The first thing I heard was the yelling of someone from outside the tent. "Wake up! Prepare for battle! We leave in two hours!"

Do they have to wake us now? I thought.

I opened my eyes and saw Larkan get out of his sleeping bag. Mark and Hiba were still asleep. Rey was already awake and sat on top of her sleeping bag. Meanwhile, Ivara was just pressing against me, her warmth was great.

I had a lot of trouble getting out of bed, partially due to Ivara who didn't want me to, and partially due to me knowing that I was ultimately walking straight towards my very possible death. I got up slowly trying my best not to wake Ivara as I put on my armour and grabbed my sword.

In the meantime, Larkan had woken Mark and Hiba who had also gotten dressed, and together the four of us left the tent.

The sun was already up in the sky, from its position I could conclude that it had to be about four hours until noon.

"Perhaps they hope Vindictus will still be asleep by the time we begin the battle . . ." Hiba said in a joking manner but something in his voice told me that he had realized the gravity of the situation a lot better now that the battle was about to begin.

In the time until we left we stretched and got warm by swinging our swords and shooting a few arrows in Hiba's case. Ivara had also awoken and had come outside. I talked with her a bit until a soldier walked up to the entrance of the camp and began yelling.

"It is time for battle! I hope everyone is prepared! This battle will be important for the future of Ion!"

He went outside the camp and the soldiers all began to follow him further up the mountain. The mercenaries followed suit. I said my goodbyes to Ivara and Rey before we left on our job. The way there was a hard one. We had to climb over boulders and dodge many falling rocks. By the time we reached a massive open field overgrown with grass and trees, it was already noon. But we couldn't even rest, as soon as we set foot on the field arrows came whistling down upon us from above. Like rain, they pattered on us. I managed to avoid them by hiding behind a large boulder with others.

"Do not falter! Advance!" the soldier from before yelled.

Hiba ran behind a tree knocked an arrow and began to fire. The fight was starting to gain motion quickly. I and many of the other mercenaries had run straight into battle and engaged the enemy.

I cut through the soldiers with fluent moves, as if I was dancing. It felt great, I felt as if I was free. I dodged every blade that came close to me and answered with a quick strike. They all fell before me like insects. This was the greatest of all feelings, the feeling of power. I had forgotten all about my worries as I immersed myself in the slaughtering that was happening all around me, which was really the only way to describe what was happening. I had barely noticed that besides me barely any mercenaries fighting for Ion were left.

"Typical, only amateurs," I said to myself at the sorry sight of all those fighters lying on the ground, bathed in their own blood.

I was in a bad situation, I had allowed the enemy soldiers to surround me.

"Tch" How do I get out of this? I asked myself.

But I didn't have to wait long for an answer. Mark and Larkan had broken through the enemies surrounding me. Together we managed to escape the situation. Looking back at it, the battlefield was overrun with Avalonian soldiers.

"Good thing Ion's army is competent . . ." I said while looking at the dire situation.

Mark, Larkan, and I ran over to where Hiba was hiding and firing arrows from.

"Hiba, you alright?" Mark asked.

He nodded and fired another arrow.

"This is a shitty situation," he said calmly. "Any idea how we can turn the tide on this?"

I tried to think about a way to turn this around for us but before I could finish I heard the crackling of lightning from above.

"We need to get away from the trees!" I immediately yelled.

The four of us quickly sprinted behind a large boulder out in the open, far away enough from the trees and that just in time. Above the battlefield, a thunderstorm had begun to run rampant. Bolts of lightning hit trees everywhere, leaving only the burned tree stumps behind.

"Didn't take as long as I had hoped," Hiba said.

The lightning began to gather in a single spot, right above the Avalonian soldiers. In an instant a massive beam of lightning hit the ground, leaving only burned corpses behind. The entire enemy force that had gathered there had been wiped out along with a few of Ion's soldiers that had attempted to escape. And in the middle of all that chaos stood a figure as imposing as no other. Vindictus, a man more than just tall, with wings, each wider than he was tall. His long braided hair swayed in the wind, nearly hanging all the way down to the ground.

From this distance, it was difficult to see what he was doing. All I saw was him lifting one of his hands. In the next moment a large portion of Ion's force, which was still gathered at the entrance to the area, was crushed. Forced to the ground by an invisible hand. Even from this far away I could hear their bones breaking and shattering, their screams as they tried to escape whatever it was that tormented them. But none managed to, all of them were reduced to piles of blood.

I could now see how Vindictus turned around towards Avalon's army. Before they could even recover from the shock, before anyone could scream they were engulfed by darkness itself. They were devoured by darkness and disappeared, leaving neither weapon nor armour behind.

I was so shocked that I didn't even know what to feel. Was I supposed to be afraid or impressed? Was I supposed to watch or run away? I asked myself these questions knowing that there was no right answer to them. Because the only thing you could do when you angered the thirteenth god was hope for a death as painless as possible. Like those Avalonien soldiers, they didn't scream. It must have been a painless death, I told myself. But why was I telling myself these things? To feel better about what would undeniably happen any second now? I didn't know.

My mind was blank. Only filled with what I presumed to be fear and admiration at once. Admiration for the force of nature I was watching. And that's when I realized it. Vindictus had disappeared from where he stood before. The battlefield was filled with screams of those trying to escape him and Hiba was hectically tapping my shoulder. I had gone into some form of trance.

I felt a weird, oppressive feeling from behind me, it was as if the weight of the entire world had just fallen down from the skies and landed right behind me. I slowly turned my head, knowing what was there but still trying to deny it, hoping it was something . . . someone else. I raised my head and there he stood, skin as pale as my own and his red eyes piercing me.

"Those green eyes . . . I remember them," Vindictus said, with a voice so terrifying that I nearly pissed myself. "You must be one of his descendants . . . interesting . . . one like you, in a place like this."

Was he talking to me? I could hardly believe it. I only stared into the red eyes that were studying me. Was this some joke? Was he trying to toy with me? My mind tried to find answers to too many questions at the same time. All I could utter were three words.

"Please spare us," I said over and over.

Vindictus' eyes tightened. His massive wings cast a shadow over us, blocking out the sun entirely. This was the end, I thought.

"Why should I spare you? You were the ones who entered my territory. You were the ones who endangered the children!" he said.

"Children?" I asked carefully, barely even managing to not faint.

I now knew what that feeling was, it was the Aura leaking from his body. When I concentrated I could even see it. It was like smoke rising from his body up into the heavens. A black smoke.

"Yes!" he replied, "the children. You endanger them by fighting in this area. Where else are they supposed to hatch?"

Hatch? I asked myself, and then it struck me like lightning. Vindictus was talking about the Amphithere hatchlings. I had once read that they were not strong enough to withstand the conditions up on the mountain peaks so they had to hatch elsewhere. This area must be the hatching ground for the Amphithere's of this mountain. And to Vindictus, who was according to old tales, half Amphithere himself, a dragonkin, they might even be family.

"I . . . We are terribly . . . terribly sorry for entering your territory like . . . like this," I said slowly, hoping it might persuade the walking natural disaster in front of me.

By now the admiration I had felt before had left me as well, only fear was filling my head, I was only acting to secure my own survival simply hoping that my friends would get out of this as well. I tried looking over to them. All three of them had lowered their heads and were kneeling. I turned my view back to Vindictus, who was seemingly thinking. He pulled his wings close to his body, making him appear more human-like.

"So you're sorry . . . you know the last hundred or so people cried the same thing when my lightning struck them."

He lifted one hand and let lightning circle around it like snakes, colliding right over his palm and turning into a sphere out of pure lightning. I gulped at the sight of it. He was truly toying with us.

"But, if you truly are a descendant of his you will one day be capable of great things I'm sure . . . so killing you here would be a waste of a potential subject for observations."

Vindictus became silent again. But I didn't even try to say anything, I knew that one wrong word could end up in my death. A death so quick that I might not even realize it.

"Oh why not, I shall let you four live . . . be sure to entertain me in the future," Vindictus said with a grin on his face before he jumped far up into the air, extended his wings and began moving them to fly, which he did at high speeds. It was like he created a storm with each movement of the massive, dark green wings.

"Did we . . . did we just survive this?" Larkan asked after Vindictus had disappeared behind the clouds.

"I think we did," I answered, still not quite believing what happened.

Hiba slowly began chuckling and Mark tuned in. Quickly all four of us burst out in laughter. To other survivors, we must seem like madmen, if there even were others left.

"I bet that stupid commander wasn't expecting him to be this merciless huh?" Hiba said while laughing.

The four of us just leaned against the rock for what felt like hours, laughing the whole time, until we stood up and made our way back to the path we had taken to get there. Everywhere we looked we saw corpses, some burned and some crushed. Especially where the large group had stood. It smelled disgusting, like blood and shit mixed together. Soldiers, crushed under the weight of Vindictus' power.

"Heh, idiots, all of them . . ." Larkan said as he gazed down onto the corpses. "This is why you don't mess with Vindictus," he said while kicking the head of the soldier that had led all of us to this battle, or rather to this massacre.

We continued down the mountain until we reached the camp again. A few of the guards looked at us in surprise as we entered the camp. I heard them whisper something but couldn't quite understand. But even without understanding, I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen.

The four of us entered the tent in the middle, to the surprise of the commander inside.