by Jacob Spadt
“That is what I am. I am the Defender. Teacher trained me to fight the hordes.”
“Thusey Tuchier’s,” it said, and pointed to a small symbol that was very familiar to me. It was a small tree with a moon above it.
“That is Malnuras’s symbol,” I said and glanced around at the crowd of them that now gathered around me. “He is my teacher.”
More excited chattering exploded around the clearing. It appeared they knew Malnuras and had respect for him. That made them an ally. It was the first good news I had in a while and was especially welcomed today. I pointed towards the distance. They all turned and looked, some of them cocking their heads like chickens pecking at the ground for food.
“Teacher is that way. Many daemons attack him.” I was about to suggest we go save him when I heard their language roll through the crowd, all repeating the same word: "Kloschka!"
I looked where my finger was pointing and saw movement on the ground. Leapers were bounding towards me. More than I could count. The skies in that direction darkened. The horde had found me. I was about to ask for my swords back when I found them in my hands. Shrieks rolled through the population of my new friends, and they all ran to places of ambush. The one that spoke to me turned towards me.
“Wui huntee. Schtoy.”
I was still getting used to the accent, but understood enough to know I should ready my weapons.
“Wow that’s a lot of them,” I said.
I do not know if it was a smile, but it recognized my words. “Give me room to move,” I said to it. It nodded and scaled a tree faster than I could fall from it.
This is going to be messy.
Looking up, the nets wove together and then I saw a surprise. They vanished. Dozens of flesh woven nets formed and disappeared, spanning tens of yards between trees. I began to swing my swords and made sure engage my defenses. In the distance, the daemons approached.
“Damn, that is a lot,” I muttered. This is going to hurt. I heard Mathias’s voice in my head.
“Only if you think it will,” I remembered he said to me before a particularly painful lesson. The first ones approached fast and slammed into the tendril nets. I could hear them scream in their daemonic language as their life force drained from them. The net opened and a bunch of husks fell to the ground. I suddenly felt fortunate my defenses had come on when they did.
Several of the flyers made it past the nets and dove for me; the leapers approached from the ground, rapidly. It did not matter if I was on the ground or in the air since the two were capable of both. My feet remained set for a sideways leap with both blades over my right shoulder in preparation. In they came. Out snapped my arms, taking several of them as they blazed passed me. The metal passed through hide and flesh with ease. The blades used their own momentum, which allowed me to conserve energy. I landed and reset my attack. The aerial ones farther back in the horde adjusted their trajectory while the ones up front streamed by with feeble attempts. I swung again and took the head off one leaper in the front of the wave, and took the legs of several others as they veered away.
Several more rapid strikes yielded dead daemons.
The dance of death began. Daemons on the ground came at me from all angles. Flyers flew away to regain speed for another volley of attacks; this gave me time to kill several more leapers before having to worry about the flyers. My blades struck faster and faster, like a whirlwind. Bodies piled up around me. I had to keep moving.
Still swinging my blades as a barrier of steel, I repositioned myself again. This time I began to feel nicks and scratches getting past my defenses, even though I was focusing on creating a barrier. My healing was on, and the wounds closed almost as fast as they opened. I found my footing and adjusted my attacks to be killing blows. Shrieking filled the clearing as daemons died. They fell with each strike. Ichor splattered the hard ground with a sound like infrequent rain.
In the distance, I occasionally saw my new friends killing daemons by the dozens. It was hard to see amidst my stride and the flow of my weapons. I had to remain focused to keep from letting them through my defenses. A few of the hunters may have died, but the amount of creatures they could snare at one time, kill, drop, and catch was staggering. I dealt with the leftover daemons. Their numbers still overran me. Yet I was one. They were hundreds strong.
Numerous cuts flowed on my arms. My healing slowed the flow of blood down to less than a trickle. However, I still bled. They still got through my shield, but it was one in a hundred…if that. Over time, it added up. A silent thank you for my training was on my lips amidst blows.
“You need to increase your healing,” one blade declared while the other purred in agreement. It was true. Letting the damage stack up would overwhelm the rune. I started to gather energy from around me to lessen the impact on my own pool.
“We are alone out here; this race of beings cannot help you. They will only slow the horde down. These kinds of numbers will overrun them soon,” Radu said mentally. He was right. The count of dead around me was in the hundreds in the opening melee. Anytime I swung, several died. The amount of flyers thinned for a moment and those on the ground suffered the most since they did not have to line up angles of attack. They just came on with teeth and claws in a continuous flow. The ground was slippery with ichor. It turned to mud.
The efforts of my helpers would not be enough.
Another reposition was in order. I leapt up and confronted some of the flyers overhead lining up their attack angle. It was easy to figure out the animal mentality of the creatures, even if they did have the same intelligence as an average human. My ascent took me up thirty feet where something impacted me. I had to react quickly.
One of the large ones with four wings swooped in and grabbed a hold of me. Three of its talons hit me hard and tried to sink in as it made a pass at a moderate speed. The impact was tremendous. I found myself flying toward a tree as large talons lost grip of me but tore my flesh in the process in areas that my protective cloth did not cover. Talons had bypassed my protections. The last thing I remember was hitting the tree and falling before blackness took me.
* * *
Sounds of battle, as if in a distant tunnel, filled my ears. I heard wind and felt it against my face. The pressure crushed down making breathing hard. Light peeked in through the cracks in my blinking eyelids. Trying to focus, I cracked one eye open even more and rolled my head to the side. I was airborne. A beast carried me. The stench of the beast was horrific and familiar.
My hands were empty. Not good.
I was about to panic.
Without weapons, I would be lucky to survive. No matter how long I fought, taking them down with rocks and sticks would take too long. With every beat of the creature’s wings, the talons loosened and tightened gently. Hoping I could use that to my advantage. I began to memorize the timing. It could not glide, so it had to flap constantly; otherwise, it would plummet to the ground.
My healing was no longer active, being knocked out, and it took a moment to restore it. The runes magic coursed through me and instantly felt better. Thankfully, the daemon did not notice the wave of energy that rolled over me. At least if there was to be a fight, I would have my wits and my health. Held weaponless in the daemons claws, I prepared for the challenge.
In the distance, the battle raged; it could not be more than a mile away. My mind raced. On one hand, the large one was not part of the battle, so perhaps the creatures in the trees had a chance to win. Yet, on the other hand, I was alone and weaponless. I tried to run over scenarios that did not end with me eaten alive, and they all ended badly.
I was going to have to see how this panned out and decided to play possum for a bit longer; perhaps it would drop me if it thought I was dead. I shuddered as the thought rolled to the next conclusion. It might be bringing me back to its leader or to a nest to feed its offspring. I must have moved a bit too much because I heard it growl and start to squeeze me. Pain exploded in my body, and I groaned. It knew it caused me
agony.
I actually heard it laugh.
Fighting to stay conscious, I tried to focus on my training. I began to cuss myself out internally while trying to focus to bring my defenses on. Why I kept forgetting about my healing left me to wonder how I was going to survive longer than a few minutes while protecting the planet. My healing powers engaged at full power. The energy released and slammed against the inside of the creature’s claw, pushing against the debilitating energy the creature projected.
My healing powers burned the monster as it held me. I felt the grip tighten; it growled even louder and then roared. Its second claw wrapped around the first in a renewed effort to maintain a hold on me. The roar got louder as its discomfort grew. I could only imagine the pain the creature must be in when it passed me from its back claws to its front claw. Before I realized what was happening, I was in its mouth. I engaged my shield.
“Not again!” I cried out as I felt the creature swallow. Forced down its gullet, its saliva could not touch me because my barrier held. It took about three seconds by my guess to move from the mouth to stomach, and the smell made me gag. I floated in half digested bodies suspended by my shield. Several corpses of the new race of creatures just met were nearby so this thing was obviously not on their menu.
I felt bad that the horde had decimated the hunters. The responsibility for potentially wiping out that tribe was mine. I had no idea if there were more of them, but hoped the battle was going in their favor. Then the lights went out, for it closed its great maw.
Centrifugal force shifted as the daemon banked. Soon I hoped my fate would be obvious. Odds were it would digest me or regurgitate me for its young. I was not thrilled about my options. That anticipation of approaching death was worse than the act itself. The other issue was only a matter of time before hunger set in. I also did not know if the protection would shut off if I fell asleep. The theory remained untested. The sudden change of direction made me wonder if it was approaching its nest. The smell was atrocious.
The air grew thinner. Breathing in the gullet of a beast is no easy task.
My thoughts turned inward. Mathias’s voice played in my mind, telling me about using my environment as a weapon. I recalled looking around while I let his martial sermon play in my head. Rotting flesh and small bones weak with decay littered its stomach. Nothing jumped out at me so I allowed my mind to roll over to another one of his lessons. My thoughts dug deep.
I remembered the day he gave me my swords and how exquisite they were to me. The beautiful lines that gave them balance and added strength to the blades’ construction caught the light ever so gently. Crafted runes, so intricate, adorned the bladed center running vertically. The metal almost seemed alive to me. As they swung through the air, they almost sang their own song of death. When they impacted flesh, I barely noticed. The cuts were so clean it was as though the target was not there.
Their chatter of my swords always kept me company. I missed them now. The sound they made when in action was music to my ears. Their song was that of glorious death and righteous victory.
The beast’s belly jumped again as if it hit something or changed course again. I was about to try to meditate when I heard Mathias’s voice trail off in my head as it played one very important memory that I had forgotten. It was a thought that would change my thinking forever. I slapped my own forehead in disbelief. My misstep was epic.
Why did I always forget this?
The thought had not even cleared my mind when I felt the cold metal in both of my hands and a cheer escaped my lips. The stale air was full of acid vapors. They made it hard to draw breath as I in took the air for a yell. I paid for it with coughing. I was thankful my healing was still going strong. I did my best to position myself on my knees in my bubble of protection. It took moments to right myself so I could raise both blades above my head. In one swift motion, I cut a terrific gouge into the bottom of the creature’s feted stomach lining. It contracted as daylight spilled in past its teeth. Fresh air managed to make its way in and gave me added strength to balance myself.
The creature pitched wildly.
My swords fell again, making an even larger cut. Bile and stomach fluid drained into the soft tissue of the creature’s underbelly. If this creature reacted like every other in regards to stomach acid, the fluid would burn like hell in its bowels. My cuts would make this worse, as it was an open wound and the acid should be hitting its blood stream, lighting a fire in its veins. I felt a shudder and a roar roll though the creature’s flesh as my blades bit deeper. Air was thin even though I had gotten a trace amount of fresh air from the first strike. No new air was coming down to me, and I felt the first few stages of asphyxia start. The pins and needles started in my limbs. My healing helped, but no air meant unconsciousness, which meant the rune might not function.
My blades bit again, weaker than the first blow, but I continued to rain them down. The stomach fluid all but drained into the open wounds. Suddenly the lining floor rose up sharply, trying to smash me against the top. I turned my right hand blade up and left my other down while trying to maintain balance. Up it came again. This time both points met their respective surface and bit deep. Another shudder rolled through the beast’s insides. Its stomach contracted violently in an attempt to regurgitate me.
I managed to maintain my pose while the blades bit deep yet again, and the rotting meat moved toward me. My mouth filled with my own saliva as if I was going to get sick too, but I choked it down, trying not to breathe. Rumbles inside the beast’s belly made it hard to hold onto my swords embedded into its insides. The maw was open. Its roars of pain were deafening. It tumbled in all directions, trying to dislodge me.
I tried to get the timing of the tumbles down to re-sink the swords in for a better hold. Logic hit me. I did not want to be inside this creature when it hit the ground.
I changed my strategy and, with all my might, swung at the already deep cuts, further exposing the daemon’s soft insides. The blade bit deep. There was resistance, which surprised me for the first time since owning the swords. A violent shudder rolled through the creature and it began to spasm. The blades appeared caught on something. I pitched my weight forward and felt them break free, snapping a rib bone or something off with it. Ichor flowed and the wails coming from the creature turned into gurgles. I felt weak and gave my all to one last swing, which rewarded me with sunlight and precious air.
I thrust my blades and my arms through the thick, leathery hide of the creature with all my remaining strength, cried out, and pulled my body through. Clean air whistled around me and felt amazing. The feeling was short lived, though, as the ground rushed up at me. The whistle sound that a plane makes when it dives filled my ears. Managing to pull myself free of the falling carcass, I launched myself out and up, away from the beast. There was no chance to slow my descent. The daemon concaved the ground creating a monstrous dust and debris cloud that settled over the area. It was only feet from me.
To my surprise, I did not black out; a break from the pain would have been nice.
I held my breath while waiting for the cloud to disperse and hoping for some wind to speed the process up. My body was fatigued and hurt. Time passed as I lay there focusing on healing. Something was wrong with my legs or spine; moving was impossible. With the movement of the sun being the only way to track time, I struggled to determine how long I lay face down in the dirt. At some point, I must have passed out or fallen asleep. My body lay on its side when my eyes crept open, but still hurt as if the distance fallen was farther than originally imagined.
Wearily, I rose to my knees and surveyed my location. Mountains surrounded me. Steep crags climbed skyward and snow on the ground showed signs of a thaw. The sun was high overhead, which told me that it was the next day. The heat felt good to my sore flesh. It was overtaxed keeping the creatures acid at bay. Plainly, it hurt to move.
The sound of water tantalized my ears. There might be a small creek close by. It only took a moment to locat
e the source, and I was on my knees instantly, ridding my face and hair of the funk that was clinging there. It must have been a lot because the downstream color turned brackish for several minutes. I needed more. Begrudgingly, I stood and stumbled farther downstream to look for a deeper place to submerge myself. With the sun overhead, drying off would not be an issue. My footfalls became rather heavy. I navigated the rough shore to follow the tiny stream. There was an uneasy silence in the surrounding desolation. Not a lot of animal scurried about, nor were there many signs of vegetation. The area appeared void of life. My pursuit of the stream finally revealed my prize; a pool that was a few feet deep, enough for me to submerge in. I gingerly waded in, feeling the cool water hit my skin and make the muscles spasm. The water turned foul. I hoped that nothing drinking downstream…if there was even anything downstream.
There were only a few hours until sundown and figuring out which way to go was my task. A sigh escaped my lips. I was frustrated. I hoped Malnuras was okay. Thoughts turned to those creatures’ noble efforts to protect me. The dark water began to clear while I removed my clothes to cleanse. Some sort of scent saturated me. Around the pool nothing that gave off any fragrance. Nothing could counter the smell of it other than the bath. Several minutes passed and the water became less murky from the expunged filth. Once on shore again I took to cleaning my clothes and laid them on a nearby rock to dry. What little heat felt good and I basked in its rays while keeping an eye out for company, swords at the ready.
Sometime later, with my clothes mostly dry, I foraged the area for food. Some indigenous berries grew everywhere, but in this desolation, there was no luck just yet. I wandered for a bit, when in the distance, a sound echoed off the rocks and made it difficult to determine the direction it came from. I kept up my search but noticed that the sound was still present and growing. Everywhere looked, the paths seemed to all point one way. I deduced it had to be a known path, but could not tell what used it.