COMBAT ENCOUNTER: CORGI VS DARKSEED CULTIVATOR

RESULTS: CORGI DEFEAT

The haze of pain that shrouds my body doesn’t let me make one move to swipe these words away.

Talk about adding…insult…to injury…

There’re sounds emerging through the intense ringing in my ears. But I can’t hear anything that’s being said. They could be shrieks of pain from the Elves or shouts of victory from the Darkseed’s forces. Either way, my pancaked ears refuse to process them. They aren’t helped by more of the searing neon letters that buzz before my brain:

[Armor Type] Increases:

Flamboyant: LVL 1 -> 2

Protection against weapon type {VOID} acquired.

[Weapon Art] increases:

Glittering Thrust: LVL 5 -> 6*

Swallow-Swipe: LVL 5 -> 6*

*RELENTLESS attribute unlocked

Through the mist of smoke, wooden splinters, and blood that clouds my vision, I try to shake my head. To move a single limb. Even just a twitch of my beaten snout would be enough.

Nothing.

So that when a thick, steel coated hand reaches through the remains of the Glenmaidens’ shrine and pulls me up by my neck, I don’t even have the strength to resist.

Blinking through the blood that pools before my eyes, I see what’s left of them – Myra, Mia, Swiftrunner, and the five remaining Glenmaidens in a circle around the dozen or so Elves that remain. Those that haven’t been taken or collapsed from their wounds in the flaming wreckage of the houses above.

I’m being held aloft in front of them – presented like a grisly, pathetic little trophy.

“Behold your savior,” the voice of Thorn sneers beside me. “The Lightborn.”

“Raz!”

The voice is Swiftrunner’s. Even through the agony of my injuries, I’d know that voice anywhere.

The eyes of the Elves find my dangling form. Mia looks like she’s ready to collapse from despair, while Myra and Swiftrunner – don’t ask me how – just look more determined than ever to fight.

“Unhand him!” Myra screams.

Now the rest of the world’s coming into view. While I dueled with Thorn, the rest of the walls fell. Glenheim’s tower has been caved in, allowing the armies of the Darkseed to crawl through. Now I see them all for what they are – humans, elves, goblins, other beings I’ve never even laid eyes on before – who all creep towards the dwindling circle of Elves in the middle of the stronghold like a horde of mindless zombies waiting for the moment to charge.

The moment – or the command.

My beady, scarred eyes meet Thorn’s blackened ovals.

“Stop,” I murmur. “Take…me…”

He scoffs. “You think it’s you I want, Raziel? I’ve already taken the measure of you. I find myself unimpressed.”

I feel myself flying through the smog-laden air as he tosses me into the circle, landing squarely in Myra’s outstretched palms and coughing up more of my insides.

“Raziel!”

I feel the healing energies from her hands rush through me, instantly clotting blood and closing wounds like a team of seraphic surgeons working overtime. Yet even as reality starts to form in front of me again, and I see her tear-stained, dirt-clad face staring down at me, I know this is nothing more than a momentary respite.

Stolen story; please report.

“You will pay for this!” Swiftrunner shouts, stepping up beside me to lay a disheveled paw on mine.

From behind, I hear Thorn take move down the broken steps of the ruined shrine, drawing his blade across the oaken ground.

“Incredible talent, that,” he says to Myra. “Stitch up a soldier enough and you can barely tell that he was once an inch from death. But he remembers. And the memory stays with him.”

“Stay back!” Myra shrieks, keeping one arm under my head while her other moves to draw her silver blade. “One more step and –“

“And what?” the descending General taunts. “You will fight, and you will die.”

I incline my head, my twitching nose finding no comfort in Myra’s sweet-scented hands.

I shift in her arm, trying to paw at her face – to wipe that determination away. I want to tell her that he’s right. That it’s pointless to –

“Yet still, we will fight.”

The voice comes from one of the last Glenmaidens left. She stands in front of Myra, brandishing her glimmering blade, while the rest of her sisters do the same.

“As will I,” Swiftrunner agrees with a defiant “harrumph!” that would have made Witherfang himself proud.

Only Mia, I notice, stays back with the other Elves.

“Admirable,” Thorn says as he glides his blade over the dying flowers at the foot of the shrine’s crushed effigies. “But pointless. Don’t throw your lives away for nothing. Especially not a creature that cares not one jot for your existence. Bend the knee to me, here, and you shall serve Lady Gyko in perfect har-“

Myra cuts him off by spitting at his feet.

“You don’t know much about us, do you, human?” she says, stepping forward utterly without fear. “We’re Glenmaidens of Glenheim. The chosen of Mistress Palka. We serve one queen and one alone.”

“Seneca certainly did not feel the same way,” Thorn chuckles.

“Don’t dare mention her name, butcher.” she spits right back at him.

Even through all my slowly regenerating crushed little bones, I manage a smile. She really was fearless, after all.

“’Butcher is too kind a word,” Swiftrunner says as he bears his fangs. He too, catches my eyes, and sees the despair that lingers behind them. Yet still, he plows on, standing in front of me like a battered, flea-bitten shield. But still a shield.

“You would give your life for this pup, hound?” the General chuckles ruefully, as if he’s just noticed Swiftrunner for the first time. “Is this what your once proud clan has come to?”

I’m about to tell him the old demon’s right – all this time, Swift, I tried to warn you. But still, you didn’t -

“You may turn on your own to suit your ambition,” he growls right back. “But we who run upon four legs know the true nature of loyalty. You can slash at our bodies, you may crush our bones, but we will endure. You won’t ever break us. If this Little-Brother can stand up to you, then I shall stand with him!”

I stifle what might have been the beginnings of a sob.

Swiftrunner…

A more loyal friend I could never have asked for.

“A wolf that calls the Lightborn ‘brother’”, the General sighs, taking in the sight of the meagre resistance as his army slowly edged towards them. “And an Elf that calls me a butcher. I wonder: is that how history shall remember me?”

I try to shuffle through the pain I still feel crawling up my ribcage, trying to unleash some form of attack to no avail. No matter how hard I try to lift my sword, it simply clatters back down to the ground with a dumb clamor of steel.

And though I expect him to be amused to see it, Thorn does nothing but give another heavy sigh as he plants his dark blade in the earth beneath him.

“Flailing against the inevitable, till the end,” he says. “It seems that is something humans, animals, and even you eternal Elves have in common.”

Curiously I watch him claw at the silver locket I ripped from his neck earlier, his fingers coiling round it with tenderness.

“Your corpses are not what I desire,” he says. “But if this is how you would decide your fate, then I have but one recourse left.”

He turns his back to our tiny force and throws his voice:

“Palka! Is this truly how you wish to see your children die? Slaughtered to the last while you cower in your lair? Come, face me here, see the end of your reign for yourself. Or bear witness to your people as they are wiped off the face of this earth!”

“You traitorous bastard!” a Glenmaiden screams, surging forwards with wild abandon.

And for a stomach curdling second his eyes meet mine as he turns, twists his blade in his hand, and cleaves the running Elf’s head clean from her shoulders.

Her body falls to the ground in a bundle of silver smeared with the crimson liquid that spews from her neck.

“No!”

The scream is Myra’s, who goes to lunge at him next, only to be grabbed and pulled back by her sister.

“Stand down,” Thorn says through a voice tinged with darkest darkness. “Or die.”

No one moves a muscle. The undead horde of Seeded ones looks to its General for guidance.

And there it is. Through his veneer of confidence – a spark of frustration.

And I have to chuckle at his old, battle-hardened face, through all of the madness that spirals around me.

“You find something amusing, dog?”

“You don’t get it, do you?” I say, looking proudly at Swftrunner and Myra who stand shoulder to shoulder, paw by foot, at my side. “If you really think we’ll give in to you and your master because it’s ‘inevitable’, then you don’t understand anything about us mortals anymore. We don’t just sit down and shut up because we’re told to. We fight for what’s ours – even if you take everything from us. Even if you’re stronger than we are. There’s no logic to it, soldier-boy, it’s just the way we are.”

The tip of his sword wavers between the three of us, and even as I know Mia behind is twitching uncontrollably with the desire to run away, the rest of us are standing proud, firm, staring into the darkness without a shred of despair.

At my nod, Myra sets me down with a wry smile.

“So come on,” I cough, as the ground begins to shake beneath us. “Let’s finish this.”