Walking through the portal felt like they weren’t traveling anywhere at all, no wormhole, no flashing lights, no feeling of being stretched or anything like that. Their steps simply changed from one place to another as if walking into a room.

However, as soon as they walked out, they were assaulted by the loud noises of steel clashing with steel, explosions both near and far, and finally the incomprehensible shouts of people. Shouts of combat, of orders, and of people falling while the sun was rising to their right.

In front of them was a battlefield of knights, with steel armors, covered in the dirt of battle, all with their backs towards the portal, while closer to them there were people wearing white robes, some with their hands up, pointing at the frontline, lights coming out of them.

And facing this fantasy army, beings at least three times taller and wider than the knights, with horns on their heads, red armors with orange patterns all over it, a towering shield as big as a wall on one hand, and swords the size of an average house door.

Most of the knights would fall on a single blow, even if some of the knights were able to withstand one of the devastating blows of those beings, they would all eventually be struck down on the next one.

The team froze for a moment as soon as they walked in, and the same could be said about a beautiful woman that was standing closer to the portal when she saw them walk out of it.

She was wearing an armor, no different from the one the knights were wearing, only that hers was clean, with a red cape showing a symbol or a coat of arms on it, and a small crown on top of her bright blond hair. Her blue eyes were wide for a moment while looking at the team that had just appeared, only to right after start shouting at them while pointing at the frontlines of the knights.

The team stared at her for a moment, seeing her mouth move, but no sounds coming out of it. They could tell that she was human, but the whole situation wouldn’t fit any kind of logic that they had.

Her voice started coming out, somewhat muffled, while she kept repeating the same action towards them, until they finally heard her cry out, “—ease help us!”

After pointing one more time at the beings in the frontline, she begged again, “If you are knights, please help us!”

Noticing the situation after a brief moment from coming out of the portal, Mostafa finally lifted up his weapon ordering, “Open fire towards those demons!” and started shooting at them, being followed shortly after by the team.

The weapons that they had were no normal rifles, each bullet was small, but the weight of each one of those could be compared to a cannonball, so each hit that landed on the horned beings would push them back, while others if hit on an open space on their armor would fall down wounded.

The woman was taken aback by both the noise and the power of those weapons, but seeing the destructive power she couldn’t say anything. The same couldn’t be said about the knights on the field that were startled by the help coming from behind, some of them gasping because of the noise.

The horned beings took quick action after being hit by such weapons, with one of them on the back screaming with a deep, loud voice. “Wall formation!”

All of the horned beings put away the swords and took hold of their shields with both hands, putting them on their front, effectively making a wall at the frontline. The bullets from the team would hit the shields, chipping away at them a little bit, but not causing enough damage to destroy them, simply pushing them back a few centimeters.

While still aiming at the wall of shields, Jason’s helmet gave a warning from his right, it showed that unusual movement could be detected coming from the forest. Nobody had reacted so far, neither the team, the knights fighting or the mages next to the commanding woman, so Jason turned to Mostafa. “Sir, I detect movement from our right flank!”

After saying that, all the team members turned to look at the forest on that side, and their helmet also indicated movement. From the forest they could see that shadows were moving along the trees, all extremely fast and coming their way.

Nobody in the army had noticed the incoming threat, so Mostafa ordered, “On our right, open fire on whatever damn thing is coming!”

The team quickly turned as if it was choreographed and started shooting that way. The shadows would only slightly move left or right to avoid any incoming bullet. However, as they were getting closer, dodging became harder for them, so some bullets would hit the marks, but it would simply go through them and they would keep coming.

Now that they were closer, did the knight army notice the incoming shadows, and the commanding woman answered to their presence by screaming, “We have reapers!”

Some of the knights in the army turned to look at the wave of shadows getting closer, however the light from the sun risin on that side made it difficult to clearly see what was coming towards them.

A bullet finally hit one of those shadows in such a way that it fell to the ground, showing now at a closer distance to the team what those shadows were. So one of them zoomed in on the fallen shadow.

“My God, it truly is a reaper!” exclaimed the team member.

What he saw on the ground was a hooded figure. From under the hood he could see the lower jaw of a skull, and from its sleeves there was a bony hand holding a scythe about as big as the coat of the fallen Reaper.

But there still were too many of them coming from the flank towards the army.

“Get ready!” shouted one of the knights in the army as the reapers were about to hit them.

With speed and great power, the reapers started mowing down the knights that were unprepared, and so the other knights that just now noticed the new attack, turned to face the attackers. However, they didn’t notice that on the complete opposite side of the reaper attack, the horned beings with the wall of shields had started shifting their positions and closing in to the reaper side, while the ones that were in the middle still held their ground, making the knight army to be in the middle of a box, with reapers on the right side, and walls on the front and left side.

Some knights lost their composure the moment they realized they were cornered and losing numbers from the surprise attack of the reapers and started running back in fear.

“What in the God’s name are you doing?! Come back here!” screamed one of the knights seeing the guys next to him try to run away, not realizing that the horned beings started opening their wall to take down those who distracted themselves in the confusion.

“What the hell do we do now, commander? This fight seems to be lost and we don’t have enough firepower to deal with this!” said Kang in the middle of reloading.

“Sir, we need to break contact, retreat and inform about this situation!” followed Sokolov in the middle of shooting his weapon at the reapers.

At that moment, the men with the robes that had been shooting lights from their hands stopped their movements, looked at each other and held hands together. Some of the team members saw this action and could only see with pity, thinking that the men had given up on the fight and were getting ready to pray. What they didn’t expect was that the robed men started glowing with white light and some streaks of golden light, which only got brighter and brighter.

The commanding woman saw this and did a sad smile at their actions, followed by a small prayer. “We hope that your sacrifice will bring us victory in the face of evil.”

A moment later the men in the circle started fainting, and despite falling, the ones next to them still held them by their hands. Then from the intense light that they were emitting, in the middle of their circle, a huge hand came out, that grabbed onto one of the fallen men and pressed him down on the ground, followed another hand came out and grabbed one of the still standing men on the other side, pressing him down as well.

A big head came out from the middle of the ground in the intense light, the head had white hair and it’s face resembled that of a woman. However, her eyes were a dark void that was soon filled with a golden light. Her body came out, robed in a toga, with three pairs of white wings at her back. She was about the same size of the horned beings, if not slightly bigger.

She was still holding on to the men that she grabbed as she was coming out of the ground, she looked at them, and with a cold expression she crushed them, leaving only blood that fell to the ground.

“What the fuck?!” screamed one of the team members when he saw the bloody mess that that angel made.

The blood then sucked into her hands, leaving her clean as if the men had never been there.

“Please, defeat the evil that we’re facing!” pleaded one of the still standing robed men.

The angel saw him for a moment and crushed him with her hand as she had done with the ones she had been holding before. She then proceeded to do the same with the remaining robed men, then looked at the battlefield, and at the falling knights that were either retreating or still trying to fight. All eventually being taken down by either the horned beings or the reapers.

The angel opened her hands in the direction of the army. Some of the knights shed tears seeing an angel descend on the battlefield to save them, while others felt invigorated and decided to turn back and fight once again.

Light came out of the knights that were closer to the hands of the angel, and soon after their bodies fell down, lifeless.

The angel’s robes started glowing and transforming at the same time. From the light, an armor was shaped, covering her body completely with its golden luster. Out her hands two golden swords with intricate patterns and a golden glow came out, which she held to her sides, and over her head, a golden halo was formed.

She directed her gaze at the horned beings that were holding a horrified expression seeing the angel look at them. The angel pointed her swords their way, which made some of the horned beings take a step back, bracing themselves for any attack that could come their way.

An intense light came out of her swords that crashed with the shields still held by them. The light stayed there, but the shields didn’t fall, the horned beings were only pushed back, leaving a track on the ground. However, the same couldn’t be said about the knights that were in the way, which were melted on the spots they were standing on when the light came out.

After the light from her swords stopped hitting the shields, the ones that had taken the light directly were glowing bright red with heat coming out of them and parts of the shields melting down.

The angel only looked at them for a moment before she started walking forward, stepping over the bodies of knights she had taken the light out of as if they weren’t even there, leaving bloody marks on her path.

The team members were momentarily stunned by this, some of them putting their weapons away.

“What do we do now, sir? Do we stay and try to clear the area with the help of that… ‘angel’? Or do we break contact and go back to base?” asked Martinez as she and every other member saw how close they were to being crushed standing so close to the summoning.

“I think we should—”

Before Mostafa could answer, a loud boom was heard coming from beyond the army and the wall of shields.

In the sky above the knight army and the angel, red geometrical patterns within a red circle started appearing. Not knowing what that was, they stared at them for a moment before the commanding woman screamed. “Move out of the way! Don’t stay under them!”

The team members did as they were told and started running.

From the red circles a bright orange light fell down on the ground, followed by an explosion that sent dirt and rocks flying as well as the team members that were close to the explosion. Some of the team members fell down on the ground, moaning. Among those was Martinez, so Jason decided to go back and aid her, since he had promised to keep her back safe.

Soon after he started running her way, a red circle appeared in the way, but at the speed that he was going he couldn’t stop himself before another explosion happened, sending him flying away but closer to Martinez.

The damage from it was severe, everywhere he looked it was blurry, while a ringing noise in his ears was all he could hear. Still, he mustered any strength that he could and started trying to lift himself up to get closer to the unmoving Martinez.

Sokolov showed up at that moment, screaming something at him while getting closer. However, he stopped himself and readied his weapon, pointing it behind Jason and shooting.

Jason tried to turn around to see what made Sokolov stop like that and start firing his weapon. He was firing at Reapers that were coming their way. Jason also saw the battlefield in complete disarray. The hole that the angel caused in the middle of the knight army, the reapers crashing on the right flank, and the horned beings pushing the left flank, everything seemed to crumble down around the team. They had to get out of there and report the situation back home.

After a few rounds, Sokolov stopped firing and ran towards Jason, picking him up from an arm and wrapping it around his shoulder.

“Come on man, I’ve got you, we’re leaving,” assured Sokolov trying to seem calm.

“Hold on, I’ve” —answered Jason, with heavy breathing— “I’ve got to get Martinez, over there.”

“God damn it, you better walk on your own two feet if you want to save her!”

But the burden on Jason was too much. He was hardly limping and moving at all thanks to Sokolov.

Sokolov kept moving in the direction of the portal, which gave some hope to Jason, thinking that they were going to save Martinez, since her body was in the same path. But in that moment something hit them from behind, sending them both flying and tumbling forward.

“What!? Damn, these things are fast!” shouted Sokolov as he pulled the combat knife they all carried, preparing to fight in close combat with the three Reapers that hit them.

The Reapers had tried to kill them both with one swing, judging by the mark in the back of the armor on Sokolov left by a scythe, which didn’t break through thanks to the strong material it was made of.

Jason still tried his best to stand up and fight, but the ringing and the blurred vision still weren’t gone, so he stumbled down.

Sokolov parried and cut at the Reapers, but they proved to be too fast, with his blows missing their opponents while the strikes dealt by them kept inflicting more and more damage on him, until eventually, they managed to break his defenses, cutting him down.

“Get your ass…” was all Sokolov could say before falling down, blood flowing out of the opened wounds.

Jason tried to scream and fight back, but the Reapers were already on him, with one throwing a merciless swing at him, sending him flying again, falling just next to Martinez. He started crawling on the ground trying to protect her just as he promised, until he placed his hand on her arm.

“I’ve got your back,” was all he could say when a Reaper stood in front of him, its bright white eyes looking down at him.

It stood there just staring at him for a handful of seconds. In the background beyond the Reaper, the angel was now striking the horned beings, easily splitting some of them in half, and walking over the corpses of others, just as she had done with the knights on her way there. She was burning from all the explosions she had taken; however, she still kept a cold expression on her face as if none of the fire and damage on her body had anything to do with her.

The team that came with him was falling due to other Reapers getting to them and explosions detonating right on top of them. Closer to the portal, Mostafa was arguing with the commanding woman while she held his arm tightly with a desperate expression on her face and a light surrounding them.

The Reaper facing Jason eventually moved, lifting his scythe high while the other Reapers kept moving.

It swung down its scythe on him and then…

Darkness.