The Berserker and the Dancer

Before heading out, Anna found a loose stone in the barracks’ outer wall, carefully placed Pietta’s tracking seed inside the hollow space, and pushed the stone back into place, severing the connection.

“Now, let’s go.”

The smell of damp stone and decay permeated the stale air at the Tramble Site. General Marutur, stood amid the collapsing pillars, his enormous, horned head wildly swaying from side to side. 

"Saintt....!!!" 

Waves of suffocating heat emanated from him, the raw, hardly contained force. He has scars all over his skin, which is actually the color of burnt charcoal.

His army, five hundred strong monsters spread out through the forgotten ruins. They were a legion of nightmares given form.

Massive Grave Stone-hided trolls pushed down fallen monoliths with their great strength. 

Packs of Shadow Hounds, dogs composed of solidified darkness, slunk softly across the overgrown courtyards, their scarlet eyes penetrating the blackness. Overhead, winged shriekers circled, probing every dark archway, tomb, and fissure.

They found nothing.

“Nothing, General!” a troll’s guttural voice rumbled.

“Empty, Lord Marutur!” a hound master hissed.

Marutur growl as his jaw tightened. "EMPTY?!" 

His cloven hooves gripped the moss-covered stone as he sprang to the top of a collapsed statue. His head snapped left and then right as he twitched once more.

He growled, "Wait," he ordered.

His subordinates immediately complied and froze in place since no one wanted to be the object of his erratic outbursts.

He closed his eyes and rotated his big, pointed ears, listening for the smallest sound from kilometers away.

He heard only the wind.

A trick, the thought burned in his simple, violent mind. The vampire lied. He was about to raise a hand to cast a communication spell, to report this failure to Lord Yarte, but he got mad.

A small, brown rabbit startled from its burrow, darted across the open space directly in front of him. "HOW DARE YOU WALK IN FRONT OF ME?!" Marutur’s body moved on instinct, he launched himself from the statue, directly on top of the creature. He didn’t even look down as a wet crunch filled in the silence. He just stood there, his head twitching, sniffing the air again.

And then he sensed it.

It began as a faint sound of something moving at an impossible speed coming from the deep woods. Then the sensation struck. Holy Radiance swept over the ruins in a dense, oppressive wave. To them, it was anathema, a burning pressure.

Marutur's head snapped toward the energy, and the hunt was on. 

He gave a loud, bloody howl and flung back his head.

His cloven hooves dug into the desolate ground as he dropped his enormous, horned head.

With its runes shining like coals, his enormous, double-headed great axe, fashioned of black, pitted iron, materialized in his clawed hands.

“CHARGE!!”

He then exploded forward, ramming through every obstacle.

His army, ignited by his fury, surged after him.

Marutur’s voice, a roar of pure, unadulterated hatred, tore through the trees, a promise and a prayer to the darkness he served.

“KILL SERENYA!!!”

He scream as he destroyed all the trees nearby, carving a massive, crude arena out of the forest. He stood in the center of the clearing. "Where...?"

“Such a brute’s way to fight.” Someone else said.

Another powerful dark creature leaned against a silver birch that had miraculously remained undisturbed. This man was sleek and elegant, in contrast to Marutur's monstrous muscle and jagged edges.

With a black hair and red eyes, and a suit seemed more appropriate for a ballroom than a battlefield, he was in every way a vampire noble. 

His hands were calmly clasped behind his back, no weapon in his possession. This was Marutur's longtime adversary, Lord Demidicus, a master of dark magic and strategy.

Demidicus looked over the carnage with a bored expression. “All this noise and mess… You could have used an instant-kill hex, if only you had the senses to locate your target.”

Marutur whirled around, his berserker fury now directed at his comrade. “DEMIDICUS!” he roared, his voice cracking the air. “Stay out of this! This is my hunt!”

“Is it now?” Demidicus replied with a condescending smirk, not even flinching at the outburst. “I was under the impression we are a team this time.”

The two generals glared at each other.

“Fine,” he growled, planting the head of his axe into the dirt. “But let me do the kill...”

A violent, euphoric thrill started to shake him. He drooled a thick, black ichor that hit the forest floor like magma at the prospect of it, the pure, savage thrill of it.

Demidicus watched him, his handsome face full of pure disgust. “I do not pretend to understand your personal obsession with this woman, Marutur,” he said, wiping an imaginary fleck of dust from his perfectly polished gauntlet.

“But if you are already drooling lava at the mere thought of her, one must question your composure. It is hardly a good look for a general.”

Suddenly Marutur grunted, a flicker of annoyance crossing his brutish features. It wasn't a look of grief, but of a craftsman noticing a tool had broken. “Tch. Twenty of my trolls just died,” he growled.

Demidicus didn't even look. “And you’re surprised?” he said with a bored, condescending sigh. “This is why I told you to fight with your brain, you dimwit, not just your horns. You didn't give them any strategy.”

The berserker’s head snapped towards him, red eyes blazing with fury. “I told them how to fight! To kill! To eat!” he roared. “That is their strategy! Overwhelm! Devour!”

“A truly brilliant tactic,” Demidicus mocked, finally meeting his gaze. “How you were ever promoted to General is one of this world’s greatest mysteries. If you continue like this, all five hundred of your pet will be dead before the sun rises.”

“They are not pets!” Marutur bellowed, slamming the butt of his axe on the ground. “Many has fifty thousand mana! They are strong!”

Demidicus let out a soft, pitying laugh. “Did you listen to a single word that vampire informant told Pietta and Lord Yarte? Or were you too busy drooling?” He took a step forward, his voice dripping with condescending logic. “Six hundred and eighty is what we need to defeat Serenya. You would need more than your entire legion just to match her, and that assumes she stands perfectly still and allows them to hit her one by one.”

“They would swarm her! She—”

“Silence,” Demidicus hissed, his calm demeanor suddenly gone, replaced by a sharp, predatory focus. He held up a hand, his head tilted.

Something is coming their way.