Puddles decided that their rest was enough, and started shouting their orders. The orders were simple. Move back to the center fortress area, where they would regroup with leadership and decide what the next move was.

Perhaps the small fortress would be absorbed into their own supply line.

Rane glanced around at his gathering squad. Erick had blood running down his face from a wound somewhere in his dark brown hair. He wiped away at it, but it wasn’t stopping. He paused, focusing his ambient, trying to seal the cut.

Sven’s smooth features were nowhere to be found. He looked as if he had fallen face first into a vile concoction of blood and dirt, giving him more of a street urchin look than his usual lady killer aura. His hair was matted to his head like a helmet made of mud and straw.

Klein was mostly uninjured aside from some heavy bruises, but he could no longer lift the tip of his longsword. As he lifted it to put it in his scabbard, he missed the opening several times, quietly muttering curses all the while.

Mud was breathing with wheezing gasps, holding his ribs and dribbling a bit of blood from his mouth. Apparently, there was some internal damage that he could not fix himself. Now that the battle was over, though, he would hold.

Puddles looked the most in form of them all, but had lost the usual bark in his orders, and the vigor in his eyes. His shoulders that usually were straight and tall were relaxed in a bit of a slouch, even as he tried to hold his head high.

Rane could not see himself, but he suspected that, humorously, this would be one of the few moments he could say that he looked like Sven. He could feel his hair knotted and clumped, some of it swaying around as he walked.

Now that the battle was over, he was starting to notice the smells. Excrement and the smell of spilled entrails ambushed their noses at odd intervals and without warning. He smelled sweat, the stench of the wet fur of animals, urine, and every so often, the smell of spilled food that had been cooking when the battle began.

Among all these smells, one existed omnipresently: the sharp iron smell of blood. The corpses of axtls large and small lined the path that they walked to the center. Some were barely larger than dogs.

As they continued their silent march to the interior, Rane felt uneasy, then suddenly, oppressed. It felt as if something deep and incomprehensible had him in its sights. He flared his area of direct control to check, and found that the surrounding ambient had become ever so slightly more difficult to move.

He knew what this was. He had felt it before, upon the approach of the head of the house of Auryck. Monster.

“We need to leave,” he said suddenly. His squadmates looked at him oddly.

Puddles was the first to inquire, “What are you talking about?”

*****

Caeris was confused. The final moments of the commander had been odd. He could have fought against them for a short while longer if he had not performed his strange ritual. There must have been something to it.

The others thought little of the axtls, but she knew better. They were not just a simple people of superstition. Their rituals held symbolic meaning of course, but that was not all. Their rituals had purpose.

Jaskil and the others had gathered around the corpse of the commander. Nastael had already retrieved its severed head, and they were currently discussing where it would be best placed. Caeris thought it barbaric, but knew that it would also serve a purpose that was not only symbolic.

It would rally their soldiers, and hinder the morale of any surviving axtls. Not that any survivors would be left in the village itself, but that is why placement mattered.

“It should be at the edge of the village, a clear message to axtl and elven scouts of our purpose,” argued Germaine

“No, the morale of our own troops should be first and foremost. We should display it in the center of our own camp, or if we set our new location here, in the remains of the axtl fortification,” countered Jaskil.

Then Caeris felt it. There was something rapidly approaching them. Something powerful. No, more than just powerful. She felt the familiar presence of seltience beginning to interfere with the ambient around them.

That is when she understood the purpose of the vexing ritual of the now dead chieftain. He knew he could not defeat them, and so, he had attracted something that could: a monster.

Caeris stepped forward towards them. They both looked eagerly to her, thinking she would be joining to settle the debate.

“We need to retreat. Now,” she said.

Both looked at her with a bit of confusion before she hurriedly explained, “there is a seltient creature approaching. A monster.”

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

Upon this statement, she turned heel and began her exit, only shouting for retreat to the soldiers in earshot.

“Coward. She’ll leave her division behind to die,” said Germaine.

“I’ll stay if you’re staying. We can get as many as we can out and then escape ourselves,” proposed Nastael.

“Fools! We’ve got no time for this. Germaine of Warlskill, come to your senses and retreat. No, flee. This is not something we can handle,” said Jaskil. He was backing away as he said it.

He felt it now, too. The creature would be here in mere minutes.

“You sully the Warlskill family name, Jaskil. You will be branded a traitor and a coward when we return,” said Germaine.

Jaskil was already on his way out of the village, shouting for an uncoordinated retreat as he went. Coward? he thought, one has to be alive to obtain glory. I guess, even in Warlskill, there are those who do not understand power.

Jaskil had thought himself powerful once. Then, on his coming of age day, he met his father. That monster.

*****

“We need to leave, NOW!” Rane repeated.

“I can feel something heading here, something powerful. Closest I can think of is when we met the Marquess of Auryck.”

“Maybe it's him, then,” suggested Erick.

“No, it’s not,” replied Rane.

“Well, we can’t just full retreat on a whim,” said Puddles. “Commander Caeris would have our heads as soon as we got back.”

In the midst of their discussion, they were interrupted by a squad barrelling towards them at full sprint. Rane recognized one of them. It was Caid, from his original squad at training camp.

As they ran by, Caid was the one to slow down and speak up, “orders are in, full retreat.” He didn’t stop to explain. He had only slowed down just enough to get the sentence out in their earshot.

Puddles was decisive. “Let's move.”

The squad gathered themselves and reoriented, no longer facing towards the fortress, but simply back into the woods. Dawn was breaking, but they still didn’t have quite the sense of direction to immediately know in which direction they should be heading.

The presence was stronger now, and the others clearly felt it. Rane could see Mud’s legs trembling, and he knew that it was not another manifestation of his wounds.

Their direction had been chosen for them, it seemed.

It was a simple direction: away. Away from that, that feeling, towards that primal wish to feel safe again.

Then, suddenly, shortly after their flight had begun, they were rudderless. Which direction was away? They no longer could tell. Rane understood what this meant, and the others must too.

They were now in its area of direct control.

They stood, silently, swords drawn and staring into the dimly lit woods.

The sound of screams broke the silence, along with the sound of snapping trees, as if a great storm had broken loose in the forest.

They heard the sound of hooves stamping against leaves, and then they saw it. It walked in the manner of a horse while towering even taller than the greatest of the axtls they had fought. Its skin looked like the expensive, aged meat sold by the butchers in Kelston. On its back was a mass of rising sinew that resembled a rider, but it was headless, only serving as a point from which three arms protruded at uncanny angles.

Rane’s body was paralyzed by panic and adrenaline. His heart was racing, but his mind was nearly blank. All he could think of was getting away from where he was right now. He looked to his squad.

Puddles raised his blade, flared, his ambient, and shouted, as if in challenge.

Erick had picked up a small javelin, and was preparing for a throw.

Klein had dropped his sword and was trying to coalesce an ambient barrier in front of Puddles.

Mud… Had passed out

Sven was on one knee, struggling to coalesce his ambient, but struggling in the presence of the fiendish creature.

None of it mattered.

The creature waved one of its ungainly arms with a fluidity incongruous of its shape, and Rane saw for the first time, seltience.

The ambient in the air in front of it shifted, hardened, and was made manifest. Not in the way that he knew; however.

Ambient was something that one sensed, like an omnipresent force that could be accessed and manipulated, but not touched.

But as the thin, black line in front of the nightmare grew into a sickle blade shape, Rane understood that what was happening was different. He could SEE the ambient. It was no longer a mystical force; it had been granted form and body.

The dark sickle shot disappeared as if shot from the limbs of the greatest bow.

And Puddles was the first to fall. His body stood tall for a bit, the now broken sword in his hands still held out towards his enemy, but everything above his shoulders was gone. His body fell to the ground in what felt like an eternity.

As he fell, Rane remembered their days in training, their march to Kelston, and the many times they had laughed together with their squad at the bars.

Erick launched his javelin, but the projectile barely left his hands when it stopped dead in the air, and was sent back through his chest, haft first.

Rane thought once more of his situation and his frozen body. He had thought himself strong. No, he was not so stupid. He had thought himself competent. He had thought himself ready to face the world as he was.

I am weak. I am a coward. There will be no glory for me, and I am at the mercy of this creature of nightmare, this monster. I am… Nothing. And… I want to go home.

With this admission to himself, he found his legs.

And he ran. He turned his body and did not look back.

As he ran, he released his hold on the ambient around him, and for the first time in years, withdrew it into himself completely. It felt as if he had lost a limb, but it seemed a correct choice, like a lizard that loses its tail to avoid capture.

He ran, not listening to the shouts and screams behind him.

He ran, not looking at the soldiers staring blankly at the creature that would bring their demise.

He ran, not tasting the bile and blood rising in his mouth.

He ran, not feeling the warmth of the rising sun which lit the dark world.

He ran, unconnected to the ambient around him, which was once the will of the world, but now, was the will of only one being.

A real monster.