Chapter 56
Ryker
This was no war.
It was slaughter.
“Flank the beast on the right!” I roared. “Stay away from its mouth!”
The snake hissed, wide jaws gaping to show its bloody fangs, twice the height of our tallest warriors.
The monster had crossed the Obsidian with ease, winding its thick, gargantuan body and terrifying our troops.
My warriors, hardened in the crater, had surrounded the reptile. We kept its slitted eyes on us, distracting him from the rest of our army, already overwhelmed by the endless stream of Serpents.
But our weapons did nothing to the beast.
Whenever we got close enough to strike, our blades ricocheted off its scales. At least a dozen swords had been broken trying to at least scrape its slimy body.
Its impossible frame tightened.
My heart thudded.
“Swerve away!” I yelled. “It’s ready to strike!”
Like an ungodly spring, it uncoiled with lightning speed, jaws gaped.
“My arm! Gods, my arm!” a sickening yell tore at me.
I whipped to see Krynn kneeling in the mud, arm shredded from his shoulder. Blood spurted out as his face blanched.
The beast hadn’t hit any vital organs.
He could survive.
He deserved to.
“Lure it toward the hill,” I yelled.
The world became a bloody, metallic blur once more as my bones cracked painfully and my feet hit the gory mud.
I scooped Krynn up, not breaking my stride. The air whooshed out of his lungs at the contact and I knew his ribs hurt.
But I couldn’t slow down.
Emotions had no place in this massacre.
“Solkar?” he asked, already delusional. “Forgive me for my sins. Take me to my ancestors.”
“Not today, Krynn,” I said.
I rushed through the trees, the ground vibrating as I dodged Elysia’s deadly petards.
“Get back, you bastards!” she yelled, throwing more fiery spheres at the approaching Serpents, flanked on both sides by warriors. The carnage on the river bank hadn’t yet reached the camp’s perimeter, but burnt Serpents littered the ground just beyond the spiked fence.
If we fell, this was our last defense–and we couldn’t fall.
I swooped between the blockade, only stopping when I reached the camp.
“Healer!” I roared. “Get me a healer!”
Three white-coated figures rushed forward. I lowered a muttering, bleeding Krynn into their outstretched arms and didn’t linger long enough to even remember their faces.
I became a blur once more, sending a quick prayer to his ancestors.
I burst through the blockade, felling three Serpents in my unrelenting path.
They still squirmed, but Elysia’s spheres shook and slowed them.
“Why won’t you die?” she yelled.
As I delved back in the shadow of the trees, the smell of burnt flesh behind me, my mind flitted back to Allie.
I should have been there right now, protecting my home.
Protecting her.
Yet I knew she would have cursed my name for all eternity if I had abandoned the battlefield.
I gritted my teeth. I couldn’t think about that.
I was already pulled in every possible direction and one wrong choice would end in my people’s death.
We were getting annihilated.
I prayed to every god–old, new, forgotten, it didn't matter–that I’d made the right decision.
Perhaps the gods would be merciful today, because they let me sense a quiet flutter in my mind and recognized it as Allie’s. Or my mind had conjured it to help me face this battlefield.
I shielded it as much as I could from the horrors around me, only allowing myself to check it to make sure her emotions weren’t trembling with fear or exertion.
I didn’t know what I’d do if I felt her in danger again right now.
My thoughts caressed that small flutter once more, before I swerved them away and back to the massacre.
At this speed, I cut through Serpent soldiers, leaving a bloody trail behind me.
Yet the screams still followed.
The sickening crunch of bones.
The pleas and prayers whispered with last breaths, never to be answered.
I heard it all.
I had to fight through it all.
My daggers hit both jade armours and veins alike.
Yet the Serpent soldiers kept coming.
They waddled through the deep river currents like they were nothing.
They rushed at us with an unnatural speed and ferocity.
They writhed on the bloody, muddy ground and swung their swords even after being eviscerated.
Whatever dark magic had transformed them into brutal beasts wouldn’t let them die.
“Xamor himself would have fallen faster!” Kylian yelled as he kept impaling his spear into a fallen soldier that still reached out to cut him.
The sky had shattered, raining icy water on us all. The bloody mud trapped our feet, as if it wanted to drag us quicker into its depths.
The mayhem slowed me down.
My mud-coated boots slid against the gore. So many sharp, fallen weapons stuck between the bodies, I was in danger of lurching straight into a blade.
It was a miracle the Blood Brotherhood warriors were still standing.
The Battlefield Butcher sent wave after wave of soldiers upon us, while keeping most of his army on the other shore, menacing and protected.
“Fire!” Zandyr roared over the chaos.
Another rain of arrows ripped through the skies. They suffered the same useless fate as their brethren–stopped in mid-air by an invisible wall that barely shimmered.
Behind the veil, the Butcher smiled, showing his sharp, metal teeth.
That’s why he’d wanted us to cross the river.
Whatever depraved magic he’d gotten his thick, liver-spotted hands on protected the entire Serpent army on that side. Some of that power must have trickled into the soldiers that crossed.
They were too strong.
Too fast.
Too unwilling to die.
No cannons, arrows or spears we fired could touch that army.
“On your right!” I yelled as I passed Myron, two soldiers at his back.
The hiss of his daggers slicing through bone ghosted after me as I pushed toward my main target.
My warriors had managed to lure the snake toward the hill. I had a split-second chance for a mad plan.
Sanity had no place here.
A hulking Serpent soldier blocked my path.
My bones snapped as I swerved out of his way, jade-encrusted sword hissing a breath away from my ear.
The halt was so sudden, I skidded back.
Teeth clenched, I reared and launched myself at him. I embedded my dagger right at the junction of his shoulder, where his armour was held together by thick hide. Only half of the blade sunk in, but it should have been enough to paralyze him.
He swung at me once more.
I stuck my dagger into his eye.
He swayed, but still didn’t fall.
Gods above, what was keeping him upright?
The snake slithered up the mound, a few inches of his belly now exposed.
I had to act fast.
As if sensing my plan, two more soldiers charged at me.
I crouched low to the ground and swept my foot in an arc. Blood and guts sprayed through the air as I knocked them down.
Two more daggers hissed into my palm as I whirled in a blur of slashes. I ribboned every inch of skin I saw, severing fingers and cutting straight to the bone.
Finally, the soldiers couldn’t stand anymore.
One twitched hard enough that he exposed the side of his neck.
I sucked in a breath as my eyes landed on the dark mark on what remained on his skin.
The Borderline Bands circle.
Mercenaries, pretending to be Serpents.
We weren’t facing a single army.
My bones cracked once more as I raced away from the realization.
That’s how they were overwhelming us with shocking surge after shocking surge.
My daggers slit two more throats, the veins and sinew too strong against my weapons, as I pushed forward.
The snake was halfway up the small hill, a sliver of space between its yellow abdomen and the ground.
This plan could kill me.
I ran faster.
I twisted and used the momentum to propel myself forward. My body hit the ground with a painful thud, as I slid through guts and severed limbs, right between the ground and the beast’s underside.
The mud reeked of death.
The snake smelled worse.
The light faded as the snake covered me, its filthy, putrid scales only an inch away from my face.
I pushed my daggers into the snake with all my might. But the blades only scraped against the scales, hard enough that sparks flew.
The coiling mass above me pushed down, threatening to crush me.
But I was faster.
By the time I’d slowed down and saw light again on the other side of the snake, I’d left no mark behind.
I jumped to my feet, sucking in breath after breath.
Every being in this world had a soft spot. But this monster seemed to be protected by a frightening magicked shell.
It kept slithering forward. It hadn’t even noticed I’d risked my life to impale it.
I swallowed my growing despair as it flicked its fetid forked tongue toward my warriors.
It was getting ready to strike again.
“Run!” I yelled, flailing my arms to catch the snake’s eye. “Run away!”
It blinked at me.
In the next breath, it twisted its massive head, cold, deadly gaze trained on me.
And only me.
If we couldn’t hurt it, I could at least save some lives by risking my own.
“That’s it,” I shouted, arms flailing harder. “Come here!”
It flicked its tongue again.
Then it struck.
It moved with frightening speed.
My body contorted out of pure instinct, sprinting out of its way.
The monster was so large and fast, it created a wind tunnel that stung my eyes and almost knocked me down.
But I remained upright.
A ferocious grin twisted my face even as my heart thudded with the alarm of prey facing a predator.
It had taken the bait.
Just as it turned its head, I rushed, stopping ahead of it.
Its gaze honed in on me again, body coiled.
If I could draw it far enough away from the army–
It struck once more, even faster.
This time, I dodged its massive jaws at the very last moment. The force of it slammed me into the ground.
“Commander!” a terrified voice shouted.
I barely registered it as I jumped back to my feet right as the snake righted itself.
Then its eyes shimmered and glazed over.
In the distance, the Butcher twisted his hands.
He was controlling the beast–and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
The snake flicked its tail, knocking down half of my battalion.
Pure terror rushed through me.
“RUN!”
The snake coiled and turned.
Then it struck with unnatural speed.
A coldness unlike any other speared me.
The battalion dissipated.
Not fast enough.
A few unlucky souls stumbled to their feet.
One fell back down.
At the last moment, I recognized the young face, contorted with terror.
The blond hair sticking from the sides of the oversized helmet.
The wide eyes, which had never been so frightened before.
The shield I’d given him before his first training session.
I rushed forward like I never had before.
I forced my body to my limits.
I wasn’t fast enough.
Geryll opened his mouth to yell as the snake descended upon him.
No scream came.
Only a sickening crunch that broke me.