leaving a trail of frozen, blackened flesh that felt neither hot nor cold, but simply empty. He grunted, the sound a stream of bubbles, and grabbed the hilt of the sword.

The moment his hand closed around it, the world exploded.

Above, on the ice platform, a shockwave of raw, crimson energy erupted from the water. The Water Wraith shrieked, its form destabilizing. The Drowned Men simply dissolved, their borrowed animation severed.

Hrothgar burst from the surface, gasping, the shimmering air bubble gone. In his right hand, he held the Sword of Mars. It thrummed with a power that was both terrible and magnificent, its dark blade now sheathed in a flickering aura of b****y light. The flesh on his left side was withered and grey, as if decades of life had been sucked from it in an instant.

He hauled himself onto the ice and stumbled towards Marcus. His face was pale, his breath coming in ragged gasps, but his eyes blazed with triumph.

“The head… of the snake… is severed,” he rasped. He thrust the sword into Marcus’s hands.

The moment Marcus’s fingers touched the hilt, a jolt like lightning shot up his arm. Visions of ancient battlefields, of legionaries fighting monsters of myth, of a god of war screaming in triumph and rage, flooded his mind. The sword was impossibly heavy, not with physical weight, but with the burden of its purpose. It was a weapon for ending worlds.

The Water Wraith gave one final, fading shriek and collapsed back into the lake, which now lay still and silent, the oppressive misery lifting as if a fever had broken.

They had done it. They had the sword.

But as Marcus looked from the divine weapon in his hands to the grievously wounded Saxon who had retrieved it, and to the exhausted, battered faces of his comrades, he knew the victory was only the beginning. They had pulled a tooth from the lion. Now they had to figure out how to slay the beast with it. The Wraiths of the Moor were gone, but the Moor itself—the vast, blighted power of the Fomorii—remained, and it had just felt its most prized possession being stolen.