“It's the enemy from beyond the lake,” Ariane said, “The blood walkers.”

  Screams were ringing out from the direction of the camp. A wild cacophony of agony and battle cries. There were sounds of slaughter and mayhem, death and carnage. And there was a rank odor of blood, spreading like gangrene in the air.

  I didn't waste any time to light the half burnt card in my hand and throw it at Ariane. “We are done here,” I said to Smokewell. “This isn't our war.”

  “The only right words for the situation,” the large cat said and scooped me up with a single paw and hoisted me onto her shoulder. Then she took off running like the feral beast that she was.

  Even though her speed was almost fast enough to make my cheeks blow behind my ears, we weren't prepared for what we were greeted with next. There was a loud, screeching whistle, then a massive explosion. There was a brief crimson rain.

  “Was that–”

  “Doesn't matter,” Smokewell said as she kept speeding ahead. “Whatever it was. It can probably kill you.”

  I frowned and looked behind. The big red puddles of liquid were writhing on the ground, as if a creature was trying to swim up to its surface. Surprisingly, my guess wasn't too far off from what happened next.

  The liquid turned rubbery before solidifying into the shape of a red quadruped with the muzzle of a wolf at the front and the torso of a muscular man sprouting out of its back. And the man produced blood red bow and arrows out of his own flesh and aimed at us, face twisted in a predatory grin.

  “Faster, madam! That rain can indeed kill us!” I screamed into the cat's ear, clinging to her tighter.

  The cat growled and launched off the ground as the bloody arrows flew at us from the rear. More crimson creatures of equal grotesqueness were growing out of other red puddles.

  We managed to dodge most of the arrows but it wasn't much of a good news. Since whatever those arrows were made of was the same thing the flesh of those blood walkers was made of (probably blood).

  The arrows that lodged themselves into the tree trunks transformed into little monkeys with spider appendages that jumped at us as we whooshed by. Some of the walkers that hadn't transformed into those weird wolf centaurs, had turned into weirder vulturine lizards that spat blood missiles as if they had a quota to fill.

  One of these attacks almost got Smokewell into the back of her legs but her hack-saw tail struck it off. I felt a stab of ice in my heart. “Madam, don’t let that thing touch you,” I said frantically but it was too late.

  The cat shrieked in pain when the many droplets of the blood on her tail coalesced into tiny spiders that disappeared into Smokewell's fur. I saw tiny spurts of blood erupting in their wake.

  “Those little shits!” Smokewell growled as she came to a stumbling halt and began clawing at herself to get rid of the intruders in her fur. “I think some of them crawled inside my skin…” she said, annoyed.

  The abominations of blood were drawing closer. A small army of them. Their laughter kept ringing in my ears.

  I pulled Smokewell behind one of the flesh-leafed trees. “That's it, we need bruteforce,” I mumbled, peering at them from behind our cover. “Godfrey, it's time to serve your master.”

  The black vortex swirled. The gigantic abyss set its foot back onto earth. “As you command,” his gravelly voice answered.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  I knew the blood walkers were multiplying in numbers already. And their grotesque soldiers were probably circling us and closing in. Even though Ariane had called this a war, I found it almost laughable to call it that.

  The blood walkers didn't want a war. They wanted a slaughter. This was a land ruled by the Butcher King after all. What else could he create if not more butchers?

  I focused all my malice on my thoughts and made sure my mind was one with my loyal servant's. “It’s time to let these pathetic fools meet their maker,” I ordered him mentally before giving him my next command. “Godfrey, destroy.”

  ****

  And Godfrey didn't hold back. My word was his gospel. The line which he clung to in his state after the death of his mortal body. He unleashed the rage of his ancestors and the world that had turned him into what he had become.

  His violence was divine like a biblical flood, raining down upon the mortals like their final judgement. Every step he took was an earthquake, every swing of his machete sliced a dozen flesh-leaf trees as if they were mere twigs in his garden. He stomped the blood walkers under foot with the force of a mountain hurled from the skies.

  One word. One word of mine was all it had taken. I commanded the God of this world. Even if it was just a corpse-like shadow of his. Anything that existed here, existed because of his mercy, existed by his permission.

  And above his word was my word. My command that dictated every action of his. It was beautiful, watching him mowing down the hordes of blood walkers like they didn't matter. Because they didn’t. Their coppery scent was like honeysuckle in my breath. Their screams were like a thousand birds chirping in the autumn wind.

  This was true power. My senses were overwhelmed by my overexertion of my malice. But I didn’t care. I felt absolute control over Godfrey. And I felt his absolute obedience. It was pure ecstacy.

  He charged forward, hacking and slashing with reckless abandon. More than a dozen tall trees fell in a rumbling chorus. His massive steps stomped the blood walkers in a way that they couldn't solidify again. This was the power of a divine abyss in all its glory. I don't think any mortal abyss would've been capable of such feats.

  The carnival of carnage lasted maybe five minutes that felt like a blissful eternity.

  And then Godfrey stopped. The ground was razed. We stood surrounded by fallen trees and their stumps, bloody leaves painting the ground and the blood walkers reduced to slimes.

  “That was…quite good,” Smokewell said, stepping up behind me. “But I think we should get going now that you've made an opening for us.”

  What I did next made me feel like someone else was controlling my body and I was looking at myself like a ghost outside myself.

  And I saw myself laughing.

  “This isn't even half of what I'm capable of,” the woman who looked like myself said. “There's so much more I can do. So very much.”

  The cat's frown turned wary. “This is enough, Elsa,” she said. “We have an objective to accomplish. You are going to follow my orders. I'm still your Madam!”

  Instead of defying the cat's words, the woman simply said, “I know. I haven't forgotten. But you don't seem to remember that this is still a test. A test of my limits. I want to see how far I can take this.”

  The cat's jaw went slack. “You can't be serious.”

  I turned back to Godfrey. I could feel his hunger for more violence. More massacre. I hungered the same. I was about to give him my next order when I sensed something. My hexonomicon felt warm in my reticule. I pulled it out. Smoke was rising out of the pages.

  Then it struck me. I gasped and flipped it open to the pages of the Liberation Ritual. A new spell slot had been added.

  I hadn't even performed an enhancement ritual. Could it be possible that the overexertion of my malice and this prolonged use of the Liberation ritual had force-triggered an enhancement?

  It might've been true or maybe not. But I had indeed enhanced the ritual involuntarily. So I pulled out my crowfeather quill and with bold, pretty strokes wrote the word ‘destruo’ in front of the new Supplement Spell section.

  I turned back to Godfrey and with my malice gathering up in my thoughts I transmitted the new command to him. “Destruo.”

  The magnificent abyssal being nodded and turned to head for the camp where the war was still ongoing. To unleash his next volley of destruction.