Michael Mathias - The Wizard and the Warlord

At the west gate, the wingless horde outnumbered the soldiers so greatly that some of the Dark Lord’s force broke away from the battle and circled the wall toward the city’s little-used northern gate. It was called the forest gate because it opened onto the southern edge of the Evermore Forest. It was guarded, but not nearly as much as the other gates. Queen Willa’s rangers used the horse door and the barracks there. With their constant presence it had never needed guarding before.

The demon spawn were surprised when, about two-thirds of the way around, an entanglement of thorny growth sprouted around them. It engulfing most of the front of their charge. They were even more surprised when scores of elven archers began loosing arrows at them from afar. The entangled demons were easy targets as they struggled to tear themselves free.

Phen was leading Telgra and the elven group toward a hidden tunnel entrance he knew of. It was still a good way east. The elves had waited until after sunset. They and the great wolves could see well enough in the dark to follow Phen’s direction. Yet, oddly, it was Phen’s human senses that picked up the demons first. He felt more than saw or heard them. His thorny growth spell was cast in the best place it could have been. Most of the dark things leading the pack were caught up. Those following didn’t have a chance to slow as they ran into the stuff. The elves engaged them freely.

Under Phen, Arf growled and shivered, waiting desperately to have a go at the evil creatures that were offending his senses. Phen wouldn’t allow it. He spoke soothingly to the great wolf, though, trying to calm him. “You’ll get your chance, pup, I promise.”

Torches flared on the walls above them, followed by the shouts of the forest gate guards. Dostin let Yip charge into the fray and used his staff in the torchlight with deft ferocity. He had an intense look, narrow-browed and scowling, with his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth. The heavyset monk whacked and jabbed everything around him. Crack! Crack! A heartbeat of pause. Crack! again. Then a flurry of chak-chak-chaks as he spun the heavy wooden pole. Yip snarled and growled, then bit into a hell boar’s flank. A piece of the beast tore free and Dostin clobbered it as it turned to attack.

“Leave them!” Queen Mother Telgra yelled to her fighters.

Phen cast an orb light into being and sent it to hover over the dark host. Already some of the Xwardian rangers were gathering archers on the wall and loosing into the group. It was all the elves could do to break free before a kettle of boiling oil was poured over the wall. A moment later, a flaming arrow streaked down and the whoomping sound of the oil igniting thundered through the night. With only a handful of hellspawn on their heels, the elves followed Phen and his great wolf mount away from the blaze and back into the darkness.

Inside the wall, almost a dozen hellcats had landed and taken to the streets. Innocent folk, farmers, seamstresses, and leathermen were thrashed by tooth and claw. Women and children were torn to shreds, and refugees trampled by their own townsfolk trying to get away.

But there was no place to go.

A series of streaking blasts sent a wagon full of chicken cages spinning over into a small, roped-in herd of sheep. The herd broke loose. A piece of the blazing wagon set a young girl’s hair on fire. She flailed and screamed in terror and pain. Her mother ran to help but both were mangled to bloody chunks by the more powerful kinetic blast of a Choska demon that was perched atop a chapel nearby.

A huge, smoldering hole was left in the street were the woman and girl had just been. A blackened leg, smaller than a man’s arm, with a shiny red shoe on its foot, twitched once, then again. People screamed and still tried to flee, only to find a pair of wyverns slinging acidic slobber over the crowd like rain.

A bat-like Choska glided down over the crowd and snatched a fat, shrieking farm wife.

A block over, an angry young plow boy swung a dirt rake into one of the wyverns. The tines caught in the beast’s black, scaly hide and the boy pulled it out of the air. A half-dozen men with hoes and shovels beat the thing to a pulp only to find their feet and lower legs sizzling and dissolving from the wyvern’s acid blood.

While the Choska sat on its perch busying itself by tearing apart the huge meal it had caught, a young mage attacked. The boy sent a thin little crackle of lightning at the Choska from the rooftop of a nearby inn. The bolt would have been insignificant had it not finished its jagged streak directly into one of the Choska’s ember eyes. The mangled farm wife fell from its jaws and landed half in, half out of an abandoned pot maker’s cart that still had a terrified horse harnessed to it. As the demon screeched a terrible, ear-splitting cry, the horse charged through the crowd, leaping and lurching over huddled people until the wagon finally hung on something.

From under the broken wagon an old man wailed. The horse fell as a pair of arrows pierced its vitals.

Half a mile away, a row of shops owned by tapestry weavers and tailors was fully ablaze. Around the fire, two imps, a wyvern, and a blood-lusting thing that looked half insect, half reptile were decimating the people, causing them to stampede like cattle, trampling their neighbors and kin into the bloody snow.

Closer to the city gate a terrible creature as big as a two-story tavern lashed and destroyed everything within reach of its many tentacles. Already a dozen people had been grabbed up and dashed against the rubble, then tossed away by the evil monster.

While all of this was happening, fat, lazy snowflakes drifted down out of the night sky.

Inside the city, even where hellspawn weren’t attacking, the conditions were miserable. It was freezing cold and blankets were scarce. No one dared brave a fire, not even to cook. To attract one of the dark-winged beasts was to attract death in quantity. Even atop the smaller thirty-foot high wall that surrounded the palace grounds, the soldiers and archers crowded there didn’t light the torches yet. They would have to soon enough. Already a pair of hellcats were ravaging through the reserve troops who were waiting in the forested park near Whitten Loch.

And above them all, searching for the place it would unleash its evil magic, was an angry, one-eyed Choska.

Along the rooftops of the eastern portion of Xwarda, a dark creature skittered to and fro. It was seen here, then there. It was pointed at and whispered about, but it didn’t stay still long enough to be identified. Whatever it was, it was terrifyingly fast and left behind long streamers of glittery dust that glistened in the moonlight.

King Mikahl found the Warlord. The Hell Master had cleared a large circle around himself with dragon’s fire and ordered his minions to leave the human king to him. The young Westlander had chopped off his lover’s head. Even the parts of the Dark Lord that had long forgotten Gerard knew that much. After all, it was the Dragon Queen who had tried so hard to help him break free of the Nethers before. This pesky little man and his sword were nothing but fodder to him. The Warlord wasn’t a mere demon, nor was he susceptible to being drawn into Pavreal’s blade, but it was the satisfaction of avenging her death that caused the Warlord to fight the High King alone.

The two of them exchanged blows with both steel and claw. They blasted powerful magics at each other and circled cautiously in ever defensive patterns. Both took wounds, but both found the shielding spells that thwarted the other’s magic. Neither of them had the advantage, and neither of them was backing down.

Mikahl was frustrated beyond rational thinking. Nothing he seemed to do more than nicked the powerful thing Hyden’s brother had become. He was dodging and defending himself fairly well, but he knew that if the Warlord let his minions into the fight, it was over. The only reason he was still alive was because this malformed monster was determined to kill him itself.