Chrysalis

Morrelia blinked the sweat and blood from her eyes as she bared her teeth in a snarl of rage. Berserk fury pounded in her veins, empowering every movement, every strike, but also narrowing her vision. Every fibre of muscle yearned to be unleashed, to slash and cut and stab until the fighting was done. However she couldn’t lose herself to the rage like she used to, not anymore. With a monumental effort of Will, she restrained herself, took hold of her own mind and forced it to heel.

“Reform the line!” she bellowed, tearing her gaze from the monsters in front. “Where’s the cover fire?”

“Monster spawned behind them, tribune,” Gyrex reported, most of his centurion’s plume burned away, “they’ll clean it up shortly.”

“They better,” she growled as she shoved her two swords into their sheaths.

It was teeth-grindingly painful to force herself back from the rage, but she did it, recentring her emotions to that point right on the brink, where she might reenter berserking at any moment. It was a mental exercise she had been forced to improve rapidly, and one that she still struggled with. Apparently, her mother was a master of it, able to dip in and out of rage at the drop of a hat, but Morrelia was far from that level. With her new rank and leadership role, she simply couldn’t berserk as she pleased anymore.

To her left and right, the massed ranks of the Abyssal Legion stood strong against the tide of monsters. Before them yawned the same opening to the below ground tunnel complex she had been defending for weeks, and in all that time, the Dungeon spawn had never stopped coming.

“The backline is occupied for a few more minutes,” she snapped to a runner, “inform the centurions.”

The woman tore off at an incredible pace. She would cover the whole front in under a minute before returning for the next instruction, waiting alongside the other two runners.

Gyrex yawned widely as another deep roar echoed from the depths before them, rising over the din of battle.

for you, centurion?” Morrelia asked, an eyebrow

had a full night’s sleep in well over a week, tribune,” he excused himself.

hours a day, but sadly, we don’t

expression flickered across the man’s

suggest eight hours?

grunted as her eyes ran up and down the line, assessing how her

reserve group committed to the blue line,”

will, tribune,” Gyrex said, turning to the runners. Before he

them. Some more time on the front should shake you out

salute and she chuckled with amusement as he

point she had become so accustomed to the grim calculus of war. Aside from those precious moments where she permitted herself to fight, she was immersed in the role of a leader, her mind running constantly as she fretted over tactics, the condition of her troops,

Despite being her daughter, or perhaps because of it, she knew better than most just how much the famed berserker hated everything that took herself away from the

been appointed

life, and she found herself modelling her decisions more and more on his patterns.