It fell to one knee in a field of wildflowers no demon had bothered to burn.
"You deleted my squad," she said through the external speakers, her voice crackling with static and grief.
The demonic horde below had a name whispered by refugees: the Black Phalanx. They were not born; they were rendered —corrupted code given iron flesh. Their leader, a warlock-engineer named Malachar, had spent decades reverse-engineering humanity’s own war-forges. Now his legions marched in perfect, silent lockstep, each carrying a blade that could shear through reinforced bunker walls. Panzer Paladin
She looked past him. The Black Phalanx was already crumbling without his signal. Demons stumbled, froze, collapsed into heaps of inert alloy. On the horizon, the first true dawn in weeks bled over the mountains.
Malachar laughed—a wet, mechanical sound. "You’ll delete yourself, pilot. That core is gone. You have less than a minute." It fell to one knee in a field
She hit Malachar’s shield at the apex of its rotation cycle. The hex plates screamed, fractured, and died. Her gauntlet punched through his chest console and lifted him off the ground.
Flint’s voice cut through her grief. "Incoming. North ridge. Two heavies, plasma-carapace." They were not born; they were rendered —corrupted
"That will give us ninety seconds of combat runtime. Then we fall."