An adolescent Meibon watches in the brush beneath a great, towering tree as approximately one hundred men come up the pathway in the distance, he’s eager to prove himself to his people and he wants to impress the strange blue man that spends a lot of time with Soulseeker; if the chief thinks he's important, then he’s important. Simple as that.
Snow from the previous days has given way to yesterday’s warmth, so now it’s patchy and in places where the sun has trouble reaching, yet the air still has a chill in it. The Meibon youth is a sentry tasked with watching the mountain pathway that leads to the Meibon territory, so he breaks into a run on all four limbs, racing back to the village to raise the alarm.
There isn’t much time, the Meibon have twenty to thirty minutes to make ready for the confrontation before the humans reach the clearing, they designated to engage, however, this was anticipated, and preparations were made. Not very many Meibon slept well last night, they’ve never been in a real battle before. Koronos tried to prepare them as much as possible in a very short time. Even though the Meibon are bigger and stronger, some, if not most of the humans have experience with armed conflict and possess superior weaponry and the humans have the advantage of numbers. Their larger size actually works against them when it comes to volleys of arrows raining down, the only chance for them to emerge victorious is to close the gap between the parties as fast as possible and engage in melee/hand to hand combat. But they aren’t particularly skilled in melee combat either.
Nombi wanted to turn herself over to the humans to stop the battle, but Koronos told her it won’t matter now, the men want to destroy the Meibon, they do not wish to share this land. He gave her the message her father asked Koronos to relay, she wasn’t sure how to take it and had mixed feelings. He simply told her this, “my father died many years ago, I would cross the sea if I could see him for just one more day.”
Thirty minutes later the Meibon are in the clearing with their hastily and crudely constructed shields. The human company lines up in a badly disciplined formation, this gives Koronos some hope; they are not highly trained and skilled warriors, these men are nothing like the legionnaires of the Octavian armies, but they still have longbows, crossbows and clad in varying ensembles of armor types. With Shelove at his side, across the field Koronos catches something with his trained and experienced eyes: a group of men that are clearly formed up differently than the rest of the motley crew, there is a big man that they seem to be assembled around. This group doesn’t seem nervous and disorderly like the rest, they look like proper killers, and the man they are gathered around is Stromhynd; Koronos has not seen this man before and he doesn’t recognize him from the human settlement.
Through the Bond, the Kazarian conveys to Soulseeker, alerting him of the new danger, “those men there, be extra wary around them, they are the real threat here.”
In return, the Meibon leader nods in acknowledgment of this admonition.
Koronos hopes the Lord of the Forest will keep their word as he visually scans the treeline, but then he senses it, circling the clearing at a distance. If it can attack them from the rear, that may very well break the lines and turn the tides of this grim looking battle. Morale of the Meibon is low and the morale is high for the townsmen, Koronos needs to do something. So, he removes the mighty Sword of the First from its scabbard, holds it over his head while channeling his Everliving power into the sword, making it glow brightly, sending out pulses of power waves and yellow electrical arcs, creating a lowly rumbling sound that shakes the ground a little under the feet of everyone in the clearing. Then he billows out a mighty war cry.
Some of the humans run away, but Stromhynd yells at them and shoots arrows into their back with his bow, “stand fast, cowards! If you run, I will kill you myself! He’s just a man, I’ll make him bleed to prove it!” The last part he says while pointing at the Kazarian. He has heard the stories of them, he knows they are usually just slaves for the fighting arenas in Octavia City. Then he draws his mighty composite longbow all the way back and sends an arrow all the way across the field, and the arrow would have landed right in the heart of the Kazarian had he not used his sword to deflect the arrow aside.
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Koronos grabs a Meibon spear, a spear tipped with a finely crafted obsidian tip, he hefts it clear across the field. A man stands in awe with his mouth open until the spear finds his open mouth, piercing clean through the back of his head, pinning him like an insect being pinned to a display board onto the ground.
All the Meibon cheer.
For the first time in a very long time, Stromhynd feels fear and it shows on his face for a brief moment, but then he quickly masks his fear with anger, so as not to appear weak in front of his men. That spear throw was impossible, no one can throw a spear that far. From his peripheral vision, he sees all the men take a few steps back, this angers him, but he steps back as well which only makes him angrier, but with himself.
His uncle Hidgken is already standing way back with his two personal guards, well behind the line of men. He’s already totally exhausted from the long hike from the bay and after what he just saw, he’s thinking maybe he should have stayed behind on Little Rock Island. He says to his guards, “I didn’t actually believe the Kazarian blue savage’s stories, that he could actually kill the God Emperor, but now, his story might be true… And if it is true, then what chances do we actually have against such a mighty warrior?” His men know well enough to not answer because it was a rhetorical question, they simply glance at each other, trying not to be obvious about it. Then he continues, trying to convince himself, “no, no, no, we have the numbers, we will win! Right?”
Stromhynd can hear his uncle and he glances back at him in disgust, but he has more disgust for himself because his uncle is merely vocalizing the thoughts that he is hiding inside of himself. Pure rage and hatred well up inside him and he grabs one of the townsmen by the back of the neck and yells at him, “go forward, start shooting them with arrows, now! All of you, go!”
The man stumbles forward a few paces, pulls back and releases an arrow, the men watch it fly through the air and fall short of the Meibon. The man tries to make himself small and starts to piss himself from fear of what's in front of him and Stromhynd from behind him.
“Pathetic!” Growls Stromhynd. So, he pulls back an arrow and lets loose, it flies across the field to the chest of a Meibon fumbling with his crudely made shield, killing him dead. He follows up with, “see, they’re just stupid apes, kill them, kill them all!”
The townsmen rally to his battle cry, run up ten paces, pull their bows back and set their crossbows, for those that have them and await his order, his order is quickly given, and they let loose.
Koronos yells to the Meibon, “raise your shields, now!” as about one hundred arrows and crossbow bolts hurl through the air and rain down with wispy piercing sounds collectively making a cacophony of noise like a loud whirring sound until they hit shields, ground and Meibon. Five Meibon fall with arrows sticking out of them and with injuries and/or dying.
“Charge them, charge them now, we cannot take another hit like that! Go!” He charges forward, leading the Meibon across the field with Shelove by his side, while the townsmen quickly try to reload, causing many to fumble, especially when the spinning whirling Sword of the First comes spinning by, chopping up men like a butcher’s meat cleaver. It whirls through the air and returns to the large blue fist of the Kazarian that threw it. Even though he’s never tried to throw his sword so far and wasn’t sure if it could even work, the tactic was effective; the townsmen fail to get off another proper volley before the Meibon reach them, driving obsidian-tipped spears in the flesh of men.
This is when the screaming, yelling and battle cries really begin, however, a group manage to fall back enough to set for a smaller volley. They let loose, Koronos deflects aside anything that comes at him, but some of the Meibon are not nearly as fortunate. Shelove is struck in the leg with an arrow, but she still finds the soft flesh of a man with her teeth, biting deeply into him, tearing through his chainmail armor and tearing his torso clean open, and throws him aside like an unwanted doll as his entrails splatter on his friends. They fire two more arrows into her body, and she drops onto the ground. They draw back again, getting ready to finish her off, but before they can let loose, they are cleaved in two by Koronos with one swing starting at the neck of one, passing through his rib cage, entering under the ribs of the other and ending at his hip opposite, their bodies fly apart in a shower of blood.
Soulseeker doesn’t have many shadows large enough to shadow walk effectively, but manages some, appearing from shadow to use a large fist to break men, then disappearing back into shadow. Stromhynd sees this happen several times as he kills several Meibon with a sword, he notices that the Meibon is somehow using the shadows. So, when Soulseeker tries to attack him, he whirls about, greeting the Meibon leader with a sword in the belly.
Shock is on Soulseekers face as he falls to the ground, clutching his wounded area. Through the Bond, he says to the Kazarian, “so fast…” Koronos sees it and yells, “no!”