Volume 3, Chapter 6: Devastation

{4 Days Remaining}

“That looks a little bit intimidating,” Lana commented from behind me. Beside her were Efari, Eden, Kiara, and Bronze Knight Commander Orik.

“Don't you think that's a bit of an understatement there, Gold Knight Commader Lana,” Orik said with a calm yet somewhat glib voice.

From his voice and words, I could tell that Orik was somewhat nervous. It was only natural, since the enemy army was just on the horizon. And this, combined with the fact that their army was more than one-fourth of a mile wide, could only create a tense and somewhat unnerving mood.

Our crystal clear view of the enemy army also did not help alleviate the nervousness in the air. Some of the younger soldiers in our army, the green ones who had not seen even one battle, had even puked their guts out from the growing tension.

They were afraid of the enemy army, who far outnumber us. The odds were not with us. It was a little more than two to one—a little over 50,000 against our measly 20,000. The only advantage we had was our defensive advantage.

Archers, mages, and other long-range attackers in our army had been positioned on large, mage-made platforms that were up to a hundred feet tall. And up ahead from the platform that I was viewing the enemy, there were many

barricades of earthen spear, mazes, and walls.

“Waah, they are as numerous as ants,” Eden said in a happy voice. “I just hope they put up a good fight.”

“Sounds rather tedious,” said Kiara toward Eden.

From the vantage point I was standing at, I could tell that the enemy army had somewhat slowed their speed down.

“They seem to be moving rather quite cautiously,” Orik said. “It is only to be expected though. One should always expect trickery and traps from the enemy army. It is what I would do.”

After some more time of observing the enemy's movements, I turned around. There was nothing more to be gained. The enemy army was only vigilantly and cautiously proceeding toward us, slowly, but inevitably, coming closer to the third and fourth regional earthen defense. Up in the sky, the enemy Air mages were scouting our positions and numbers.

There was nothing I could do to retaliate against these Air mages though. They were too far up and too far away. It would also be quite dangerous to have a battle between our Air mages and the enemy Air mages when the enemy forces clearly outnumbered us.

As I left the platform to go toward our ground defense, I felt Kiara, from beside Eden, silently watching me go down the slope. If I had to venture a guess, she was most likely wondering what we were doing in this war between two human sides. It had nothing to do with us, after all.

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Night soon fell, but the tension in the camps did not dissipate.

The enemy forces were purposely traveling slowly, and we could see light from fires a few miles away inside the enemy camps.

Sentries were posted in our camps as a worst case scenario, but we all knew in our hearts that the enemy forces would not attack yet. An army, especially a numerous one, after marching for more than half a day, obviously required rest.

No, the enemy would take their sweet time so that they could fight in their best condition. In the front of our camps, the rows of earthen platforms with spears made of hard earth formed a series of palisades. A crude defense, but nonetheless, we needed every advantage we could get.

This was where our defense would take place.

Now, we could only wait for the enemy.

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{3 Days Remaining}

The next morning came slowly, like the dead slowly trying to escape from its grave. Ever so slow, the sun rose with the crack of dawn.

The day was still, “hotter than the heat between a whore's legs,” as one of my cruder soldiers puts it. The weather near the areas around Shail Kingdom was usually always warm and sunny with few days of rain.

War and battles in the rain was a messy business, as I had found out during the period of turmoil. Blood mixed with raindrops shedding onto the greedy earth was never a good practice. It made for messy falls, and I had seen many soldiers succumb to these tiny mistakes. Mistakes which took their lives.

The green smell of crushed early morning grass was ever present. My eyes observed my surroundings with little curiosity. Some of the soldiers looked as if they had had fitful sleeps, night a tedious embrace to them.

“Morning, General Verath,” a knight captain greeted as he came out from his tent. He looked energetic and was all smiles. A glorious fool he would turn out, I believed.

“Morning, captain,” I replied, not knowing the knight's name.

The central camp, the place where I temporarily resided, was located at one of the larger raised platform. It had a clear view of the numerous enemy camps over the distance.

With my dragon eyes, I could see that the enemy were preparing to move out, getting closer and closer toward us.

The ground would soon see blood in as little as three days, I estimated.

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{2 Days Remaining}

The enemy forces were close now. We were just a few miles apart, too far for mages to attack, and too far for archers to launch arrows. Cavalry also seemed reluctant, both on our side and the enemy side.

As for the other six fronts, messages had arrived that the over 100,000 enemy forces had begun drawing closer.

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{1 Day Remaining}

Tension was high in our camps, no doubt, in the enemy camps also. Today would be the final day before the battle would begin, both of our forces in peak conditions. The last day of a nervous-wrought peace.

The expressions the men and women wore, and the emotions they gave out were palpable in the air. You could almost feel it, sense it around you. It was a high-strung tension, as if your heart and neck had been garroted.

I nodded toward Gold Knight Commander Lana who was standing beside me. “I will trust you to watch my back, vice-commander.”

“You can count on it. Don't recklessly engage the enemy also,” Lana warned. “Though I know that you are a pragmatic bastard.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” I replied. “And do consider the timing of the strategies we made in our meetings.”

Lana chuckled a little. “To think I would have someone who is more than ten years my junior tell me that.”

The Gold Knight Commander held out a gloved hand.

I grabbed it.

“We forge our own paths and make our own luck. Neither gods nor others may steer our helms. That said, let us both return alive.”

Lana's hand pulled back from mine then, and she left to prepare for the upcoming battle.

Likewise, I would also need to do so.

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Riding my black destrier, a behemoth of horses, I stood at the front with my three “wives,” beside me. Behind me were twenty thousand soldiers and battalions of mages. In my left arm, I held a black winged helmet which was opened in the front; in my right arm, I held a longsword of black sable. For my body, I wore a set of enchanted black armor made out of material which somewhat enhanced your magic, similar to the material of my sword.

The formation of our army was simple.

Archers would go toward the raised platforms to the sides and let loose rain of quivers for all they were worth. Mages, likewise, were spread throughout the melee soldiers for various reasons such as defending from the attacks of enemy mages.

At both of our flanks, there were one thousand cavalry on each side. In the center and serving as the vanguard were heavily armored units with shields and swords, numbering five thousand. And directly to the sides of the heavily armored units were various sword wielding infantry, which numbered about ten thousand. Behind these engaging units, there were spears, which numbered about three thousand soldiers.

As for the enemy forces, they were somewhat similarly structure, except the enemy had more than twice our numbers.

A loud horn signal was heard from the enemy side. It reached all the way across the one mile distance that separated our two forces. I watched as the enemy forces started marching toward us, closing the one mile distance.

I waited until the enemy forces would be within a minute's reach of our long-range units which were camped on the earthen defenses and platforms. Then I put on my black winged helmet and pointed my sable longsword at the opposing army.

The herald, the banner carrier, saw my gesture. There could be no mistake in it. He blew furiously into the enchanted horn, further signaling the start of our battle.

The blood of men and beasts would dye the ground red today. And I would be the first to spill it.

Time coalesced into a slow entity. It felt as if both armies had started marching toward each other in slow motion. Then reality intruded and everything came alive, moving quickly.

The heavy infantry units of the enemy forces parted to let through two hundred black robed mages. I felt, sensed, and saw a mass gathering of the threads of magic. Various colors joining together.

Then the magic was unleashed.

A crackling wave of fire mixed with lightning and other various kinds of magic came surging toward our vanguard. The wave was enormous, more than four hundred feet wide and more than seven feet tall. It ate at everything, and devoured all the grass as it came into contact with the wave.

“ATTACK FORMATION ONE! PIERCER! SHIELD FORMATION TWO! REFLECTION!” my most senior mage captain yelled out. He was the leader of all the battalions of mages that had been assigned to me.

At his words, two hundred mages that had been closely following our first row of heavy infantry vanguard came out to the front. Most of the mages were densely packed in the center, and formed the tip of a spear.

Devastating fire magic, lightning magic, mixed in with a column of water magic from behind, was unleashed in the shape of an arrowhead. It met the crackling wave of fire the enemy had shot with a flash explosion of various arrays of noises and fire. The center of the destructive arrowhead, however, pierced through that wave of fire, while the sides of the arrowhead were canceled and overwhelmed by the enemy's magic.

But that had all been accounted for by the commanding mage captain. More than a hundred fresh mages came forth from our light infantry units and formed dense shields of water and fire that curved upward slightly at an angle to allow for better reflection and defense. The enemy wave of fire magic was stopped stone cold with those shields.

Huge bursts of steam exploded outward, temporarily impeding the vision of both sides. It was only temporarily, however, as Air mages from our side and the enemy's side cleared away the steam with air magic.

Eden suddenly laughed out loudly from beside me. The excitement in her voice and face was obvious, similar to that of a child with sweet-tooth that had obtained a most delicious candy. “This is exciting! So this is how you wage war?”

Eden jumped forward from her horse, yelling the Ancient words, “Vurdus Incentia.”

A more than twenty feet tall vortex of flames surrounded her in midair before instantly becoming absorbed by Eden's body and hands. Her hair and hands turned scarlet-orange, an indication of the living conflagration of flames she had transformed into.

“Damned dragon,” Kiara said, surprising me a little with her somewhat vicious tone. “Always jumping into battles without thinking.” Saying that, Kiara also jumped forward from her horse. “Vurdus Glacia!”

A blizzard storm of shards of ice and snow so dense that you could see nothing through it surrounded Kiara in a spherical radius of more than ten feet. The sphere of blizzard soon disappeared and her appearance changed. On her forehead was a sparkling blue circlet covered with frost and twirling around in floating circles around her body were more than two dozens ice shards of the purest white mixed with just a hint of blue.

The two female dragons were soon side by side and made short work of the more than two hundred and fifty feet distance that separated the enemy army and our army.

I shrugged a little at Efari and some of the commanding knights in the front. Eden charging ahead of time had been wisely considered, so we had already made plans to include that.

Unlike the two dragons that had just sprinted toward the enemy forces, I utilized my horse to gallop across the distance. It would just be somewhat demoralizing for our side to see the general run toward the enemy forces by his lonesome, not even riding his horse.

I charged at the enemy with my black longsword held steady and Efari riding beside me.

“RALLY TO GENERAL VERATH!” a Silver Knight Commander shouted.

“FOR OUR GLORIOUS SHAIL KINGDOM!” another shouted.

I didn't look back to see what was happening. The plan was for the heavy infantry vanguard to lead with the mages spread between countering the enemy magic. Then the cavalry would circle around the flanks of the enemy and attack their sides. The cavalry would go around the earthen obstacles and the few raised platforms that were located near our sides.

From the sides of my eyes, I could see our some of our Fire mages and Air mages shooting magic down below at the enemy from these raised earthen platforms. One Air Mage Battalion was also fighting in midair with an enemy squad of flying Air mages.

The battlefield was a chaotic mess with rains of fireballs harrying both sides and the occasional lightning strikes creating chains of shocks across the battlefield. Pools of water were also formed on the ground, causing enemies and allies alike to slip and become crushed.

Efari and I reached the enemy mages.

A fireball and a lightning bolt came hurtling toward me, and I blocked both of them with my enchanted black longsword, which was now surrounded by flames. Covered and enhanced by red flames, the lightning bolt and fireball dissipated before the sword, overcome by my flames.

Threads of my black colored magic also formed an aura around me, becoming denser as the enchanted armor conducted and enhanced the aura by a tiny bit.

I neared the two mages, one female and the other male, that had shot those magic attacks at me. I turned my horse a little to the side as I arrived and burnt and hacked both of their heads off with one fell swoop.

Then I jumped off my horse, abandoning the mount. It was just in time too, as six colums of flame and five earth spears came sprouting out of nowhere. The horse was neighing in agony as it was roasted alive by the enemy fire. The pain continued before the five spears stabbed its body, causing it to drop dead to the ground.

Seeing our blatant intrusion into their forces, more than two tens of enemy mages were now focused on Efari and I. Enemy knights and soldiers came charging forward from one side and the rows and columns of enemy units strategically moved forward, swallowing both of us.

Efari and I were now besieged on all sides, a circle of hundreds of enemies around us. Snake-like arcs of fire came bursting from one side, while water honed sharply into fine spears came shooting forth. Efari and I both jumped simultaneously and landed on top of the bodies of soldiers. Our jump dodged all the magic spells, causing self-inflicted casualties among the enemies.

Upon landing, our superior physical strength instantly gave us the advantage and we used our weapons to hack off the heads of the closest soldiers. There was just about enough space to do so also, since our landing had caused multiple enemies to fall down.

Efari made another graceful little dance and an enemy head flew off into the air, making dizzying arcs. It was as if a goddess of death had descended. With a white aura mist surrounding her whole body, Efari deflected all the aimed sword strikes as if the attacks had come from toy swords.

A concentrated column of fire mixed with blue lightning suddenly appear from below the ground, piercing through her aura. But it was not able to pierce through all the way, and the magic quickly dissipated, leaving only a small scorch mark and some bleeding. Efari only grunted a little in pain before devouring the life essence of a close by enemy soldier.

Devourers!

They were undoubtedly monsters that excelled in group fighting. With such a large amount of humans and so much life essence to freely take, Efari had a limitless amount of stamina and power.

As four huge knights in black armor came charging at me, I created columns of fire in a circle around me. These flames instantly burned every enemy in a twenty feed radius around me. Agonizing screams were heard and the acrid smell of burnt flesh wafted across the field.

“Monsters!”

Many soldiers were shouting that word a far distance to my front.

It was only natural.

In a far distance, perhaps about four hundred enemies blocking, Eden and Kiara were each creating two hells. An icy hell and a fiery hell.

Hundreds of soldiers fell to their explosive nova of fire magic and ice magic. Tens upon tens of humans turned into blocks of ice, their ugly expressions forever encased in the blocks of ice, before the block was finally shattered into pieces. Blood did not even flow out from these ice-encased limbs and body parts, as Kiara's ice magic froze everything, including blood flow.

“WATER PRISON FORMATION!” an enemy yelled out from afar.

Out of nowhere, dozens of enemy mages began working in concentration, their threads of magic flowing together. The power of the magic was enormous, more than I could ever hope to put out. The magic was soon released, and smashed apart Eden's natural magical resistance territory like a hammer smashing against a small wooden toy.

A huge spherical shield of water more than thirty feet in radius instantly surrounded Eden and she became trapped inside.

At the same time this was happening, another voice from other enemy units called out, “FIRE PRISON FORMATION!”

Using all of my draconic physical strength and speed, I cut through and batted aside the knights and soldiers that had already began surrounding me like insects. But I was too late to reach both Eden and Kiara. I could only hope the both of them could somehow counter more than twenty human mages pouring their magic together.

A blazing sphere of fire with tendrils of flames that crackled and popped with energy soon swallowed the wide-eyed Kiara entirely. Kiara had sensed the outburst of enemy magic, but the magic was too wide and encompassing to dodge even if she had used all of her physical speed.

“RALLY TO THE GENERAL!” a powerful voice came from behind me. It was most likely the voice of an allied knight commander.

Dozens of fireballs came falling from the sky at the enemies that were surrounding me. The enemy soldiers and knights rolled against the grass futilely, screaming and hoping to put out the fire that was devouring at them.

“Ashes. Where is Lana and the rest of the Earth mages,” I muttered to myself.

Almost as if my somewhat of a prayer had been realized, crevices formed on the ground a few thousand enemy soldiers, knights, and some mages were standing upon. The earth nearby shook as the ground ruptured and pieces of earth jutted outward, ripping the very grasses from their roots.

The enemies fell screaming into these holes and the audible noises of armor and weapons clattering were heard.

From the deep tunnels we had secretly built below, Four Earth Mage Battalions came pouring out of them. Blocks of earth came dropping from the sky and more than a hundred wave of earth spears cleared the enemies who had not fallen to their crushing deaths.

I looked toward at the spheres of water and fire which encased Eden and Kiara. It still had not been interrupted one bit by the ambush our Earth mages caused. I could only think that the enemy mages who had formed those prisons were still not dead.

“Mage Captain Falna,” I said to the bearded middle-aged man. “Just in time.”

“Judging from this,” the mage captain said, “only about three thousand infantry and a few mages were killed, General Verath. The enemy still has the numerical advantage.”

“Indeed. But first we need to do something to about those two spheres of magic.”

“An amazing piece of work that is. I wonder how they formed it,” Mage Captain Falna commented.

I turned around—for some reason, I could feel Efari's presence coming closer and closer toward me through our bond.

Covered in blood and surrounded in her white misty aura, Efari was sprinting toward me with a look of horrid expression mixed with worry on her face. And suddenly, I could sense the strongest magical power I had ever felt. It was slightly even more powerful when the Eldest had destroyed the camps during the second tribulation.

When Efari reached me, everything turned scarlet red.

When I could somewhat see and feel again, I could feel pain all across my body. Then I wondered why I was looking at the clear and somewhat bluish sky. I groaned a little as pain wracked my body. I realized I was lying on the ground, my hearing and vision still somewhat blurry and unclear. I was bleeding in multiple places and my left hand had been seared off, blood flowing profusely from the wound.

The area around me had become desolate. Nothing remained except a large crater of perhaps more than four hundred feet wide and ten feet deep.

I heard a voice laugh out weakly in front of me as I tried with extreme efforts to stand up. I finally got up, and the sudden change in position caused more blood to pour out from the stump that was my left wrist.

“Efari...” I said, seeing the female lying on the ground with a jagged hole where her stomach should have been. Blood was pouring out heavily and dust and dirt covered her face, and no doubt, also covered mine. She no longer had the aura of white mist covering her, and her face looked as pale as freshly fallen snow.

“Hah...” Efari laughed out weakly, forming a sad smile, while shaking her head slightly. “I guess I should have listened to the soothsayer, that you would be the death of me. Ah, my Deathwalker, it seems I can no longer accompany you in your journey. ”

Flecks of scarlet blood spurted out from her mouth as she weakly tried to laugh some more. “To think that I would die when we had not even truly met yet...the things I wanted to accomplish...to tell you...I am sorry...” Both of her hands touched my cheek, and she said in an even weaker voice, “It begins...be wary, my love.”

Her hands fell away from my cheek then as the light in her dark eyes died, making that pair of eyes which could swallow you whole, which could make you gaze into them for an eternity, even darker.

There was no more light in them. Never again would there be.

Something inside of me snapped then.

I screamed as I felt the bond between Efari and I disappear forever, as if a string had been sharply cut into two. As if the string had been entirely burnt out of existence, eaten up, not even releasing smoke.

The pain it caused was as if every drop of blood in my body was being boiled. How could it hurt this much? What was this unbearable agony I felt?

A wail filled with intolerable sadness resounded inside my mind. At the same time, I screamed along with the voice that was lamenting inside my head. The battlefield around me was filled with my screams, much louder than the screams the dying made.

An enemy Air mage suddenly descended from the sky above.

A lightning bolt came at me from the corner of my eyes, and the yellow flash of a strange weapon he was holding came swinging at my neck. I couldn't move. I could only continue screaming. On my face, I felt tears, red hot tears flow down. Red? Was I crying tears of blood?

Time slowed down for me. The lightning bolt and the strange yellow weapon both traveling in slow motion, both of them aimed at me.

Then suddenly, all around me, as far as my blood tears-blinded eyes could see, a sea of flames surrounded me, drowning everyone and everything that had been around me. The soldiers, knights, mages, and commanders—all of them screamed as they were drowned and burnt alive in that sea of flames. Allies and enemies were all burnt alive. Indiscriminate. And I was the epicenter of this sea of flames.

NOOOOO! She is mine! She is mine! HOW CAN YOU DIE NOW!

The mental voice that was lamenting inside my head did not seem to belong to my other self.

Who are you? I screamed back at this entity inside my head.

The voice did not answer, merely repeating his words.

SHE IS MINE!

The repetition of words continued for a long while as I stood in a kneeling position on the burning battlefield.

DAMN YOU VESSEL! SHE DIED PROTECTING YOU!

Another voice, a darker and more indifferent voice, yet similar to my own voice, interrupted.

IT SEEMS, MY OTHER SELF, HE HAS AWOKEN. AND I HAVE REGAINED SOME OF MY MEMORIES DUE TO THIS INCIDENT. KNOW THIS! THIS SHALL BE THE ONLY TIME I WILL HELP YOU, AS I DO NOT WISH FOR THIS INTRUDER TO TAKE CONTROL OF OUR BODY. I SHALL SEAL HIM ALONG WITH ME!

NO! I WILL NOT LET YOU DO AS YOU PLEASE! MINE!

I screamed in agony even louder as a mental pain exploded inside me. The two entities that were inside my mind and my very soul were fighting for domination.

The crater around me, upon which a sea of fire had started blazing, ruptured as jagged crevices appeared. Small earthen slabs that were more than forty feet tall and perhaps even wider than that erupted and formed around the blazing sea of fire that was the battlefield. Then a blinding nova of fire shot out in multiple rings from my body.

I did not know how long this outburst of magic from my whole body lasted. My vision was half-blinded by blood and the mental and physical agony that was coursing through me made everything seem slow and out of focus.

Finally, silence.

I stood up, wiping away the blood tears from eyes.

An acrid smell pervaded my nose. It was the smell of burnt flesh, of fiery deaths. All around me, I could see a dying sea of flames and ruptured earth slabs, rather like small hills, and with large crevices in the ground. I stood on one such earth slab. It gave me a vision of the ruptured battlefield, where not even a blade of grass remained for a far distance.

Enemies and allies alike who had stayed the closest to me had been entirely burnt to ashes. Not one trace remained of them. Further away, perhaps more than a two thousand feet, there were burning corpses.

Casualties. I had caused all of these deaths.

I roughly estimated the number of deaths, judging from the remaining soldiers on my side and the enemy side. Only perhaps about 2/5 of both armies remained from the decimation the nova of fire and the earthquake I had created.

More than forty thousand humans had died.

I looked down at Efari in front of me. Only her corpse had remained untouched from the devastation.

“In the end, you still told me nothing...” I whispered with just a small amount of sadness and perhaps regret. The Matriarch Devourer, if she was even one, had grown on me.

Kiara. Eden. Were they both even alive?

I searched around, but could see nothing but devastation and the retreating backs of the frightened soldiers of both armies.

I felt lost.

It was a feeling I had never truly felt before.

Truly, I felt lost.

“Just what am I...”

As I muttered those words to myself, I heard a cold and somewhat mad laughter resound across the area of the ruined battlefield I stood in.

Out of nowhere—I did not even sense the magic nor saw it—the four-horned female entity I met during the forest appeared before me.

“So we meet again.”

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Volume 3 (Chapter 7)