6.

  The darkness flooded the forest, filling the air and smothering the world as Erak and Sammus walked through the old growth. Thick branches were weighted down by thick boughs, bending to the breaking point. The forest floor was well maintained by Royal Wardens, clearing the normally thick scrub so that Erak and Sammus could walk unbothered.

  Even miles from the city, the devastation wrought by the opening of the grand portal was seen here. Civilians were laying in blood soaked clothing, still and waxen, sprawled where they lay.

  Most of them.

  Some had been…snacked on.

  Erak pointed the tip of the dragonbone sword toward a man whose legs had been gnawed away, thick strips of muscle removed. The blood was black and tacky, clotted as the hours had gone by. Sammus hummed, leaning over the still body and then turning away.

  “After he died. Not long ago,” Sammus said and Erak grunted as he kept his senses peeled along the forest. He nudged Pomp, raising his shoulder and dropping it suddenly, and floated him a question. The dragon huffed and then Erak’s vision swam for a moment before his Essence sight kicked in.

  Trees were pillars of thin, green Essence, running up and down the trunk and into the roots and earth. Animals ran to and fro in the branches above them, small and bright in his vision. Then there were things prowling the ground, hunched and gnarled, viscous red energy that contrasted with the white and gold of the rest of the forest. They were scattered about in a loose ring around him and Sammus.

  “We’re surrounded,” Pomp said to Sammus. The prince drew his sword instantly, the rasp of steel delightful to Erak’s ear. The creatures responded, beginning to lurch toward them in an ungainly manner.

  “This would be easier if I could see, but who am I to complain,” Sammus said with a laugh. Erak looked at the smaller prince, but the man had Essence rising to his eyes, burning along his ears and nose. Pomp barked a laugh, but then the first of the monstrosities were coming toward them, loping along like misshapen apes.

  Corpse-Eater lvl. 19

  The flesh of the dead is a sweet nectar. These beasts don’t mind the living though.

  The ugly energy leapt at Erak and Erak met it with his blade. Flesh parted wetly as he cut it in half, the dense body parting in two and spraying Erak’s body with hot blood. Flesh hit the ground and Erak stepped through the mist to meet the next of the monsters, whose jaws were gaping open to bite him.

  He cracked teeth into splinters with a shield bash, sending it rolling across the ground as a third and fourth came flying at him. Pomp unleashed a blast of white-blue essence over the closest of the monsters and Erak focused on the fourth monster. His sword work was tight and precise as a butcher, gutting and removing an arm in three flicks of his wrist.

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  He was sent staggering forward as the now toothless monster hit him from the back, driving him into a tree. Wood cracked under the weight and impetus of their charge, Pomp leaping free of his shoulder and the last moment. The ring of flesh on steel rang out as claws scraped over his armor yet again.

  Erak bucked backward, throwing the smaller beast back, and spun with the dragonbone blade at waist height. He removed the creature’s head and watched as Sammus danced between three of the beasts. The prince was lower level than the beasts, but he was faster and a skilled swordsman.

  Erak crossed the distance between them with long strides, raising his blade up, pointing down, and stabbed through the closest of the monster’s head. The beast’s skull popped and it died instantly as the tip of the sword touched the earth and the Corpse-Eater froze as it was impaled. Sammus used the distraction to slip a downward clawstrike and open up the beast’s neck with the edge of his sword. The final beast hit him, wrapping its arms around the prince and driving him to the ground.

  Erak was there as the monster opened its jaws to wrap around the prince’s throat. He rammed his forearm into the beast's jaws before it could bite down, teeth grating on his armor, pressure threatening the bones as he grunted. Erak jacked his arm back, pulling the creature’s head back and exposing its neck.

  Sammus punched it and the creature growled and shook its head, completely unfazed by the prince’s blow. Erak strained and the dense monster rose up off the ground as it refused to release Erak’s arm. Erak spiked the monster into the earth, dirt erupting as the creature hit like a meteor.

  Erak stomped it, his steel boots cracking bone under every stomp as the monster stopped writhing and died. The pulsing Essence was hardly enough for him to feel, he had been glutting himself on monsters of much higher levels than himself. These little ones weren’t strong enough to push him further.

  Sammus scrambled to his feet and looked down at the paste that caked Erak’s boots before swallowing hard, one thin hand drifting along his throat. Erak watched it all with his Essence sight, Sammus’s a verdant green with tinges of gold.

  “Thank you, Erak. You may not know this, but that thing’s breath is quite rancid. Are there more of them coming?”

  Erak swung his head back and forth, looking through the trees and ground and there were more of the beasts. Running away.

  “They are fleeing, running away from our might!” Pomp said, draconic pride dripping from his voice as he scrambled up Erak’s side. Erak flicked him on the nose, deflating the dragon. Erak dragged his blade free of the Corpse-Eater he had impaled, flicking the blood of the bone sword and walked over to where Pomp had frozen his one target.

  His Essence sight flickered and disappeared and he was staring at the ice sculpture that Pomp had made. White ice, opaque and milky, sat there like an ugly statue. He tapped it with a finger and with a mighty crack the ice split into many pieces, falling all around Erak’s feet.

  “That’s just unfair. I'm drenched in blood and the dragon gets to do this cleanly?” Sammus said with fake offense in his voice.

  “Erak says to stop complaining. Also, there’s something much bigger coming this way,” Pomp said. He pointed a single clawed finger toward the deepest part of the woods just as the silver moonlight pierced the woods illuminating the furry shape moving towards them.

  It was tall and broad with wide shoulders and black claws. Its head scraped the lowest of the branches as it lumbered forward on bent knees, triangular head jutting forward with thick drool hanging from its jowls as it raised its head and howled. The sound raced across the forest, slamming into Erak and Sammus like a physical attack, Erak becoming nauseous and having to deal with the world beginning to tilt as the moon brightened in a moment until the entire area was glowing white.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Sammus groaned as he leaned against a tree, sword held limply between his fingers. Erak grunted as his world spun, his sheer willpower keeping him on his feet. In the distance he heard the howls echoing back from deeper in the forest, haunting and fierce all at once.