CHAPTER 194: THE SERPENT’S STRIKE

The Schwarzwald was a place of myth, a forest so deep and ancient it seemed to have swallowed the light. Its canopy was a tangled roof of black pine and moss-choked oak, and the air beneath was cool and heavy with the scent of damp earth and decay. It was a place where Roman patrols were said to vanish, where even the local tribes trod with caution, whispering of old gods and monstrous things that slept beneath the roots of the world.

Through this primordial gloom, a new and terrible predator now moved.

Lucilla, Augusta and Proconsul of Noricum, led the hunt. She was not carried in a litter or garbed in the finery of her station. She was on foot, clad in dull, oiled scale armor that absorbed the faint light, a dark wool cloak clasped at her shoulder. Her face, framed by braids of dark hair, was a mask of cold, focused determination. She moved with a predator’s grace, her eyes scanning the unnatural stillness of the forest. This was her element. Not the perfumed halls of the Senate, but the raw, unforgiving wilderness where power was measured in steel and cunning.

Her force was a reflection of her own hybrid nature. At its core marched a single, disciplined century from her Legio I Urbana, their heavy shields slung over their backs, their short swords slapping rhythmically against their thighs. They were the rock, the unyielding Roman center, led by the grim-faced Centurion Cilo, a man whose loyalty to Lucilla was absolute. They moved with a practiced silence, their expressions hard and professional.

But flanking them, melting into the shadows and flitting between the colossal tree trunks, were the true hunters: two full cohorts of her new Legio II Norica. They were sons of these forests, clad in leather and wolfskin, their faces painted with streaks of mud and charcoal. They carried Roman-made repeating crossbows and long, vicious hunting knives, but they moved with the eerie silence of their barbarian ancestors. They were the eyes, ears, and fangs of her new army, a perfect fusion of Roman discipline and tribal savagery.

Senator Servius Rufus, forced to accompany the expedition as the legal sanctioning authority, struggled to keep pace. His fine toga had been exchanged for a practical tunic and heavy cloak, but he still looked profoundly out of place, a creature of law and debate lost in a world of primal violence. He watched Lucilla and her legion with a growing sense of awe and terror. She was not just playing at being a general. She was one.

After two days of relentless marching, following the crude map scratched in the dirt by a now-dead prisoner, they arrived. The Norican scouts ahead signaled a halt. Cilo, his hand resting on the pommel of his gladius, approached Lucilla.

"My lady, we are here," he murmured.

The site was an abomination against nature. A perfectly circular clearing, a hundred paces across, where nothing grew. The very earth was dark and sterile, and the colossal trees ringing its edge seemed to lean away, their branches twisted as if in silent agony. In the exact center of this wound in the world stood the Resonator.

It was more immense and more alien than the prisoner’s terrified description had conveyed. A fifty-foot monolith of a substance that was not quite stone, a non-reflective, shifting obsidian that seemed to drink the light. Its surface was covered in faint, geometric patterns that pulsed with a subliminal energy, making the eyes water. From it emanated a low, gut-wrenching thrum, a sound that was felt more than heard, a vibration that resonated deep in the bones and set the teeth on edge. The air around it was unnaturally cold. It was not a creation of man. It was a fang of some terrible, cosmic entity, sunk deep into the flesh of the world.

Rufus stared, his face ashen. The Emperor’s tales of alien gardeners and cosmic wars had seemed like a fantastical, necessary lie. Now, confronted with this terrible, humming reality, he felt the foundations of his world crack. It was all true.

The Resonator was not undefended. Patrolling its perimeter was a contingent of Silenti warriors unlike the mindless rabble on the Danube. These were taller, clad in segmented armor of the same black material as the monolith, their faces hidden behind expressionless helms. They moved with a chilling, synchronized grace. They were Wardens, guardians of a sacred place.

Lucilla did not hesitate. Her mind, cold and analytical, assessed the battlefield. "Cilo," she commanded, her voice a sharp whisper that cut through the humming silence. "Your century forms the anvil. Advance to the edge of the clearing and hold them. Do not break formation, no matter what."

"Aye, my lady," the centurion grunted, a grim smile touching his lips. He turned to his men. "Shield wall! Advance!" The Romans moved as one, their heavy boots crunching on the dead earth, their shields locking together to form an glittering, immovable wall of steel and wood.

As the Wardens turned their attention to this new, direct threat, Lucilla gave a sharp, bird-like whistle. From the dark treeline on three sides, her Noricans rose. The response was not a guttural war cry, but the sharp, mechanical thwack-thwack-thwack of two hundred repeating crossbows unleashing a volley of iron-tipped bolts. Many of the Wardens staggered, their black armor deflecting some bolts but pierced by others.

Then, the true hunt began. The Wardens, powerful as they were, were individual fighters. They charged the Roman shield wall, their strange weapons clashing against Roman steel in a shower of sparks. The Urbana held, a disciplined bastion of roaring defiance.

Meanwhile, the Noricans descended like wolves. They did not engage in a straight fight. They used weighted nets to tangle the limbs of the Wardens, surged from the undergrowth to slash at exposed legs and joints, and dragged isolated enemies into the woods where numbers and savagery overwhelmed them. It was a masterclass in hybrid warfare, a perfect execution of her rival doctrine. Roman discipline pinned the enemy while barbarian cunning dismembered it.

But Lucilla was not watching the fight. Her objective was not the guards; it was the prize. Protected by a small cadre of her personal guard, she advanced toward the humming monolith. The cold intensified, a physical pressure against her skin. She ignored it. Unsheathing her dagger, she scraped it against the black surface. The steel blade came away scored and blunted, leaving not a single mark.

This was no mere rock to be shattered by hammers. It was something else. A piece of technology.

"The levers!" she commanded. Her engineers, men from the Urbana’s workshops, rushed forward, carrying massive, hastily forged iron crowbars, each as thick as a man’s arm. "Find a seam! A joint! We don’t break it, we take it apart!"

This was not just destruction. It was hostile reverse-engineering. While the battle raged around them, her men probed the surface of the monolith, seeking a weakness. Lucilla, with a shocking display of intellectual courage, pulled out a wax tablet and a stylus, and in the midst of the chaos, began to sketch the alien patterns on the monolith’s surface, her mind racing to comprehend its function even as she sought to destroy it.

The last of the Wardens fell, impaled on a Norican spear. Her legion had won, and won decisively.

"Now!" Lucilla roared.

Her engineers found their purchase, wedging the tips of three massive levers into a hairline seam near the base of the monolith. "Heave!" Cilo bellowed, adding the weight of his own legionaries to the effort.

Muscles strained, sinews popped. The great iron bars groaned under the impossible pressure. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a sound that was both a physical, grinding crack and a silent, psychic scream that lanced through every mind in the clearing, the monolith fractured.

A wave of invisible, kinetic energy erupted outwards, flattening the grass for a hundred yards and staggering every soldier. The low, nauseating hum ceased instantly. The oppressive cold vanished, replaced by the natural cool of the deep forest.

The great black stone, the Resonator, now had a massive crack running up its side, its internal structure exposed like shattered crystal. It was broken. Silent.

Lucilla stood before her prize, breathing heavily, a grim, triumphant smile spreading across her face. She had done it. She had struck a blow deep into the enemy’s heart, a blow her brother, with all his divine knowledge, had never even contemplated. The glory would be hers. The victory would be hers. The name Lucilla Victrix would be sung from the taverns of Rome to the farthest frontiers.

Standing there, in the sudden silence of the forest, she had no conception of the wave of pure chaos she had just unleashed upon her brother’s own desperate gambit, hundreds of miles away. She had won her secret battle, utterly blind to the fact that she may have just lost the war.

To be the first to know about future sequels and new projects, follow my official author blog: https://waystarnovels.blogspot.com/