Armed with whatever they had summoned at the moment of the disabling wave was activated, the powerless members of the attacking army met with the Lightbringers forces. Those that they had mocked in their minds mere moments ago, yet now posed a true threat even with their makeshift weapons.

Fists were clenched, swords were swung and clubs battered against armour. What was supposed to be a war of warriors, quickly degraded into a hellish brawl of fists flying, blood spraying and bones crushing.

It was not the noble battles of knights that many thought of when they imagined medieval battle, nor was it even the heart wrenching battles between two evenly matched armies, where one fought side by side with their friends and exchanged witty, one liners and banter, like so many of the old Hollywood movies were eager to portray.

The closest analogue to this battle, was little more than a violent, bar brawl with everyone being drunk on the worst thing of all. Religion.

It was chaos. There was no banter, no jokes, no time to stand tall with your brother in arms. There was only death and murder. There was only blood.

It was not even kill or be killed, for that would be far too kind. Far too fair. Kill or be killed suggested it was a choice. In this battle, it was kill and be killed.

It was a battle in which a man could cut down his enemy, only to have another leap onto his back, wrap their legs around his waist, and stab a knife into his throat before he had even retrieved his sword from his kill.

And when he dropped, his killer would already be getting their brains splattered all over the dirt by a swung of a hammer.

There was no honour in such a battle. No duels. They fought like feral animals, desperate to survive. The Lightbringers men were quick to adopt that mentality, attacking their heavily armoured opponents like pack animals. Throwing themselves endlessly into the fray so that, no matter how many of them were cut down, one of them got the opening to plunge a shiv into the shield bearers armpit.

Weapons were scavenged from the dead. A sword ripped from the hand of a dead man and swung to cleave the head from a heretic, before a spear tore through their own chest.

When it came to this feral, animalistic brawling, none were better than the wretched, flesh melting abominations. Their grotesque inhuman bodies tore through the battlefield as the few that still possessed their supernatural abilities tried to contain the beasts, but their efforts were only repaid with disappointment.

Swords severed their body parts, only for each part to keep moving as if they were different entities from the start. If left for too long, the new parts even started to mutate, their melted flesh shifting and rearranging itself until a severed arm turned into a disgusting creature of its own right.

A mouth opened in the palm of the hand, while the fingers twisted and cracked, rearranging themselves into legs like that of a spider, before it eagerly scuttled away from the fight that caused its birth and instead over to the main battle.

All of the Abominations seemed drawn to it, the more chaotic the battle grew the more feverish their movements became. Only when one of them finally dragged itself close enough, despite the woman standing on its slug-like back, repeatedly stabbing it with a dagger, did they truly understand the reasoning behind it.

The slug style Abomination used one of its long, tendril-like arms to scoop up one of the fallen bodies, one of the Lightbringers men, and dragged it over to itself. It lifted the body into the air, before the entirety of its front torso opened up in a vertical slit, revealing a slobbering maw filled with hundreds and thousands of shark like teeth that rotated like the blades of a blender.

It carelessly tossed the corpse into its gaping maw, before scooping up another, then another. One after the other, bodies were tossed into the swirling maw of death, blood spurting from the blender-like mouth as it consumed the corpses, armour and all.

Even despite the people actively attacking it, burning it with hands of molten lava and stabbing it with claws that erupted from knuckles, the abomination kept feasting and eagerly satiating its hunger. And, once the tenth body had been consumed, its wretched slug-like body started to ungulate and shift.

All along its body, its flesh bubbled as if t was boiling, before dozens of fingers erupted from the sides. Each finger was the width of a man, and more than five metres long. The fingernails on the freshly spouted fingers were long, overgrown and yellowed

The fingers bent, stabbing their disgusting fingernails into the ground, before pushing. All at once they pushed, as the slug-like creature lifted itself off the ground, and stood tall on it's new legs made of giant, human fingers. Already using them to stride across the battlefield as it snatched up more bodies, some of them not even dead yet as they were captured mid battle.

Seth's army and Lightbringers men alike were attacked, the Abominations showed no allegiance or preference. It dragged their live victims across the mud as they screamed for help, their fingernails or swords digging into the ground, dragging long canyons in the dirt, as they desperately tried to stop themselves.

Some did. Some manage to wiggle free or were cut loose before they could meat their fate. Others were tossed into the blender as their screams would haunt the dreams of those who survived this hellish battle.

All those who had the true displeasure of witnessing this wretched event were rightly disgusted and aghast at what they were seeing. None of them quite understood what they were seeing, not in its entirety. None, but one man.

One man who's body was far away, safely kept from this battle where it would be safe. Which was good, as that body was currently slumped over, all of his life missing from his eyes, as was the man in black next to him. His body was still alive, keeping itself in something akin to vegetative state, for the time being. But while the body was alive, it was missing its soul.

***

A lone puppet stood in the middle of a field of corpses. There was no blood spilling from these corpses, as they had no blood to spill. They were not even alive in the first place, merely dancing to the tune of their master in a pantomime of life.

But while these performers have fallen, this one remains, all thanks to the burning ember of life held within its body. The soul of its master.

When Seth had seen Woe, his younger brother, standing atop the ramparts of the fort, he had immediately transferred his soul over. Sure, Astra had insisted he keep himself safe in the city, she had never said anything about joining the battle through his possession ability.

So really, he wasn't breaking her rules or his promise to her, technically speaking. Just don't tell her that.

The thing is, in the middle of his transference, the disabling wave erupted out from his younger brother, completely shutting off any and all magic in the area. Such as the threads he had connected to his puppets to control them, including the one he was projecting his soul along through [Resonant Threads].

Like a train that was thrown from its tracks, or a train that had its tracks suddenly disappear from underneath it, his soul was sent careening through the air. Thankfully the wave didn't have the ability to snuff it out, but his soul had been sent wildly with no ability to control its path, until he landed in this body and completed the possession.

However, he could already feel his connection to it weakening, the joints became stiffer by the minute and his short trek across the field had become like the journey of the tin man in the rain, his body locking up one part at a time.

Starting with the fingers, becoming stiffer than a poor author with arthritis, it moved to his arms and then one of its legs. He had to hobble the after that, his legs unable to bend as he dragged himself across the battlefield to where everyone else was fighting.

All the while, he was forced to watch his people battling for their lives against those Abominations. Perhaps it was a blessing then, that they didn't know what they were, what manner of beast they had originated from.

But Seth did.

When he had taken over the castle, which would become his home in Ravenkeep, the dungeon had been home to a few victims of the Hemogoblin residents that they had 'evicted'.

These victims were kept alive for their blood supply, but the goblins were not too picky on what they fed them.

A few of their prisoners were going through a process called [Gene Collapse]1, A process that was started and created when certain species consumed what Angel referred to as 'Similar Genetic Material'.

In essence... it was a process that caused the body to collapse as the power they absorbed ran rampant, stemming entirely from Cannibalism. Although the man that Seth had met was not this far gone, even he was beyond saving.

What these creatures were... were people suffering from [Gene Collapse].

This term was last seen and explained in chapter 138, Aftermath