All around them, the heavy hull shields were folded up to form the sides of the seed lance, as the wardancers chanted out a simple refrain, a mantra to focus the mind and banish fear. One word, over and over again: Ama-ZON, Ama-ZON, Ama-ZON.

     All throughout the lance, the soldiers slapped at their padded restraints and stomped their feet in time  as they added their voice to the chant. The chorus swelled, as the soldiers’ voices unified them, reminding the warriors of their singular purpose and identity—brave warriors of Amazon nation. As the tempo and intensity of the chant began to increase, Delara let her eyes drift upward, gazing up through the seed lance’s open top to the blue sky above.

     Outside. Soon she’d be looking up at a sky in a completely different plane of existence. The plane where the rest of humanity lived. The plane where  knights, princesses, castles, and dragons existed for real. Even if that wasn’t where she was going now, still she’d be under the same sky—the star-speckled realm that encompassed the thousands of shardworlds of Shattered Zemyah. 

     The Amazon chant reached a crescendo, transforming into a long, wordless battle cry, as the wheel blocks were removed and the seed lance was shoved from behind. Delara felt the acceleration build, and had a few seconds to look back down at Mina, her forearms braced against Delara’s shield, eyes shut, head thrown back, gleefully yelling her head off.

     Delara felt a powerful jolt through the frame of the lance, as a bizarre full-spectrum band of color passed overhead, followed by a second jolt, as they were plunged into pitch darkness. For Delara, that just meant the world around her lost all color, thanks to the eyesight she’d inherited from her father the orc knight. But it told her that the seed lance had left its rails and crossed realities. 

     The padded rails of the stocks pressed into Delara’s back as the lance driver hit the brakes, followed by a hard snap as it rammed into something and went still. The wardancers went quiet for a brief second, before beginning a new chant, this one exhorting them all to deploy. Delara fumbled at her restraint buckle. There was starlight coming from up above, but it wasn’t like what she’d read in her stories. Everything looked faded and smeared, as though it had been covered in grease. Was this interference from the Plane of Shadow, that influenced so many shardworlds in the Varkathian Empire’s territory?

     Delara released her buckle and was retrieving her spear when two hands grabbed her helmet on either side, and suddenly Mina was inches from Delara’s face, her vertical cat pupils open wide in the low light.

     “If you survive this battle, come find me,” she said, and kissed Delara on the lips. “Later, nerd.”

And with that, Mina scrambled up the stocks and leapt out of the open roof of the lance, her fluffy cat tail brushing against Delara’s helmet as she did.

     The cheek guards of Delara’s helmet had actually blocked most of the kiss, but she still felt a slight tingle from the bit that had made contact. She also felt the harsh bite of frigid air through the gaps in armor, another brand new sensation for a child of Amazonia. Better get moving to warm up. Delara shoved on the hull shield to tip it open as its integrated light enchantments activated, then ran down it to ground level, shield up, spear ready, as she’d been trained. 

     No one was there to oppose her. She heard screams and grunts and other sounds of battle, but that was all from the stalkers and the tuned, who’d leapt out of the seed lance and attacked as skirmishers. The four seed lances had emerged in the skydock end of the Korchra Reaper’s base, which also contained their teleportation circles, to cut off any possibility of retreat. One lance’s worth of troops headed back to the skydock with a team of sappers, to ensure that none of the three astral ships docked there would be able to take off.

     Delara could already see flames lighting up from those ships and from various points around her, as the stalkers hurled their black oil bombs at enemy targets. In particular, the Korcha Reapers had managed to get a hold of around twenty of the Varkath Empire’s latest magitanks, magically-powered armored vehicles with wheeled legs and arcane cannon turrets. These could chew through hoplites like a wheat thresher, so it was up to the stalkers to cover their air vents with flaming black oil, suffocating anyone inside, and ensuring no one outside could enter them.

     Cora took up position besides Delara, while Rue turned back and grabbed one of the control struts of the hull shield, as another Amazon from two cells ahead did the same. Together, they activated the shield’s levitation enchantment and it popped off the ground, effectively weightless despite its great mass. Eight feet high and six feet long, and magically treated to resist all forms of damage, the hull shields were the Amazon’s mobile fortifications, part of their battle line, that could be combined with a conventional phalanx in any number of ways.

     Rue and the other hull-bearer whirled the hull shield in position, waiting briefly for the troops ahead of them to get set, and then they all advanced in double-time, according to the coded instructions coming from the wardancers, just as they’d done over and over in their many drills. 

     “Can’t believe it,” grumbled Rue as they ran, “Delara, how the fuck do you manage to get action right before an operation? It’s insane.”

     Delara scowled at that. What a thing to bring up, at a time like this.

     “I didn’t do anything.”

     “That’s just it, you never do anything,” said Rue. “They just come flocking to you. There has to be some trick to it.”

     “It’s not her fault,” said Cora. “Being popular is just this horrible curse that she has to bear.”

     “Hey, you think you two could maybe focus on the mission a little bit?” Delara complained.

     “Naw, it’s just my nature,” said Rue. “My dad was the court jester of Euclid von Booger, Earl of Shittington. From the shardworld of Tits-topia. He left me his special family hat, all pointy with bells on. I’m wearing it beneath my helmet, because it inspires me so fucking much.”

     Delara groaned, while Cora laughed her head off. Now she really couldn’t wait to kill something.

     “But seriously,” said Cora. “After we’re done here you’d better find that loopy cat girl and fuck her like she clearly wants you to. If you go back and hide in your tent again I swear to the Goddess I’m going to find you and strangle you.”

     “What, you actually like Mina?” said Delara. 

     “Well, you clearly do, given how your face kept lighting up every time she looked at you,” said Cora. “And anyone who finally manages to wash the taste of Sofia out of your mouth is cool with me.”

     “You never liked Sofia,” said Delara.

     “Because she made you miserable.”

     “Not all the time,” said Delara. “And you didn’t like her before then.”

     “Because I could tell she was going to make you miserable,” said Cora. “That shit was like watching a shipwreck in slow motion.”

     “Who’s Sofia?” said the other hull-bearer, who hadn’t been privy to their pre-battle conversation.

     “Delara’s ex,” said Rue. “A librarian.”

     “A ridiculous, insecure waif,” said Cora, “Who happened to be the closest thing she could find in Amazonia to one of those pathetic, helpless princesses from those chivalry stories she’s so obsessed with.”

     Delara winced. That one actually hit a little too close to home.

     “Not all the women in those stories are helpless,” she protested.

     “Your opinion,” said Cora. “But none of them would qualify for Stalker Corps, like that catkin, which means she can’t be a complete fuck-up, so she’s leagues better.”

     Delara had nothing to say to that, so she said nothing, hoping that would be enough to kill this whole impromptu conversation about her love life. Their squad cleared the bottleneck created by the four empty seed lances and spread out, along with all the other hoplite squads, to form a battle line sweeping from one end of the mercenary compound to the other. 

     On either side of her, Delara could see rows of magitanks, each one covered with flaming oil, and she’d already stepped past a few corpses, riddled with stalker arrows. Ahead of her, she saw more troops waiting for the formation to complete. She recognized some of them. There were Asha and Sasha, who she’d grown up with in their clan home, dark-skinned, with their wooly hair twisted into thick strands that had grown longer since the last time she’d seen them, when they’d left to train in primal magic from the strange shamans of Amazonia, living out in the untamed rain forests. They chanted in unison, gesturing and waving feathered totems, as dark clouds gathered low overhead in the dark sky. Then they threw their hands up and a deafening crack of thunder blasted out across the compound as twin bolts of lightning struck targets out beyond the skirmish line. But they weren’t done. Both of them fell forward, on all fours, as their bodies began to distort. Black fur sprouted from their bodies as they transformed into huge jungle cats and bounded off to join the skirmishers, even as their lightning spell continued to rain devastation on the Korchra Reapers.

     Their squad passed another familiar face, though only one seen from afar. Halfrid clan Hagen, who’d dominated the national archery competitions for over a decade, had just finished stringing her massive longbow. Though dressed in stalker kit, her long blonde hair trailing down her back in a single braid, she wasn’t rushing out like they were. Instead, she drew one of her distinctive arrows, fletched with brightly-colored parrot feathers, nocked it, and fired. The arrow flew off somewhere far in the distance, too far to imagine that it would hit something, except Delara had seen her demonstrate crazier feats at the Arena Amazonia. Halfred could stand at one end of the field and hit bullseyes on targets on the other end at will, and Delara noted that today she was wearing odd jeweled goggles. Perhaps they gave her effective farsight in this gloom.

Next was one of the wardancer squads, clad in minimal armor to give them freedom to dance and play their instruments, which they hadn’t been able to play well when crammed into the narrow stocks of the seed lance. They had chimes, wooden flutes, bells, trumpets, and a wide variety of drums. They were making a terrific racket, and their percussion was punctuated with actual thunder, in time to the music, as Asha, Sasha, and the other shamans all acted in concert with the coded commands contained in the Amazon battle hymn. Delara saw Lance Commander Eza marching right beside the wardancer conductor, ready to issue orders and alter the song at a moment’s notice.

     They ran past one final special group, clad in white and pale blue, with polished silver mail gleaming even in the night, the holy warriors of the goddess, led by the youngest of the Goddess’ thirteen high priestesses, Xanthe clan Galatas. Her long dark blue hair was parted in twin braids that descended past her pointed elf ears to rest on the front of her shoulders. She brandished her sacred Triple Moon Scepter, while her three acolytes fanned out in front of her, faces covered with stylized masks of maiden, mother, and crone, each bearing a crescent sickle with a long chain attached to the pommel. The other end of the chain held a spiked censer head, that the three swung ahead of them like pendulums, wafting holy incense in time with the wardancers’ song. And each of these holy women was flanked by a protector—except for the High Priestess, who had two of them. These were the Holy Champions of the goddess, their features hidden by their silver helms and armor—the heaviest that the Amazons had, each bearing whatever arms they preferred.

     It wasn’t unheard of for a wildling like Delara to hear the voice of the goddess Shoskara, but it had never happened to her, else she might have been tempted to apply to be a holy champion—the closest thing to a true knight that the Amazons had.

     Finally they reached the mustering point, falling into a loose line of battle. Delara hung slightly behind Rue, peering around the edge of the hull shield, prepared to either reinforce a phalanx or thrust her spear at enemies that might attempt to climb over the shield, as the wardancers commanded. From here she could see more corpses, dark elves, orcs, and dvergar, mostly. Stabbed, riddled with stalker arrows—she saw one headless corpse lying near a pile of strange, reddish ice, and realized that its head had been frozen solid by a tuned nun and then shattered. She felt her stomach roil at the sight, but she maintained her composure, swallowing hard and steeling her nerves.

     They’d gathered at the mouth of a canyon, the elevated back of which held the main walled compound of the Korchra Reapers. The approach was a wide, open field sloping upwards, at least a half mile long, bordered by steep cliffs on the left side, and a perilous crevasse on the right. On the field ahead, Delara saw some actual fighting, the tuned and the stalkers swarming around a bizarre giant, some twelve feet tall. 

     It was a shadow golem—one of the Korchra Reaper’s strange arcane weapons of war. Delara had been briefed on them like everyone else, but seeing one for real was something else. Roughly human-shaped, its body was comprised of a massive brass-plated steel skeleton, serving as the frame for flesh of inky black shadow. The stalker’s arrows passed through the creature’s body as though it wasn’t there, but every time it tried to stomp on a Amazon, the ground shook with the weight of the impact. The tuned and stalkers seemed to be able to dodge its stilted movements, while one of the shaman twins snarled at it from out of range in her cat form, thankfully remembering to not empower the thing by hitting it with lightning. The tuned were having some success, their spiritually-powered attacks sending turbulent waves through the creature’s form with every strike. 

     As Delara watched, a particularly bold Tuned ran straight at the giant, jumping into the prepared hands of two of her comrades, who launched her skyward. She landed on the giant’s back, and kept going, each barehanded strike gouging into its shadow-flesh, propelling herself upward, until she reached its head. The giant swung at her, but only managed to dent its own metal skull as she dodged aside, then flipped over its stunned head, all of her momentum channeled into a single, powerful kick that shattered the golem’s central onyx eye. The thing spasmed and pitched over like a felled oak. When it his the ground, its shadowy body vanished, leaving only a metal skeleton, as the victorious tuned fell into the waiting arms of the two Amazons who’d thrown her, and a cheer rang out among all the soldiers who’d witnessed this feat.

     “Nice shot,” said Cora. “But I hope they leave some left for us.”

     “No kidding,” said Rue. “This has been a total rout. Just give us the order to advance, already.”

Delara said nothing, while gazing up at the main compound, an indistinct dark mass, save for when the intermittent lightning flashes lit it up with harsh bright light. In those brief instants Delara thought she saw movement outside the gate, a mass of people trapped outside. 

     Rue saw it, too. “Look at that,” she said. “They’re so scared they won’t even open the gates to let their own people in. Slavers are nothing but cowards.”

     “Give it a minute or two and our stalkers will get into bow range,” said Cora. “Those poor bastards are sitting ducks out there.”

     As they watched, a bolt of lightning hit the crowd of desperate mercenaries dead center, sending the survivors scattering along the wall. 

     “Ooh, nice shot, Iris,” said the other hull-bearer. The other Amazons looked at her quizzically, so she explained, “Our clan’s shaman. She can turn into a giant eagle. You can kind of see her up there if you squint.”

     “She’d better be careful,” said Delara. “She’s going into their bow range, now.”

     “Ah, they’re not even shooting at her,” said the other hull-bearer.

     Delara frowned at that. Something was odd here, something that went beyond simple cowardice. It made no sense that such a large, successful mercenary company would be such pushovers, even when taken by surprise. Delara breathed a sigh of relief as the song of the warchanters changed, calling for the skirmishers to retreat and withdraw behind the battle line.

     “Aw, come on,” moaned Rue.

     “No,” said Delara. “I think it’s a smart move. There’s something—“

     But the rest of her sentence was cut off as Iris wheeled about to retreat, summoning one final lightning bolt as she did, this one landing just inside the compound itself. But the following roll of thunder was eclipsed by a massive explosion that turned into a whole series of them, as the entire front wall of the compound was blasted outwards, sending huge chunks of stone hurtling forwards to start rolling down the hill. It had been a trap. One that Iris had thankfully set off early.

     But it turned out that was only partly true, as there was further motion from the ruins of the compound’s front, followed by strange noises—a strange murmur, and the sound of steel clashing with steel. It was hard to see through the clouds of dust and dirt, but the ground appeared to ripple, and with a shock Delara realized that she was seeing people, a huge mass of them—hundreds at least. And they weren’t marching double-time, they were sprinting, charging headlong down the field, straight at their position.

     The wardancers called for the hull shields to be set and for the phalanxes to mass several rows deep to meet this charge. Rue spoke the command and their shield hit the ground with a resonant boom, along with another crew’s shield to their immediate left, as the control struts extended to pierce the frozen earth by their feet. The enchantment on the shield should keep it locked in place, even in a hurricane, but Rue and the other woman braced themselves against it, anyway.

     The phalanx to their right wasn’t able to set themselves yet, as they had to maintain a gap to allow the retreating skirmishers to get through. Delara saw a whole mess of stalkers zip by, along with a few tuned and one of the black jungle cats. They took up reserve positions behind the phalanx, the tuned looking as unbothered as ever, while some of the stalkers needed a few seconds to catch their breath before they nocked their bows and began volley-firing. The great black panther snarled at the oncoming mob and paced about, waiting for them to come back within the range of her lightning spell.

     Delara heard an eagle’s cry and saw Iris flying over the mob’s heads, continuing to blast them with her primal magic. Each lightning bolt opened a hole in their ranks that was quickly filled, the light giving her brief glimpses of detail, and that detail was strange. The enemy armor was bizarre. It seemed like they were all wearing globular metal cages on their heads, attached to heavy iron collars around their necks. And their garb was strange. Delara was only getting brief glimpses in the lightning flashes, but it seemed like some were armored and others were wearing normal clothes. No uniformity at all.

     The charging, muttering mass of people had made it halfway down the hill when the wind changed direction and the Amazon battle line shuddered in response, as they were assailed by the foulest stench Delara had ever smelled. She felt her eyes water and her gorge rise as she struggled not to puke. She reached beneath her helmet and pulled her neckerchief up over her nose, her fingers just barely fitting in the slot between her cheek guards. She saw her comrades react similarly, and their coughing and groans of disgust echoed across the battle line. Some of the tuned used their elemental powers to blast gusts of wind to dispel the stench but it only helped a little.

     Delara saw the phalanx lock into place as the last of the skirmishers completed their retreat. Delara scanned the stalkers, her anxiety spiking until she saw Mina, who was actually doubled-over and puking. The amount of relief that sight brought her was surprising. She’d only met the girl a few minutes ago. But she had no time for introspection, as the enemy infantry had finally gotten close enough to see what they actually were.

Beneath the steel cages were lifeless eyes sunken into rotted sockets, lips peeled back over mindless gnashing teeth, as the creatures wailed out their unholy hunger through putrified throats, as the army of zombies charged upon the Amazon battle lines like a crashing wave.