I led the charge up the hill, and I could see Took simply charging on the other side, disregarding the humans that stood in her way. When one brave, foolhardy Flamespeaker began a Calling, perhaps thinking he could scare her with the flames, Took simply closed her eyes to protect them from fire and ran him over. I heard the meaty thud of a shoulder plowing into a gut, then the screams of a man who was stepped on, before agonizingly dying to the implacable weight of dozens of keelish feet stomping across his prostrate body. Behind him, more humans stood in shocked silence as the keelish charge continued.
Back on my side of the hill, the Wind and Flamespeakers were trying to gather, to prepare themselves for our arrival, and I channeled [Conqueror’s Rebuke] as I shouted to my keelish, my soldiers. Under the amplification of my sonic magic, my voice boomed over the hill, and I could see the influence of my [Skill] wash over the keelish under Sybil’s command as they rallied against the assembled humans.
“Hunt them all! Leave none alive! VICTORY!”
“VICTORY BY FANG AND BLOOD!” Echoed the voices of hundreds of keelish, and, more than the slight reduction in strength from [Conqueror’s Rebuke], the sound of hundreds of shrieking voices in unison obliterated the humans’ will. We surged forward, and the Wind and Flamespeakers at the crest of the hill broke under our charge, fleeing towards the defenses their Earthspeakers had created. They took potshots, trying to do something to us as we made our approach, but the few attacks made were too panicked, too hasty to pose a real threat. One of the Flamespeakers tried to make a Calling, but I gathered my own magic to my throat, and with a wordless shout, let out a [Crippling Cry].
Even more than the shrieks of keelish or [Conqueror’s Rebuke], the [Crippling Cry] shattered not just the single Flamespeaker’s Calling, but that of every one of the humans spread out before us, with the sole exception of one Earthspeaker at the base of the hill who stood wholly enveloped by stone armor. As we rushed down the hill towards the battlefield where my fodder had acted as the vanguard, I witnessed the slaughter there. Keelish bodies lay smoldering in heaps, and the evidence of explosions filled the valley of death the Earthspeakers had created. Since I looked with my thermal vision uniquely suited for seeing at night, everything was awash with heat, and I forcibly changed my perception to the more ordinary eyesight.
The space between the two erected walls was a flaming mess of dead bodies and spilled blood. I internally thanked the vanguard for their sacrifice as I looked closer. On the eastern wall, Ytte had made herself known and destroyed the wall with her magic. The Earthspeakers behind the walls hadn’t been prepared for her frenzied entrance, and she had immediately begun making short work of them while dozens more of my keelish swarmed in behind her. Though the humans there were trying their best to rally and protect themselves, the dissolution of their plan left them in the lurch, and we keelish thrive within the chaos of the battlefield. Eager keelish rushed under and around hastily constructed defenses and ripped into the exposed flesh beneath.
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While most of the humans from the crest of the hill, the supporters of the infantry on the front lines, fled mindlessly from our charge, there was one singular man among them who remained calm and worked to keep his people safe. He stood tall amid the rest and could be seen giving commands to his fellows while occasionally loosing an arrow into the pressing horde of keelish. With each shot, a keelish fell, and I felt a certain measure of respect for his ability to keep calm enough to work with his people. I began to sprint towards him specifically.
As I approached, he laid eye on me specifically, and to his credit, he didn’t react at all beyond continuing to place an arrow to his bow before drawing. He was maybe fifty feet away, too far away for me to do anything about that for now, so as he drew the arrow to the full length of his bow’s capacity and let it loose, I threw myself prone. The man hadn’t expected that, and the arrow flew overhead as his eyes widened in shock. I thought I heard it hit home into someone behind me, but I couldn’t concern myself with that. Instead, I continued to clamber to my feet before I drew close enough to the man to kill him.
He held his bow in both hands, obviously hoping to hold me back, but there was no hope in his eyes or posture. I lunged forward, and he raised the center of his bow to catch my jaws. With a forceful chomp, I split the bow in two and continued my attack forward with both hands. Both of my claws and fingers were joined together by my specialized scales, and the blades that my hands had become sunk deep into the man’s chest. Then, with a surprisingly tender smile on his face, I heard him send a short windword, the sound nothing more than a shallow gasp coming from his punctured lungs.
“I love you. Survive.”
I pulled my hands from the man’s ribs, and as I did so, I heard a thundering voice, a woman’s, coming from the Earthspeaker in full armor.
“KORALI!”
His name, then. The small part of me that remained human regretted Korali’s death, but the overwhelmingly keelish part of me looked at the dozens of keelish bodies scattered around the clearing. Were they not worthy of life? Did he and his people not think it was a divine mandate to slaughter us all, and that without a moment’s effort at communication?
The brief moment of moralizing was interrupted by the advent of the fully armored Earthspeaker. She wielded two short red blades, and I realized that her weapons were not naturally that color but were instead painted with the blood of my subordinates. Her armor had spikes along the knuckles, protruding from the knees and elbows, and on the shoulders, while the face was featureless except for the visor’s slit. Her whole body was splattered with the blood and viscera of keelish, most especially on the fists and knees, where she had obviously struck down any of the ambitious ones that had gotten close to her. And, she was sprinting towards me. Korali’s lover, then.
Every keelish that came near her was only an obstacle to her path onward, and she contemptuously smashed anything in her way to paste. If her armor wasn’t a testament enough, the consistent and overwhelming strength she could draw from the earth was proof that this woman was a True Earthspeaker. The armor would be a problem, and I couldn’t say how much energy she had left to repair the armor once I finally got through it. If she was still near full, then this would be a long fight. I felt the grin crack my face at the thought and activated [Combatant’s Bloodlust].