Strange Soldiers

While the ballistas had felled wyverns in droves, Castle Black's losses had quickly mounted when the enemy closed in. The wyverns, alongside the Intis air cavalry, struck with ferocity, and half an hour into the battle, the toll was steep.

Asher stood upon a rampart steeped in ash and the stench of burnt flesh. Smoke curled around him like mourning shrouds. The twenty Dragon Head ballistas that once crowned the walls—gone. Reduced to molten husks. Their controllers either charred in their seats or hurled to the ground by silver javelins that had struck like lightning bolts from the sky.

The corpses of hundreds of Dark Skies littered the battlements, their longbows shattered beside them.

Now, only silence lingered in the air, broken only by the keening wails of retreating wyverns—three of them—beating their heavy wings as they fled across the moonlit sky. Their cries, jagged and raw, gnawed at Asher's bones.