Banda slammed his iron fist on the ward with as much power as he could muster. A gust of wind exploded from the impact and the ward shook with the shrill sound of glass. But it remained. He opened his other hand and clawed across but the result was no different. His attacks had not even left the slightest mark.

  “We should have attacked when we had the chance.” Frustration seeped through Scar’s tone as he snapped at Eres.

  “Then we would be in this exact same situation at best.” Eres snapped back with harsh composure. “Otto had clearly already killed Barosa when the bell sounded. Whether Shamura is dead or comatose, her threat is the same. At least now she is a burden to Otto. And an anchor…”

  “Do you really think Otto will stay in this town just for her?” Ubin asked. “He may be the strongest, but he stands no chance against all four of us.”

  “He’s not the type to discard someone that useful and obedient so easily.” Eres spoke with firm conviction. “He had a good chance to kill us when he brought that ogre. But he chose to prioritize her instead.”

  Ubin fell silent as he saw the reasoning.

  “The horde is gone.” Banda spoke up. “He could flee into the forest.”

  “That’s not possible.” Scar answered. “A moonless night is Tiamat’s time. Though not as much as a monster wave, her influence turns the jinn more ravenous and restless. And they double in strength from her blessing. Even Otto cannot survive a whole night outside while protecting the beastwoman.”

  “Then he will stay in this magic wall until she wakes.” Frustration seeped through Banda’s tone.

  “He can’t. The manor ward only holds for 6 hours. I’ve seen it done before, when Otto killed the previous town lord… That gives us half the night.” Scar tightened his grip.

  “You know a lot.” Eres said with a stable accusatory tone and a glint of suspicion in her eyes. “Why did you wait so long to challenge Otto?”

  Scar’s face twitched a little. “...We couldn’t do it alone. Otto can use his Soul Seed art on two people at once, like I said before. He can’t use any other arts when he does, but he’s still skilled. Needs to be at least two others at our level to be certain of his death. Before the soul seeds destroy the ones chosen.”

  “Ubin and myself have been developing our own ways to kill him in short time. But the plan is doomed if both of us are chosen.” Scar continued. “Tath had potential. But the state of her mind was a problem. The ones who defected to Barosa’s side were nothing but pawns. Shamura enslaved their minds long ago.”

  “What do you mean enslaved their minds?” Eres’ concern spiked.

  “I mean very literally.” Scar jittery motions acted up. “She controls them. They do as she commands. The side effects are… obvious. They were more like mindless golems than men. I do not know if two is her limit, but I know that whether it works or not depends on the willpower of the target. Not strength of mind.”

  “How does she use this power?” Eres asked.

  “She only needs your gaze for a while.” Scar answered.

  Eres’ expression did not change, but her eyes seemed to steel over slightly. “You do know quite a lot…”

  Scar’s head bobbled a bit as he turned his sight down and back up. “I traded much for it. Which reminds me. I’d like my eye back now.”

  Eres stared at him for a moment, then withdrew the ruby eye from her pouch and tossed it over. Scar lifted his patch and put the gemstone eye back in his socket.

  “But the two of you are stronger than any of them.” Scar said as he winkled his face. “Whichever two among us Otto binds, the others have a strong chance at killing him.”

  “Ubin doesn’t strike me as the strong in combat type.” Eres commented as she looked over at him.

  “”I’m not.” The man freely admitted. “But I do have a way to kill him, provided he does not kill me before I can use it.”

  “Myself and the boy would be the targets, if I were him.” Scar spoke up, and looked at Eres. “That leaves the role of protecting Ubin to you. If either of us are able to act, then we become the center of the plan.”

  “That is a bad plan.” Banda voiced his dissent, though Eres paid the complaint no mind.

  “So… Otto cannot cripple all of us, and when he’s using the Soul Seeds he cannot use any other technique. He does not intent to abandon Shamura and he cannot flee into the wilderness with her. He has no choice but to fight at least two of us while unable to use any techniques.” Eres summarized, as her face lowered coldly. Something was missing again.

  “He’s at an overwhelming disadvantage. There’s something we’re not seeing.”

  Banda’s frown deepened. He was about to open his mouth to speak, but Otto’s booming voice ambushed them all.

  “Hear me!”

  All four of their heads snapped to the manor, from where Otto’s voice shouted out loud enough to reach all four walls of the town.

  “I have in my hands three sets of pills, plundered from Warlord’s corpse! Three sets of pills that can advance one from the peak of Rank 1 to the peak of Rank 2! I will give them to whoever kills any of the traitors!”

  “Scar! Ubin! The Savage! And the Princess! If you are soul-seeded, I will release you! I make this vow on my mortal soul!”

  “Has he gone mad?” Ubin asked. “Which one of those fools will rush to their deaths for a promise he won’t keep?”

  “It’s because they are fools that some will try…” Eres pushed her thoughts faster. “What is he hoping to accomplish. We’ll kill any of these dredges with ease and have enough time to recover. There has to be something else.”

  “Scheming again.” Banda accused. “We kill the ones who come, then we kill Otto when he comes out of his shell.”

  “One of us has to use our brain if we are going to overcome this.” Eres snapped at him. Her frustrations at his incessant faith in brute might were reaching its limit.

  The greedy clamor of a crude mob cut through the tension. A large group of humans charged their way, and among them some seemed more competent than most.

  “Wait-” Eres spoke but Banda had already moved.

  He killed the first two before they even realized it, and slaughtered the rest within moments. Bodies fell in droves over the blood soaked streets. The blood drained unnaturally into the ground and the last of the blood runes lit up.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  A red veil fell upon the town and a thin infernal mist rose from the ground. And the demons followed.

  They emerged through dark portals. Dreadful fiends, hideous and loathsome. Scar clutched his eye and fell to a knee, as three of them set their sights upon the party.

  Two were putrid sludges of human flesh in the vague shape of a man, and the other a grotesque humanoid pig with a long bulbous face.

  They charged at the group, the Dretch with glutinous fervor and the two Lemures with half-witted instinct, and Eres acted first. She summoned the white winged amulet from around her neck. It floated slightly and began to shine with a splendid radiance, but demonic red lightning sparked over and the amulet fell inert.

  Panic took Eres’ expression, and Banda shot forth. He destroyed the Dretch’s head with a quick maul of his hand, but screeched to a halt as the two Lemures quivered and released a foul green mist from their fleshy bodies.

  Banda whipped two stones and destroyed their heads with ease. At a glance, it seemed neither would rise again. He quickly flicked the foul black blood off his hand in disgust.

  These creatures were even stranger than the jinn, and Banda found them far more repulsive. He assumed they were either the angels or the demons Eres had spoken about, though which they were did not matter to him. He only had to kill them. Or flee.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” Ubin asked Scar.

  “It’s fine.” Scar rose back to his feet with a grimace, bearing whatever pain his eye was causing him.

  “This is a Blood Feast Festival.” Eres said with a grim seriousness, and the other three turned to her. “Demons of all kind will spawn without end and pursue the souls of those inside.”

  “We leave now.” Banda demanded.

  “We can’t.” Eres said. “This ritual makes the land within almost part of the Abyss for a whole night. We’re trapped in here until dawn. Barosa is behind this. He probably did the same to the neighbouring town. Otto just made use of it.”

  “That’s madness!” Ubin exclaimed. “Once his ward falls, he’ll be trapped in here just like us.”

  “Except he’ll have half the night to recover, while we struggle out here.” Eres added. “But it’s not hopeless. A worm like Barosa wouldn’t be able to bring about the full ritual. The demons summoned will be low and mid-grade at most… We need to rally the others of the town and use them as soldiers. That will buy us time, until the ward comes down.”

  “What?” Ubin asked.

  “Otto wouldn’t have saved Shamura if he was just going to abandon her to these demons. It’s even more dangerous in the town than it is out in the wild. He can’t survive this ritual while being weighed down. He’s going to hide her somewhere.”

  “Where?” Ubin asked with a bit more urgency. “No corner of this town is safe.”

  “He’ll bury her…” Scar realized. “Leviathan Beastmen don’t need to breathe.”

  “Exactly.” Eres said. “Otto plans to recover within the ward, while we get worn down by this demon scourge. He’ll hide her somewhere once the ward falls, and then it’s just a matter of surviving until dawn.”

  “The ritual will end and Shamura will wake. We stand no chance then. But… He won’t settle for that.” Eres’ eyes sharpened. “He’ll try to ambush us through the night. Otto has higher base physical abilities. He’s more equipped for the situation. If he manages to kill a single one of us, nothing’s stopping him from killing us all.”

  “There’s nothing we can do now, but this strategy is a double edged sword. Just as he wins if he makes it to dawn. We win if we find Shamura before it.”

  Scar gripped his axe tight. “Then let’s find some solders.”

  ---

  “Fight!” A lightly bearded man shouted. “Fight, you bastards!”

  He cleaved a demon in two with his khopesh and bashed two others away with his round shield. The man fought at the front lines of the group, not out of self sacrifice, but sheer necessity.

  The demon scourge was as endless as it was unrelenting. Too often in this short time he had seen others fall victim to terrible horrors. A fate he wanted to avoid. But the demons swarmed.

  Hellhounds with burning fur and chests glowing red like a furnace. Eyes the size of heads flying on leathery bat-like wings. Imps shaped like red goblins with horns and wings and the lower legs of a goat. These were among the least revolting of the fiends. And the least threatening.

  Terrified wails stole his attention to the side. He looked just in time to see the limbs of several people swallowed up in the mouth of a giant demon.

  It had the form of a bipedal toad, though it was as tall as an ogre and even wider. A huge mouth stretched across its flattened head from one side to the next, disconcertingly filled with fangs. Large eyes bulged from its head and its disgusting gut protruded below its knees.

  A Broga. Takar knew it to be a mid-grade demon. One of the more common ones to scare young children with tales of. And he could not sense its aura well.

  Its tongue shot out towards him without warning. Were his shield not already positioned in front, he would not have had time to raise it. But the tongue stuck to his shield, and dragged him back towards its mouth just as quickly.

  A spinning axe severed the tongue just in time and he crashed on the ground. The Broga groaned in pain and a rock smashed into its head. The impact sent ripples through its soft flesh and sprung back tepidly, doing no harm but to make the demon stumble.

  Takar lept away to put distance between him, and as he did, he saw a feral savage rip the Broga apart in a blur. By the time he landed back on his feet, the Broga had fallen and already started to crumble to ash.

  “All of you stand firm!” Scar shouted out.

  The man turned his head to see the rest of the swarm being quickly exterminated. He did not recognize the savage and the woman, but he did not need more than a glance to recognize the other two.

  Relief showed on his face. In this hellish land, he would have taken any hand held out to him. The hands of two slumlords were better than he expected.

  “Join the rest of the group!” Scar ordered what remained of his group. “Do your part to fight, or we’ll leave you behind!”

  Takar hurried to the surprisingly large crowd, with no need to be told twice. Perhaps he would survive this hell yet.

  ---

  Eres glanced around at the carnage and their steadily growing army of pawns. They had managed to gather a few hundred of them so far, and most were motivated enough to fight.

  Still, the situation was less than optimistic. Too many demons sprung from the accursed depths. Not as many as the horde but demons were far more cunning. Many employed the use of schemes, everything from hit and run ambushes to shepherding the weaker cretins in their direction.

  They had not encountered much Rank 2 mid-grades so far, but it had not even been an hour since the ritual began. The night was still long ahead.

  “This should be enough.” Scar said.

  “Yes.” Eres agreed. “Now we need a place they can hold.”

  “The wall.” Scar answered immediately. “One less side to focus on. No houses to sneak close through.”

  “Then, let’s-” A long black spear clanked against Eres’ Shield Arm, held in the air by a demon.

  It had legs like that of a harpy, but long gangly arms, a pair of wings with rotting feathers, and the bony head of a vulture.

  A Vrok. Were it not obvious by appearance, Eres would identify it by its rancid stench. She had only heard tales of it before, and by this brief experience she wished it had remained that way.

  The vrok crooned its neck and spewed out noxious black smog. Scar clinked his axes together at the same time, and the barrier of sound kept its foul fumes at bay. Long enough for a piece of cobblestone to crack its skull.

  The vrok crashed into the ground and staggered back up with a fractured skull, and Banda shattered it fully with another stone.

  “Let’s go.” Eres repeated her command properly, unaffected by the encounter. These demons were only second-most in her mind. She would not lose sight of the priority.

  The four of them led their newfound militia through the town. The demon scourge had enacted a massacre in this short time, with the mangled remains of corpses strewn about as much as the piles of ash.

  But that was none of her concern. They made it to the wall, and Scar immediately began to organize them in a simple formation.

  None of them seemed to need much convincing, as was natural. The choice between frontline conscript or mutilated and tortured for all eternity was an obvious one.

  Scar was already proving a capable enough leader. Eres admittedly had little mind for warfare, and little care for it. Her path was a different one after all. But she could still recognize the logic of it.

  It was a simple formation system of three rows, laid out in a wide semicircle leading out from the wall. She imagined the rows would switch out for the one behind after a certain time had past, allowing each time to rest and recover some aura.

  A standard tactic in a battle of attrition. One that was necessary, given that the demon scourge had already started to swarm against them in greater numbers than ever before.

  Eres took out a Mana Crystal and started to replenish her own reserves, as the pawns fought for their lives. Her focus fixated on the priority.