Backstabbers

Cyneric drew in a long, steadying breath, letting the dramatic pause of his speech stretch out exactly as rehearsed. Below him, the army stood motionless, hanging on every syllable. Even across the field, the enemy camp had emerged to listen. Hatred simmered between the two forces - deep-rooted, sharp, and hungry. One spark would ignite them, and he knew it. But now was not the time for a battle cry.

He inhaled again - slow, regal, commanding - when sudden boots slapped against packed earth. A scout, easily singled out by his lack of armour and weapons and by the cheap fabric of his clothes, sprinted up the hill. His breaths came in frantic gasps, one arm flailing desperately toward the lake and the forested shoreline beyond it.

“My liege! There’s… there’s danger on the far side of the lake!”

Cyneric’s gaze snapped toward the water. A small house - really more a cabin - sat nestled near the bank, half-hidden by reeds and trees. Harmless. Utterly harmless.

His eyes narrowed.

“What is this danger you speak of?”

The scout swallowed hard. Even before he spoke, the tremble in his body betrayed him.

“The… the Angel of Death and his family live in that house!”

For a moment Cyneric felt his pulse stop. His face turned cold, numb, as if carved from stone. Slowly he twisted toward his advisor - only to find the man staring back at him, even more horrified than he felt. Kaleo looked indifferent. Yejide appeared unconcerned. But the priest… the priest looked ready to faint.

Cyneric clenched his jaw.

“What are they doing?”

“Nothing, sire!” the scout squeaked.

A flicker of motion tugged at Cyneric’s attention. He turned just in time to spot a squad of demons sprinting around the lake’s far rim toward the house. No doubt they had seen the scout pointing and assumed the gesture meant something crucial. Good. Let them go. They could distract the Angel… delay him. It would take them time to reach the house.

But then Cyneric’s sharp eyes caught more details - wolf ears, tails, lithe movement. Formys. All of them.

His thoughts tangled in confusion. Why would they rush toward that house if they knew who lived there? Why run willingly toward their own annihilation?

Before he could unravel the logic, another glint flashed in the sky. He tilted his chin up - and his breath faltered.

Wyverns. Dozens of them. Tame. Wings beating in coordinated rhythm several minutes out.

He forced his shoulders to relax. Yejide would not falter over a wyvern squadron. And if she did not fear them, neither would he.

He did not notice the thin silver gleam drifting high above, circling like a patient star.

He did not notice the figures leaning against the balcony rail of the house across the lake.

He did not notice the sudden blur of motion behind him as Kaleo darted forward - fast, so fast - even Yejide failed to react in time.

He did notice, for one brief, suspended second, the blade that pierced his ribs and heart as a short sword was plunged into his back.

The advisor could only watch, frozen in horror, as Kaleo drove the blade into Cyneric with such deadly precision that the King died almost instantly. Cyneric sagged to the ground in a boneless collapse, his crown slipping sideways in the dirt. That was not part of the plan. Not even close.

For one heartbeat, no one on either side of the field moved.

Then Kaleo lifted his blood-slick short sword high, the metal dripping crimson. His dark hair seemed to devour the light around him. A guttural scream tore from his throat - wild, primal, a sound born from despair and fury tangled together. The cry echoed across the lake like a curse.

But the scream had barely finished when Yejide’s blade whispered through the back of his neck. His body folded silently, severed before he even hit the ground.

Too late. Far too late.

Kaleo’s betrayal had been planned for a long time - any fool could see that now. His death cry had been the signal, the one spark required to ignite the waiting storm.

A ragged chorus of war cries erupted as the demon army surged forward, weapons raised, tearing across the field with terrifying speed. The ground trembled beneath the coordinated thunder of their charge. Overhead, the wyvern squadron drew closer, their shadows skimming across the grass that flattened in their wake. The human soldiers faltered as dread rippled through their ranks.

The advisor spun, throat tight. Leadership had fallen squarely onto him.

He ground his teeth together, forced breath into his lungs, and shouted - his voice nearly swallowed by the roar of the demon charge.

“BACKSTABBERS! KILL THE SWINE!”

It worked.

The human army snapped out of its shock, faces twisting with anger. They surged forward, mirrors of the oncoming horde. But before either side reached bow range, the demons halted.

All of them.

Instant, absolute paralysis - without a flash of magic or the thrum of a spell. One moment they were in full sprint; the next, they were statues mid-stride.

The advisor blinked, stunned. Then he noticed Yejide. Her pale eyes glowed like moons, and a sly smile curled across her lips. The advisor felt a slow, victorious grin forming on his own. Their trump card - played perfectly.

Above, the wyverns hesitated, circled back, unwilling to approach the silent tableau on the ground.

A cheer erupted from the human soldiers as they understood what had happened, their furious sprint softening to a confident march. They could take their time now. Make the deaths hurt. Victory was suddenly, wonderfully inevitable.

The advisor stepped forward, inhaling to proclaim their triumph-

The air warped.

A ripple. A blur. And then a figure simply was there behind Yejide, as though reality had forgotten to hide her entrance. A long tail, black as ink, swayed behind her, matching the dark feline ears atop her head. Straps crisscrossed her small frame, anchoring what little clothing she wore. In one hand, a knife gleamed.

Before Yejide could turn, the blade sliced cleanly across her neck.

Her head toppled. Her body followed. And the spell collapsed with her.

The demon army roared back to life, bursting into motion with renewed savagery. They plowed into the still-processing human front, blades already red as the tide turned violently against the humans.

Arrows hissed through the air. Magic flared and cracked. Screams rose like smoke.

Amid the chaos, the cat-girl’s amber eyes locked onto the advisor. For one chilling second, she regarded him with open contempt - then her form blurred, vanishing like she had never existed.

The advisor dropped to his knees as the wyverns turned back toward the battlefield.

Victory was now in the hands of whatever greater power watched over them.

Jaka felt her weight settle on his back again, light but unmistakable. Miro’s knife was still slick with blood as she holstered it and leaned forward, fingers curling around his neck.

“That should do the trick! Descend a bit - I can’t see properly!”

He obeyed, banking lower in slow, controlled arcs. Below them, the two armies had finally collided.

Chaos reigned.

Bodies fell in every direction. Steel clashed in harsh, ringing bursts. Jaka watched an orc spear three knights in one brutal thrust, only to be obliterated a heartbeat later by a bolt of magic. The mage responsible didn’t have time to celebrate - an imp’s arrow dropped him instantly, though the imp itself was already staggering, bleeding out from a gaping wound.

It was a mess of bodies, colours, and screams - so intermingled no normal human could hope to track any of it. But Jaka wasn’t human. Every breathing organism on the field had already been tagged, categorised, mapped. His awareness shifted through the battlefield like a net, tracking hundreds of moving pieces at once.

The wyverns were nearly on top of the melee, but they still hadn’t spotted him. Their attention was fixed on the ground, preparing to make their first attack passes-

Until suddenly they weren’t.

Jaka watched them veer as one, banking sharply. They swept over the battlefield at a dangerously low height, archers loosing hopeful arrows up at them. Then they veered out toward the lake, all of them fixing on something across the water.

Jaka followed their trajectory and spotted the log cabin on the shore. Something there had caught their attention, but before he could analyse-

“Crap! They’ve got a silencer!”

And then Miro vanished.

He checked instantly - scanning, searching, desperately trying to locate her signature among the madness - but found nothing.

Until she reappeared on his back with a soft thump.

“Okay, keep going. There’s bound to be more.”

He nodded, adjusting mid-flight. Miro smirked to herself. She liked this method of fighting - dishonourable, maybe, but far safer than throwing herself into the fray over and over.

Her eyes darted across the battlefield, sharp and predatory. Silencers - mages capable of generating expanding bubbles of suppression - had to be dealt with quickly. Silence didn’t stop someone from swinging a sword, but it stifled coordination, spells, and communication. If allowed to spread unchecked, a silencer’s bubble could swallow entire units.

Miro spotted one: a faint shimmer in the air. The caster wouldn’t be far.

She vanished.

A heartbeat later, a headless mage slumped to the ground - and then she was back on Jaka’s shoulders as though she had never left.

Jaka learned to adjust quicker each time. Moments later he was anticipating her impact before she even materialised, stabilising himself more gracefully with every blink.

He circled again. And again. Miro flickered like a phantom, appearing and disappearing as she executed silencer after silencer, each death clean and silent.

And then she didn’t come back.

Jaka banked, waiting for the familiar shift of weight. One second. Two. Five. Eight.

When ten seconds passed, dread punched through him.

He cast his awareness downward, frantically scanning for her in the blood-soaked sea of bodies. Nothing. No unmarked soldier. No untagged corpse. No flicker of life signature belonging to her.

She was simply - gone.

Panic clawed its way through his systems as he climbed higher, his wings trembling. He’d lost his superior. His anchor. His purpose.

Whose orders was he supposed to follow now?

His processors stuttered, slowed - dulled by the rising fear he wasn’t built to handle.

And no answers came.