“We should have borrowed Phaedra and Nyota’s brass daggers.” Grumbled Arlet.

Liam ‘hmmm’ed in acknowledgement, doubting the presence of two additional brass weapons would matter. Whatever mystic power invigorated the blades still required the strength of a trained knight to wield. In the hours since Nyota’s retreat the portals had swelled to seven, creating an unlucky wave of monsters every ten minutes, though Rhendal’s hourglasses told them that each wave was coming faster than the last, appearing just a few seconds earlier.

What happens when there is no time between the waves? Thought Liam, mentally tallying his remaining forces.

Humanity had started the day with nearly a thousand souls, now there were down to maybe half that number. Nyota’s felinids had retreated, alongside Dorian’s wounded outriders, over two hundred souls removed from the fight. Not including the wounded knights of Blackwood, or Alexander Blackwood, whom seemed to have vanished after a demon had wounded him. The Greenhaven militia now stood at sixteen men, not including six of Arlet’s knights. Barely enough men to hold a single portal, though Niana’s command of her Hulks safeguarded a second portal.

Which left five for Blackwood’s conscripts. His hired mercenaries fought well, and died well, spending their lives for gold he no longer possessed. Of his hundred men-at-arms only a dozen remained, less than his landed knights. Yet these casualties paled in comparison to the piles of human bodies made from fallen conscripts.

The valiant old farmers had died in droves, too quickly for Liam to count. Niana’s hulks made accounting pointless, they devoured the fallen, be it friend or foe, though they refused to touch the demonic corpses, treating those with disdain. The largest hulk even began digging a trench for the demonic corpses, excavating a mass grave until it realized no hole could hold thousands of bodies.

To Liam’s surprise, Blackwood reappeared and proved himself a competent commander, dividing his knights into subcommanders and dividing the conscripts into squads who rotated portal openings. That way no squad was forced to fight without rest. His initial twenty squads had dwindled to fifteen, which he presently combined into ten squads.

Soren’s magi held the line, but their magic was running thin. All exhausted their staves and grimoires, leaving only their innate mana to combat the enemy.

“Soren!” Called Liam, “have your magi exhaust themselves in the order we discussed, then retreat. IT will happen soon.”

The royal magician gave him a thumbs up gesture that crossed the courtyard. Quickly dismissing a dozen of his human magi, and leaving only the select magicians. Elite warriors with a strong penchant for the dark affinity.

“God’s anus hasn’t opened, and without the magi…” Said Arlet. Not needing to complete the thought.

They already knew what would happen without the magi’s buffs. Mass casualties. The conscripts and militia would perish then the magi would be exposed. Without a spear wall the magi would fall to a single hellhound.

“We could order Dorian to dismount.” Said Arlet.

Dorian’s royal outriders… Their lances would be marginally better than spears, and they’re far more skilled than conscripts, but dismounting them is a travesty. A last-ditch scramble for survival.

“No. Send Dorian’s outriders to the west, towards Duke Hamilton’s domain. If nothing else they’ll bear witness to our story, lending Hamilton the providence he lacked during my announcement.” Said Liam.

Arlet frowned, then went to Dorian, delivering the sour order with his own authority. Dorian’s face turned scarlet as he heard the order, shouting over freshly spawned hellhounds towards Liam.

“Retreat now? The king’s outriders do not cower before any foe!”

“HUZZAH!” Shouted the outriders.

Three demonic hellhounds howled in challenge, pressing against flaming spears, claws carving rivulets in the earth, as they strained towards the outriders.

Liam raised his finger, aiming at the hellhounds.

“Pew”

Whatever dark ectoplasm comprising the demon exploded, showing black ichor across the restraining conscripts. Liam followed his first shot with two more bolts, slaying these new demonic hellhounds as easily as he had slain the first three hellhounds ever to trouble this county.

“Captain Dorian!” Shouted Liam, his voice rolling like thunder over the silent courtyard. “King Aldric did not send you to protect this castle. Your orders are to investigate and report back. I only ask you to fulfill the oaths you swore to King and Country.”

Daggers filled Dorian’s eyes, turning his greatest virtue –unparalleled valor– into crippling indecision. The fight was here, ambushing the enemy at the portals was the right tactical answer, t’was where he belonged. He grit his teeth, grinding them as he wrestled against his loyalty to King Aldric. Veins bulged in his forehead, his heart beating the logic of his skull against the cobblestones of duty. And for several terrible moments, Liam watched him wrestle. Dorian cocked his wheel-lock, index finger on the trigger, ready to execute himself rather than retreat.

Not like this Dorian, you’re a good man, a loyal man. Come to your senses! Prayed Liam, knowing better than to interfere.

In the end it was Arlet who acted, speaking a few words from one champion to another.

“I always intended to die young… But Taloc has guided my aim and blinded my enemies. Today marks the first battle of a campaign. True cowardice would be to escape from the long rides and months of half rations that are to come.”

“Arlet, I might just put a bullet in you.” Snapped Dorian.

“I’ve seen you aim, Jenkins gets to the point twice as directly.” Answered Arlet.

“Damnable cocksucker.” Said Dorian, spurring his horse forward, with the most fearsome scowl of joy any human had ever worn.

In the next minute the Royal outriders galloped away from Blackwood Castle, hoping to reach Duke Hamilton’s approaching forces and join them for a counterattack. A potential future that Liam knew would never come to pass. Though he was glad for Dorian’s hope. As the cavalry retreated the sun came to rest between the two tallest towers of Blackwood Castle, just as it had In Quetzalcoatl’s vision.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Rhendal, it’s time.” Said Liam, heading off towards the portals.

“Oh bother. I was hoping to reach a nice triple digit age… Although, there is only one woman I would be happier to die alongside.” Said Rhendal. He rose from his wingback chair, stripping off his cumbersome robes and hat.

Finally revealing why he had never been fond of clothes. Dark fur covered most of Rhendal’s body, no longer twisted into humanoid chest and back hair. Dark mana collected around Rhendal’s figure, reverting the odd mane of hair on his balding pate into the two feline ears of an umbraquin. His incisors lengthened, as did his spine, stretching while pivoting his limbs so he fell forward. Gray hair shifted to the purest black, and a tail sprouted from somewhere better left uninvestigated.

Niana applauded the transformation. Unbridled joy twinkled within her eyes at the revelation of shapeshifting. And Liam had to wonder how long it would be before she sought the ability for herself.

Rhendal’s once ancient figure was now standing beside Liam, a black panther far larger than any feline had a right to be. He rumbled his throat, clearing it for a moment before unleashing a roar unlike any vocalization he had ever made.

“RRRAAAAaaaa-ack gahk-” He coughed.

“Ahem,” Rhendal choked out, attempting the call once more.

“RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRR!”

The noise sent shivers through the great sequoia-esq trees of Blackwood County. And in later centuries the legend of Rhendal the Sage would recite how Jenkins and the people of Avignon heard his roar.

Whether any human was alive in Avignon was immaterial, for the roar reached those it was meant for. Above the carnage a figure appeared in the dragon’s portal, three angular heads, covered in dissimilarly colored scales peered through the purple disk. Eyes glowing with the darkness of a starless night.

Pandora had heard Rhendal.

And he wasn’t alone. For his roar wasn’t a verbal communication, no, it was a ripple of the darkest affinity, one that cried out across the continent with a single focused purpose. Whispering ‘the time is now’ to all umbraquins on the continent, and a few beyond. Dozens of dark portals appeared in every shadow. Black furred panthers stepped out of the shadows, materializing nearby to answer Rhendal’s call. Dozens of roars echoed through the castle, reverberating the stone as their sound waves harmonically converged, amplifying their volume and distance. Militiamen scattered, trying to reform themselves into phalanxes to fight the new apparitions. While knights restrained the rash farmers, preventing the unexpected surprise from turning fatal.

Liam strode behind the portals, tapping into the mana that powered each of them. He glanced up, looking Pandora –or her avatar– dead in the eyes of her central headed dragon.

“Come to me.” He said, showing both middle fingers to Pandora. “I need all umbraquins here!” Shouted Liam.

The two dozen shadow panthers advanced towards Liam, skirting cautious farmers, yet eyeing them with tawney pupils. As if to say ‘we could eat you alive, but we have a greater purpose than playing with a skinny snack’. A feat they accomplished easily, since the remaining royal magicians stripped out of their clothes and shifted, revealing their umbraquin nature to the world.

Liam witnessed them, understanding that this dark kitty cat, was out of the bag for good. Should any of Blackwood’s men survive, then rumors of King Aldric’s court being infiltrated by the same felinids he ordered vivisected, would spread across the globe.

Rhendal arrived first, planting his hind legs behind Liam to face upward, defiantly sitting in front of Pandora. Three dragon heads turned to face the cat, eyes glowing with amusement, or maybe hatred. Hard to say either way, the only thing that could be determined empirically was the densening mana. Around the courtyard mana underwent fusion, coalescing into visible raindrops, dripping from the dragon portal into the seven nearby gates, causing them to swell.

Bigger gates meant bigger monsters. A fact Liam took no satisfaction from. He raised his arms towards the God’s anus and –just as Taloc had shown him in the King’s court– manipulated the mana. Within his mind’s eye he pictured the mana from the permanent gates recirculating into the dragon portal. Sapping their strength in exchange for hastening Pandora’s entry.

But one man was not enough, Liam was but a single bilge-pump, trying to reverse Niagara falls. Seven thin streams of mana droplets flowed against gravity, empowering the dragon portal while a flood rained into them from on high. Then the umbraquins added their strength to his. Almost thirty dark affinity mages, beings who understood their power and embraced it, grasped Pandora’s dark affinity. This was their purpose. Therun Perun Taloc had created them to wield the weapon of his enemy, to be her watcher, and keeper.

They would not be denied their purpose now, for they had endured a thousand years of enslavement. Of wandering the world alone, without family, allies, or support the umbraquins had survived. Mutant orphans doomed to die an ignominious death so others might live. As an exalted body they raised their suffering in supplication to Pandora, feeding her the woes she had visited on them.

Seven thin streams expanded into seven rivers, flowing upwards. Pandora resisted, annoyed by the mortal’s resistance. The northlands were hers, humanity itself belonged to her. She had raised them from the apes they were into the somewhat-intelligent beings they are, shepherded them through eons. Protected them from the same monsters she now sent against them with obsidian walls and fortresses, both carved from her own flesh. Debts of life that Pandora intended on collecting.

Yet her righteous fury paled in comparison to the umbraquins. The agony of their filed down teeth mingled with their amputated ears, the start of their eternal torments. Peace was an idea that they could never know. While Pandora had only died, a mere nap for a god such as her. They had suffered a thousand deaths, as every member of their family had been butchered by amateur surgeons. Rhendal’s memories screamed the loudest, as he recalled standing witness to hundreds of vivisections. Being forced to participate in many of them to maintain his cover, inflicting unthinkable pain on kin who had committed no sin other than being born. All so he could stand against Pandora here and now.

Seven trickles of mana expanded into rivers, finally flowing in reverse, wiggling through the sky to empower God’s anus. Pandora beamed with pleasure, overwhelmed by so many of Taloc’s servants offering their pain to her. She drank it in, intoxicated by the elixir of hellish damnation.

Her drunken stupor was the final straw. In one last push the umbraquins and Liam drained the portals, collapsing them inward and stuffing the last vestiges of power into God’s anus. A mana suppository aimed at dislogging a draconic deity. The world seemed to shatter, as if the sky above was a glass dome encircling the world, and one that Pandora punched through.

She plummeted from the sky, her wings stretching wider than the castle, catching clouds as her sin-bloated gut weighed her down. Armored scales covered her body, thicker than a gorgon was long, and glinting with an obsidian steel. Completely impervious to the vaunted lightning that had first slain her. A milenia of preparation showed in her three heads. The yellow dragon crackled with lightning, its yellow scales extending down the length of her body, from snout to toe to tail-tip, ready to counter-channel the element of Taloc’s champions. Her third head was blacker than darkness, so infernally black that it was difficult to focus on. For its scales absorbed all light, robbing the head and neck of any details.

Finally her central head was blue, like the sapphires of Stheno’s charming eyes, they shone through the darkness, tempting heroes with promises.

Liam’s gaze found those blue eyes, and Pandora spoke to his soul. Join me, I elevated humanity once, it would be my joy to annoint you as king. Taloc is a restrained power, forced to sacrifice your kin, while I am free to do as I wish. I can give you the immortality to stand at Nyota’s side.

Her words pierced Liam’s skull, settling into his heart like molten lead.

The tallest tower of Blackwood castle interrupted Pandora’s drunken fall, crumbling under her bulk. She thrashed as the turreted peak met her scales, sending rubble raining down and tearing into the other three towers. A chunk of wall crushed the conscript next to Alexander Blackwood, sending all present into pandemonium. Conscripts fled, their valiant determination vanishing before a god’s might. Pandora’s tail whipped through the final tower, reducing Blackwood Castle into Blackwood’s crumbling keep.

Elemental destruction, Queen of Wyrms, the bane of mankind, the source of all humanities’ woe stood atop Blackwood Castle. Just as she had in Liam’s vision all those months ago. His heart trembled at the spectacle of destruction, praying to a God he had never met for deliverance.

Therun Perun Taloc, I really hope you’ve still got some mojo left.

A thousand miles away the baby inside Sarah’s womb kicked.