The battle had become a living, monstrous, panting organism. It no longer breathed through the lungs of one man, but through the hundreds of chests swelling with terror, rage, or courage. It was a three-headed beast, its every movement shaking the ground.

On one side, there was Maggie, the furious heart. She was a cyclone of metal and screams, a point of rupture in the enemy line. Her halberd carved scarlet furrows through the ranks of puppets, drawing the Mask's attention to her like lightning draws thunder. She was the incarnation of providential chaos, a force so unpredictable it shattered the adversary's schemes, but at the cost of a terrible fragility: she could not last. Each charge exhausted her a little more, and the tide she pushed back threatened at any moment to crash down and engulf her.

On the other, there was Tonar, the backbone. He had neither Élisa's swiftness nor Maggie's devastating power. He was the bulwark, the rock. He filled the breaches that Maggie inadvertently opened in their own ranks, rallying the scattered soldiers, reforming the wall of shields where it threatened to give way. His presence was less spectacular, but absolutely vital. He was the cement preventing the structure from collapsing under the weight of chaos.

And at the center, there was Élisa, the scalpel. She was neither the heart nor the backbone, but the nervous system. Each discharge of her weapon was a rapid, precise impulse that paralyzed an enemy limb, relieved pressure, saved a life. She was the calculated response to Maggie's fury and the indispensable support for Tonar's resistance. Her lead pellets were the sutures that stitched the fabric of their army back together where it tore.

The Wooden Mask, however, was the sea. A vast, impersonal entity, whose waves were made of corrupted flesh and insidious murmurs. It did not fight; it eroded. It tested their defenses, seeking the flaw, the soldier with wavering morale, the moment of inattention. Its puppets were mere cannon fodder, tools to wear down their strength and will. Its murmurs were a weapon far more redoubtable than its claws, for they attacked the very soul of the fighters.

For a time, the battle was a precarious equilibrium. Maggie's fury contained the tide, Tonar's tenacity consolidated the dike, and Élisa's precision plugged the leaks. The soldiers, initially disoriented, regrouped around these three pillars. They were no longer a disorderly crowd, but a body learning to function despite the pain. They protected Maggie's flanks, followed the direction Tonar indicated with a gesture, and took heart with every sharp crack of Élisa's pellet felling a creature.

But the Mask felt the balance being struck. And it changed tactics.

The sea became a tempest.

The assault waves ceased to be disordered. They concentrated, striking Maggie successively to exhaust her, then Tonar to overwhelm him, then sending entire squads of agilely deformed puppets to try to breach the lines and reach Élisa. The murmurs, previously diffuse, became targeted. They whispered the soldiers' most intimate doubts, their most buried fears, giving rise to hallucinations that turned allies against each other.

The living organism that was the battlefield was seized with convulsions. Tonar's line bent; a group of soldiers began screaming and fighting amongst themselves, seeing monsters in the faces of their brothers-in-arms. Maggie, isolated by a calculated enemy withdrawal, found herself momentarily surrounded, her rage beginning to turn into breathlessness.

It was at this moment that true symbiosis was born.

Élisa, feeling the pressure shift, ceased to be merely occasional support. Her shots became messages. A series of projectiles felling the puppets on Tonar's flank showed him where to reinforce the line. A single shot, crossing the field to pierce the skull of a lizardman about to strike Maggie from behind, was a reminder to be vigilant.

Tonar, understanding the silent language, began to anticipate. He saw the enemies marked by Élisa's pellets fall and redirected his men there. He became the shield that allowed the scalpel to work.

Maggie, for her part, in a flash of lucidity amid her fury, used the space Élisa's shots created for her. She no longer charged randomly, but towards points of rupture that the young woman indirectly designated by eliminating enemy support. Her channeled rage became a strategic tool.

They didn't need to speak. The battle was their language. The initial chaos had transformed into a macabre and terrible dance, but one of formidable efficiency. The organism had found its rhythm. The heart beat with channeled rage, the spine held with renewed obstinacy, and the nervous system sent its orders with deadly precision.

The sea, faced with this newly coherent resistance, seemed to hesitate. The waves lost their force, the murmurs their conviction. The Mask perhaps understood, in its humanity-devoid consciousness, that it no longer faced disunited prey, but a single collective being, determined, and whose every part reinforced the other. The battle was far from won, but for the first time, it was no longer inevitably lost.

---

The sea did not merely hesitate. It drew back, as if gathering its waves for a vaster tide. The Mask, in its apparent inertia, was already reorganizing its breath. The puppets no longer threw themselves in an indistinct mass: their ranks sorted themselves, specialized. Goblins were sent in clusters to gnaw at the soldiers' ankles, lizardmen advanced in tight columns, forming scaly walls, while the disfigured humans became scouts, brandishing blades and shouting words not their own.

It was a composite army, but now it had found a form of discipline. And this discipline was born not from a visible general, but from the heart of wood beating at the center of the square. The Mask, enthroned like a misshapen idol, let its roots pulse: every vibration in the ground equated to an order. Every murmur, to coordination.

The three poles—Maggie, Tonar, Élisa—could feel this shift. The enemy, which had until now been a tide, was becoming a consciousness.

The collective breath of the human fighters, however, amplified. For the regained cohesion, born from that fragile balance between rage, obstinacy, and precision, made something greater than themselves vibrate. They were no longer an improvised band thrown haphazardly into a carnage: they were the ultimate dike, and everyone knew it. The weakest, staggering, retook their place in the ranks. Those who, a moment before, had fought each other under the influence of the murmurs, clung once more to Tonar's voice, to Élisa's shots, to Maggie's fury.

Then the sea unleashed itself.

The earth itself seemed to groan as roots opened like jaws beneath their feet. Sections of mud collapsed, swallowing bodies into the shifting darkness. Puppets emerged from these chasms like drowned men surfacing, dripping with black sap, their dead eyes reflecting the surrounding flames.

Maggie answered with a roar. Her halberd planted itself in the ground, tearing the bark-flesh from the root that tried to engulf her. She was no longer fighting just silhouettes, but the very ground. Every impact made viscous splinters fly, as if the entire square were a body, and she was puncturing its organs.

Tonar, for his part, ordered a tightening. Shields slammed together, forming a human carapace around the most fragile. It was no longer a question of holding a line, but a circle, a defensive heart within the tempest. The soldiers obeyed, their eyes burned by fear, but galvanized by his voice.

Élisa, at the center, saw her role change then. It was no longer just about shooting: it was about weaving. Her bullets became anchor points holding the circle closed. She felled the creatures trying to slip through the gaps, severed the hands and fangs that came too close. Her psychokinesis vibrated in her veins like a taut string: each shot was not merely a strike, but a note in an invisible war chant.

And yet, despite this resistance, the tide gained ground. The circle tightened, pushed by the implacable inertia of the mass.

Then the Mask chose to reveal itself.

Its voice, until then disseminated in murmurs, became single, deep, resonant. It did not speak in a human language, but the meaning pierced minds like a naked blade:

*"You are not united. You are but scattered flesh. I will tear you apart until only silence remains."*

A silence fell, heavy, as if even the wind had frozen. Then a wave swept across the battlefield. The puppets, until then hesitant, redoubled their ardor, striking with inhuman synchronization. Every raised arm fell in unison, every cry resonated like an echo.

And for the first time, the human organism wavered. Maggie, exhausted, missed a beat and found herself thrown to the ground. Tonar had to divert his forces to protect her, opening a breach in the circle. Élisa fired, fired again, but her pellets were no longer enough to cover every flaw.

The circle threatened to break.

And in this wavering, a naked truth appeared: they could not hold out indefinitely. Their cohesion was not deep enough, their collective body not yet fused enough to resist the Mask's ocean. They had bought time, but not yet victory.

The air reeked of black sap, blood, and churned earth. The battlefield, a panting organism, was now just a struggle at the end of its breath between two wills seeking to devour each other.

But at the heart of this chaos, three beats persisted: Maggie's furious heart, Tonar's tenacious spine, and Élisa's clear mind.

And as long as those three beat together, the ocean had not yet engulfed the dike.

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