by Kell Inkston
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT: THE FIGHT OUTSIDE
Love rushes out of Liefholn’s gates and is met with a sizable group of necromancers, around them scattered the remains of every other person that had attempted to pass through the gates. She presumes that Oa’s doing its best to keep support from coming into the room of the High Tea.
Love drops the mace and knives and pulls out her door.
“P-please move aside. I don’t have any body parts to give you!” she says, raising her hands.
The first necromancer of the ten leaps forward, only to be met with a graceful, whimsical spin from Love. Everlock swings with her, smashing the necromancer to the other side of the room and initiating the short fight. Wave-after-wave of knives, blades, and other unpleasant sharp things soar at Love, her response to such being opening up Everlock and catching them all inside. She promptly shuts the door after they’ve exhausted their supply, and then opens it again. In a violent explosion each and every weapon thrown against Love is shot back out from the door at the unfortunate necromancers who are rapidly disintegrated from the hailstorm of steel. Love smiles, picks up her things, and rushes through the gates to the outside.
Immediately she’s met with the roar of battle coming from all sides; she thinks she should have been a little faster to get here. All around are elves firing arrows in clean, uniform fashion, dwarves tangling with the necromancers in close range, the fairies casting spells of illusion and attack, along with every other able-bodied fairy folk in an attempt to protect their country and their people. Love spots Law and Dresmond nearby surrounded by a group of necromancers that are closing in quickly.
“Oh Hosiiiiie!” Love calls as she throws the gigantic mace, wrapped with a certain knife harness, over the wall of fighting fairies and necromancers to Law. He catches it with frightening ease and hands the harness over to Dresmond. Hos’Rayull gives a single look of appreciation to Love, and then something clicks in him as he tightens his grip on the metal.
“YOU DAMN CORPSES ARE LONG DUE FOR A BURIAL. COME HERE AND MEET YOUR GRAVE DIGGER!” he yells as the disposition of the necromancers surrounding him instantly changes. Law leaps at them, and slams down his mace, smashing three and sending five others flying off from the impact. Dresmond, now armed, also shows greater confidence in the fight, though he cannot afford the same sort of brashness Law fights with. Love does not pause to join in on the fight with her bow, mowing down a group of two dozen with a rapid-fire assault of enchanted arrows. She knows that she has an appointment; however, so she moves back into Liefholn to complete her primary objective while firing more down. She disappears through the gates, and the battle rages on.
The waves upon waves of necromancers do not let up; they know well they outnumber the fairies and Knights ten to one. As the minutes pass, the fairies are being cut down gradually, bodies filled with knives falling to the lush grass after expending every breath they have. The great spook amalgamations smash through the hordes of the cloaked half-deads, but too are painfully divided and killed individually.
After jointly going through more than one hundred necromancers, Dresmond engages one necromancer that is made more of metal than anything; it seems to be an authority among the others. The horrifically-thin officer, standing at roughly four meters, approaches the young Knight silently. By this point Dresmond has exhausted all of his knives except one, which he is now using for hand-to-hand fighting rather than throwing. He holds his distance from it, keeping perfectly calm, but when the other necromancers in the vicinity spot their superior going for the young man, they join in on the attempt at his life.
Dresmond suddenly finds himself surrounded and alone while Law fights in a frenzy several groups away. Dresmond is quickly forced to push into one foe at a time to prevent being surrounded, but this tactic will only work for a few seconds until they catch on. He cuts through one, and then another, and then comes to terms with his situation just when it’s too late.
“Rayull!” he shouts, calling for his officer and friend’s help. Law cannot hear him over his own maniac yelling, smashing through crowd after crowd of necromancers. Dresmond sees that Law is bleeding now from the dozens upon dozens of knives stuck into him from the top of his skull to the openings in the plate armor at his legs. Dresmond spared too much attention to Law and is met with the terrifying, confusing feeling of a sharp, consuming pain that seems to go through his entire being. He had never been stabbed before, only shot, so this feeling of his flesh making room for such a large piece of metal is new to him.
“LAW!” he yells as he swipes his knife at the culprit behind him; the blade missed his spine, but he knows he can’t keep this up much longer. He feels another blade enter him from behind, causing him to spin around again in retaliation, but then another, and another, as if they’re manifesting right into him from the air. Dresmond screams as he goes for another and another necromancer, but by this point he has bleed too much, so his thrusts only dent their bodies.
The large authority of the necromancers looms over the soldier Knight and speaks with the stolen cords of a young boy.
“We remember you. You killed our brother with your dragon fellow. We will do to you what you did to him,” it says, the five-year-old’s voice striking Dresmond with fear as its innocent tone clashes with the ungodly horror possessing it. From out of the authority’s cloak comes a sharp, metallic hand, connected by multiple hinges to allow an inhuman range of movement. The downed Dresmond spits at the monstrosity reaching towards him, and then pulls in another, deep breath.
“SOMEBODY HELP ME!” he cries just as the metal hand reaches his eye.
“On you!” a deep voice chimes nearby.
Dresmond’s fear is abated the second he sees the authority disappear from his vision, being divided in half by what Dresmond believes is the blade of a tall, thin sword. Before losing consciousness, the young Knight’s last sight is of a man in shining plate, radiating the light of his blade’s many glowing runes. Dresmond falls limp, and Redemption speaks again.
“Here,” Redemption says, pointing down to designate Dresmond’s spot across the chaos of the battlefield. A Knight well-trained in healing magics rushes up and gets to work as the rest of the Knights pour across the square, killing the necromancers in droves and sending them packing across back into the forest.
Redemption looks across the field to ensure the Knights are winning the fight, and then rushes into Liefholn to find Order.
It’s only a moment before Dresmond regains consciousness to the wizened features of an elderly-looking Knight healing his wounds and removing the knives in his body one by one.
“Can you stand?” Knight Hospitality says with a smile as she offers him her hand.
“Y-yes. Thank you!” Dresmond says, taking the hand and getting to his feet.
“Very good, now get back into it. We have much still to do,” she says as she pats him on the back to go back into the crowds. He nods, and runs forward to join the fairies and Knights in deterring the necromancers.