“Trebuchets!” Wood creaked as stones were flung toward… them. Eighteen years as a general, thirty more as all the ranks below, totalling forty-eight years of service for the country of Darstin. Three wars, seventeen victories as a general, countless more before that. Just a week ago Sansbrook burned, its citizens hanged, its soldiers slaughtered, its leaders tossed on the fire or kept prisoner. He had feared all throughout his career, though so few had he felt immediately in peril.

First when he was nearly killed in battle, buried beneath so many bodies as to become immobile, blood and shit leaking down upon him, blinding his eyes, filling his mouth and nostrils. Only when he screamed for help after the battle had died down had he been rescued, and luckily enough by the victorious Darstin troops.

Second was when his battalion was flanked, the men around him falling to a hail of arrows and spears. An arrow had pierced the back of his head, just to the side of his spine, its tip poking through his cheek. He had ridden his horse as fast as he could, spitting blood from his mouth as he went, sticking close to the handful of soldiers who’d escaped by his side until they reached a Darstin fort and gave word of the attack.

This marked the third. Monsters of grey and brown, twisted, oddly shaped, the makings of a mad sculptor. Dog-like creatures with the heads of three men. Elephant sized creatures with gigantic, teeth-filled maws. Flying beasts covered in human ears and tooth-like spikes. And at their head, a half-man half-goat with shredded flesh, taller than all else and stood at the center, its limbs so gaunt as to be nothing but bones, its eyes glowing red, as if the beast had some perverted form of a Seers power.

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Unmoving, the mass of monsters waited as their flighted brethren descended upon the Darstin troops. One crashed into a trebuchet, crushing it under its immense size and sending out a blast of splinters. Another grabbed a trebuchet with its talons, dragging it along and tipping it over completely. But he didn’t have time for them.

A thousand more fell upon them, scratching at them with class as sharp as iron, dragging men into the sky and tearing them apart. “Retreat!” A spray of blood dowsed the men around him, a man above having been split in two. They all turned, pushing back as they tried to escape. Some tuned back, looking at the top of the hill where the horde of monsters lay, only to push harder. The horde was coming.

General Tivus, a general of forty-eight years and hardened by the cruelties of war, shivered as he heard the screams start. The horde of monstrosities blended his men to pieces, limbs and blood flung into the air, others swallowed whole, never to be seen again. He urged his horse forward, away from the enclosing wall of death. A sharp pain greeted his shoulders, his body pulled from his horse and lifted skyward. He looked up at the beast as it carried him, and shuddered. A tall pillar of flesh and hair with wings carried him, flying him back, away from his men and toward the grey mass of death. He screamed, grabbing the beasts talons, holding on with all his strength as it released him.

He kicked his legs in a vain attempt to grab purchase with his legs, his hands, covered in wet blood, slipping from the beasts foot. At last he slipped too far, slicing his hand on the monsters talon as he fell, body thudding against dirt, mind thrown to unconsciousness. A small comfort, to remain ignorant of death and pain as he was ripped apart.