Tanya's gaze darted around the battlefield.
A flicker of emotion finally appeared behind her normally detached eyes. Biting her thumb, she frantically searched for a solution amongst the chaos unfolding before her.
The situation was deteriorating far too quickly.
The breach in the line continued to widen with every passing minute. Stone soldiers poured through the gap in an endless stream, driving deeper and deeper into the Freehold's formation.
The obvious answer was to seal the breach.
The problem was that she lacked the strength to do it.
Cursing her barbarous life, Tanya's eyes swept across the battlefield in a frenzy, searching desperately for a solution. Meanwhile, the Freehold army continued to collapse beneath the relentless advance of the stone legion.
Sanyma was drudgingly upholding the rear with her platoon. Commanding a hundred arrows at once, she shaved off her essence at an appalling rate, halting their advance.
Her arrows whistled through the air, carving through enemies and forming a defensive barrier around her troops.
But Sanyma didn't rest there. Knocking an arrow, she continued to add on to the already growing fleet of flying death.
She wouldn't need any reinforcements… for now.
Tanya's gaze turned towards the other sections of the battlefield.
What she found there did little to ease her concerns.
The officers stationed throughout the Freehold's lines were fighting desperately to contain the damage, shifting soldiers from one position to another in an attempt to stabilize the front. Unfortunately, every formation they reinforced seemed to create weaknesses somewhere else.
Tanya turned her attention towards her reckless commander and found himself struggling against the Knight in vain.
The two were engaged in a vicious duel, trading blows at a pace that left sparks and destruction across the battlefield. The Knight's hammer crashed down again and again, while Mahoraga slipped through the attacks by the narrowest of margins, answering with strikes of his own whenever an opportunity presented itself.
Unfortunately, opportunities were becoming increasingly rare.
At first, the two had appeared evenly matched. Mahoraga's adaptability and ingenuity had allowed him to keep pace with the monstrous Knight despite the overwhelming disparity in strength.
Now, however, the cracks were beginning to show.
Even from this distance, Tanya could tell that the Knight was controlling the pace of the fight.
Their song of steel and stone had long since run out of course — now it was more of a desperate struggle against inevitability.
All around, the Freehold was losing.
Little by little, the battlefield was slipping from their grasp.
Tanya clenched her jaw.
The situation was becoming unsalvageable by the minute.
She forced herself to calm down and reconsider everything from the beginning. Mahoraga was occupied by the Knight. Sanyma was anchoring the rear. The officers were desperately trying to prevent the army from splitting apart. One by one, she mentally accounted for every important piece on the battlefield.
Then her eyes widened.
She had forgotten someone.
The realization had come so suddenly that she nearly missed the stone soldier emerging from the melee. The creature lunged toward her with its spear raised high, exploiting the brief moment her attention had wandered.
Fortunately, Tanya's body reacted faster than her mind.
A translucent barrier materialized in front of her just as the spear descended. The impact sent cracks racing across the hastily constructed construct and forced Tanya several steps backward, but it held.
Before the stone warrior could launch a second attack, a shadow flashed across her peripheral vision.
A Freehold soldier intercepted the creature from the side and drove his sword into the gap beneath its arm. Another followed immediately after, burying an axe into its neck.
The stone soldier staggered.
A third strike shattered its head.
The entire exchange lasted less than a second.
Tanya barely spared the soldiers a glance before returning her attention to the battlefield. Her eyes swept across the endless chaos of clashing armies.
Then, she found him.
Or rather, she found the trail left by him.
A long scar cut through the battlefield. Broken rocks littered the ground in such quantities that it looked less like a battlefront and more like the aftermath of a natural disaster.
At the center of it all was Rath.
The scarred Awakened had somehow wandered far from his original position. Wherever he went, formations crumbled. Stone soldiers converged on him from every direction, yet instead of slowing him down, they merely added to the trail of destruction in his wake. Amidst the carnage, Rath's face bore a wide, murderously cheerful grin that even disturbed her.
What kind of murderous fellow had she been paired up with?
Tanya stared for a few moments, a strange expression appearing on her face.
The answer had been right in front of her the entire time.
They didn't have the strength to stop the breach.
But they did possess one thing the enemy lacked.
A complete lunatic capable of ripping a hole straight through the enemy lines.
As she watched Rath blast apart another formation and immediately charge into the opening he had created, a plan slowly began to take shape in her mind.
A rupture in their formation wouldn't matter if they could inflict an even greater one upon the enemy.
The breach threatening to split the Freehold apart was undoubtedly dangerous, but it only mattered because the stone legion was in a position to exploit it.
If a larger rupture suddenly appeared within Nether's own ranks — one that demanded the attention of every soldier and every leader available — then the initiative would shift immediately.
For all of the stone legion's discipline, they were still fighting a war. Wars were won and lost through pressure.
If Rath could punch a path deep enough into their formation and create chaos near the heart of their army, then the enemy would be forced to respond.
In other words, they didn't need to repair the damage already done. They simply needed to create a problem so large that the stone legion could no longer afford to capitalize on their wound.
Smiling, Tanya used her ability to soar towards Rath. The smile felt strange on her face. Not because she was happy.
Far from it.
The battlefield was collapsing. Thousands of soldiers were dying due to a war their Deities started and thousands of commanders were forced to lead their brethren to their slaughter.
There was very little to smile about.
Yet she couldn't help herself.
For the first time since the breach had formed, she could see a path forward.
It wasn't a good plan.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the more ridiculous it became.
But sanity had accomplished remarkably little on this battlefield.
A quiet laugh escaped Tanya's lips.
Perhaps the answer had never been some elaborate, esoteric scheme. Perhaps all they needed was enough chaos to shatter the enemy's order and throw them into confusion.