44.

Leeches latched onto people with a suicidal determination, their teeth biting into flesh even as steel tore through them. A madness gripped them, their eyes wide and wild as the stench of blood filled the street in an overwhelming blanket that coated the air. Every leech was in a frenzy, jaws snapping as desperation drove them.

The rush of reinforcements blunted the crazed rush, freezing them in their tracks as battlelines formed. Erak was behind enemy lines. The wedge of armored fighters were fifteen or so feet down the street from him, a wall of teeth and claws between them.

Erak roared again, his throat raw and painful, and swung his sword about in wide sweeping blows. His aura mingled with the bloodlust of the monsters and the line of Imperials began to match the leeches in ferocity. Blood was pouring like a river across the cobblestones.

Every wide sweep of the sword took rubbery limbs and the sound of talons on his armor filled his ears, a shriek that set his teeth on edge. He crushed another of the leeches to the ground with his shield and then stomped on the creature. His boots slipped a bit and he nearly fell to his knees and under the mass of claws and fangs.

“We’re coming! Hold fast!” The woman yelled towards him. Erak just kept cutting. Another body slapped the ground while its head went up into the air. A pair of hands gripped the thin edge where his breastplate met gorget and pulled him downard, the creature’s strength supernatural.

The sword was stuck in another leech’s head and he let go of the pommel and reached around and jerked free the knife. The bronze blade split the leech’s gut with ease, bathing Erak’s hand with hot blood. Erak stabbed it twice more and the creature's grasp weakened and then slipped free.

Another grabbed at his back and shoulders, then another to a leg, trying to lift it up and topple him backward. Erak forced his leg down, crushing fingers and having the leech scream in pain as Erak’s boot ground fingers into stone. The leech on his back was still there, weighing him down as Erak knifed the leech who’s hands he had pinned down.

The weight disappeared and Erak was free to keep fighting again. The pressure of the leech wave was being forced back as more and more Imperials flooded into the street and entered Erak’s aura field. The desire to keep going, to chase them down the alleyway they had flooded out of, was rampant.

Erak focused on the feeling of the weight of the battle thrill and imagined it breaking apart. Essence unraveled and the aura broke apart, leaving over a hundred panting Imperials standing panting in the street. Leeches lay thick and mixed with the Hellspawn and dead Imperials.

The cluster of armored figures broke apart and revealed the woman who had been shouting for him to hold. His heart sank. The family resemblance was too strong to ignore.

She was gorgeous, with blood spackled across high cheekbones and eyes filled with feverish light. Her auburn hair was tightly bound and the slightest tilt of her ears and the deceptively muscular build. She was built like a gymnast with a flat stomach and powerful thighs. A pair of courtesans clung to her side, their eyes wide and filled with adoration.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I’m Illyria Greenbough, the sixteenth Prince of the Throne,” her voice was musical and rang like chimes in the wind. Erak sighed loudly then cleaned his knife off and sheathed it. He rapped on his armor, hoping to wake Pomp up from his nap.

“Tell me warrior, your name?” She asked watching with amused emerald eyes as Erak waited for Pomp to wake up. The sleeping dragon didn’t rouse himself so Erak quickly started to sign.

“Silent Tongue?”

“Of course, I am not a savage,” the princess said with a laugh.

“I have come to find the mantle bearer of the Sword of Empire. The mantle is an old sword that the Captain of the ship carried,” Erak said. They both stopped and stared at the sword in the woman’s hand.

It was an old blade, a sense of antiquity clutching to it even though it was perfectly maintained. There was a hint of blue along the steel, a ripple that only appeared when the light reflected just right as Illyria twisted it this way and that.

“Ahhh, an old man had this when it all started. He was with Jules here, and well, he died with the blade unstained. I rectified that mistake,” Illyria said. Jules was one of the two courtesans next to her, a short muscular woman with black hair tied up in a thick bun.

“The Sword of Empire sent me to retrieve you so you could activate the ship’s systems.”

“What do you mean by that? Is the ship alive or something?” she said, laughing. Erak nodded solemnly.

“You’re being serious. That ancient killing machine is alive?” Erak nodded again.

“Well fuck me,” the princess muttered.

“Already did,” Someone muttered in the crowd. The princess rolled her eyes at that then looked around where they were at.

“This is the wrong place for this. These…leeches, have been flooding this area fairly regularly. We haven’t had trouble holding them back, but that last wave with whatever that thing was,” she waved at where Erak had killed the rage demon.

“We had to retreat or risk all of us succumbing to the affliction. We have a base close by, one of the bars that we’ve fortified. We’ve managed to rally quite a few survivors and I won’t leave them here.”

Erak nodded in agreement and then went and pulled his sword out of the leech’s skull. He wiped the blade on a dead man’s partially clean shirt and then went and retrieved his spear. Most of the crowd had retreated, with just the princess and her small posse waiting for him.

They led him away from the scene of the battle and down another side street. Here the buildings were more squat, wide windows broken apart and covered with bar furniture. Men and women walked about, their dress not appropriate for the battlefield, wielding weapons won from their foe.

Erak saw spears and swords and knives that all of the Infernal Soldiers had used. The scenes of violence were rampant and there was a pile of shrouded corpses off to the side, crimson stained sheets over them. Hundreds were clustered about and walking with haunted eyes in a range of strange clothes, from party going sheer gowns, to hearty and well made work clothes of janitorial staff.

“In here,” Illyria said, pointing to one of the bars. A red swan with a long neck stretched to the side was painted over the door. A burly guard, who looked to have a trace of Giant blood, stood with a thick cudgel in his hand. He waved them through, his dark eyes looking at the milling crowds with suspicion.

“When we didn’t fold immediately, and I began to rally this area, there was a demon. A shapechanger. It nearly killed me, if it wasn’t for the sacrifice of one of my companions, I would be dead,” Illyria said when she noticed Erak looking at the guard.

Pomp’s head emerged from his shoulder and the dragon stretched its jaws, yawned widely and looked around with sleepy eyes.

“What did I miss?