Just then, the ground beneath their feet began to shake violently, and layer after layer of Ratfolk fell from the magical barrier.
More than a dozen miles from the battlefield, the earth bulged upward and split into a bottomless chasm. Deep within it, a vast shadow slowly emerged.
When the Rat King Egarut rode the Rat Tide onto the battlefield, the earth groaned under his weight.
His body was like a Rat Mother, a small mountain, but more than anything, a living fortress. Layers of rotting fat folded into hills, and his skin was riddled with honeycombed holes through which thousands of Ratfolk crawled in and out.
Spike-like bones rose along his spine and shoulders. A bronze spire stood atop the central spike, while each of the six spikes lining his shoulders carried a Ratfolk catapult.
His abdomen had long since rotted away, exposing organs powered entirely by fel energy. An enormous cauldron of flesh occupied the place of his stomach and intestines, where fel energy pooled into a seemingly tangible liquid and gave off a cloud of corrosive poison.
The Ratfolk filled containers with fel energy from the cauldron and carried them along fleshy passageways to the catapults on his shoulders.
"Finally decided to show yourself?"
Archmage Albeck watched the Rat King reveal himself at last. Rather than looking surprised, he seemed relieved, as if this confirmed his suspicions.
Then next...
The Rat King lumbered toward the Blackwatch Legion.
The earth trembled. Inside its chest, the Ratfolk Priests sheltered by its ribs began chanting in shrill, grating Ratfolk Language. At their center, a Ratfolk Elder gripped a thirteen-segment Spine Staff and extended a withered right claw dripping with thick, tar-like fluorescent green slime toward the magical barrier. The claw clenched tight.
At first, ripples merely spread across the magical