Blood still drenched the air, even a week after burning the bodies. An odd custom, but it was to ward away corpse eaters, unusual creatures as large as a small horse and native to Mythel. He had hoped to fight one. Instead, Galal’s days had been filled with menial work, carrying supplies from area to area as the humans rebuilt the walls of the fort. When not carrying supplies, he fought with the other Khor or took lessons from the human knights.

Night turned to day, and day fell to night, cycling between the two as time passed. After a week the walls and gate had been rebuilt and fortified, the ground surrounding the walls laid with trap holes filled with wooden stakes. It was more defensible now, apparently. It would need to be.

“A thousand men?” He asked aloud. The words were for himself, but the knight before him answered anyways, unaware.

“At least that many. Possibly two.” There was fear plaguing the air here. They numbered less than a hundred now, the main force still on the Uthain side of the border. It was a suicide mission to stay and protect this place, and the men knew it, unable to even pass the time with games as they had almost every night before.

Galal walked about the Khor, listening to their clicks as he passed them by. “We will die if we stay,” he said. They knew. They were as afraid as well. Not as much, mind, but fearful enough to smell it. “You will go.”

“We will stay.” They wouldn’t change their minds. He knew it all too well. They wouldn’t leave him, even if he told them to. And he wouldn’t leave the fort. He needed to fight. And if he were to die in battle, it would be a death he could accept.

“Fine,” he replied. He walked away from them, to the walls, and climbed utop the rampart. On the other side, toward Uthain land, there was an open clearing of about a hundred meters. But right in front of him was open land that stretched out for hundreds before it fell a bit, the land dipping down out of sight before rising again in the distance. That’s where he had seen their approach three nights ago. A sea of brown, dotted by hundreds of tiny lights that shone with clarity in the night. A brazen display, a show of pride, a show of confidence. Confidence that they would take the fort and continue onwards, no matter what they did.

Now, in midday, he saw them again as the row of brown appeared from beneath the dip in the land, the shine of metal glimmering off of armor and spear tips. The Uthain humans scrambled about, called to activity by the warning sound of a horn. And for all of it, Galal did not but wait, chest heaving slowly as he breathed, staring upon the Darstin army. A true army, unlike any he had seen before. As many men as a town, each ready to throw their lives away. Men who didn’t know of Galal, of the Khor.

At the start of it Galal sat at the center of the fort, surrounded by his Khor and several knights, shields risen to protect against the volleys of arrows that were exchanged. They had not to do until the gate broke, watching as men upon the ramparts shot arrows or fell to the returning fire of their invaders, others thrusting down with spears as men tried to climb the walls with ladders. The gate began to crack with powerful thuds, wood splintering, walls crumbling. Finally the gate collapsed, its hinges broken free from rock. The Khor led the onslaught, roaring as they charged the invaders, forming a second gate of their own. Steel met bone and blood and flesh and more steel. Men crumpled as their chests caved in to the powerful strikes of Galal’s mace, others as spears pierced their hearts or swords sliced their necks.

They pushed forward against their shields, ten or twenty men and countless men behind them against five Khor, barely budging as Uthain men slipped between the shields to cut down invader after invader.

Fear grew, in all of them. Darstin, Uthain, Khor. It permeated the air, enough to choke on if not for the blood and shit they had already begun to choke on, an ocean of scents that clogged the mind. Nothing to focus on, Galal swung his mace to and fro, clobbering the nearest man at every opportunity. Spear tips danced around him, scraping against his own armor. None aimed for his legs, their minds having been clouded at the sight of him, a giant mass of fur, muscle, and horns, a hellspawn given life that punished those who encroached upon his lands with death.

His mace met the body of soldier after soldier, knight after knight, each crushed beneath his blows and sending red viscera into the air. Three walls of bodies formed at the gate, two living and one dead between them. With a wall of carnage between them, neither approached the other. But blood was beating through him, risen to the surface, desiring escape.

Galal charged through the wall of corpses, crushing them beneath his hooves as he leapt at the enemies. Spears met his chest plate, skidding off the sides as he pushed through. Spots of pressure had started to appear throughout his body. Legs, arms, chest, they sprung up everywhere, each one ignored as he sent more to the grave.

Pain finally came in his chest, an arrow as thick as his finger sticking from his shoulder, having pierced his armor. He saw where it had come from, machines of wood held in the arms of men a ways off. More aimed at him and fired, some bolts missing and piercing the heads of random soldiers. Galal sprinted towards them, smashing through the rows of men before him, trampling them underfoot.

Thick arrows continued to puncture flesh, one after the other, each closer to the center of his chest than the last. Galal plowed through the group of men, swinging his mace as he felt the crunch of their bones underneath his foot. A man’s head was torn off by one swing and an amr in the next. Not enough to stem the flood of soldiers pouring in, their spears tore into his legs and sides.

More and more cut into him, each one seeming to darken the world, the light of the sun seeming to fade with each strike. He fell to his knees, blind, cold, the weight of the mace no longer in his hands. He searched for it, reaching out with a hand only to have it stabbed into the ground and forced still. There was no pain anymore, nor the hot pressure of his wounds. No sight. No sound. Only nothingness.

Power. A voice. Faint, shrill yet simultaneously deep, it spoke. Power for servitude, the voice said. Power for victory.

A light appeared, distant. A world away. Flickering. Candlelight. Above it, a shrine. A wall of dried wood, old, on the verge of rotting, black tapestries on either side, unknowable golden scrawlings sewn into each. At the center a giant elongated skull with horns jutting from each side, curling around like a pig's tail, tips pointed up.

Serve, and power will be yours, the voice said again, louder, like a vibration from within his skin. Serve, and you will know victory. He saw something else. A battlefield littered with hundreds of dead men. Thousands. Crows and vultures littered it all, feeding from the corpses, large furless beasts having come to do the same. At the center, a Khor. No, Galal. At the center he could see himself standing, alone, alive, staring to the heavens. Dead Khor surrounded him in a circle. And his horns, his horns were ablaze in a crown of fire.

“I will serve,” he said. His skin vibrated again, a searing heat spreading through his veins, burning him as the battlefield disappeared in a black fog, the light of the candle growing brighter and larger with every moment. He could not scream, could not move his body, if a body still he had, and as the burning grew too hot, the candle flame too bright, nothingness overtook him.