The blighted army and the demon king

“I have to meet him!”

“Who, the demon king?” Giselle looked at me incredulously.

She had to lean against a wall to catch her breath.

We had rushed towards the source of that deafening noise and the sandstorm that accompanied it, which happened to be north of where we’d entered the town.

A flock of dog-sized mites ran at us. Danayr sliced through four of them, and I kicked the other two, then grabbed a piece of wooden debris and threw it into the third one, pinning it to the ground.

< Creature slain - >

The messages kept coming, bringing with them a beyond unwanted visual stimuli. The air was heavy, and although I could hear someone yelling out orders through a loudspeaker or equivalent, I couldn’t focus on any of the individual words.

“Are you alright?” Danyar reached out to me, and I recoiled, not wanting to feel anything but my armour on my skin.

And even that …

“Hey, answer me, what’s your -”

I jerked back, hitting my head against a wall.

“Are you alright?”

Danyar put an arm out, preventing Giselle from presumably shaking me by the shoulders.

“We just need to get to him. He’ll have answers.”

That wasn’t a good enough explanation, but neither did we have time for a better one.

“Help! I need cover!” A voice came from a nearby street.

Giselle’s expression made it well known that my words weren’t good enough, but we rushed to the alleyway all the same.

A creature greeted us the second we set foot there. There was no better way to describe it. Its lizard-like, half-meter-tall legs supported a carapace-covered, fridge-sized body, from which a long and thick, corkscrew-shaped, bark-covered neck extended towards us.

“Help!” The creature repeated from its human mouth.

Giselle shrieked, and a wind blast pushed the creature back.

“It’s your kin, make it go away!” She yelled at Danyar.

When I glanced up at him, he was frozen. That was the first time I’d seen such deep terror in his eyes.

I lunged forward, but the creature dodged out of the way. It scaled part of the wall and untwisted its neck, blocking me off from my companions.

“Why won’t you help?”

Its voice was deep, that of an older man.

“What are you?” I whispered.

It lunged at me, running off the wall and opening its mouth way past where its cheeks held the jaws together.

Blood rushed to my head, and in an instinct-driven decision, I ducked under it and kicked its belly with all my might.

“Why are you doing this, daddy?” The voice of a little boy suddenly came from above.

My heart skipped a beat, and I kicked it again, harder.

Giselle and Danyar both yanked on my ankles, pulling me from under the smoking corpse.

“What’s with the…”

Its neck and body started to fizzle, and soon a naked lizard man lay where the creature had been. His abdomen was a gaping, catheterised hole, and purple goo flowed from under him, seemingly given a mind of its own.

Giselle blasted air into it, making the blighted blood dissipate into nothingness.

“... fire.” Danayr finished his sentence.

“What happened to -”

“So it’s true?” Giselled cut me off. She rose on her tiptoes, grabbing Danyar by his shoulders. “Earlier, I was just saying that because I didn’t recognise the creature, but he’s a demon! Did your King do this to him? Will you turn as well, huh?”

I glanced at Danayr, who looked frozen in shock. I couldn’t tell if this was because of what Giselle had just said or the transformation of that man. Although I too wanted to learn more, I didn’t want to push Dnayar, who was in shock, so instead I redirected the conversation:

“Now is really not the time, Giselle! People are getting hurt! They need us, we can talk about this later!”

“I don’t think there will be a later -”

A woman screamed, and a couple ran past us, carrying an elderly person between their shoulders. The building to our left collapsed, as something was smashed into it. Three desert hounds jumped out of the ruins and chased after that group of civilians, not even acknowledging us.

I tried kicking one of them as it passed, but it was too fast.

“I’m doing after them, make sure there’s not more! And then we’ll talk!” She yelled as she ran off.

Perhaps she’d heard the noises of a fight approaching, which to me had been drowned out by the ruckus of everything happening all around me at once.

The next second, a woman came crushing through the remains of that building. She collapsed against the opposite wall as a truck-sized wolf emerged from the ruins. Her brown wings spread out at the impact, and one of them cracked, folding forward at too strong an angle.

She patted the ground next to her, reaching out for her weapon. Then, she raised her eyes and locked eyes with me. Instantly, a dagger was in her hand, and she raised it in front of her chest, defensively, as she struggled to get up.

The wolf lunged forward, and Danyar intercepted it. He stabbed one of its feet and jammed his dagger vertically in its mouth when it tried to bite his shoulder.

“Get back! It’s not safe!” The woman ordered.

She rose up, slowly and with great struggle. The wolf, seeing movement, closed its jaws over the dagger. Purple blood spashed over Danayr’s hand as he pulled it away in extremis.

“Distract it!”

The woman rushed back to the ruins.

Danayr took a step back, spinning his spear around on itself to keep the wolf’s attention. I used this chance to run up to it and punch straight through it with all my strength.

Purple blighted blood sipped into the cobblestones.

The wolf howled, and Danayr jumped over it and put it out of its misery with one spear jab through its head.

The woman reemerged from the ruins, greatsword in hand. Her right wing was hanging back.

She assessed the situation before raising her sword. She pointed it at me and nudged it to the side.

I looked up at Danyar, who’d pulled out his spear and was pointing it at her in a comparable hostile position.

“Whose side are you on, son of Yiir?” She said, not letting her eyes or her weapon off me.

“We are just fighting the monsters,” I raised my hands up, high enough to pass as a gesture of surrender, but also close enough to my body in case I needed to defend against this crazy woman.

Whatever this is, now is not the time. She needs a healing potion, and we need to find the demon king.

“Is that one holding you captive?” The woman asked again.

Her lips were moving out of sync with her words.

“Yiir has forsaken me once already,” Danayr replied.

Then, he hopped off the dead wolf to my side. We exchanged a look, then some realisation flashed over his face. He seemed shocked, then pleading, as he raised his spear up at the woman again.

“No, no, we’re not fighting her,” I suddenly realised what he’d misunderstood. “Let’s go!”

That soldier didn’t lower her sword as she watched us chase after Giselle and the monsters.

“Who was she -”

“There you are,” Giselle shouted at us, before throwing the three blighted hounds she’d been levitating up in the air towards us.

We finished them off with a few quick movements.

That family Giselle had been protecting was long gone, and we were just about to regroup when a white light pierced the sky.

It wasn’t vertical like a flare, but rather angled down like a floodlight. It swayed from side to side, as its source slowly moved towards us. Something fizzled through the air, and I watched as a white arrow was fired towards the source of the light. Then, it was joined by half a dozen more, all originating from different parts of the city, and all carried forth by a mixture of magic and physical prowess. The floodlight vanished, instead transforming into a glowing aura around something fast-approaching.

“Brace yourselves,” Giselle said, before gesturing with her hands and propelling us onto the nearest roof. “Brace,” She repeated, carrying us over from several more roofs until we reached a good vantage point.

The air was still hot and smelled of rot and iron. It was filled with sand-dust and dust from the broken buildings, but most of the sand that’d risen with the sound of the horn had settled down.

It revealed the frontlines proper, where everyone was fighting anything that would fight back. Swords and spells hit mutated monsters. But swords also clashed with halberds and daggers. There were no banners, and few uniforms, but it seemed that a lot - three or so dozen - demons had joined both fights.

A woman in a blue Caravan guard uniform was ordering her people around, and several clusters of adventurers were holding position in a semi-organised way.

A man in a red formal attire was yelling orders into a gem floating some distance in front of him. He had black horns curving over the back of his head, and a lot of gold jewellery on his hands, waist, and draping over his chest. He ordered his soldiers to fight the monsters, but many were forced to defend against the third and largest group of humans: angry locals with makeshift weapons.

Yet, I didn’t have time to linger over the situation on the battlefield. The sand settled further, finally revealing the creature marked by all those lights.

A cold shiver ran down my spine. Giselle covered her mouth, and Danayr took a step back.

It was the shambling head of a mille-pattes, with symmetrical bright spots on its carapace and spikes growing radially from its long, thin mouth. I couldn’t see what was carrying it upright. Spots of white light marked it all over its body, turning it into an easier target.

The whole battlefield seemed to freeze when it appeared.

The mille-patted head dropped down. Ant-like legs separated from its body to support it in this horizontal position. It opened its maw, and I recognised the fizzling noise of the cocatrix.

Giselle was already down on the roof, covering her head with her hands. I pulled onto Danyar’s sleeve, bridging him to his knees and summoning my armour to shelter him. He let me.

The mille pattes flipped the upper part of its head back, and flames spanned through it. It swept across the front of the battlefield, taking out the blighted monsters and anyone unlucky enough to have remained in its path.

Then, it rose up.

Slowly, it resumed its shambling advance.