After a hard couple of weeks on the road, the caravan was on the last leg of its journey; only a few hours from the pack symbol that would mark the boundary of the wolves’ territory. The sands of the coast had changed to tall grasslands and finally to the thin forests that they found themselves in. The trees were spaced far apart from one another, creating clearings on either side of the road every so often.
A drizzling rain soaked the caravanners from head to toe, making the last week of their travels absolutely miserable. Even in the late summer heat, the rain sapped the warmth from their bodies no matter how hard they tried to keep dry. The sky was an overcast grey and droplets clung to the vegetation of the forest, making them appear more vibrant with their lively green coloring.
The dirt road had become a slush of mud that slowed their wagons to a crawl, but at least kept the dust from rising. Noah looked toward the front of the caravan and saw that another wagon had gotten stuck in the deep ruts of the mud. Soldiers and coachmen were attempting to push the wagon free, but progress was slow.
“Fuck this godforsaken weather. It has rained for a week straight! Have any of you heathens pissed off the gods recently? This is more reminiscent of a curse than natural weather.” Owen kicked the side of the wagon in frustration, a loud thump ringing out to break the morose silence of the caravanners. Smith, who sat atop the wagon, juggled the flask he was attempting to hide inside his jacket.
“You bastard. This is the last of the fae wine I packed for the trip. And trust me, I will defend this wine over your life, no questions asked.”
Owen scoffed and spat in the mud. Lin walked on the opposite side of the wagon that Smith drove. Her crossbow, as always, was at the ready. The rain rendered her eyeglass useless, covering it in smearing moisture.
Noah sat atop his wagon with his hat over his eyes, attempting to take a nap. Rain pelted his cowboy hat and dripped off of the rim onto his lap, startling him each time the cold liquid hit his trousers. Nightmares had not been kind to him on this journey, and he needed to grab bits of sleep whenever he could.
John and Lazar walked shoulder to shoulder in between the wagons. Neither was in the mood for any conversation and remained silent.
Noah’s ears flickered as he heard a whooshing sound cutting through the air. He jumped up from his seat in an instant, lifting his hand crossbow toward the noise. He was just in time to witness a crude-looking stone arrow penetrate directly into John’s neck. John’s eyes went wide as blood gurgled out of the hideous wound in his throat. His hands fumbled at his neck, attempting to stop the blood flowing in rivers down his chest.
Noah watched in horror as the light in John’s eyes slowly dimmed. The twenty-year veteran of more caravan runs than all of them combined fell to the mud with his sword still sheathed. His dignity couldn’t be salvaged as his face slammed into the mud with a sickening squish. The wizened old man, a mentor to them all, was finally captured by death and fell still.
Noah jumped down from his box seat and took cover behind the wagon from the direction the arrow had come from. More arrows rained down upon them as the humans took shelter. He grabbed Lazar, who hunched over John’s corpse in a daze. His shaking hands pressed against his mentor’s chest and throat, trying to staunch the blood flow of the corpse.
He pulled Lazar off of his feet and dragged him through the mud to cover. The pounding of dozens of arrows thudding into the sides of the wooden wagons informed him how big the force of this ambush actually was. This wasn’t one or two attackers. It must have been dozens, if not hundreds, of enemy combatants. Chaos erupted among the caravan soldiers, who scrambled to take cover.
As he waited for the volley to finally end, he rubbed the little leather pouch in his trench coat pocket. Screams of agony and panic rang out up and down the caravan line, competing with the thudding of arrows for the attention of their ears.
The horses attached to his wagon fell in an earthshaking shudder, and he could see the dozens of arrows sticking out of their corpses. The enemy was numerous enough to hit the entire caravan line, dozens of wagons long, all at once. For an enemy force of this size who attacked without warning, there would be no escape. They had to fight, and they had to win if they wanted to survive. He peaked around the wheels of his wagon as the arrows thudding into the side of the wagon slowed. He cursed.
Through the mist and gloom, all kinds of ghastly creatures appeared out of the woods. Goblins threw their bows to the ground and hoisted their stone hatchets high above their head. Red hats licked the blades of their scythes, anticipation gleaming in their eyes. The banshee shrieked her potent wails that had the humans closest to her bleeding from their ears. Even a few massive trolls emerged from the forest, awaiting the command for the carnage to ensue.
“Iron! Iron! Iron!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. The call to arms was repeated down the caravan line, and soldiers hurried to exchange their silver weapons for iron. They had been caught unprepared, armed for shifters, not fae.
A quick glance revealed the absence of any magic using creatures such as hags, elementals, or a Prince. The Unseelie Fae shouted a battle cry and charged toward the humans hiding behind their wagons. Noah raised his brows in confusion. They were slow. Much slower than they should have been. The portal of their territory must be quite a distance from the battlefield.
The goblins stood lower than his waist and were a dark leathery green with open sores covering their bodies. They charged with their stone hatchets raised above their heads, sprinting as fast as their short legs allowed. They were sentient, but just barely.
He stood up from behind the wagon and began firing iron cross bolt after iron cross bolt at the charging creatures. The bolts easily felled the goblins, but the trolls seemed to shrug off the bolts, no worse for the wear. He dove behind his wagon as a few arrows slammed into the wood right where his head had just been.
Gasping for breath, he glanced at his comrades. Lin was a wondrous sniper of death. Her crossbow never missed, and her bolts penetrated the goblins one after the other. Her talent was so immense that she was single-handedly giving the humans a chance in this battle.
Unfortunately, the banshee commanding the enemy forces thought so, too. A haunting wail pierced above the noise of the battle. A troll answered her call with a roar, picking up speed and charging the wagon providing Lin cover. It smashed straight through the wood with its massive wooden club and flung Lin in a crunch of bones into the trees behind them.
Owen stared frozen at the copse of trees that Lin had disappeared into and lost himself in bloodlust. With an inhuman shriek, he charged the troll with his iron sword. While ducking and diving around the troll, he kept stabbing and stabbing, always staying just out of its club’s path. He just wasn’t able to cause enough damage to bring the troll down. He would tire and lose the ability to outmaneuver the troll before he could kill it.
The sky blue troll stood many heads taller than the humans, even with the hunch in its back. Long ears twitched atop its head, and a feline-like tail swung behind it. The air vibrated as the troll’s swing passed by, promising to splatter anyone unlucky enough to be struck.
Noah pulled out his leather pouch from his trench coat and shook the contents onto the back of his hand. He shaped a line of powder containing the crushed remnants of fangs onto his hand. The same baby fangs that the bear cub had lost to him in their gamble.
It wouldn’t give him the power of an adult shifter’s powder, but it would give him the strength of a bear. He covered one nostril and snorted the entire mixture in one deep inhale. His nose burned and blood started to drip from his nostril.
As the substance entered his bloodstream, his body instantly went rigid. His veins pulsed and his muscles attempted to tear through his skin. His pupils grew to cover his irises, removing any hit of their bright green coloring. He couldn’t contain the power coursing through his veins and roared, drowning out the sounds of the battlefield.
He picked up his cane and tapped a symbol halfway down the shaft. An enchantment glowed, and the cane became sturdier and lighter as the fae magic coursed through it. With the iron blade screwed in, he launched himself in a blur at the troll. The troll suffered from many superficial wounds from Owen’s sword, but vitality still flowed strongly through it. Not for long, though.
Noah appeared behind the troll and leaped higher than any human normally would be able to. He rose until he was even with the troll’s neck and skewered his cane through its throat, its rough and protective hide barely even slowing the iron spear. The monster grabbed at its throat and fell to its knees. Noah grabbed Owens’s sword from his hands in a blur and swung with all his might, decapitating the troll. A fountain of blood geysered up into the air, but Noah’s felt cowboy hat redirected the spray away from his face.
He turned from the fallen troll to survey the battlefield. He didn’t have much longer, and when the drug wore off, he would essentially be powerless for the rest of the battle. In the next minute or so, he had to make a difference that would turn the tide of the battle. His eyes surveyed the goblins, who, although dangerous with large numbers, weren’t an existential threat to the humans.
He turned to a battalion of red caps that stood only to his waist, not much taller than the goblins. They looked like wizened gnomes but gleaming scythes in their hands ruined that comparison. Their hats weren’t naturally red, but the blood of past enemies had soaked and stained the fabric. The goblins enjoyed war, but the red caps needed it. A red cap only became fertile for a few hours after their bloodthirst was sated in battle. Their very existence as a species demanded that they fight and kill for eternity.
He shook his head, dismissing the red caps. They were powerful, but he needed a target that he could dispose of in a matter of moments. He turned to the lone Fachan that was dispatching guards one after the other. The hideous monstrosity was both large and powerful, and he marked it as his prey.
He blurred to the Fachan, ignoring the goblins and red caps that attempted to block his way. He approached the Fachan at breathtaking speed and it enlarged in his enhanced vision. His feet kicked up mats of mud, and he gripped his cane as tight as he could with his enhanced strength. Rain and blood had slicked his cane, and it threatened to slip through his fingers.
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A creature straight from the nightmare realm stood before him. It had an enormous gaping mouth on its forehead, with teeth similar to a shark. A long tongue lolled limply out of its mouth, slithering over its singular eye. The tongue kept the oversized eyeball that made up the majority of its torso, moisturized as it had no eyelid.
Just below the eye was one incredibly muscular arm, jutting out from where its stomach would have been on a normal creature. The entire amalgamation stood atop one leg that hopped vast distances at incredible speeds. His cane flashed out in a jab and compressed the air with its speed. He directly pierced the bulbous eye of the Fachan with a sickening squelch. Fluid that he didn’t have a name for splashed onto him, covering his prized trench coat and ruffled shirt.
The monster covered the eyeball with its one arm and shrieked with pain so loudly that the wooden wagons rattled. Noah reared back with Owen’s sword and swung in a wide arc, hoping to bisect the creature, but the Fachan wasn’t feared for no reason. It hopped back on its one leg quicker than his sword moved through the air. The creature bent down to pick up a large club and swung it at Noah in a shocking display of power.
Noah dodged as the club completely exploded the wagon behind him. Wood splintered through the air as Noah slid into a duck under the Fachan’s follow-up swing. His slide on the muddy ground carried him behind the Fachan, and he sliced with his sword, amputating the foot at the knee. The Fachan toppled to the ground, and Noah wasted no time, plunging his cane into the eye and torso of the creature again and again until it became an unrecognizable unmoving mass of flesh.
As the humans cheered at his victory, he turned to survey the battlefield for his next target. The goblins and redcaps would have to be dealt with by the soldiers, and the banshee was too far back behind enemy lines for him to target. Regardless, the only real threat she posed was causing disorientation with her shrieks
During his survey, his knees wobbled, and he used his cane to prop his body up. Streams of blood from his eyes blocked his vision. His time was up. He fell to the mud on his stomach with his chin propping up his head so that he could still see the battlefield. He wouldn’t be able to move for at least ten minutes and would be weak for hours afterward. His role in this battle was over and some other hero would have to emerge to save them.
Then he heard a sound that made him shiver; his body’s natural warning to the presence of a predator. The roar of the battlefield died down and even the banshee became silent. The goblins and red caps retreated, shaking in fear. Through the trees, a silhouette appeared. It was a little larger than a man, but not by much, and it was humanoid.
If this was an Unseelie Prince, then they were already dead. Even this far from the portal, a prince would be an unstoppable force that would slaughter each and every one of them. They were a tier above even the strongest alpha and oldest master vampire while in their own territories and next to their portals. The silhouette slowly came into focus as the unknown horror crept closer to the battlefield.
Noah felt torn between a sigh of relief that it wasn’t an unseelie prince and a sigh of resignation because it mattered little. The new creature would squash the human’s pathetic resistance by itself. A fast-paced clicking noise skittered across the silent battlefield and shouts of despair from the humans rang out as they discovered what fresh nightmare they faced.
Noah’s eyes inspected the creature, and he saw the leathery grey skin pulled so tight across its bones that it pulled back its nose and eyes into reptilian slits. There wasn’t an ounce of hair on the abomination which allowed for all of its sharp-angled bones to protrude its skin at weird angles.
The monster clicked through a lipless circular mouth that had rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth. All of this was terrifying enough, but that’s when Noah and the other humans confirmed their worst fears. A second face seemed to be trying to emerge from its chest before disappearing back into the skin again. An outline of a fist emerged from the creature’s stomach, as if trying to punch its way out, before vanishing once more.
It was a Sluagh. A nightmarish creature that would absorb evil spirits and sometimes even other Sluagh. A new Sluagh that could only draw power from itself was as dangerous as a Fachan, but a Sluagh that had absorbed multiple entities already?
The other unseelie waited behind their horrifying champion near the tree line, unwilling to risk that the Sluagh would be able to tell friend from foe.
It sauntered toward the caravan in no rush and enjoying its hunt. The remaining humans stood with wooden shields and iron swords raised, but their trembling betrayed the strong front they were showing.
“Archer’s load!” the captain of the soldiers yelled. The humans shakily loaded their crossbows and raised to aim at the creature.
The Captain raised his arm. “Aim!”
They trained their sights on the stumbling creature only forty yards away. It looked upon the soldiers with constant chitters, clicking in amusement at the human’s defiance.
“Fire!” the Captain yelled and threw down his arm. Bolts rained down upon the creature, with most slamming into their target. The bolts struck the creature and bounced off, not leaving even a cut on the Sluagh.
“No!” one archer yelled out, falling to his knees in despair.
The Captain chuckled and raised his iron-tipped spear toward the Sluagh. “Looks like we will have to get up close and personal with this demon, lads. You carry the force of humanity behind each of your blows. Show this vile beast what humans are capable of when our backs are against the wall!”
The remaining guardsman, and even the coachmen and tradesman, threw down their crossbows and gripped whatever sword, dagger, or spear they could get their hands on. Glowing symbols covered the weapons, as the fae magic did all it could to turn the tide of the battle.
Noah sighed. The men were trembling and they didn’t have the strength to pierce the skin of the Sluagh. Only a ballista bolt would have a chance and only if it was much further from its portal than it currently was. They were heading straight into the face of a slaughter, and the men knew it. But what else could they do if escape was not an option?
He widened his eyes as a blur flew across his vision to stand between the demonic creature and the remaining humans. It was a lone, gangly human. He turned his head to look back at the caravan and Noah gasped as he recognized Lazar. When he had seen him last, the young lad was crying over John’s body, trying to staunch the blood of the wounds with his hands. Or so Noah thought. He must have been digging in John’s pocket for shifter powder because when Lazar looked toward the caravan, Noah could see his rippling veins and pupil-covered black eyes.
Noah called on his remaining strength to lift himself onto his elbows. He yelled out, “Lad, run away as far as you can from here while you still have the high. There’s nothing you can do to save us.”
Lazar zeroed in on Noah and shook his head sadly. “John told me. The day the powerful leave the weak to suffer their fate is the day humanity will fall. I won’t disgrace myself or my mentor by fleeing from the battlefield like a coward.”
Noah’s heart sped up. “Lad, you can’t win this fight. No one would think you a coward for preserving your own life.”
Lazar ignored his warnings and returned his attention to the Sluagh, still stumbling slowly toward them. His soft voice somehow carried across the battlefield in a whisper, “I am tired of merely surviving, Noah. It is time for humans to start truly living once more.”
His declaration pierced the ears of each human present, causing them to squeeze their eyes shut in a hopelessness that spanned generations. Lazar raised John’s sword in front of his face and then, in a blur, sped towards the monster. Mud flew into the air from the force of his charge, and his yell of defiance carried the hopes of humanity.
“No!” Noah yelled out, trying to rise to his feet and falling back into the mud impotently.
He watched as Lazar reached the monster and swung with all of his enhanced strength. The sword bent with the force and struck the Sluagh in its side. After penetrating an inch into the creature’s magically enforced skin, the blade abruptly halted. The force of the blow threw the Sluagh backwards, causing its feet to skid across the muddy ground. It ground to a halt around ten yards from where it began, looking no worse for the wear.
Noah squinted his eyes and could see a slight wound on its side, bleeding black blood freely down its torso. The Sluagh used its clawed hand to wipe at the wound and cocked its head in confusion. It raised its elongated arm to its face and looked at the black blood dripping off its long claws.
It threw its head back and the rows of razor-sharp teeth moved in a circular rotation. A horrendous clicking noise echoed out across the battlefield. Its head snapped down to stare at Lazar, who stood strong, waiting for another clash. The slow stumbling of the creature disappeared, and it blurred forward with a speed that Noah had only witnessed one time in his life. Master Vampire Augustus.
Lazar barely had time to raise his sword before the Sluagh was on him, punching out its arm toward his chest. The loud snap of the iron sword made the humans wince, and Lazar’s body hurled towards the wagons like a bolt of lightning. He slammed into one of the few wooden wagons still standing and cratered into the hard wood. With bated breaths, the humans waited for their young hero to rise and renter the fray. He didn’t.
“How can humans stand against such power?” Noah whispered to himself. Hopelessness washed over him just like it did during his encounter with Master Augustus. Humans just weren’t meant to compete with the other races. All they could do was throw wave after wave of new generations at the problem and hope to divert the enemy’s attention long enough to stave off complete annihilation.
“We can’t defeat such evil,” one soldier yelled out with madness in his eyes. “We must surrender and beg for mercy.” He threw his sword down and crawled on his hands and knees toward the demonic creature. The other soldiers lowered their weapons with shaking arms and despair on their faces.
The Captain remained clear-headed and showed why he had earned his rank. “You fool! You crawl on your knees seeking mercy, but it shall grant you none. Return at once. That is an order!”
The soldier ignored the Captain and continued crawling. “It is our only hope. I will try to survive in the manner I see fit.”
The soldier crawled through the mud up to the Sluagh and bowed his head. “Mighty creature of the Fae. I surrender my arms and offer myself as a prisoner in hope of proving my worthiness for life.”
The Sluagh cocked its head at the human begging in the mud in front of it. Clicking noises reverberated around the battlefield. Noah held his breath, hoping against common sense that the soldier would find success. He didn’t. In a blur, the Sluagh swiped its claws, severing the soldier’s head and flinging it into the air.
The Captain shouted with a deep sadness lacing his voice, “Men! Your only hope of survival is to defeat this monster. You cannot reason with it. You cannot run from it. If this is our last stand, then we shall go down in such a blaze of glory that we will be able to meet our ancestors in the afterlife with our heads held high!”
The soldiers yelled in answer and started to bang their swords and spears against their shields, creating a thunderous roar. Noah finally was able to pull himself up onto his knees and then his feet. Preparing for his last stand, he grabbed a nearby crossbow and a sliver of bolts. He searched within himself and found no fear at his impending death. He would meet death as a free man with his head held high. 125 would applaud his final moments.
The Sluagh clicked once again, and the goblins, trolls, red hats, and banshee slinked forward. They still kept a healthy distance between themselves and the monster, but they were once again ready to charge and annihilate the humans. The battlefield grew quiet, apart from the moans of the injured, as each side glared at each other with such hatred and violence you could practically feel it vibrating in the air. There could be no peace in a world filled with such rage.
Toward the front of the caravan, a haunting sound broke the silence. A lone howl rang through the woods. Noah took his eyes off the enemy for a quick glance toward the commotion. A monstrous wolf appeared from the cover of the forest. It was entirely black and had glowing silver eyes.
His eyes widened. The Alpha! And where the Alpha went… Answering howls rang in the forest, as wolf after wolf with glowing yellow eyes appeared behind the Alpha. Hundreds of howls boomed through the trees, and Noah’s ears began to bleed from the volume.
He dropped his weapons and clasped his ears as tight as he could, but still couldn’t escape the unending howls. The wolves came in all colors and stood higher on four legs than most humans on two. Their fangs were the length of his forearms and drool dripped from their maws onto the ground. After the wolves had all gathered, the howls transformed into fearsome growls. Staring wide eyed at the wolves, he wondered if this was a positive development or if their lives were still forfeit. The Alpha, with its glowing silver eyes, howled once more and then charged with ferocious fury.