Reyland watched in shock as his mentor, the man he’d been apprenticed under for some three years now, threw himself from the wall and onto the back of the greatest beast he’d ever seen. The man moved across its back with a grace that seemed inhuman, unwavering even as the beast tried its best to shake him off.

The beast bucked like a horse, throwing Griff up into the air almost ten feet. The man didn’t even seem fazed. He landed blade first, stabbing down close to its spine, eliciting an earth-shaking roar. Griff’s sword carved an x into the air, sending two lines of bright purple blood splattering, all without slowing down.

“Is he even bloody human?” Reyland muttered in disbelief.

The growl of a beast beside him snapped his concentration back to the wall. He backstepped as quickly as he could, the jaws of a wolf snapping shut just in front of his face close enough he could feel its hot breath on his nose.

His shortsword carved a line up into its jaw as he retreated, drawing blood but only angering the snarling beast. It lunged for him again, this time he stepped to the side. As it passed him by he stabbed downwards, straight through the neck. It yelped in pain as his blade nicked the side of its spine, bouncing off but leaving a deep wound. The wolf slid to a stop on the wet stone floor of the wall, turning around to attack him again.

Then three spears punctured it from all sides and it fell to the ground, choking on its dying breath. Maeve ripped her spear from its neck, followed by two soldiers slowly retrieving their own from its flanks. He nodded to them in thanks, then dashed back into the chaos.

The walls had been almost completely overtaken. Blighted swarmed the stairs and the ramparts themselves, and nearly every crossbow had been put away, spears and shields drawn in their place. Reyland threaded his way through, cutting wounds into beasts as deeply as he could. He lunged their backs, dodged past those that came for him, and danced his way through the battle as quickly as he could. There was nothing left to do now but fight, fight until one or the other was all that remained.

Reyland had seen it though. The end of the horde. As their own numbers had dwindled, so had the Blight’s. The scent of blood soaked the air, rancid and metallic. The courtyard and the tops of the walls were stacked high with bodies, human and beast alike, and it was impossible to see far through the melee that fought over them.

Next to him, a woman in the black armour of the Order struck a killing blow on a boar, only for a tethered spike to puncture her throat. The blood sprayed into Reyland’s face as the woman’s eyes went wide in shock, and her mouth parted in a silent scream. Then the tether went taught and in an instant she was ripped from the wall, disappearing into the darkness and rain beyond. Her spear clattered to the ground where she was just a moment before.

“Reyland!” Maeve yelled, running up behind him. She was clutching her left arm, where he could see a messy, bloody bite wound had torn through her armour.

“Maeve!” He yelled back, panting. “What happened?”

She looked down at her own arm in surprise, like she had forgotten that the wound was even there.

“I’ll deal with it later,” she said. “We’re spread too thin, we need to gather somewhere. We won’t last long at this rate.”

“Aye, you’re right.”

Something moved at the corner of Reyland’s eye, and he ducked as quickly as he could. He stabbed upwards, catching the wolf in the stomach as it passed over him, then using its momentum to heave it off the wall. It yelped and snarled as it was tossed, then disappeared over the edge into the courtyard below.

It was as he was watching the beast tumble that he saw it. On the opposite side of the keep, climbing over the fortifications was a black shadow, moving silently through the night. A shadow far too large to be any of the normal beasts they had been struggling against. It wasn’t as large as the bear-beast that Griff fought, nor was it winged like the wyvern. This was a newcomer.

And as it fully emerged over the wall, Reyland clenched his jaw in recognition. A pit of fear had lodged itself in his stomach, and he froze in place, the battle fading into the background around him.

“You…” he whispered.

The single, orange eye of the direwolf glowed back. The massive black wolf sniffed the air as the soldiers around it began to panic, retreating from the new swarm of wolves that had climbed the wall alongside the direwolf.

The direwolf scanned the keep, its left eye still closed shut from where Griff’s crossbow had injured it. It took only a moment for it to see something, lowering its head with a snarl as it began to prowl forwards.

Right towards Griff.

The man had carved countless wounds into the bear, but had been thrown from its back. He now battled it from the courtyard grounds, weaving under and around its earth-shattering blows, dodging with a perfected grace and power.

Yet, he didn’t see it coming. How could he, with the bear before him?

“Oi, oi,” Reyland stammered, beginning to stagger forward as a feeling of horror overtook him. “Oi, Griff, Griff!”

The bear struck the ground with enough force to create a small crater, missing Griff by a hair. Reyland watched as Griff’s long blade carved another gouge into the bear’s forearm, then three more all before it could move. Yet, the beast didn’t even slow. And all the while, the direwolf crept up from behind.

Reyland broke into a sprint. He ran along the wall towards the broken gate, the closest place he could get to without jumping the thirty feet down to the ground. He could hear Maeve yelling something at him from behind, but he did not slow. Rather, he pushed himself faster, his aches and pains fading away just like everything else. Everything except his master, and the beasts on either side of him.

“Griff!” Reyland screamed again as he got closer. “Griff, behind you!”

He couldn’t tell if the man heard him at all. So, he ran faster, and the pit in his stomach grew larger.

As Reyland approached the top of the gate, destruction awaited him. Every last one of the ballistae had been crushed, and dozens of soldiers and Ordained littered the blood soaked ground. Even the oil pot had been damaged, one half of the wooden frame that held it broken, causing it to be partially tipped over on its side.

And there on the ground was Lord Aubrey, as well. Reyland paused for only a split second at the sight of the man, blood soaked through his hair, laying crumpled against the wall. He had no time to check if the baron was even still alive.

“Griff!” Reyland yelled, standing almost directly over top of the man now. “The Direwolf, it’s-”

“Krrruuuuooaah!” The shriek of the wyvern pierced the air just above him. Reyland dove to the side on instinct, and not a moment too soon. The talons of the wyrm crashed down where he had been only a moment before, sending wooden shrapnel flying in all directions.

“Agh!” Reyland cried in pain, as a wooden beam crashed down on top of him. It crushed his chest, a chunk of stone still connected to its ends from where the beam had been lodged into the wall itself. He wheezed and gasped for breath, straining against the weight atop him as a slow, burning horror gripped him.

Quietly, he looked up. Standing over him, its long, scaled neck twisting like a serpent to see him better, was the wyvern. It hissed, long and slow, forked tongue coming out towards him as it tasted the air.

He pushed against the beam again weakly. The pain in his chest as it was crushed was barely even present in his mind, and his legs kicked uselessly against the ground as he tried to push himself back from the monster over him.

“G-Griff,” he gasped, trying to call out. “Di-direwolf…”

The wyvern snapped its jaws shut in front of him, and he kicked at the bottom of its jaw. It felt like kicking a boulder.

“Krrrrr,” it almost purred, before its jaws opened wide. Reyland’s vision was filled with teeth, long and sharp, clear like a snake’s.

Then, a spear bounced off the wyvern’s scaled head. The beast looked up, and Reyland strained his neck backwards to see as well. His vision had started to go hazy.

“Back, back!” Maeve howled, throwing another spear. It glanced off the wyvern’s forehead this time, and its lips peeled back in a snarl. The huff of hot air over Reyland’s face was almost enough to burn the skin.

Maeve lunged forward with the last of her spears, a discarded weapon from the corpse of a soldier nearby. The wyvern’s neck writhed, and in one motion it bit the side of the spear, snapping it into splinters in an instant. Maeve was left holding the end of a broken stick, barely a few feet long.

“R-run,” Reyland gasped, the strength in his arms failing. It was nearly impossible to even breathe.

Maeve threw the broken stick at the wyvern’s eye, and it snarled in rage before rearing its head back in a roar.

“Kruoooaah!”

Maeve drew her knife, and Reyland’s vision nearly went black. Then, without warning, the wyvern simply stopped.

Its head slowly turned to the side, staring off at the tower in the centre of the keep. Maeve looked on in shock as Reyland began to lose consciousness. He saw the world in slow, shifting blurs, everything around him fading in and out of focus.

In a great heave of its wings, the wyvern took to the air, ignoring them both completely. Reyland didn’t even have it in him to be surprised. But then, the weight on his chest began to lessen.

“Hey, you’d better be helping me lift this, if I’m savin’ yer sorry ass!” Maeve yelled.

Through the haze of his mind, Reyland gave it one more shot. He put his hands on the beam and lifted for all he has worth, and together, they pushed it just high enough.

Reyland slid himself out from under the beam right as their strength failed, dropping the beam just behind his head. Reyland instantly tried to stand, but the world started to spin and he collapsed to his hands and knees with a pained gasp.

“Just - just what are ya thinkin, runnin’ off alone like that?” Maeve gasped, also on her knees. Her chest heaved with every breath, and she clutched at her wounded arm which still dripped with crimson blood.

“G-Griff,” Reyland choked out. “Have to - have to warn ‘em.”

He pushed himself to his feet with a groan of pain.

At this rate, I don’t think my ribs will ever heal, he thought, grimacing.

He leaned heavily against the stone railing of the wall, squinting to try and see through the haze of his own spinning head. He could see the courtyard, the mass of bodies and blood, the pouring rain and the outline of the tower.

And at last, he saw what he was looking for. Griff, still battling the great beast alone… and the direwolf directly behind him. Then the direwolf lunged at his exposed back, and a cry of panic escaped Reyland’s lips.

“Griff!”