The fortress descended into a methodical storm of crunching boots and clanging steel. Lucius’s party had no room to interfere; this was no place for stragglers.
The group had no choice but to retreat back to the barracks lest they be trampled underneath all the chaos. The inside, however, had become just as frantic. Players ran about in a daze, terrified by the sound of bellowing horns, and it was only thanks to Sir Ruggiero that they managed to compose themselves long enough to evacuate towards the upper levels.
“Concern yourself not with the paladins’ rally!” he roared, taking command with a boldness unlike his prior, more gentle, self. “This battle is not yours to fight, not yet. Climb the ramps up to the battlements and spread yourselves thin. There, you will find the priests of the artillery division: Their position lies the farthest out of danger, but heed caution nonetheless. No corner is truly safe.”
Far out in the distance, Lucius could hear it: a faint yell. The cries of war. It seemed the Frankish knights had already made contact, bitterly clashing against their mortal enemies.
Ruggiero donned a scaled helm. “I must leave you now; the others require my aid. Should your lives be threatened, scream. Do not die a reckless martyr.”
With that, the Peer disappeared, leaving the others to fester in their distress. The players had been warned of this, but nothing could prepare them for the grim reality: the pressure, the tension, the constant gnawing fear creeping down their spines.
Lucius was perfectly fine, of course. So was Marco. The old mobster patted the trembling Mili’s shoulder and held her hand as she took deep breaths.
Harper was a bit unsettled, her face scowling, but the firefighter quickly sprung to action and led at the forefront.
“The worst you can do during an emergency is freeze up,” she hollered, grabbing the party and running up the fortress steps. “Your body’ll whimper and try to hold you back, but you gotta keep moving—push through. Run. One of the first thing’s I learned at the station was to grit my teeth and let the blood boil. Heat will keep you alert - don’t fight it.”
Soon, they arrived at the fortress’s peak, where a long line of both player and priest alike had already begun congregating. They looked out to the west. The hazy mist obscured their vision, but still they were able to glean a glimpse of the tattered lands and scorched soil that laid beyond the walls.
It was like another world entirely. The mountains stretched out into the beyond, jutted peaks encased in whirling black clouds, and stood tall as an imposing, dreadful monument. Lucius could feel the evil emanating from its shadows, looming over all under a rotting sky. The once-luscious forests, decayed. The air—stagnant.
From the bowels of this fetid realm, it appeared. The vile horde the players had trained all this time to slay.
Mili began to hyperventilate. She backed away and clutched at her head, eyes threatening to burst out of their sockets. “W-What is that? What the hell is that?”
It was too bizarre to fully comprehend.
“I don’t know, kid. I don’t—Jesus Christ…” Marco trembled and made the sign of the cross. Even the horrors of the maze had not shaken him to the extent he was now. “Were those knight fellas really dealin’ with that all this time?”
Too unnatural to have been spawned by nature.
Harper covered her mouth and strained every muscle she had to prevent herself from hurling. “I, um, need a second…”Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
What was it that defined a creature as living? Was it a vessel of meat; a frame of bone; a consciousness upon which to think? If that were true, then these things could not be considered alive whatsoever.
Their figures had no sensible form. The only way Lucius could describe it was as if a child’s scribblings had come to life—a jumble of nonsense that merely imitated the actions of the living. Some looked like they were drawn by pencil: others watercolor, acrylic, pastel and yarn and clay. The most demented of the lot were clumped together in a collage of printed photos, the contents within moving despite being trapped in frame.
The players knew not how to react, what to even make of this situation. They were under the assumption that their foes would be, well, real and not these abstract concepts given animation. It was no wonder the holy empire had not taught them of the demons’ strategy, for there was naught to teach in the first place. How could you counter that which had no true substance?
The things lurched forward with the derangement of a cartoon character. They laughed with nonexistent lips, sang in a choir of melody incomprehensible to the human ear. Merely gazing upon them was enough to erode the players’ sanity.
Except for Lucius, of course. The gentleman thought the demons beautiful, in their own grotesque way. But he couldn’t quite decipher why. They were ambiguous, yes, and yet their origins were perhaps not as alien as he first assumed. Something had to have created them, after all.
The priests stationed to the battlements quickly began to take formation. They stood firm and chanted in prayer, wielding scepters fitted with large, crystal red orbs. A blaze began to billow around them: growing, intensifying, sweltering into a river of liquid flame that surged forth and rained down from the sky onto the incoherent spawn called demon.
The spell slowed their pace for a time, but the demons reacted not as a physical being should. They swam across the fire, chillingly unbothered by their burning bodies, and climbed atop the corpses of the fallen.
The priests summoned forth new disasters: storms of thunder, hails of ice, any and all they could possibly muster in an effort to drive back the approaching horde. But the demons numbered in the thousands. Spells alone were not enough.
Those who managed to pass the first boundary were then met personally with the full might of the Frankish paladins. The armored warriors hunkered down in front of the walls, their flesh invigorated with a flood of adrenaline and bloodlust. They ground their soles; they glared with veins bulging in madness.
When the demons drew near, the paladins all stepped forth in unison, and swung their weapons with a thunderous cry. Their enemies fell without a sound—torn asunder in a systematic execution of whirling steel. One by one, wave after wave, the paladins raged with every fiber of their soul.
It was unnerving to watch the battle unfold: not because the Franks were losing, but due to the sheer insanity that was the demons’ existence. They had no blood to bleed, no emotion beside an ever persistent jolly, giggling like a child unaware of sin even as their incoherent forms were crushed beneath heel. Youthful ignorance: A sinister purity.
When the demons did succeed in catching a paladin unaware, they sang their playful song, and brutally ripped into them—all with a smile on their crudely-painted faces. Organs were flung and skulls were paraded. They snickered and snorted, for their joy could never be degraded.
Men and women were toys to be played: their struggle a fun, exciting game. They hesitated not to rip out their eyes, even as their screams became lame. The demons sought after pleasure, merriment, a constant source of amusement. This was not a war to them, nor did Lucius believe they harbored any ill intention. That was simply their nature. Their very instinct was one of blissfully cruel destruction.
No matter how much pain they inflicted, now matter the despair wrought and spread, it was never enough. The demons would not stop until every living being in sight was carved and gouged into a mutilated, bloody sea.
Eventually, even the paladin’s offensive began to wane. Their barricade had been breached. The demons dived in with a merry cackle.
When all seemed dire, when fatigue and exhaustion finally settled into the warrior’s spirit, a roar bellowed across the battlefield: of a man, nay, a force of pure unconstrained ferocity.
A figure blurred across Lucius’s vision. It descended from above, rushing past, and crashed straight into the very heart of the demons’ ranks. The air swelled. Hundreds of the scourge were obliterated in an instant, and their slayer rose up, emerging from a crater wrought from nothing else but raw strength.
There grumbled the fortress’s commander, Ogier the giant. There stood a man who shook the very earth with his wrath.