No matter how far away it was, Orzenian cannon shot exploded so intensely that Iro was certain his teeth would rattle clean out of his head.
Maybe that was the fear making him shake. It certainly was the cause for the piss rolling down his pant leg as he charged into the Orzenian line with the rest of his brigade.
At a distance, the cannon fire sounded high and clear, a ringing crack that told you death had just cast lots, and you just hoped and prayed that someone else's number came up instead. Please, oh please, you'd think, kill some other fucker instead of me. Take that bastard DeMarco instead. Anyone. Fuck you, mom. Just don't let me die!
Once you got close to the guns, after the first earshattering thunderclap loud as the Words of Creation, your hearing gave out. After that, you didn't hear the boom so much as you felt it- a low, muddy rumble in the bones of your feet and face that told you that yes, God was real. His name was Gunpowder. He served no one but destruction. And he fired six times a minute, each shell that missed digging the grave for one that didn't.
The Orzenians, mad men that they were, often mixed their black powder with red magicite, which served to turn standard field artillery into machines capable of hurling rays of molten shot and magic fire hundreds of feet in wide jets that melted steel, turned sandbags into glass art, and disintegrated flesh like dragonfire. The fact that they also tended to melt through their own barrels and explode in the middle of their own troops after a few shots was apparently a perfectly acceptable compromise for the carnage they caused. Austerean troops ran as much a risk of being blown up in a backfire once they made it to an enemy trench as they were to be shot or vaporized on the way. It was common superstition across the lines that Orzenian brass ordered them to backfire intentionally when the lines broke, but no Austerean could say for certain. You could fit the remains of anyone who had been close enough to know for sure in a matchbox.
For three years, Austeare had been at war with Orzenmar.
Three years lost.
Three miles gained.
Three million dead.
The lucky ones, they died quickly, before they were even aware what hit them.
The less lucky ones Death took screaming into the darkness, twitching and jerking, their bodies spurting blood and bile and shit into the mud or the trench floor, their limbs pulverized by a field mine, or lungs dissolved in the orange spellclouds of an Orzenian toxin mage.
But Iro wasn't sure the greatest cruelty wasn't reserved for the ones allowed to survive. Misshapen sides of meat where men used to be, hollow-eyed and disfigured, sitting in silence in cold iron buildings, waiting to be funnel-fed soup by stone-faced nurses.
The sound of an artillery shell screeched low over Iro's head as he ran before slamming into the ground somewhere close behind him, shooting up a curtain of dirt and stone that rained down on his back. Glancing to his left and right, he saw Jenkins and Harvey right beside him, both of their faces twisted in the same grimace of determined, abject terror as his own as they charged at the Orzenian line.
Two hundred feet to go, and Jenkins joined the lucky ones as a cannon shell took his head clean off.
Seventy-five feet to go, Harvey was less lucky.
Even in the chaotic din of the end of the world, the gurgling of a man choking on his own blood is immistakable.
The trench edge rushed up in sight, and with a final jump, Iro and the entire remainder of his brigade dove into the depths.
Iro drove the bayonet of his spellrifle in front of him as he fell, and felt it find something soft as he bore it to the ground. He looked down into the snot-stained face of a boy in an Orzenian uniform, perhaps no more than sixteen, who struggled and grabbed at the blade as Iro tried to pull it from his chest to strike again. Iro ripped the blade through the boy's hands in a gout of red, and thrust again, and again, until the boy stopped thrashing.
No one was lucky in the trenches. Especially not the enemy.
He turned to his left to look down the line, and saw one of his squaddies, a young recruit by the name of Almarez, wrestling in the mud with a dark-skinned dwarf in Orzenian sapper gear. The dwarf fought his way on top of the young soldier, pinning the boy's arms beneath his legs, and was about to smash Almarez's face in with a trench hammer when Iro fired his rifle. The top half of the dwarf's head, from the bridge of his nose upwards, vanished in a burst of blue magic and gore, and Iro walked up and kicked the body off before offering a hand to his squadmate.
Almarez said something and pointed, but Iro didn't hear it. He saw that Almarez was pointing to an Austerean spellrifle on the ground that was clearly now in no condition to fire, its stock and barrel destroyed.
Without pausing, Iro pushed his rifle into the young man's hands, and grabbed a snub-nosed trench gun out of the mud a few paces from the spot the two were fighting. Probably the dwarf's, he guessed. He saw Almarez go to say something else, but Iro was already pushing past him. The kid had what he needed. Human connection was not on that list right now.
Iro checked the magazine on the trench gun and chambered a round. Six.
A short ways ahead, he caught an Orzenian mage in the back as she tried to cast healing magic on another soldier. Five.
The next round found the face of an Orzenian rifleman hiding in a small troop alcove cut into the trench wall. Four.
The next two put down an elf spellblade, who'd manage to cast a shield weave to deflect the first, and barely missed cutting Iro clean in two with his longsword. In his efforts to dodge the slash, Iro lost his footing and backwards onto the trench floor, managing at the last moment to discharge the trench gun into the elf's pelvis as the soldier went to swing the killing blow. Two.
Iro pulled himself to his feet, looking down at the thrashing, screaming form of the elf. He raised his boot, and drove it into the man's face, feeling the eggshell crunch of angular features beneath his steel sole. No wasting ammo on mercy kills.
A short distance ahead, an access trench cut to the right off the first line towards the second, and he watched as several of his brigade mates rushed down it. Iro looked for another weapon, and saw a spellrifle laying on the ground a short distance behind, underneath a friendly corpse.
Iro ran over and kicked the body over. It was Almarez, the lower half of his face a flesh and blood crater. Poor bastard must have caught a shell seconds after they parted. Iro grabbed his rifle back, and dug through Almarez's uniform, taking the man's spare ammunition and tucking it into his empty belt pouch. No time for sentiment. He ran back towards the access trench, and rounded the corner.
He made it five steps before the dark grey of an Orzenian uniform landed and crushed the trench floor a few feet in front of him, wearing the tell-tale winged and plated magic armor of a Magesterium Paragon. Nicknamed "The Angels of Death" by rifle jockeys and spellweavers alike, the Paragons were among the most powerful and feared of Orzenmar's army. Brass urged rank-and-file to run from them on sight. For good reason, considering the last Austerean to successfully kill one was an Archmagus who died in the effort.
...Shit.
The Paragon turned towards a pair of Austerean soldiers further down the trench, a mage and a sapper, who took aim aim at him. The sapper's trench gun and the mage's spell both discharged at the same time, striking the Paragon straight in the chest. The armored fighter took a step backwards to steady himself, and then slowly raised his right hand.
Iro knew better than to wait around to see what happened next.
He turned and ran back the opposite direction, casting his eyes around rapidly for any sign of potential safety around the corner he'd just come from. A blast shockwave roared up behind him a few seconds later, and sent him flying several dozen feet before he collided with another Austerean soldier, slamming the man into the ground.
Iro felt his right arm and leg shatter on impact.
He passed out from the pain several seconds later.