Elena could hear Clarkson whispering to the soldiers behind her, but the steadily growing tinges of rage forming in the back of her mind made her put everything but the fact that those asshole guardsmen were trying to stop her from doing something.

Her.

A hero.

What absurdity.

“One last time. I will ask you fucking worthless guards one. Last. Time.” Elena held out her unsheathed sword, its blade already glowing with the warmth of her magic. “Move the fuck out of the way and surrender yourselves to my men. If this goes any further, it’s a rebellion in my books.” A rebellion would give her license to use whatever force she deemed appropriate. Treason, in essence.

Vort just stood there. He must be ignoring her! That prideful bag of snot. She imagined he was sneering beneath that placid mask of his. Elena frowned in disgust. He really was getting on her nerves.

“Very well. You made your bed, now go lay in it.” She breathed in, tensing the muscles in her legs as her soldiers moved forwards to cover her sides. A few muttered syllables found her blade exploding with holy light and the familiar faint hymns of angels ringing in her ears.

Still, neither Vort nor his men moved a single muscle. They only stared.

“Ma’am,” Clarkson nudged her from his position to Elena’s right flank, “not that I’m gonna stop you, but the boys and I are thinking this is mighty suspicious.”

Elena nodded in agreement as she inched closer and closer to the line of guardsmen. With each inch she grew closer to the guards, but not even a clatter their metal armor rang out. Only their heads gradually swiveled to keep up with her movement, to follow her.

A mutinous part of her mind registered the involuntary shiver that crawled down her spine. Even her instincts screamed at Elena that something was wrong.

Elena’s vision narrowed, becoming that of a tunnel pointing directly towards the men she recognized as the leadership of the town guards. Beside her, Clarkson heaved out a great sigh.

And then, Elena dashed forwards with a tremendous battle cry, striking Vort right through the throat and flicking her sword out to the side to partially sever his neck. The blade passed through the skin cleanly, much to Elena’s surprise. Too cleanly. Almost as if… there was no bone? In the half of a second that followed her long sword exiting the skin of the captain of the guard, Elena observed the blade out of concern. Did she miss? Elena’s brows narrowed. No. Her vision flicked to the man’s ruined throat, flicking back and forth from her blade to the man. Something was terribly wrong, but she couldn't quite out her thumb on it. Another second passed, and Elena’s eyes widened.

There was no blood on the blade, nor was there any spraying from his throat.

A little less than a dozen more war cries sounded out around her as Elena’s faithful soldiers struck the line of guardsmen like a hammer onto a thin sheet of metal. Elena’s brows continued to narrow in confusion, her feet backpedaling a few paces to get a better glimpse, a better understanding as to why the guardsmen weren’t bleeding. Puppet magic? If some mage went rogue again and created this many puppets, as mana intensive as they are, they were in trouble. But she knew how to handle that.

Suddenly, Elena’s attention was stolen by what she could only describe as a rippling pulse of strange, crimson light coming from the second floor of an inn at the end of the street. Even though it was just light, the crimson light felt wrong as it washed over her skin.

Like something was watching her.

Vort’s half-severed neck snapped around to look at her. That was no puppeteer.

“Just what the hell is going on!” Elena bellowed at him. Vort raised his hands in response, lazily reaching up towards his jaw. And, as Elena looked on in horror as the combat stilled around her, Vort tore off his own lower jawbone with a sickening ‘crunch’ of bone and tendons snapping, of skin tearing, all without uttering a single word or cry of pain.

A soldier beside Elena halted mid-strike, eyes locked onto the captain of the guard.

“They’ve gone mad…” he whispered with audible fear in his voice. Elena forced down the steadily rising bile in her throat. Vort lurched closer, ignoring the strikes of her sword as they severed chunks of flesh. She shuddered, suddenly very aware of how blank and calm his eyes looked. The soldier next to her screamed in terror as Vort latched his arms around him with the speed of a viper striking its prey.

And then Vort’s body exploded into a mass of squirming, screeching rats. Squelching sounds of chewing filled Elena’s ears as they gorged themselves on what remained of Vort’s flesh, eating his remaining bones with ghastly rasping crunches before they moved on to the flesh of the poor man next to her. More and more screams followed as all of the guardsmen nearby disintegrated into living whirlpools of vermin while Elena stood with her face riddled with shock. Phantom pains roared through the stump of her left arm, each pulse causing memories of that day, the day she lost her arm, to rise up in her mind until she could see no more than the memory of the flood of rats. Only this time she was surrounded by the terrible screams of pain from her soldiers as real swarms of rats clung to their flesh, burrowing under their skin towards their luscious inner organs.