The Skrain, composed largely of the soldiers Evie and Mother Manai watched form ranks and strike off to battle the Legion, are soon falling back to the center of their camp. Evie watches as they quickly arrange themselves in a skirmish line two columns deep. They still believe they’re fighting only rogue Legionnaires from the Savage quarter, and they’ve chosen to take up a position facing that side of the encampment. Evie watches several soldiers fleeing the battles raging in the north and southwest quarters of the base try to inform the others forming the line, but their warnings either aren’t being understood or heeded, or they aren’t spreading through the ranks fast enough.

Ahead of the line, trampling and pulling down the flaming and smoking remnants of several tents, Savages a hundred strong are slowly approaching the center of the camp. Most are wielding their rusted, secondhand melee weapons, but others have appropriated the finely forged blades of fallen soldiers. Even in the sparsely firelit dark of night, even amidst the mass and chaos of bodies, Evie can see Lariat striding ahead of the Savage pack. Beside the walrus-mustached fist fighter, Bam’s mallet is held high above his head, almost like a standard for an army that carries no banners.

With half a hundred yards separating the two forces, Lariat spreads his leather-strapped arms, blooded katars held in both fists, and the Savage Legion halts.

Other than the scattered shout or order given, the Skrain line is silent. They’ve never faced a horde of Savages across a field of battle before. They’ve never seen what the face of chaos fueled by bloody desperation looks like, let alone stared into its maw as that maw opened to swallow them all whole.

On the Legionnaire side, Lariat begins to laugh. It echoes throughout the center of the camp, an ugly sound like the gleeful braying of some animal in heat. The other Savages soon join in, filling the burning encampment with noxious, twisted laughter.

Evie can almost feel the tension and fear radiating off the Skrain soldiers. They don’t know what to make of anything that’s happening. They’ve had their whole world torn asunder in a matter of moments, very much like every Legionnaire when they were plucked from a dungeon cell or directly off the street and flung through rotted doors onto a dying field of grass to be told that their new name is Savage.

Evie, on the other hand, knows exactly why and at what the Legionnaires are laughing, and why they’re holding their position.