Chapter Twenty-Three The Howler

Marith stepped out of the tavern and shrugged her shoulders resettling her armor and stretched. She watched as the town guards all touched a ring of copper threaded through the top of their ear. They looked to the east and began running to the gates. Marith felt drawn after them and followed. The town guard shoved barrels and crates into the rode and took up position behind them with their battle-staves and duel-wands the copper rune inscribed tubes aimed down the town’s main road. A human town guard was running down the road at a mad dash when an explosion of green light lifted him off his feet and threw him several yards forward to the ground where he lay still with a hole in his back emitting green smoke.

Marith could suddenly hear the pebbles on the ground, she knelt down and looked at a small pebble bouncing up and down and wondered how she was able to hear its rattle so clearly. She placed a hand to the ground and felt a vibration running through it. She could hear distant howl’s and war cries and she recognized the language and tone from the town in the Dead-lands. She suddenly felt angry, no not angry she realized. Hungry, she bared her teeth and grabbed her Warhammer.

“Now Marith,” She heard Pathaldron speak to her. “Your allies arrive.”

Marith moved into the shadow of the ally and growled, the sound startled her, it was not an imitation of a growl but a deep and savage sound that came to her as a natural response. She looked down at her arms and saw that her skin was sprouting thick fur, she brushed it and felt the soft thick fur she felt a pain in her mouth and ran her finger along with pointed teeth. She recalled drinking from the pool and Pathaldon’s promise of power. She considered being angry and this unnatural transformation but… it didn’t feel unnatural if she felt as if she were only now realizing her true self.

Marith heard the cries of fear from the guards and her head jerked toward’ s the sound. She heard a thud, thud, thud sound and realized it was the sound of their hearts beating in fear. The sound awakened in something primal. She tossed away her Warhammer, that was a weapon carried by her old-self she extended her claws and vaulted ontop of the guards from behind. She felt her body swell and her armor crush her chest before ripping along the seams and its buckles snapping.

The guards turned at the snarling sound as Marith towered over them. They fired their wands at her and Marith acted by instinct her form turning to a living shadow off black smoke and the shots passing through her. They burned but not to the level they would have if she had been mere flesh and blood. Marith ripped through the guards shredding armor and flesh with black claws and biting into throats tasting the iron in the blood of her victims. She looked up to see a hoard of gremlins astride car-car and at the head of them a bunraku in a golden mask with antlers that curved back and around the mask pointing up like a crown.

“Mistress, we obey our master’s call and have come to aid in your task,” the golden masked bunraku said.

Marith grinned and felt her fur melt away and the wind rushed over her nakedness but she felt no shame, shame was for prey and she was a predator. She grabbed a cloak from a fallen soldier and tied it around herself to ward off the wind and grabbed a belt to hold it in place and to hold a scabbard as she took a blade from the fallen guards.

“Prepare your men, we ride on Nomm in an hour,” Marith ordered.

She turned and marched back into the tavern. “If you’re taking the job you should find some horses, we ride on Nomm.”

The Illrigger nodded and stood and straightened their sword-belts. They strode out of the tavern and to the town’s stable. Marith watched her army with a surreal sense of detachment. The illrigger reigned in their horses alongside the horde of gremlins and Marith nodded in approval.

“Do you require a mount my lady?” the captain of the illrigger asked.

“That will not be necessary,” Marith said and turned and began to run. She felt her muscles and the strength that flowed to her from the beast. She did not tire, and her stride was as fast as that of a horse at a full run. They rode for hours until Marith slowed as they came into sight of Nomm.

“We will rest in the forest and attack at first light when the guards will be groggy from just having woken,” she announced.

Marith opened her eyes from where she had been sleeping inside a small cave at the glimmer of sunlight from the sun that was just peeking over the horizon. She stood and stretched and looked over the long valley that lay between them and the gates of the city. She found the illrigger and looked them over.

“I need you to wrap your armor in cloth to hide it, then you will go to the city in groups of five once all of you are inside the walls you and I shall take and hold open the gates for the rest of my army,” Marith explained confidently.

Marith went with the first group and waited as the illrigger slowly trickled into the city. They hid in the alleys and sat at tavern tables. Finally, the illrigger captain nodded to Marith and she nodded back. Marith strode toward the gate and drew her sword. The guards lowered their battle staves and aimed them at her she smiled at them and leaped up over them to the top of the gatehouse. Shots rang out as they fired at where she had been. Marith spun about her cutting through the guards on the ramparts. One guard tried to slam the iron door shut to the gatehouse, but she caught it with her hand and yanked back. She stabbed forward with her sword. She strode forward cutting through the three guards on duty in the gatehouse. She slammed her sword through the gears trying to lower the portcullis.

Far in the distance, there was a great howling roar as the gremlin hoard charged the walls of Nomm. Bells began to toll through the city. Marith jumped and landed on the balls of her feet her claws digging into the tiles of the room for support as she catapulted from rooftop to rooftop making her way unerringly towards the palace. She landed before the gates of the palace and fifty guards lowered battle-staves towards her and fired. She somersaulted into the air and the shots passed under her ripping open the air with the sound of thunder. She landed in the midst of them and her claws tore open flesh. Her hands squeezed a neck of a human bringing out a duel wand shattering it in a split second. Pain filled her side as a bolt of fire struck her.

Marith turned in the blink of an eye and pounced delicious hot coppery blood filling her mouth. A few of the guards fled but the rest stood firm reloading their weapons, but it was already to late for them. Marith struck and the few remaining guards collapsed in a heap of cooling bodies. Turning her eyes to the palace Marith took a running start and jumped bursting through the windows into the second floor. Before her, the Queen and her attendants were rushing towards the stairs but stopped as they looked at the mass of muscle and blood matted fur.

“Your majesty,” Marith growled. “We meet again.”

“Marith?” the Queen asked in horror stumbling back clutching her child to her chest. “What have you done?”

“I have done what I always should have, I have taken what I needed rather than really on the promises of others,” she said striding forward.

“You won’t hurt me your still a Cleric of Fesla your oaths to your goddess do not allow you too,” the Queen said a note of stern command returning to her voice.

Marith laughed the rush of power euphoric as it shuddered through her body. “I am no weakling servant of a pantheist water goddess anymore your majesty; I am a Turashen, one of the Ten, I am a champion of the Darkness and I have been given the choice to kill you. My new master does not demand service we can refuse at any time,” Marith explained as she advanced, and her prey retreated. “But even if he had asked this of me, I still would have come for you. You sought to separate me from my children and use them as tools against my husband and that is unforgivable.”

Suddenly two massive figures of bronze and steel charged Marith. She dodged to the side putting her head between the legs of one grabbing it with both arms and bucking sending it flying out the open window into the courtyard. Her hand then punched into the steel frame of the other golem and yanked out its gem heart and it crumpled to the ground.

Turning back to the Queen and her retinue who were in full retreat she coiled her legs and sprang landing in front of them. Her claws lashed out ripping open the chest of three of the Queen’s handmaidens. Marith’s vision began to go red as she clawed and bit in a mad frenzy to kill and destroy a door opened and the king rushed in followed by dozens of knights and spell snipers. Marith ducked as bolts of lightning and fire shot overhead. Slinking into the shadows she disappeared reappearing above the group of knights landing in the middle of their group.

She didn’t go for the kill this time but instead struck at their hamstrings and legs crippling them and leaving them to bleed out and slow the rest of them. She pounced then going straight for her target seizing the King’s head in her jaws and crushing the gnome’s skull.

She leaped away then her job done she looked around and saw a fire burning in a hearth; grabbing a rug in her jaws she set one end in the fire and pulled down the curtains giving it enough kindling to start ablaze. She exited the palace slinking past guards running towards the palace. She entered the streets where bells still rang as the hoard of riders ran through the city tossing torches into buildings as others picked off the occupants who stumbled coughing out their houses carrying their most valuable possessions in their hands.

The city of Nomm had not fallen she did not have a large enough army for that, but it had been brought to its knees and humbled and the reign of the Nommen Empire would begin to end as kingdoms took back their independence. She smiled picking up a cloak from a dead woman and shifting back into a woman and wrapping herself in it.