My heart raced as I heard the demon’s shrieks mixed with the wailing cries of the dying and the dead. I was standing upon a slight hill, so as I watched the battle progress, I could see the swarm of black demons consuming the soldiers.
It was like the soldiers were no more than annoying flies that needed no more than to be swatted away. It appeared to me that that was exactly what was being done. Though smaller than humans, lacking our height by almost a foot, the demons lacked not in strength. They possessed sometimes three times our strength. Had not our army been three times the size of the demon army, we surely would have perished within minutes.
It seemed that hours had passed. Our clear advantage in numbers was beginning to fail. The soldiers were growing tired. Those who were not dead were surely exhausted. There were only a few hundred who had not yet been injured. Rauk and I being two of those. But the demons were closing in. And they were doing so very quickly.
“Rauk” We’re not going to make it.” I compared the number of dead soldiers to that of the demons. I estimated 10,000 of our 13,000 dead or incapacitated. Leaving 3,000 to fight the rest of the demons, assuming that at least half of those 3,000 were injured. I estimated the death toll of the demons to be at least 3,000. It looked as if there had been about 4,000 to start with. 3,000 against their 1,000. 3 to 1. Maybe there was a chance. Maybe we could defeat them this time.
“Alizanon! Look out!” I spun around quickly to find myself face to face with a hideous demon. It snarled what looked to be a slight grin and raked its gnarly arm across my chest. I flew backwards and landed hard on the earth. I growled a bit, annoyed with the creature. Slowly I stood up. The demon kept its red eyes on me as I got up. I brushed myself off and began to advance on the demon. I though it quite amusing that this breed of demon should be the first to toy with me. This was a krell. I knew from the three black blades on its spine, the beady red eyes, the huge powerful arms and short, tiny legs, and from the white mark down its cheek that looked like a like a lightning bolt. I heard it speak its foreign language. Fortunately I had forced myself to learn most of the gibberish.
“Don’t try to stop him,” the demon snarled. He shuddered as he spoke. “You will not succeed.” Then something I couldn’t translate. I had heard enough anyway. I attempted to speak back to the thing.
“Don’t tell me what to do you piece of shit. Die!” I jumped swiftly onto the ground in front of it and swung my sword through its neck. The sound was sickening. It was like slicing through a huge glob of jell-o with a hard, solid, crispy coating on the outside. I kicked the lifeless body once and spun around to find Rauk. He was currently at battle with three other krells. I spat on the demon and ran towards Rauk.
“Alizanon! Go help the other soldiers! This is fun for me!” He laughed wildly and I stopped running. I stood there dumbfounded. He wasn’t fighting krells, they were Abhorans! Those were the demons that had three times our strength! And there was Rauk, playing with three of them! He was jumping back and forth, dodging sword slices without even watching them. He would make short, quick jabs at the demons, but nothing that damaged them. I wonder why?
“If I do battle we these all day, all the other demons will busy themselves with others! Muahahaha” I shook my head and laughed, and decided to survey the battle again. I ran atop a hill and sat down, placing my sword at my feet. It did not look good. It did not even look as if our side had made a dent in the number of demons. But our numbers were clearly diminishing. I looked to Rauk again. He was still playing with…well…there was only one left now. The other two lay dead at his feet. How could he possibly have done that? I don’t understand?
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I jumped up quickly and spun around. “Easy, there soldier. Back up too much and you’ll fall right down that hill and hurt your pretty little face. This battle too much for you, my dear?”
“No sir. I felt I needed a chance to survey my battlegrounds a little more and go help out in the weakest spot, sir.”
“Yes, of course. Get back out there and kill some of those demons. They need you,” he said.
“Yes sir.” I ran down the hill, growling the whole way. I couldn’t even bare to look at Master. To think what he did to my mother and my only love”
I didn’t have much time to think as I soon came face to face with more demons. I didn’t know where Rauk was now, but he was probably just fine. Every little demon I encountered were just obstacles for me to pass; they were not really a match for my skill. The abhorans were close, but not quite. I was beginning to grow bored of the battle, and it made me mad to think that we might actually lose.
I saw a sneaky little krell kneeling behind a patch of un-tread grass. It was about to pounce on another soldier. I retrieved my throwing knives from my belt and snarled at the demon. But before I could throw the first knife, a wisp of blue fire streaked through the air right in front of my eyes. I watched as it sizzled the demon’s head to a ball of ash. I took a step back and looked to where the blue magic had come from. I saw Rauk standing there smiling at me. His long dark green trench coat was fluttering in the wind, as was his thick curls of brown hair. And as the wind pushed his hair behind his ears, I saw the elf ears again, and was reminded that he was from Bailaran. Of course he possesses magic! He is an elf, after all. I had totally forgotten! I wondered why he hadn’t used it before? Maybe now we could defeat all of the demons. I ran to him.
“You little bastard! I was just about to kill the son of a-” I began.
“You wouldn’t have. He knew you were there. That wasn’t a krell.”
“It had to have been. Had every marking of the krell.”
“Except for the orange tongue. Did you see it? That is a Djeiron, Alizanon. A shape-shifter. Deadly for you. Deadly for me. You have to be careful of them.”
“Alright. Well, shit, why didn’t you use your magic to get rid of more of these demons?”
“I don’t want Master to know. I didn’t want to do that, but I had to or else you would have been- Well, I had to.” He blushed a little for some reason. How cute.
“Thanks. Let’s go kick some more demon ass now.” We looked around and found no demons in sight. What the -? “Where’d they go? How?” I pointed south to little black creatures retreating back to where they had come from. “Why?” I was utterly confused.
“That is quite strange. Do you think Master did it?”
“He had to have. What other reason could there be?”
“Let’s go back to Mareila. No use staying here,” Rauk suggested.
“Yeah, sure. Let’s go.” We turned around and began the semi-long trek home. For a while there was silence.
“What’s on your mind, Rauk?”
“Nothing. Concentrating on getting home.”
“Oh. Tell me the story of how you have come to hate Master.” I sensed a slight change in his mood.
“He killed her, Alizanon. He just looked me straight in the eye and killed her. The same with my father. How could anyone do that?” He trailed off. It was a bad subject. I probably shouldn’t have brought it up.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t-”
“Shhhh.” He cut me off. He stopped walking and stood straight up, listening. “Do you hear that?” I listened intently. I could hear something, but could not identify it. I nodded.
“Keep your eyes open, I smell demons.” My throat tightened and my muscles tensed as I drew my sword. We continued on a bit slower, listening to the sound of the wind and that small, barely audible noise in the background. I didn’t like the feeling of this.
“I don’t like this-” And as I said it, a group of demons jumped out from behind a rock we were approaching. There had to be at least twenty of them, all crouched and waiting for attack. I looked around for other soldiers. They were either too far away, or they were dead.
“They’re just krells, we can take them.” I noticed then that one of them had an orange tongue. Which probably meant that they all did. “Shit, they are…those other kind, whatever you called them.”
“Shit! Alizanon, run! Follow me!” He dashed off to the left and I took off after him. I looked behind me to see the demons leap after us in their strange way of running. On all fours for a bit, then on two, fours, two. What a strange thing to do. Rauk was a fast runner, thank goodness, but it didn’t really seem to matter. The demons were gaining on us. They had perhaps fifty feet to go. I could hear their disgusting respirations even from that far away.
“This isn’t working! We have to do something!” Rauk stopped suddenly and turned around. He lifted his hands up into the air quickly and from the skies shot bolts of lightning streaking down to the spot to which the demons were heading. It knocked off about five of them. That’s a start, I thought, as we continued to run. We rounded a small hill and came face to face with another pack of demons. We dodged past them and continued to run as fast as we could. I pointed ahead of us. I heard Rauk curse. Up ahead was a line of about fifty demons. They looked like krells. And even if they were, two people were not a match for those fifty demons plus the ones behind us. What the hell are we going to do?
“Rauk! Holy shit, what are we doing?” I screamed. He stopped abruptly. I spun around to face him. He stood straight up, with his arms laying straight at his side and his palms facing the earth. He closed his eyes. I looked back to the pack of fifty demons. They had begun running towards us. The other demons sat waiting for their friends to join them in the…feeding. I stood next to Rauk as he did whatever it was he was doing. Suddenly he raised his arms up, pointing towards the pack of running demons. Thick blue and white beams of light were emitted from his palms. He shuddered with power. The magic was knocking off some of the demons, but doing so not quickly enough. They were closing in. There were still about twelve in front of us and ten behind us. I screamed at Rauk that this wasn’t going to work.
“Shit! Alizanon! Run!” We took off running yet again. It wasn’t going to help. They were right on our heals. All twenty or more of them. My legs felt like rubber. “Alizanon! Give me your hand and don’t let go!” Rauk screamed. I did so just as the first demon’s claws raked across my back. I grunted in pain. It’s all over now. They have us now. Oh God, please for give me for I have failed. Forgive me, Damien, forgive me mother, I have failed you both.”
To Be Continued…
you have to be the type of writer i am, arent you?