“What the fuck is that?” Jay cursed as she watched the flame-winged thing soar away to the south. “Seriously, what the fuck?”
She couldn’t get a clear view of the abomination, but from what little she could see of it, the red, flaming creature had a dozen oddly shaped, asymmetrical wings sprouting out of its oscillating body at every angle. She had no idea what kind of creature could possibly function with a body structure like that.
“I don’t know,” Aila shook her head. “I think that’s a greater demon…”
“A what?”
Jadis had never heard the term before, at least not on Oros. As far as she knew, it was just demons and demon matriarchs. And the demon lord, she supposed, whatever that mysterious individual entailed.
“Whatever that shit is doesn’t matter right now!” Kerr shouted, slapping Dys on the side of her helmeted head. “We need to get down there!”
Fuck. She was right, Jadis immediately recognized. There could be soldiers down in the fort fighting for their lives at that very moment. Figuring out what the flying fiery figure was had to be a secondary concern since it was retreating into the distance.
Without another word, Jadis sprinted down the hill, weaving between giant pines to get back on the road. Even at her top speed it still took a few minutes to get to the fort and the closer they got, the worse the situation looked.
The gates of the fort stood open, one hanging loose on a single hinge. Bodies lay scattered around the gate, both inhuman and not. The watchtower in the center of the fort wasn’t the only structure on fire, either. Tents and other temporary buildings could be seen burning as well. The sounds of screaming animals, horses and aurochs, could be heard coming from somewhere out of sight, but so too could the sound of battle. Somewhere inside, at least a few mercenaries were still fighting for their lives.
There was a ditch dug around the fort to make it harder to assault, wooden stakes lining the base of it. Jadis leapt over the barrier with ease and once on the other side, bodies of demons all around her feet, she set her companions down and spoke a quick word.
“Thea, stay back with Eir and Aila, keep them safe and shout if you need me back. Kerr, shoot down anything that I can’t get to. Aila, save your magic as much as you can and stick to traps. I don’t think this is the only place under attack. Eir, focus on healing others before me. I’ll come to you for healing if I need it.”
Jadis didn’t wait to hear any counterarguments to her plan of action. There was no time. Her bodies immediately turned and dashed into the fort proper.
Smoke choked the air and made it hard to see, but there was no hiding the carnage. Dozens upon dozens of demon corpses lay strewn across the ground, mixed with the viciously savaged bodies of mercenaries. Off to one side, Jadis could see twisted wretches and bone thieves attacking the mounts and other beasts of burden that the mercenaries had kept in their stables, the demons slaughtering the unprotected animals with evident relish. The fate of the poor creatures couldn’t be her concern at the moment, though. A far larger number of demons were surrounding what looked to be a barracks or similar structure and from within Jadis could hear the shouts of men caught up in combat.
Jay, Dys, and Syd ran forward at three different angles, reaching the long side of the wooden building. With big, sweeping strikes, Jay and Dys slammed their heavy weapons into the demons from behind, catching many of them off guard. With each powerful swing, Jadis killed a lesser demonic aberration, sending their broken bodies flying to the sides as she waded into them like giant harbingers of destruction.
Syd took a more controlled approach, lancing demons as they turned and tried to counterattack, keeping any of the wretches or bone thieves from flanking her other two selves. There were dozens of the demons, though, and even as she slaughtered them, more came around from the other sides of the building to launch themselves at her, heedless of their own safety.
An arrow struck one horse-like wretch as it disjointedly crawled across the roof of the building, sending it collapsing down onto the ground before it could leap on top of Jay. Glancing back for a brief moment, Syd saw Kerr standing on top of an overturned wagon, bow drawn as she took precise shots, sniping demons that tried to break off from the main melee or attack Jadis’ bodies at oblique angles.
On the ground near her Jadis saw Aila, a look of concentration on her freckled face as she focused on placing magical traps, not by Jadis and the barracks but around the stables where the other demons were starting to turn from their grim butchering of helpless animals. Instead of creating the smaller spike traps, she was making much larger traps that had rune circles three feet in diameter. It seemed her range was limited as she couldn’t put them too close to the stables, but they covered far more ground. As one of the wretches, its horribly twisted body dripping with blood, turned and charged towards Kerr and Aila, it crossed one of the circles and triggered its effect. Ghostly force chains appeared around the edges of the rune circle and snapped tight around the demon, holding it in place. It struggled wildly to get free, but the demon lacked the strength to break the bonds that held it and was forced to yowl and squirm helplessly. Much to Jadis’ surprise, the traps weren’t a one-and-done spell either. When another demon tried to pass the trapped demon and stepped a foot in the circle, the chains wrapped around its leg too, arresting its momentum as it too was held in place.
As more demons tried to rush Kerr and Aila and fell victim to her traps, Thea stood to the fore, her makeshift shield to the front as she stood firm against any demons that somehow avoided the traps. Whenever one managed to get past the snares, she would meet them with her shield, slamming into them with surprising force, knocking them back and either down on the ground or into one of the traps. When one of the demons would strike her, Thea forged on unfazed, her newly boosted Fortitude protecting her from any non-critical blows.
Eir knelt in the shadow of the overturned wagon and at first it seemed she was only hiding, trying to stay out of the way. But then Syd saw that the priestess was actually checking the bodies of the mercenaries scattered nearby. When her hands found one man who Jadis assumed had to be dead, she held him tightly as she began to glow a purifying holy light. In a few moments, the man was stirring and slowly sitting up, his vitality restored. In another few moments he was standing, a bloody sword in one hand and a shield in the other as he turned to help Thea.
The glimpses Jadis got of her companions showed that they were doing well which took at least one worry off of her shoulders, but she couldn’t afford to get distracted by watching the more than competent women do their work. She had her own battle to fight and from the sounds of things inside the barracks, she needed to finish it. Fast.
Jay’s mallet crushed a bone thief against the wooden wall as it tried to crawl through a window, splintering its thick core shell and splashing viscous black goo everywhere as the demon inside was squashed like a blackberry. Ducking down to look inside the window, Jay caught a look at the chaos within. Six or seven men were inside, desperately fighting against demons from multiple angles. There was no orderly line of shields, just a scrum of a melee as man and monster wrestled on the ground amidst the bodies of the dead and the overturned wreckage of bunk beds.
A wretch made from the body of some unfortunate bovine hit Jay on her side, digging its split-hooved claws into her thigh as it tried to topple her. Grabbing the demonically mutated cow around the neck with one hand, Jay lifted it high and then tossed it to the side where Dys caught it mid air with a swing of her maul, the force of her blow rupturing its body and sending a shower of blood and gore across the remaining demons as it was split in two.
There were far fewer demons on the outside of the barracks now, but still enough to block Jadis from easily getting in to help the men who were being overrun. Even as she killed another bone thief, Jadis heard the sound of a wretch inside spewing flesh-melting acid and the concurrent screams of whoever had the misfortune to be caught in the spray. Even if there weren’t dozens left of the demons, just getting through the door was a problem for Jadis, both for its size compared to her and because of the bodies and other wreckage blocking the way. She needed to get inside, and she couldn’t wait to clear the entrance of hostiles.
“Get back if you can!” Dys shouted at the men inside, though she knew the warning was futile. The mercs weren’t able to be choosy about their positions.
With an overhead swing, Dys chopped down onto the roof of the barracks over the window. Her improvised maul crushed the wood more than split it, sending splinters in a cloud around her. She continued chopping, then reverted to grabbing the wooden beams and just ripping them aside, making her own entrance to the building. In a few seconds, she was through and Dys was able to duck into the barracks, her helmeted head knocking against the gables.
As quickly as she could, Dys moved to help the mercenaries. There was no point in trying to swing her maul inside the barracks, it was too big and she was just as likely to hit a man as a demon, so instead she dropped her weapon and just started pulling the demons off of the mercs and tossing them to one side. One bone thief had leapt on top of a man, his arms and legs pinned to the ground by many limbs as it savaged his armored body with even more bony appendages. Dys grabbed the demon from behind and lifted it straight up, slamming it into the ceiling and shattering its skeletal body. Grimacing, she reached inside and crushed the squirming tentacles within with her bare hand before tossing aside the broken shell.
The man was stunned, but breathing, so Dys left him where he was and turned to the next.
Outside, Jay and Syd continued to strike down every demon that charged her, their numbers thinning more and more. A shout from Aila caught Jadis’ attention and she looked to see that all the demons from the stables had been either killed by Kerr and Thea or were contained by Aila’s snare traps. Aila pointed and Jadis followed her finger to see that Thea stood over Eir, the guard watching over the cleric as she quickly rushed from one body to another across the courtyard, checking for more mercenaries that could be saved.
“Eir, come this way!” Jay shouted her command. “Kerr, Thea, whoever the fuck you are!” she called out, indicating the newly healed soldier that was finishing off a demon that was half-sticking out of one of Aila’s snares, “Get over here! Let’s finish this!”
As her companions moved in to aid in ending the remaining demons surrounding the barracks, inside Dys cursed. Tossing aside another wretch she found the man beneath dead, his throat ripped out, a pool of blood surrounding him. Before she could even move onto the next, another mercenary cried out as a demon ripped open his thigh, splattering blood everywhere as it dealt a lethal blow with its claws. Dys couldn’t get to the men fast enough, the confines of the barracks making it difficult just to move much less fight. But Dys powered through, shrugging off a wretch as it leapt on her back, teeth tearing into her arm before she ripped it free and hurled it against another demon, crushing them both.
She kept on, grabbing and tearing, ripping and crushing bone thieves and twisted wretches almost blindly, moving in a whirlwind of reckless slaughter, blood dripping from her helmet and hands and every part between until Dys reached out to another enemy and it cried out in fear. It was only then that she stopped to realize she had grabbed a man by his arm, his boots dangling above the floor as she held the mercenary up and ready to toss against the pile of bodies she’d made.
“Sorry,” Dys panted out, blinking the blood and sweat out of her eyes. “I, uh—I’m sorry.”
“By Valtar,” the man said with a shaky breath, “I think I can forgive you, all things considered.”
Now that her heart was no longer pounding in her ears, Dys was able to look around and see that all the demons inside were dead. Five mercenaries were left alive, in varying states of injury, but they lived.
Outside, Jay, Syd, and her companions were finishing off the remaining demons, the last few going down under a barrage of attacks from multiple angles. With the death of the final wretch, the fort was far quieter, but the sounds of burning wood and injured animals still filled the air. Jadis knew her work was far from over, but at least a few mercenaries had been saved. That was a start.
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