Prologue: Part III

The Fiendish Reality

To call the pain Eskil felt when this fiend released its almost taunting roar directly into his face terrible would be a gross understatement. The disorienting shock that nullified his ability to defend himself was grossly amplified to an utter agony in this moment. His shredded eardrums all but burned into his very skull as the ringing reverberated throughout every bone. What limited blurry eyesight he had going completely awry now as those vibrations hummed throughout his head and shook his eyes like a pair of shallow ponds.

He could no longer see or really hear the death he knew was about to come at any moment. Nor could he react, or even think for that matter. All he knew in this instant was pain.

Pain that would be shamefully released by his death.

….

…One

.. Two

.Three

Three seconds passed. Three seconds and the pain continued, dimming slightly with each added second as Eskil’s divine aura slowly regenerated his wounds.

Four seconds now. Four seconds and his vision began to clear again, almost like he was surfacing his head from a murky whirlpool. As his vision recovered, his eyes went wide at the sight before him.

Eskil was no longer staring into the open maw of the fiend that stood before him, awaiting for it to either close around his neck or burn his body and soul to cinders. Instead, his slowly returning mind was filled with surprise as he looked up with great effort at the creature that towered over him, now having stumbled back several steps into the deep snow as it appeared to be writhing in agony.

As another couple seconds passed, and Eskil’s ears started to ring less while his blown-out eardrums reformed, he could hear that the earlier roar had been replaced with a higher-pitched wailing of agony. The shocking sight was a welcome turnaround as far as Eskil was concerned.

Welcomed, but confusing.

Thinking about it for the next couple seconds, he realized that it was clearly the doing of one of his fellow Holy Knights. But as he brought his eyes up and tried to scan the area around him, a pulsing headache thanking him for the effort, there was little for him to see.

Aside from the still partially blurred image of the fiend before him, the only thing to be seen in Eskil’s peripherals was the dense falling snow that added a sense of natural calm and beauty to the mass of chaos and death that was filling the forest at this very moment.

Still unable to move however, aside from flexing his fingers into the cool packed snow he sat partially submerged into, Eskil instead focused back on the scene before him as he continued to recover.

Upon a more and more focused inspection, he could see the beast’s arms grabbing and scratching at the base of its neck, as it apparently tried to rip out whatever was causing it such immense pain. However, as the image became clearer, Eskil’s mind clicked in realization of what it was that had impaled itself through the abomination’s throat.

Gleaming slightly through the cover of the beasts clutching claws that tore into its own flesh, showering the surrounding snow in an almost beautiful contrast of deep crimson red, Eskil could see the familiar sight of the strange silver metallic-like liquid Acario had created before they separated. This was the first time Eskil had seen anything that his commander was capable of in combat, but as the seconds continued to pass by, he was very quickly becoming aware of one of the reasons he was considered to be an almost revered legend.

Since the fiend had seemed to completely forget about Eskil while he continued to heal back to full strength, instead absorbed wholly and desperately by its attempt to rid its body of this foreign substance as it had all but ripped its own throat out in a haze of blood, torn flesh, and a clouding of its dark aura; he was able to keep on witnessing as the silver liquid was apparently burning and melting away its flesh like some form of corrosive acid.

Worse yet than that, Eskil could also see a webbing of silver lines that streaked beneath the fiends hide and spread out from the initial impalement of this silver liquid spike throughout the entirety of its body. From the looks of it, Eskil assumed that the liquid had invaded the creature’s bloodstream and was high-jacking the system to destroy the beast from the inside out.

Surely enough, by the time Eskil was healed enough to bring his hands up against the tree at his back and support himself to stand again, he could only remain shocked and speechless at the sight of this massive creature slumping down onto its knees in the snow, all its wailing having ceased now as its head was little more than a dripping mess of rancid and burnt sludge.

Shocking him even more as his eyes somehow widened further, Eskil looked out behind the large stump of the beast before him that continued to melt away, only to find that over ten more fiends behind it had suffered similar fates, some of them still bellowing in infernal agony as they were being melted away from the body up.

In the span of what he realized now couldn’t have been much more than half a minute, over a dozen monstrous fiends had been slain, every single one of which could have been more than a match for Eskil. Hell, one of which was almost the end for him.

Looking around as his mind cleared fully, his head and internal injuries having recovered under the veil of his golden aura, Eskil tried to get a sense of his surroundings again. He had been thrown back dangerously close to the camp and couldn’t see much with the cover of the falling snow, but as he focused more, he became aware of all the auras surrounding him.

Surely enough, Acario’s massive presence hadn’t moved from his starting position in the center of their formation. Viola’s incredibly powerful aura was also around the same position she began in, although hers was smaller and somewhat more intense. It wasn’t all that surprising, even though this was his first time seeing her aura released like this. She might have delicate features, but her strength and skills had earned her the title of ‘Heaven’s Fist’. Eskil knew before he ever met her that she was incredibly powerful.

That wasn’t to say Alano and Omar fell all that short of her. While he noticed their presence wasn’t as dominating as Acario and Viola, they were certainly in no way small or weak. They both blew him out of the water as far as Eskil was concerned, evident by the fact that they were snuffing out equally as powerful fiendish auras at an alarming rate.

Even still, the horde of fiends that had fallen upon them was truly staggering. Each of the even moderately powerful ones could massacre an entire town in their own right. And here in this forest was a wave of nearly a hundred such threats. The force their aura’s alone put on the mind was truly staggering, but nonetheless, the tide of their fiendish presence was held at bay and ground up by the bulwark of his four comrades.

Both sides were unrelenting in the carnage, and for a moment, Eskil just stood in awe of it all. Not even the stomach churning stench of the gurgling and sizzling hunk of now charred meat before him took away from the moment.

After another passing second however, Eskil was snapped out of the astonishment as he noticed the large aura of some fiends spreading out around Alano, moving through the space in the formation he had been shaken from thanks to his own carelessness.

Clenching his fingers into fists as he cursed himself once more for this carelessness, Eskil focused his aura in on himself as all the muscles in his body tightened and swelled as if he was flexing them past their natural state. Now that he was fully healed, he had no intention to waste even a single second more and let Alano get blind-sided. So without much thought, Eskil strained his legs even further, his musculature at the moment making him look more monster than man as he exploded forward in a cloud of snow, leaping over the deceased fiend that had almost killed him a moment ago in a single bound.

As he sliced through the deep snow with inhuman speed and an ease that surpasses the Oghur beasts that got them all here, Eskil honed in on the auras of the three closest fiends that had started to surround his comrade. He had made a split second assumption that nearly cost him his life before, but he’d be damned if he was going to let the same thing happen before he killed his fair share of the enemy.

He may have left the Eska clan for the south, but the image of Eskil as he blurred through the white backdrop of the falling snow towards his targets was still that of a berserker. Unfortunately, Eskil had no idea where his axe was, which left actually injuring the fiends rather difficult. Nonetheless, as another second passed and he had cleared more than half the distance towards Alano, Eskil opened his large fist and focused on creating another ice magic sigil.

He had only just started to learn how to really manifest his divine aura, having grown up being exposed to little of it, and mostly learning ice magic. As of now, he was only capable of enriching his strength and senses far more than he could in the past, as well as learning to accelerate the natural regeneration it affords him. Neither of which would help him put down a fiend for good.

That left him with only the fundamental beginning for utilizing this power in combat: fusion.

Since the manipulation of one or more elements at a time is naturally easier for a human, those with a divine aura start by learning how to mix simpler magics with a divine essence. Doing this would make the spell more powerful, as well as give it the property of some divinity, thus giving it the ability to actually damage a fiend. Sadly, it was far harder to get a grip on than it might sound, which is why Eskil hadn’t infused his initial area spell with it to deliver a truly devastating starting assault.

As he dashed forward now like a force of nature however, he focused as hard as he could on weaving his divine aura into the small ice magic he was preparing. If ever there was a time to take some success from his training, this was it.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

Seeing the honestly frightful auras he was chasing take shape through the blurry snowfall in front of him, Eskil made one more impressive bound before crouching down and straining his legs once again. When his legs looked like they might burst through the metal plating of his armour from the force of the muscles within, he leapt forward off of the soft snow and frozen ground beneath his feet, sailing through the air and appearing before the first fiend in the span of a single breath.

Without the slightest pause, the sigil over Eskil’s right hand started to glow an almost yellowish cyan hue, the tip of a single ice stave starting to materialize out of his palm just as he slammed it into the head of the large bipedal, four-armed abomination before him. With the force of his leap following through, Eskil knocked the fiend off of its feet as they both soared through the air another couple of yards.

Coming to a stop by slamming the large head of the beast he had managed to catch off guard into the ground with a crash that reverberated through the earth and snow around them, Eskil let out a heavy breath as he stood up over the upper body of the much larger being. As he did so, the sigil over his palm dispersed in a small puff of energy as he wrapped his hands around the cold surface of the ice sticking up out of the side of this fiend’s head.

Yanking it free with a bit of force, Eskil’s hand was then splattered with the blood of his kill, bringing the blood stained ice stave up in front of him with a fair amount of surprise. Looking down at the body before him, he could see that its gruesome wound wasn’t regenerating. Actually smirking to himself with a morbid satisfaction, Eskil basked in his successful follow through of infusing his aura.

This was the first time in the chaos of a battle that he was able to do it, and while it wasn’t incredibly powerful, it gave him the ability to injure these fiends that had already pivoted towards him. With that and his enriched body, where most of his energy was currently being directed, Eskil felt confident that he could at least contend with the two fiends that remained on the flanking side of Alano.

Turning towards the two threats that were coming towards him, Eskil steeled himself against the anxiety and hints of fear that welled up within him in the face of these creatures. One of them was the same species as the one that had nearly killed him not even a minute ago. The other was smaller in height but no less imposing. It stood on all four of its feline legs at almost five feet, with its body being more of a slick toned build over a bulky frame. With a quick assessment, it was clear that this fiend was the speedy predator type.

With the clearly defined muscles beneath its furless black hide however, Eskil was concerned at just how fast it was going to be. As far as he could tell, speed and maneuverability was going to be his only chance here. With as much energy as he had pumping through his body, he was confident in his strength, but after taking that hit before, Eskil wasn’t too sure how it would stack up to the strength behind that deadly tail.

With a roar from the taller beast as it stomped towards him unfortunately, Eskil ran out of time to think about it. Jumping into the action as more streaks of light from Alano’s direction lit up the dimming dusk in the background, Eskil strained his legs and gripped his simple cold weapon firm as he leapt forward at an angle to the raptor-like fiends right side. Since the smaller one was on the left, Eskil hoped he might be able to dash into a position to blitz this one quickly.

Soaring straight for one of the sturdy spruce trees of this forest, Eskil planted his feet on its bark for little more than a moment before kicking off of it and sailing straight for the fiends side, leaving the trunk in splinters as he did so. However, in this blur of a motion, Eskil spotted another blur in his peripheral as he intended to plunge the point of his stave into his target’s eye. Making an incredibly split second decision, Eskil aimed as accurately as he could in this situation and released the stave like a javelin instead.

Surely enough, the very moment after he did so, his body ragdolled in the air as he was impacted with an incredible force from his right. Crashing into the snow in the later half of the same moment, Eskil heard the pained roar of the larger beast as he now strained his arms with every ounce of strength in his body to stop the jaws that now had ahold of his body from sinking deeper into his armour.

Eskil couldn’t believe the speed of this second fiend. It had managed to dart around its fellow beast and intercept him like it not only kept up with his pace, but knew exactly where he planned on striking. It wasn’t only its speed that was astonishing, but the strength he was now fighting against in its jaws was equally as ungodly. Feeling the pressure of its large and pointed teeth denting and starting to pierce through the enchanted metal of his breastplate as his arms were slowly but surely failing him, Eskil’s mind raced with some way to free himself from this deadly situation.

As it stood now, he was already resting inside the fiend’s mouth, having just been able to get his right hand under him in time to grip against its lower jaw as his left stopped the top. Grimacing with pain as another second passed and both of his bloodied hands were pierced further by the two fangs that had impaled them, Eskil came up with the only thing he thought would work short of sacrificing his arms.

Forming two cyan sigils of energy around the teeth impaling his hands, he focused with everything he had on once again weaving his divine aura together with the spell. Sensing this happening in its own mouth however, the back of the fiend’s mouth started to heat up as sparks of its dark aura began to appear and flicker into small pure black flames.

Knowing what was coming, Eskil put everything he had in this moment into the magic he was casting. In the next couple brief moments, as all the chaos in the background outside of this struggle faded away, the two sigils flashed in another yellowish blue hue, a freezing fog surrounding the teeth of the fiend’s jaw as a result.

Just as the skin on his face started to burn from the growing flames in the throat of the beast, Eskil used every single ounce of energy he could muster and channeled it through his arms as he pushed up and down on the jaws that promised to kill him with a violent force.

In the next second, just before the growing inferno of blistering flames erupted out to engulf him, Eskil managed to open the fiend’s mouth wide enough for him to now crush down on the teeth that kept his hands lodged in place with his fingers, shattering them like ice as he pushed away from the beast and dropped into the snow by its feet.

The moment he did so, the air above him jumped in temperature, the snow around him melting and the ends of his hair singeing as a pillar of black fire erupted from the fiend’s mouth. As his eyes reflected this terrible light, Eskil could all but see his own death in those flames, a death he just narrowly avoided. Not thinking about it however, he brought his left hand up before him as another sigil took shape above his palm, his feet trying to find some grip through the snow into the ground somewhere so that he could push himself out of this still incredibly dangerous situation.

Just as he found this ground however, the fiend above him got over the brief pain he caused it as it lowered its head and brought the fire it was breathing out down with it towards Eskil. Sweating profusely in the proximity of it, the air in front of him glowed again for a moment before the image of the fiend above him skewed slightly through the nearly clear visage of the ice shield he formed in front of him.

Immediately starting to melt as the black flames washed over it however, Eskil used the leverage beneath him he discovered to kick off with some force and slide away from the fiend. Earning a couple yards in distance with this desperate move, Eskil was quickly hampered by the heavy bunching of snow on his back that slowed him a lot more quickly than he would have liked.

With his little barrier of ice also having been shrunk by far over half its original size in the span of that one second of direct contact with the fiend’s flame, Eskil was seriously finding himself backed into a corner. Quickly getting to his feet, he hastily tried to come up with an effective next step.

From what he could see, the faster fiend had ceased its breath attack the moment after he had slipped away, but rather than pounce on him immediately, which he knew would have likely resulted in his death as things would have gotten much more desperate; he watched as it started to slowly step around him with a measured pace, terribly intelligent dark red eyes with black slitted pupils gazing right at him as if they were soaking up his ragged appearance and desperately calculating expression.

Of the two, Eskil quickly changed his mind into thinking that this one was by far the more dangerous in all respects when compared to the raptor-like fiend. Speaking of which, Eskil turned his eyes ever so slightly so that he could keep both beasts in view, now seeing the other one a good distance away as it was trying to reach its long deadly claws around the shaft of the stave that he had managed to plunge deep into the fiend’s right shoulder. Judging by the fact that its entire right arm had gone limp, Eskil guessed that he had managed to sever some important muscles and nerves with the attack. That was also probably the only reason it hadn’t directly jumped in to help rip him apart with the smaller fiend.

Luckily even though he had missed the intended kill-shot through the eye, his ice stave had struck just low enough to miss the much harder scales on its back and on a good enough angle to be out of reach for its other arm, no matter how much it strained and roared out in pain. Although Eskil knew well that its aura would eat away at the invasive material and then repair itself in no time at all. Even with the small amount of divine essence it contained, he couldn’t see it lasting for much more than another dozen seconds.

With that being the case, Eskil turned his attention to the more dangerous of the two for the moment, keeping an eye on the other in his peripheral as he reached down with a grimace and pulled the points of the fangs still buried in his hands out, two bleeding holes remaining to drip down rather profusely and stain the snow beneath him as he couldn’t afford the energy to heal himself at the moment. Every ounce that Eskil had in him was being used to strengthen his body enough to keep up with his opponent, as well as fuel the magic sigil he created over his injured right hand.

Seeing this, the fiend which had been stalking around him slowly like a predator having fun with its cornered prey stopped and turned its head towards him, knees bending ever so slightly as it prepared to pounce at a moments notice. Eskil doing the same with his own legs, there was a brief second where the two faced off with a silent gaze shared between them as his sweat continued to drip down his lightly burned face without him even noticing.

The moment after this incredibly tense stare-down, Eskil took one deep breath to try and calm the heart that was trying to beat out of his own chest, although failed to help at all as both him and the fiend then erupted into a blur of motion.

Over the next ten seconds, the two danced a violent exchange of competing explosive speed against measured movement. Eskil instantly learned that while he might have the strength to explode forward with an incredible speed, the agility of his opponent and its ability to maneuver in the middle of a movement far outclassed him. He also became away of the three long spiked tails the fiend had as he was delivered a passing hit by one in the first exchange. The only thing that prevented him from being gutted by the blow being his currently steel-like body and enchanted armour.

And that’s how it continued for the most part, Eskil being out maneuvered and played with by this fiend and taking hit after hit, only being able to dodge or avoid them by activating his ice magic periodically, none of which were even able to cut the surprisingly dense hide of the fiend with such quick casting times. All they managed to do was knock it off balance a step or two in order for him to avoid, block, or redirect one of the fiend’s claws or tails.

Now by the end of this blurring blitz, Eskil stood dripping with both sweat and blood amidst the snow that had lost all of its untouched beauty at this point. Looking up at the beast in front of him, as it licked the part of its left forearm where he had managed to deliver one solid blow to no real effect, Eskil realized that he was against an enemy he had no hope of defeating as things stood. If he had his axe with him, he felt that it would be a different story, but with so little experience in fusing his magic, he could only accept the reality. He was too weak to be facing this opponent.

Watching again as the fiend started to methodically circle around him, Eskil knew that it was enjoying what it saw. Standing before it was a man dressed in what was once full plated armour and was now a metal coffin for the man contained within. His forehead had been cut severely and was bleeding down into his right eye, obstructing his eyesight. The breastplate around his torso was mostly flattened and dented inwards from several powerful strikes which had fractured many of his ribs and was making his breathing both incredibly painful and difficult. The holes in his palms only continued to bleed profusely down his slumped fingers and into the waiting snow below, as the bone in his left forearm had also been shattered from a block, leaving him unable to raise it up without flashing a dangerous level of pain throughout his mind.

All in all, Eskil was at the end of his rope, even more so than simply physically since he had expended so much of his energy so quickly just to try and overpower the fiend that stalked about before him completely unfazed. Hearing another roar behind him as he thought this, Eskil tried to focus on what it was without turning away from the beast in front of him, instead trying to focus in on the aura of the familiar fiend that seemed to be closing in on him fast.

With a weary bloody smirk, Eskil guessed that the second fiend had dealt with its injury and was coming to return the favour. However, as he continued to smirk, he decided that he was going to at least try and tie these two up for as long as he possibly could before he died. To at least go out like a true warrior who fought to his last breath.

Resigning himself to this fate, Eskil raised both of his hands above his head as his mind went numb from the pain in his arm and body. Staggering on his feet for a moment, he collected his consciousness again and focused on creating a large sigil hovering over his overlapped palms. As he did so, he couldn’t prevent his eyes from widening in surprise of what the fiend in front of him did in response. Hovering in front of the beast’s maw was a large sigil formed of its own dark aura, its eyes leering into his own as Eskil tried to come to grips with the fact that he was actually seeing a fiend use magic, something he had never even heard of, let alone seen.

Despite the fact that Eskil had accepted he was going to die here, he couldn’t help but be shocked by the action as both their sigils quickly began to fill out. With the sight of it going hazy however as his consciousness wavered once more, Eskil lost his keen interest on the scene before him as he sensed the aura behind him quickly approaching as it roared once more.

Regardless of what kind of magic this fiend before him was about to use, Eskil knew that it was all likely going to end in the next few seconds anyways. Even without that stunning realization, he figured that the magic he was going to unleash would only give him the smallest opportunity to kill the fiend charging his rear, but even if not, he would at least keep them contained here long enough for his fellow Holy Knights to clear through more of their numbers and be better prepared to take on these fiends from the rear, or stop them from heading into the camp.

With another, more content smirk, Eskil focused solely on the completion of his spell, no longer truly fearing death in this moment.

That is, until a blinding white light of hope streaked across his vision and seared into the flesh of the fiend in front of him, interrupting its magic preparation as it snapped its head off to its right with a mix of pain and anger towards the source of this attack. A more vocal reaction coming from Eskil’s back as the second fiend once more roared out in pain just before he heard, or rather felt, its large body drop onto the ground behind him.

Blinking suddenly as he brought a hand down to wipe some of the blood away from his right eye, Eskil followed the suit of the stronger fiend and looked to his left with a far more relieved and expectant feeling than his onlooking counterpart.

Coming into view now through the snowfall and to the snarl of the fiend, Eskil looked onto the familiar image just prior to it lowering its hand and speaking out with a gruff and flamboyant voice, “Whew, to take a hit from the legendary Alano Vasco, I see Eskil has been over here hogging the glory kill all to himself.”