CHAPTER 100: THE ETIQUETTE OF EXTREME VIOLENCE

Thunder had spoken, and now came the reckoning.

The charge that followed was not born of glory or grand ambition, but of something far more primal—the desperate hope of survival.

Each warrior who surged forward carried within them the weight of all who sheltered behind: the sleeping children in village beds, the elders whose stories would die with them, the lovers who had whispered promises in the darkness.

They ran not toward victory, for victory was a luxury none could guarantee, but toward the moment when they would discover what manner of creature they truly were beneath the skin.

In a war, every soul learns the same brutal lesson: that courage is not the absence of fear but the decision to act while drowning in it.

And as the space between armies collapsed into chaos, each heart beating within that charge would soon know whether it housed a hero or simply someone who had run out of places to retreat to.

The battle was no longer coming. It had arrived.

Just as Stahl was about to connect her sword to the first fiend to reach her, a shout of an anima spell filled her ears just before she looked to her right and saw Dally swinging his rapier in a wide arc, sending bolts of lightning flashing outwards to strike the majority of nearby fiends, the one she was about to stab included.

The arcs of lightning jumped from fiend to fiend as they got progressively weaker with each transference, but dropping over fifteen instantly and leaving even more writhing on the ground, stunned.

The husky flashed the stunned she-wolf a smile in delight as he plunged the end of his thin blade into the closest fiend still moving.

The carefree husky had just earned a new degree of respect from the wolf. Competent spellblades were a rare occurrence but a welcomed ally. Stahl turned her attention back to the next wave of fiends approaching and readied herself once again.

Chief Crag eagerly rushed forward to bludgeon on his own targets with a hefty laugh, and Stahl realized both of them were actually having fun here.

She was fighting beside two battle-crazed lunatics... Two skilled lunatics though... she flashed her own smile and raced forward herself, eager not to be entirely outshined by her comrades.

Stahl was a bit faster than the orc, so she caught up quickly. Chief Crag was crushing fiends with every swing of his club without fail, so the wolf figured she should match that pace alongside him.

Stahl lunged forward and pierced the heart of the nearest one as the pair began advancing. She cleaved through the writhing monstrosities, taking step after step and swing by swing with perfect accuracy with both swords.

Her polished movements and practiced swordplay never failed to cut down those that charged toward her from a steady flow of monsters that hungered for her flesh. The orc chief and the husky both smiled cynically at the sight.

The archers stood on their walls and began firing upon the trickle of fiends, providing invaluable support at thinning the overwhelming size of the large force.

However, despite that assistance, there were still too many making it through the spiky pillars too quickly, and the front lines were starting to feel that pressure.

Stahl heard another incantation and saw Dally rushing past her. The husky was inches away from a fiend lunging towards him when the canine drove the tip of his rapier into the dirt.

Thin icicles formed into spears and erupted into an arc from the earth where the blade pierced, skewering a good deal of the approaching fiends, and giving the vanguard a short reprieve.

Dally stood, his face less than a hands length from the agape, toothy jaw of the lunging fiend suspended before him by the stalagmites. He turned with another large grin as he tapped his blade against one such icicle and flaunted.

"Not bad, right? I’ve definitely killed the most this time, Crag!"

Stahl was in disbelief... he was gloating... And Stahl had thought she was cocky... The chief grunted his sour response.

"Did YOU make those kills? Or did your magic? It’s not the same when you don’t get to feel them break! It should count as half, in my opinion!"

The husky turned his nose up mockingly as he huffed his reply.

"Sooo... Still a sore loser then... Got it." The musician turned back to Stahl and spoke another seemingly misplaced statement.

"I’ve got to give it to you Aschefell, you haven’t disappointed yet either! I bet this will make a fantastic song! Let’s see... The ashen wolf, on their darkest day, fought by orcs, with grand swordplay... I think it has potential, you?"

Stahl stared on blankly... Surely, this wasn’t the time for this... Was he writing a song? NOW? Chief Crag huffed as he raised his club for the fiend approaching him. He gave his criticism with a grunt as he crushed it with a heavy swing down.

"No! That’s too vague! It makes it sound like we were helpless! Maybe just make a single verse about her?"

The husky rolled his eyes and kept speaking as if they weren’t standing in a battlefield. Stahl cut down another fiend in the meantime.

"Oh, right, because you should always be the star of the tale, right Chief?... You can share the credit you know."

Stahl finally let out a laugh despite the task at hand. She spoke her swift response, yielding to the lighthearted mood the two were setting.

"Aren’t you the one keeping count of who killed the most, Dally? Maybe you’re trying to hog the credit?"

Stahl flashed him a brief grin, and the husky lunged to pierce through a nearby fiend with a huff. All three laughed a moment later, carving through their enemies all the while.

The rest of the vanguard nearby thought all three had gone absolutely mad as they struggled against the few fiends that made it through to them.

___

"INCOMING! BE READY!" Captain Rix shouted as the larger fiend barreled towards the end of the wall. The bull waited with his axe at the ready and gave the command as soon as the creature ran through the opening.

"NOW!"

As the bull swung his mighty axe through the back leg of the monster’s left side, Sir Corper stepped forward and delivered two swift strikes to its front left leg, forcing it to drop as the bone snapped, and the creature flipped face first over itself from the sudden loss of balance, shrieking all the while as it stirred up the dust around it.

The creature rolled quite a few times at the speed it was charging, putting a short distance between it and the two beasts that had wounded it.

Oust got his first clear look at the opponent then. The fiend easily stood at twelve feet tall on all fours, and its massive, rounder body made the tiger wonder if its weight wasn’t in the thousands. It looked similar to a feral boar, but off, as if all of its facial features were just a bit shifted from where they should be... As if they were painted on.

Something about that offset made the tiger’s fur stand on end, but he would face this opponent regardless. Doing so with a bit of caution was never an unwise thing, however, as the two orcs going for the kill would soon find out the hard way.

As the pair of warriors made it to the writhing mass, they swiftly went to strike for the heart of the fiend, one raised a spear, and one raised a sword.

The fiend let out an odd little snort, and the next thing the tiger knew, he received his answer for the shifted features in the most uneventful way possible. The fiend’s face split open without warning, and the divided flesh slid open wider as if it were a blooming flower, revealing a circular formation of sharp teeth at the center with a writhing, barbed tentacle for a tongue.

The skin which made up the false petals expanded outwards into stretching flaps of flesh with teeth pointed inwards, and closed firmly around the first orc’s head, crushing it quickly with a popping sound as the body went limp.

The encasing flesh latched around the fallen orc’s shoulders, and started undulating, forming grotesque slurping sounds as the orc’s body shriveled from the action, everything inside of it being sucked through the hole where its head used to be.

The petals started drawing the carcass in further and further with a wet and crunching swallowing sound as the fiend swiftly made its way through the appetizer.

The second orc dove towards the abdomen to strike, but the creature’s stomach also split apart on the underside with a huff of heat, revealing a long, oversized, grinning mouth of sharp teeth to unfold from between the creature’s front legs, to its back.

Something that looked like intestines shot out a short ways and wrapped around the second orc’s neck, snapping it effortlessly as the tendril drew the body back towards the new mouth.

The teeth gnashed through the steel armor and the thick bones like they were merely eggshells, even devouring the sword with no trouble at all, and within seconds, both of the warriors had been completely consumed.

The fiend shifted, and its missing back leg writhed wildly for a bit until a fresh appendage burst through the skin. The front leg snapped back into shape, and the fiend rose up and snarled through both mouths this time as it turned back towards the bull.

Captain Rix huffed in his disgust as he yelled his warning.

"THE LARGER TWO ARE LOWER DEMONS. THEY WILL KEEP HEALING, WATCH YOURSELVES!"

***