A Man Standing Up

At that point, much of the standing army's cohesion was lost completely. Many who had seen the overwhelming ranged capabilities of the Demons quickly lost morale and were routed, splitting into fragmented groups who had shifted their focus to simple survival, rather than victory. As the Hound continued to decimate what little of the army remained, the encroaching horde of Demons in the distance only grew closer, and had repelled several more volleys of arrows.

It was an inconceivable outcome. Spears and swords were utterly worthless against the hide of those creatures, tougher than any metal. Pointlessly resisting their advance was clearly a fool's errand, but a tactical retreat wouldn't be possible with the summit camp lingering behind them. Even so, many Beastkin who had been utterly broken by the hopelessness of the situation nevertheless found themselves sprinting towards the metal tower's shadow. Those who stood fast were taken by the Hound's maw before they were given chances to scream or resist. The dust-covered plain had become a garden of madness--entrails, limbs and pools of blood dripped freely from the Hound's jaw, which didn't seem the least interested in actually eating anyone. Rather, its beaded eyes conveyed a maniacal revelry in the slaughter of hundreds.

"Gh… Damn…" Amidst a broken bed of bodies, someone continued to breathe, "Why did this… How were we supposed to…"

Closing her eyes to shield from the vibrant colours of the evening sky, Pale muttered deliriously. Her alabaster-white hair had been stained by the blood which soaked into the soil around her, and a nauseating stench of iron lingered in the air. Though she couldn't turn her head to see, the sounds of helpless screaming around her was the only thing pulling her back from unconsciousness. Gripping her shoulder with one hand, a torrent of blood continued to spurt from the arm she had lost. Fingers recoiling against the sharpened remains of her shoulder blade, Pale was filled with an uncontrollable anger.

"Hah…!" Slamming a hand against the ground, she forced herself through an unquenchable pain and pushed herself up to a sitting position, "I'll kill them…!"

Her spear had been shattered into splinters. What remained of its iron tip could barely be called a knife, never mind a sword. As a breath was caught in her chest, she fell into a coughing fit, but unsteadily rose to her feet with the weapon in hand. As her vision cleared, the Hound, who had moved to greener pastures following their battle, seemed none the worse for wear--and in fact was bounding with a blood-crazed excitement towards the remaining organised units. She was in no condition to think, let alone fight, and yet unsteadily, she took a step towards the uninterested beast.

"I'll kill them… I'll kill them… I'll-" She repeated, then paused, "...What?"

From behind, a shadow moved to envelop the ground in darkness. Decorating the edges of its sheer size were thick, undulating shapes which seemed to wobble and bend chaotically, and a sound, like the running of a mudslide, slowly grew in volume. As Pale turned around slowly, her eyes widened in horror at the sight in front of her--that creature, with its body obscured by reddish tentacles, moved unfathomably along the soil, leaving a trail of boiling ooze in its wake, and hugged in the crushing embrace of its coiling pseudopods were the severed torsos of Beastkin spearmen, their lifeless faces contorted in expressions of agony and despair.

Hurriedly backstepping, Pale couldn't hope to comprehend the speed at which its tentacles lashed, combining together into waves of incomprehensible movement. As her eyes darted across its body, even her impressive footwork couldn't evade the appendage which swept towards her from the side, catching her torso in a vice grip which contradicted its seemingly slime-like body.

"No…!" Raising her hand, the iron sheen of her spear tip glimmered in the sun's fading light, "I'll cut you to pieces if I have to!"

Slamming the weapon down, a gasp escaped from her lips as the recoil of the blow sent shivers down her spine, not sinking into the creature's flesh or scarring it, but deflecting completely as the quality metal was chipped in an instant. Incensed by the spear tip's ineffectiveness, Pale screamed as she continued to bring it down upon the tentacle in a frenzy, continuing to attack even as the worn knife was split into pieces, attempting to sink what remained of its wooden shaft into the Demon's body.

"Useless! Completely useless!" Throwing the shaft aside in a rage, her demeanour quickly changed to one overwhelmed with fear as she was drawn closer to the creature's body, "W-What is this thing!?"

Feeling an uncomfortable warmth, Pale could see bursts of steam escaping from within its tangled form. As she was reeled inward, a chemical stench filled her nose, and numerous, smaller tentacles emerged to restrain her ankles. An agonising, burning sensation assaulted her lower body as she was dragged ever-closer to the Demon's covered form, bleeding her fingernails against the creature's unyielding appendage in an effort to free herself.

"No… No!" As the reality of her situation settled in, Pale clenched her teeth and shrieked as tears began to well in her eyes, "P-Please! I don't want to die!"

Unable to continue her pleading as the pain became too severe to ignore, an unwavering scream was all she could manage. Sensation began to disappear from her feet upwards while her body sank deeper into the Demon's mass of tentacles, and a merciful, unfeeling anaesthesia overcame her senses as the mind prepared her for death.

"A-Aah…" As her eyed rolled over, a slow, guttural sound escaped from her throat, "Don't… want to…"

A flash, brighter than lightning, enveloped her limited vision in an astounding whiteness. Her ears, too, marred with blood and filth, were filled with a deafening ring. She could interpret nothing but the impact of her body against the ground, and as her vision cleared, the blurred sight of a creature writhing frantically above her.

Again, the flash came. Left alone with the searing pain in her arm and legs, her hopelessness didn't fade in the slightest. This time, a noise was more audible--a force, or some kind of explosion. It was similar to the noise of a magical spell, but heavier. To the panicked soldiers at the other side of the battlefield, there would have appeared to be a moment of intense darkness, before a blinding-white sphere enveloped the Tentacle Demon. As the sphere moved inward and collapsed upon itself, a portion of the creature's body had been completely disintegrated--severed tentacles falling with wet sounds upon the soil, and a solution of discoloured, steaming liquid pouring from the cavity that had been created.

That was the last thing Pale saw, or heard, before she lost consciousness.

Collapsing to the ground with a withering screech, the Tentacle Demon seemed to fall into a kind of stasis as the acidic liquid escaped from its body. Beside its defeated form stood something akin to a human, only wreathed in shadow and wearing an oversized wizard's hat. Fusala, who had risen from the ground, overlooked the creature's body while tossing something in her hand. It had the signature look of an alchemist's bomb, shrouded in stained dressings, an incredibly small fuse poking from its top.

"As expected, anti-matter bombs work well against Demons. The crushing forces exerted upon spacetime are impossible to defend against." Blinking, her eyes ran across the mutilated troop of Beastkin at her feet, "...It appears that I have failed to protect these people. But I will ensure that those who continue to fight will survive."

Anti-matter bombs. Those proficient in the ways of the molecular universe--alchemists, mostly, are fond of developing abstract and theoretical ideas for weapons that utilise the very laws of reality to defeat enemies. Purely for research purposes, one would be laughed out of the room for suggesting an attempt to actually create such weapons. But for one so talented as Fusala, it was only a matter of time, rather than effort, to develop such things practically.

The Demons who had begun marching were beginning to infringe upon what remained of the army. The many-limbed, grinning monstrosity continued to smile as its blade cleaved men in two, and the living flesh-barrel made guttural, disgusting noises as disintegrating beams continued to fire from its elongated chamber. Fusala was capable of moving faster than the average creature thanks to her unusual physiology, and the added benefit of hiding herself while shadowing the ground allowed her to approach the Demons from any angle she wished.

Flash after flash. It was an incomprehensible event from the perspective of the Beastkin to watch those creatures, who were yet to react to any one attack, caught within collapsing bubbles of reality--their skinless, corpulent forms shearing away in instants, low groans escaping from those which survived as the loss of legs or torsos forced them to the ground, each falling deathly silent as their twitching movement slowly ceased. The battle continued nonetheless, of course. Beastkin archers overwhelmed with invincible ferocity, pushed to the brink of despair, were forced to watch their comrades and families be torn apart by the Demonic forces, only to quickly see the harbingers of their despair disintegrated and humbled by unknowable forces.

When only two Demons remained, their cries of woe were replaced by something that had almost vanished completely--hope. Whether divine or mundane, they questioned not the forces that saved them, only grasping to the slim belief that the tables had indeed turned in their favour. Those who survived the encounter unscathed, either through sheer luck or fortunate placements, held their weapons high as those final two threats were engulfed in the blinding, deafening throes of creation being melded to mortal whims. While their corpses remained jittering and foreboding, there was a sudden, uncontrollable exclamation of relief among those whose lives had been spared from terrible fates.

"Search the battlefield!" One of them yelled, "Find the wounded!"

Victory? Even if such a thing had been claimed, it was most certainly a pyrrhic one. Less than a few hundred of that once plain-spanning army stood uninjured, and many more who had been mutilated or scarred would live only for a few hours more. Taking great care not to disturb the Demonic corpses that littered the battlefield, those who still stood quickly set about calling out for those who were injured, some of the warriors sprinting back to the summit camp to retrieve medical supplies.

Certainly, Fusala had been the defining aspect of their victory, but not a word of praise was heaped upon the artificial girl, for she had already departed to the western basin, creeping up as a living shadow towards the lip that separated the plain of Ip from the further Steppe--the place where she last stood alongside Barion, watching a cloud of dust carrying the eastward-bound threat. As her exhaustion mounted, thoughts raced in her head regarding the precise number of Demons she had witnessed. 100? 1000? Or, perhaps even more than that? No matter the answer, one truth--a singular inconsistency, continued to replay in her head. The fact that, somehow, only 10 Demons had crossed over the basin.

"Hah… hah…" As she approached the lip, her human form rematerialized, "Barion… are you…?"

Her answer awaited on that barren wasteland beyond the plain of Ip, where only dust and soil could be seen stretching for miles ahead. Only, those lands were no longer empty--or, it would be more correct to say that, for a brief moment, they had been filled with life, but were no longer. In the background of her complicated mind, calculations continued. 1,500. 2,000. 2,400. An abstract photograph of that moment when she stood at Barion's side.

"...2,440." She muttered, her beady eyes glued to the horizon, "In total, 2,440 Demons were moving to attack the Beastkin summit."

What was it that she saw? Indeed, that was the very question. An illustration out of antiquity, like the fiery rebellions of pre-Antanine Fleecia.

An ocean of gore and death. Corpses of incomprehensible, unknowable creatures, some large enough to dwarf entire villages. Dismembered, decapitated, disembowelled, severed, broken, melted, crushed--from such a distance, it was difficult to attribute names to any singular entity. Each scrap of flesh and organ tissue floated within rivers of blood blockaded by the fallen bodies of Demons, not one of them even remotely alive. Seeping flesh arranged in folds, lengths of skin torn from impossibly muscular creatures. Teeth, claws, and chitin larger than ballista bolts were propped up like swords within the dirt.

Fusala's nose twitched, and she was forced to cover it to avoid vomiting. The stench of death was palpable--unending. It was an illustration of Hell. A godless place devoid of hope, populated only by sinners and unforgivable criminals. Who, then, was the tormenter of this desecrated plain? What force of unconquerable death had created such a scene. There was but a single answer to such a question. The one who stood tall amidst that violence, who, in his serene, unaffected stance, appeared much like an Angel, or perhaps a Demon, in the chaos.

A man, standing up.