Wali heard the voice and drew the crystal orb from his pouch. He stood and dismissed the bubble. He stepped to the top of the ridge and looked into a steep draw on the other side.
In the little valley stood a figure, or more accurately, loomed a figure straight out of a nightmare.
It was easily six meters tall, muscled like a rugby player, and vaguely human. Dark red skin was thick with twisted pulsing purple veins. The face had two pairs of eyes; both glowed with internal power. They were black sclera with a pink iris and a triangular triple pupil. The nose was nothing more than two vertical slits, and the mouth was a twisted mess of sharp yellow teeth. It wore a skirt of sorts; strips of different colors of ragged leather hung around its waist. Some were scaled, others furred, and Wali noticed the faces on the ends of the leather strips. Each strip had once been a humanoid, skinned and tanned and turned into this demon’s dress. A black metal breastplate left its arms bare, but Wali could see a shirt of more of the skins below the metal.
Below the skirt was feathered and clawed feet like a black-skinned chicken made massive. The talons were cracked and seemed to ooze a black ichor. A puddle of the stuff had accumulated below its feet. A mane of shoulder-length writhing tentacles hung around its face like some medusae, a scorpion’s barb on the end of each one.
Wali felt the wave of fear press into him; he dropped the crystal orb onto the ground. He instinctively channeled mana through his Mind glyph, constructing a mental fortress. The fear hung onto him, but he was no longer paralyzed by it. This was no monster he had ever heard or read about.
The thing sniffed, “I smelled you coming. The stench of those witches is strong on you. Did they send you to finally bind me like they had done to my brethren so long ago?”
Alarm bells went off in Wali’s mind. Was this one of the caretakers, the Demon Lords? It sure looked like one.
“Too afraid to speak? Perhaps they did not send you, or you do not know who I am?” it rasped.
Wali sighed internally, preparing himself for the self-aggrandizing monologue.
“I will tell you my name, or at least what I was called before I was trapped far below the ground.” It sneered and spat. The spittle burned a smoking hole in the underbrush. “I was once called Rags the Skintaker, Herald of Gavo. Once this world feared my name, and men shat themselves when they saw me.”
“Oh shit, run, run, run, RUN!” Trickster shouted in the back of his mind. He was pulling at Wali’s soul.
Wali held still. He took a breath—both relieved and afraid. The Demon Lords each had three heralds, their lieutenants. Gavo was the name of one of the weakest Demon Lords, and it had been bound into the ground early in the wars. Marsai had said not all of the heralds had been caught or destroyed. If this thing was a herald, it was terrible news. However, if this was just one of three heralds, what sort of power would a true Demon Lord wield?
Rags leaned in to look closer at Wali, “Why are you not cowering, little man?” Its breath made Wali choke back vomit. “Perhaps being trapped in that hole for so long has reduced my reputation. Do you not know of me, manling?”
Wali shook his head and readied himself. He gulped back the bile building in his throat.
With barely a flicker, Wali disappeared. What remained in his place was a blood-thirsty Storm Elemental. Lightning lanced out in a brilliant flash, striking the herald and causing it to howl. Wali reappeared fifty meters away on the other side of the draw. He sprinted away, giving up any chance of stealth for the sake of speed. He burned mana as fast as he could manage. Flicking through the forest in short hops, zigzagging side to side, and fleeing.
Behind him, Gale whipped a tiny tornado into the draw, but the herald was too massive to be affected. Lightning flashed in the forest as Gale thrashed the herald. This did little more than enrage Rags. Screaming now, the Skintaker shouted after Wali, “I am coming for you, manling! I have your scent now, and I will hunt you!”
Now running in pure adrenaline-fueled fear, Wali headed toward the elven city. This route was much shorter than the long way they had initially approached from. He leaped over a log and blinked forward fifty meters. Landing in a roll, he stepped out into the sunlight. As he did so, he felt Gale get ripped apart through their bond, and he recalled the elemental. A thin trickle of lightning found its way into the spearhead, the elemental nearly dead.
Wali ran toward the battle. In some places, the elves were holding the line, dead trolls lying in piles; in others, trolls were running rampant. The cavalry charged, and the reserves were called forward. Spells and magic flew wildly about the battlefield.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Behind him, he heard a tree crack and the unmistakable sound of the tree falling. He shifted course and glanced to the side, where he saw Vinny, Yacob, and Sas’cha running out of the forest. The tree crashed through the forest, falling through branches and thudding into the dirt to Wali’s right. The impact sent him tumbling. He recovered and flickered over to his friends.
He yelled at them, “RUN!”
“Already running!” Vinny snarked back.
Sas’cha hissed, and Yacob just put his head down, trying to get more speed out of his thick legs. They closed in on the battle as a crash was heard behind them.
The voice of Rags the Skintaker bellowed out behind them, “I’ll kill you, little manling. I come!”
The Marshall must have seen the monster coming, and clarion calls echoed across the battlefield. The retreat had been sounded. The arrival of Rags had bolstered the flagging troll army. The elves began to fall back as orderly as possible when chased by three-meter killing machines trying to eat your face. The soldiers were professionals; many gave their lives to allow others to retreat.
The soldiers and companions passed a ring of sand that surrounded the city. When the bulk of the soldiers passed the ring of sand, a faint yellow barrier began to rise from the ground. Soldiers shouted to their comrades still on the outside. They began to sprint, and some made it over the glowing yellow wall before the trolls smashed into them from behind. A few trolls made it past the barrier but were swiftly killed by the regrouping soldiers.
The wall rose into the sky, forming a dome of power over the city. Trolls beat at the yellow barrier, pulses of energy rippling away from their strikes.
Panting, the companions stood with a group of soldiers, watching the trolls smash themselves against the barrier. Some of the trolls turned away, but most remained at the wall trying to break their way through it. Other trolls took up the fallen elves, ripped them apart, and started to consume their victims in full view of the army.
Yacob turned away and was noisily sick. Vinny paled and also turned away. Sas’cha watched, non-plussed, “I hate trolls.” She said flatly.
The sight turned Wali’s stomach, and something in him broke. He was sickened by the sight. So many useless deaths. He shuddered as long-buried memories of a war in the jungle far away from here gripped his soul. Feelings he had mostly packed away boiled up: rage, pain, sadness, and an overwhelming sense of guilt. Resolve warred with these emotions. He wanted to run away, and he wanted to fight. He had done his time in the tunnels, in the jungles, watching his brothers in arms fight, bleed out, get maimed, and die. He did not return home the same man he had departed.
He dropped to his knees, and tears leaked down his face. He didn’t know if he was the ultimate cause of this. Regardless he was an unwilling catalyst. The gods of the universe had decided that he would be the hero or fall so they could reap the rewards. Either way the dice fell, the gods would gain power. The ordinary person would suffer; the soldiers who simply wanted to see tomorrow and be a part of something would pay the price. Yacob would have nightmares for the rest of his life. So would Wali, Vinny, and all of the men and women on the field today.
Wali was grateful he couldn’t hear what was happening on the other side of the barrier as he watched one troll find a still-living victim. One of the fallen soldiers out in the field was lifted by their remaining leg, and he could see the body shudder as the troll bit into the body. Its teeth rend the armor and viscera equally easily. Blood splashed across the troll’s face, and the struggling body thankfully went limp. That one soldier was not alone. Many trolls were picking through the bodies on the field for fresh meat.
From behind the trolls came the massive form of Rags the Skintaker. The trolls skittered out of his way. They barely came up to his waist. The colossal demon quickly strode across the field and stepped up to the barrier. He examined the wall of yellow power, poking it with a finger. He balled his fist and slammed it into the barrier. Cracks formed under his fist but swiftly healed themselves. Grinning, the demon turned and started barking orders at the trolls. Most seemed to leap to obey, some needing a second shouted command. They pulled back from the barrier, and Rags released the trolls to feed among the dead and dying.
Wali’s mind resolved around the memories of the crying children, the unwelcome homecoming, and the travesties of the war he had fought as a much younger man. He had been a leader back then, somehow surviving for eight years in the jungles of a foreign land. Now he was in another jungle, facing another war. This one had real monsters, not just people trying to survive. The trolls on the other side of the magical yellow barrier were not angry kids lashing out at their parents’ killers. The enemy did not walk in the same street as you, dressed like you, and then suddenly attempted to kill you and everyone around you with a suicide bomb. Wallace had shrapnel still inside him when he died.
Wali’s grandson Jason had been taken by mortar fire in Iraq, and his granddaughter Silvia by an IED in Afghanistan. They both had joined for their own reasons, knowing the unending war of the United States was likely to send them overseas. Four of his grandchildren were veterans like Wallace had been. The loss of his grandchildren, the pain he felt, the pain his children felt at losing a child. These things were unbearable. Losses like that did not heal. They just stopped hurting as severely.
His resolve gained another layer of strength; monsters and gods would not bring him down. The world had seen fit to give him three gifts, to make him far more powerful than he deserved to be. He would use that power to fight and use those gifts to save people in this world. The fewer people that came to understand what the loss of a child did to your soul, the better in Wali’s mind. Capital “D” Destiny be damned, Demon Lords, heralds, and gods alike would burn.