*** Chapter 25 Day 53 Santos and Company ***

The open palm of the large pale creature smacked into Santos’ shield, it attempted to use its talon like nails to rip away his shield. He had seen how a similar creature had slaughtered a great warrior and the great bird man, when the strike came he expected to exchange fatal blow for fatal blow. Instead, the impact only pushed him back, but in return he gashed the creature from its upper left shoulder all the way down to the right side of its abdomen.

It screamed in agony as it sprawled back, clearly not having expected to receive a grievous wound.

Santos was not one to waste an opportunity. With the furious fire burning in him, he stepped forward and used power beyond himself and cleaved through the creature’s left thigh before it could recover after falling back. His blade cut through muscle and bone as if cutting through gelatin, there was hardly any resistance.

Clearly outclassed, the monster instinctively attempted to retreat by crawling away. Santos dropped his shield as it hindered him in handling the spear in both hands. He rushed forward and with a powerful sweep he cut through the left hip halfway up towards the right shoulder blade.

It whimpered as it lay dying, blood flooding from its wounds, it had lost all strength to move or struggle, it could only die now.

There were more things to kill.

Santos turned towards his next target, but noticed that the couple dozen of the smaller pale beasts were being swiftly dealt with.

“We have more incoming!” Moses shouted. He had a bow in hand and was currently firing in rapid succession arrow after arrow at the two large beasts that led an even larger horde that had just attacked them.

“The big ones are mine!” Santos shouted. “Stand together!”

As the last of the small creatures were killed a loose line was reformed once more. The arrows hardly slowed down the larger beasts, their arms shielded them as they closed the distance. Though Moses had incredible aim, he could only do so much in the few seconds before the two forces clashed once more.

Santos charged ahead of the others challenging the two larger creatures to a one versus two battle to the death. Maybe they had seen what he had done to the previous large creature, because these two attacked like wolves, coordinating against Santos. They attempted to flank him, palms open wide, hoping to sink their taloned hands into his flesh.

Confident after his last baut, Santos charged and swiftly changed direction as the two closed in on him. He went towards the right first and sliced through the creature’s right arm near to the elbow. The other creature, however, fully slammed its palm into his side and threw him back, thinking to take advantage, the creature charged.

He wondered if the blow would break bone, but instead he simply felt pressure from the blow and flew backwards. He rolled on the group and at the same time swung around his spear, the creature howled in retreat after it charged. The spear had flashed around faster than it could move to overwhelm Santos. It had a clean new gash across its chest, blood seeped from it, but Santos had not felt the blade cut through bones.

The two creatures defiantly roared at Santos and paced around him cautiously, the one with a missing arm suddenly charged when the two succeeded in getting into flanking positions.

Santos turned and charged at that one. He moved to flank it on the side with the missing arm and it was forced to turn to face him or leave itself open to attack. Unfortunately for it, this still left it open to a horizontal slash at the abdomen, the contents within spilled.

Without waiting to see if the creature would go down he drew up his momentum to point the spear at the other unharmed creature as it came into range. Without a stable stance the creature easily swatted away the spear point and charged forward, but Santos did not waste the new momentum energy and turned around thrusting the butt end back, winding the creature. It managed to land a blow that raked across his shoulder and back, but the claws did not go through the armor. Instead the force sent Santos sprawling forward.

Feeling his footing lost, Santos rolled instead and recovered in a kneeling stance, spear at the ready. The creature had not recovered, it was still heaving as it forced air back into its lungs. Not wanting to lose the moment, Santos burst forward, trying to take advantage of the creature’s momentary vulnerability. Fear was in the creature’s eyes, it turned and ran even as it still struggled to recover, but it wasn’t running away, it was running towards the others.

The original battle line had split into two groups of five, one to each flank of the battle between Santos and the two giant creatures. It went for the one with Solfrid and Maira.

“No you don’t!” Santos roared, throwing his spear. It flew through the air and sunk into the back of the creature, its momentum made it tumble and roll for several yards.

It continued to crawl away, the spear had cut into its lower spine wedging into the bone causing it unimaginable pain. The creature made such sounds of agony that Santos rushed forward to end its life, more out of mercy than malice. The monster was so blinded by pain that it crawled with such desperation, that it did not take note of Santos.

He yanked the spear from its back and attempted to decapitate it, he was no master of the spear by any means, the blade cut from the base of its neck after slicing through a portion of the shoulder, coming out through the base of the ear. Blood spurted and pooled from its corpse.

Unlike the bigger creatures, the smaller ones appeared more mindless, more savage, mere ravaging machines. With Santos free to help the other groups the creatures were swiftly and completely taken care of.

“These things cut through them like butter,” his father, Raphael said, showing his son his bloodied blade. “I feel like I could cut through a tree with this sword.”

“How did you make these?” Solfrid asked. She had run over to him after the battle followed by Maira. “There is not even a scratch on your armor.”

“How are you still alive?” Maira asked. She ran a hand across where the monster had struck him on the side. There were only barely visible scratch marks on the armor.

“I saw chief Volstag’s armor,” Solfrid said. “It was the best my people have made and it could not resist the talons of the monsters.”

“I don’t know,” he said to them both. “For now let’s get cleaned up.”

“Santos!” uncle George called to him as he and the others gathered around him.

“Is this the thing that you were talking about?” his father asked.

“Yes,” Santos replied.

“You said they were tough,” he said. “How did you kill three, if they are so tough?”

“I don’t know,” Santos replied. “The last one I saw threw people through the air is if they were ragdolls. Maybe, that one was a lot stronger than these three. Maybe, the steam had something to do with it. Ever since we’ve been here, the armor has felt lighter and lighter.”

“Now that you mention it,” uncle George said. “I noticed that too. Even after all the walking we’ve done with the armor and shields, and even after this fight, I still don’t really feel all that tired.”

“What should we do now?” David asked.

“What do you mean?” uncle George asked.

“Well,” David said, “now we know that whatever creatures were in here, have all probably been killed.”

“Well,” Santos said, “even if they have been wiped out, we should probably go look for the horses.”

“What…,” his father said, looking around. The horses were nowhere to be seen.

“They probably got scared and ran off,” Moses stated. “Me and David can go find them, we’ve lost them before on hunts, so it's not the first time we’ll have to track them down.”

The two quickly faded into the woods while the rest washed away the blood from their armor and weapons at the river.

*** Gribi and Croa ***

“Does this not convince you that they could be allies?” Gribi asked.

They had been debating the whole time over whether they should help the group of newcomers during the entire battle. Croa was adamant on keeping their distance, fear of the outside people kept him from entertaining the idea of helping them.

“I’m going to go inform the elders,” Gribi said. “Maybe, we can still catch up to them, before they cross the gate.”