Aurum-Titan (1)

  The earth exploded in a fountain of crystallized shale and molten glass. The ground beneath the massive paws of the Night-Howler surged so violently that Sk?ll had to force his golem’s gyrostabilizers to their absolute limit to avoid being tossed into the mud like a toy. Through the viewport, he saw a mass arise that rendered the term "lifeform" absurd.

  It was the Aurum Titan.

  A giant from the inner world, a conglomerate of rock, compressed granite, and earthen layers. His form was only vaguely humanoid, a massive silhouette with shoulders as broad as the main gate of Fortress Wolfsgrund. What made him so terrifying, however, was his skin. It wasn't simple stone; it was a living crust, shot through with pulsating veins of liquid gold and violet ether. The light emanating from these cracks was so bright that it bathed the night around the Titan in an unnatural twilight.

  The Titan let out no cry—he possessed no lungs. Instead, his mere movement caused a grinding, deafening sound of stone on stone, a tectonic rumble that made Sk?ll’s teeth vibrate in his jaw. The creature seemed ponderous, driven by a dull, low intelligence that knew only one goal: annihilation.

  "By the ancestors..." the General whispered over the radio, but his voice held no horror—only the raw panting of a man recognizing a challenge worthy of a wolf. "He’s as big as a siege tower."

  "Bigger," Sk?ll corrected, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "He is the mountain coming for us, General. And we’re going to quarry him—stone by damn stone!"

  Sk?ll slammed the Night-Howler’s control levers forward. The golem’s engines howled, a mechanical shriek reflecting the machine's hunger for battle. "All packs! Full power to primary weapons! Encircle him! Don't let him breathe—if he even knows how!"

  As if on an invisible signal, the forty-six remaining golems surged into motion. It was a sight of brutal beauty: forty-six steel beasts racing across the furrowed battlefield, their eye-lenses glowing red, their limbs danced upon by blue mana. They did not wait for the Titan’s first strike. They were Wolfsgrund. They were the hunters.

  The Night-Howler reached the giant first. Using the enormous speed of his golem, Sk?ll catapulted ten tons of steel in a calculated leap against the Aurum Titan’s left knee. The plasma claws dug deep into the rock, and a spray of sparks from molten gold splattered across the golem's pulpit. The Titan barely swayed, but the sound of the impact echoed across the plain like a thunderclap.

  "Now!" Sk?ll roared into the comms.

  From all sides, the golems threw themselves at the creature. It was coordinated chaos. Two heavy Bear-golems rammed their massive shoulders into the back of the Titan’s lower legs, while a group of agile Raptor-models began to scale his flanks. They clamped their hydraulic jaws onto the glowing gold veins, tearing fist-sized chunks from the giant's skin.

  The Aurum Titan raised an arm as massive as a tree trunk. With a sluggish but unstoppable motion, he swept through the air. Sk?ll saw the danger coming and initiated an evasive roll, the Night-Howler’s claws leaving deep furrows in the Titan’s rock. The giant’s arm hit the empty space where Sk?ll had stood just a moment before, striking the ground with such force that a pressure wave of dust and debris hurled nearby golems backward.

  But none of the wolves fell. None retreated.

  The golems' shields withstood the shockwave, flickering blue briefly before stabilizing instantly, fed by the infinite energy from Drymon. The men in the cockpits were intoxicated. They felt the power of the Portal at their backs and the challenge of the Titan before them.

  "Target the joints!" the General commanded. His golem, the Iron-Bite, had squared up directly in front of the Titan. The machine’s heavy shoulder cannons deployed, discharging a volley of high-energy mana bolts. The blue lightning struck the giant's chest exactly where a particularly thick violet vein pulsed. The rock shattered, and a viscous, glowing sap—the essence of the mountain—seeped from the wound.

  The Titan seemed to barely register the pain, but the physical impact forced him to take a step back. That single step was all the pack needed.

  Sk?ll drove his golem up the Titan's legs. With a series of hard, precise strikes, he shattered a protruding rock plate on the giant’s thigh. He could feel the heat radiating from the gold veins, a thermal signature so intense that the Night-Howler’s sensors issued overheating warnings.

  "Cooling to maximum!" Sk?ll screamed. "We do not yield!"

  Everywhere around him, the slaughter between steel and stone raged. Golems clung to the Titan’s arms like hungry ticks, their drills and saws eating through the earthen crust. A squad of lighter Wolf-golems circled the creature at a frantic pace, firing continuously from their forearm cannons to split the Titan's attention.

  The Aurum Titan attempted to free himself. He shook his massive body, and chunks of earth and rock rained down upon the attackers. A smaller golem was hit by a falling boulder, stumbled, but caught itself with a hydraulic hiss.

  In the Night-Howler’s pulpit, Sk?ll felt an almost ecstatic connection to his men. He saw on his displays how the energy levels of the forty-six machines pulsed in perfect unison. Reyn might have sent them a monster, but he had also given them a target to focus their rage.

  The Titan now raised both hands above his head, fingers of raw diamond and quartz spreading wide. Violet light began to gather between his palms, a crackling that suggested the creature was now trying to channel its elemental power.

  "Interrupt him!" Sk?ll bellowed. He wrenched his golem upward, clawing into the Titan's stone loins and climbing the giant's back with a speed that seemed to mock every law of physics. His target was the neck—the place where the most energy veins converged.

  Below him, the General launched another broadside. "All batteries, fire at will! Concentrate on the hands!"

  A hail of fire, magic, and kinetic projectiles slammed into the Titan. The plain before Wolfsgrund became an inferno of light and noise.

  Sk?ll reached the Titan’s shoulders. The view from up here was breathtaking and terrible at once. He saw the sea of enemies in the background, the violet lightning of Reyn on the horizon, and beneath him, the raging pack of wolves. He raised the Night-Howler’s right plasma claw, which now shone with a blinding white light.

  "You’re just a stone," he growled into his neural interface as he rammed the claw with all his might into the hollow of the Titan’s neck. "And I am the hammer!"

  The creature shuddered. The violet orb of light between its hands destabilized, discharging in a harmless but blinding pressure wave upward into the night sky. The Titan swayed, his movements becoming more erratic, less coordinated.

  Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

  "He’s starting to crumble!" the General shouted triumphantly. "Keep up the pressure! Don't let up!"

  The forty-six golems reacted as a single organism. They redoubled their attacks, ramming their steel bodies against the Titan's legs while Sk?ll raged upon its back like a demon. Every blow left deep craters; every discharge of the plasma claws melted the rock.

  Sk?ll Wolfsgrund laughed as he delivered another strike against the glowing veins. He felt no more fear, only the pure, cold joy of battle. The Aurum Titan might be a force of nature, but tonight, the force of nature that was House Wolfsgrund was stronger.

  The Titan swung again, faster this time, while the light within him began to flicker dangerously. Sk?ll clung tighter to the rock and prepared for the next thrust, while below him, the pack readied themselves to spring once more.

  But in the next moment, a violet bolt of lightning struck the Titan's head. It tore the sky asunder with such violence that the Night-Howler’s optical sensors cut to total black for three seconds. Sk?ll felt the impact as an electrostatic discharge that made the neural interface in his neck burn like glowing needles. The lightning struck exactly at the crown of the Aurum Titan, where the rock plates were thickest.

  The force of the discharge created a kinetic pressure wave that hurled the golems on the ground back three to five meters like discarded tin figures. Metal screeched against stone as the machines struggled to regain their footing.

  On the giant’s back, Sk?ll lost his grip. The sudden shock threw the ten-ton golem to the side. "Stabilizers to maximum!" Sk?ll roared, instinctively driving his right plasma claw deep into the Titan's back armor. The steel sliced through the living rock like a hot wire through wax. As the Night-Howler slid uncontrollably downward, the embedded claw tore a three-meter-long, gaping gash into the creature’s spine. Molten gold and violet mana sprayed from the rift in a hot fountain, coating the golem's pulpit in a viscous, glowing layer.

  Sk?ll arrested his fall by ramming the left claw into the stone as well. He hung now like a giant tick on the Titan's lower back.

  But the lightning had not been a weapon against the monster. It was a catalyst.

  The Aurum Titan emitted a grinding sound that made the very air vibrate. The violet veins in its skin swelled until they seemed to burst forth from the rock. Its previously sluggish behavior vanished instantly. With a speed that seemed physically impossible for its mass, it swung its massive arm around.

  "Watch out! He’s accelerating!" the General screamed over the radio network.

  The Titan reached over its shoulder, exactly toward where Sk?ll was clinging. Sk?ll saw the approaching hand of quartz and granite in his rear monitor and immediately released his anchors. The Night-Howler dropped, the machine’s hydraulic dampers absorbing the impact from a height of six meters with a heavy metallic groan.

  "Pack! Formation Delta-Four!" Sk?ll commanded, already forcing his golem back into forward gear. "He’s charged! Keep moving, don't let him lock on!"

  The Titan stomped down. The force made the battlefield tremble and tore a two-meter-deep fissure into the ground. He appeared wilder now; his movements were no longer blind but possessed a malicious precision. He charged toward the nearest group of golems, swinging his arms like massive flails.

  "Fire at will on the knee joints!" the General coordinated the long-range attack.

  The forty-six golems worked with the cold-bloodedness of a seasoned hunting pack. While the heavier Bear-models held the line frontally, bracing their shields against the Titan’s plunging fist-strikes, the lighter Wolf-units swirled in tight circles around the giant’s legs. The golems’ mana cannons hammered against the glowing violet weak points in an uninterrupted rhythm.

  Sk?ll saw an opening. The wound he had torn into the Titan’s back was pulsing brightly. The creature’s energetic core lay almost exposed there.

  "General, give me a lane! I need a distraction at the head!" Sk?ll called out.

  The General’s Iron-Bite charged forward. The machine rammed its massive head into the Titan’s hip, while the shoulder cannons fired a flashbang directly in front of the giant’s optical sensors. The glinting white light forced the Titan to turn its head aside.

  In that moment, Sk?ll ignited the Night-Howler’s afterburners. The golem shot forward with claws extended. He didn't just run at the Titan; he leaped. With the additional energy from the Drymon main line, the machine’s servos were working overtime. Sk?ll landed precisely on the lower edge of the slashed back.

  He rammed both claws into the wound and began to pry the rock apart with raw force. The heat inside the Titan was so intense that the cockpit temperature warning lights in the Night-Howler immediately jumped to dark red. "Cooling systems to overload!" Sk?ll gritted out through his teeth.

  Below him, his men were performing the incredible. One golem was struck by the Titan’s flat palm and sent tumbling across the ground, flipping three times, but it stood up immediately as the Arcane Shields protected the metal from deformation. The coordination was perfect. Every time the Titan tried to focus on the attacker on its back, the other golems threw it off balance again with targeted hits to the tendon plates of its knees.

  "He’s tipping!" one of the pilots cried.

  The Titan buckled onto its right knee. The weight of hundreds of tons of stone hitting the ground made the fortress walls of Wolfsgrund shudder.

  Sk?ll did not hesitate. He ripped his claws from the back and climbed directly to the exposed neck vertebrae. There he saw the pulsating center: a crystal of pure violet Atherium that had been overloaded by Reyn’s lightning strike.

  "End of the show!" Sk?ll bellowed.

  He activated the plasma blades at maximum level. A garish, white beam of pure energy shot from the golem's fingertips. Sk?ll rammed his right hand deep into the crystal core with a jagged, downward motion.

  An ear-piercing, high-pitched whistle filled the air. The Titan's violet veins began to flicker wildly. Then, with a sound like bursting ice, the central crystal shattered under the pressure of the plasma claw.

  The energy discharged in a controlled explosion. Sk?ll was thrown from the Titan’s back but managed to flip the Night-Howler in mid-air and land on all fours in the mud.

  The Aurum Titan remained for a moment in a grotesque, kneeling position. The violet light in its body extinguished first at the extremities, then at the torso. The grinding sound of its movements fell silent, replaced by the dry cracking of rock losing its inner bond. Within seconds, the massive figure collapsed. The Titan shattered into its component parts—huge boulders, clumps of earth, and fragments of gold ore rained down upon the plain, forming a new, lifeless hill of debris.

  Silence fell over the battlefield, broken only by the heavy breathing of the golem pilots over the radio and the hissing of hot coolant steaming from the golems’ valves.

  "Status report," Sk?ll panted. He wiped the sweat from his brow. His hands were shaking slightly from the adrenaline.

  "All units operational, My Lord," the General reported. In his voice lay a sense of unbelieving pride. "Some armor damage, three golems with critical shield values, but we have no losses to record. We finished him."

  Sk?ll looked at the pile of rubble that had once been the Aurum Titan. The forty-six wolves stood in a circle around the giant's grave, their metal bodies scarred by battle but unbroken. They had defeated a force of nature without losing one of their own.

  "Regroup," Sk?ll ordered. "We need to reformat the defensive lines before Reyn sends the next wave."

  He was about to give the command to turn, to lead the Night-Howler back to the fortress, when the static roar in his ear returned. It was stronger than before—a deep, bass-heavy tone that made the ground vibrate once again.

  "My Lord, we are registering new atmospheric disturbances!" the fortress communication officer screamed. "Three signatures! Identical to the first!"

  Sk?ll snapped his head upward.

  The violet sky above the plain seemed to fold like paper. Three points in the firmament began to glow simultaneously. Before Sk?ll could even utter a warning, three massive violet bolts of lightning tore through the darkness.

  They did not strike the debris pile of the first Titan. They struck in a perfect triangle, about two hundred meters apart, into the untouched plain before the fortress. Earth sprayed hundreds of meters into the air. The force was so immense that two golems near the impact sites were simply blown over.

  Sk?ll stared at the displays. The golems began their rhythmic humming once more. The sensors for underground lifeforms were no longer just glowing red—they were literally burning out from overload. In three places at once, the ground began to bulge upward with terrifying speed.

  The euphoria of victory evaporated the second the three new pressure waves rolled across the plain. Sk?ll gripped the control levers tighter. The metal of the Night-Howler creaked under his grasp.

  "General..." Sk?ll whispered as he watched the first stone hand burst from the earth. "I think Reyn has only just started getting serious."