by M E Wolf
Day after day the toll of the dead trolls rose as she mercilessly dispatched everything that got in her way. She was beginning to get hungry near the seventeenth day. On the seventeenth day with only a mile left of her journey there was one of the evil beasts, the Fenshians, in front of her. It was noon and she would be expected to be at the wedding banquet by the end of the day or not be in the wedding party at all.
This Fenshian was three times the size of the last Fenshian that she killed only by accident and because of the rules of the gauntlet she could not use her sword and put on her armour. Without a hint of movement the Fenshian ran its massive great sword along Alexandra’s path. She did not have enough time to avoid it completely, so it grated along her lower ribs and nearly sliced into her abdomen washing her lower body with a gush of her own blood.
Just as the weapon was about to exit it lodged itself into her right hipbone. A jolt of pain shot up from her hip to every grain of her body. Cutting the blade free with her claws, she then reached into her abdomen and pulled out the rest of the blade. Tossing it onto the ground she healed herself as much as she could and then leaped onto the Fenshian digging her claws into it as she climbed to its head. It tried many attempts to get her off but only succeeded in using too much of its limited energy.
Once on its back Alexandra cut out a section of its back with her claws and removed a piece of its backbone. It slumped to the ground as Alexandra tunneled through to its heart. By the time she reached the heart the Fenshian’s backbone re-grew and it stood again. The Fenshian’s heart was larger than Alexandra and it would take time for her to consume it. She hoped that once finished the Fenshian would die and she could get to the wedding.
Despite the beast having a fowl smell, its heart tasted relatively good and it did not feel like that much time had passed by the time she finished consuming the whole thing. Even after an hour wait the heart did not regenerate. Alexandra’s belly was a bit swollen from eating so much, but she felt stronger and ripped herself through the beast and ran to the wedding area. At the end she was given a bath and dressed into her bride’s maid gown and was escorted, with flowers in her hands, to the dais where the two couples were waiting for her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
They smiled when they saw her and she smiled back at them. Shiantara and Richard had already exchanged their wreaths and were wearing them. Mhekah and his bride just finished exchanging their wreaths. They held each other and kissed each other on the lips passionately. A minister came out and each couple said their vows.
He blessed them and then said, “I now pronounce you man and wife, and you may kiss the bride.” Both men kissed their respective brides and then the couples congratulated each other on their new marriages. It was the custom for rose petals to be thrown and thus everyone at the dual wedding threw rose petals.
The wedding feast was even more spectacular than the alliance feast. Every different food dish was the same as the previous feast but in greater quantities except for the wedding cake that resembled two guard towers with each respective bride and groom represented by a lifelike carving of themselves in crystal on the top. Once the meal was over speeches began.
First to speak was Rhutgar, Shiantara’s and Mhekah’s father,
“I would like to thank everyone for coming to this special occasion. This is the first time in our history that we have had a double wedding. It is a pleasure for me to welcome
“Richard and Sarah to our family. We do not know all that much about them, but we do know that this completes our alliance. Now, we are an alliance in truth. Before Bhargianus speaks, I have some good news for everyone that I would like to share.
“We have now an army that totals one million. It will be split into four two hundred and fifty thousand men units. Each will be led by Alexandra, Shiantara, Mhekah and Richard. They are our four generals.
“I believe that we will do well against the Fenshians. My scouts have reported the whereabouts of the enemy headquarters and their approximate numbers.
“There are roughly one hundred thousand Fenshians on our planet. We will be hard pressed to defeat them.” Rhutgar went to his seat and then sat down.
Bhargianus got up and went to the podium,
“I would like to congratulate Sarah, Mhekah, Shiantara and Richard on a fine job on conquering the marriage gauntlet. We looked at each of your journeys and are impressed with all of you.
“Let us drink to these four, may they always prosper. Also a toast to Alexandra on completing the gauntlet as maid of honour. Alexandra, I believe that you will never cease to amaze me and the dead body of the Fenshian amazed me most of all.
“My tracker has let me know that its heart was consumed. A long time ago there was once a tribe of warriors that killed their prey and ate the heart.
“You might have been like them in a way, except they had died off a long time ago when they no longer were able to keep up their ritualistic practices of killing something each day and eating their hearts.
“They ended up killing each other till the last one killed himself. Well that is at least what the legends tell us.”
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Everyone took up their mugs of Guar and toasted to the newly weds. It would not be long before everyone would have to fight the evil Fenshians. Unseen to all eyes at the wedding feast a Fenshian of great intelligence hovered above them some thirty thousand feet. He could destroy them all right now, but he was ordered to scout only. Losing twenty great warriors because of their stupidity was a sad time indeed.
It had been long ago when the last time Fenshians had died. The scout Zhexa was the best of the Fenshian scouts and the only scout of the one hundred thousand Fenshians that inhabited the land. They were one hundred and fifty thousand, but forty eight thousand were lost when their ship had crashed into some mountain fortress owned by some thirty million now dead dwarves.
If thirty million dwarves only could kill forty-eight thousand Fenshians then how could an army of one million ordinary men take on one hundred thousand of the Fenshians. Zhexa detested the pesky humanoids and this Alexandra most of all. Zorkov was stupid to confront the Dochani female with a silver weapon. He knew that she would react differently than the so many others that they had slaughtered on the Dochani home world Dochani Prime.
By rights they of the Order of Scale should have listened to him and make siege upon them. Zhexa knew that a race of people were not defeated until there was none left on any world. The Dochani had a way of breeding that they could be on any world that they wanted to conquer. He did not pity anyone and felt sorry for no one. Wanting to take back all of the worlds that were overrun by the cesspools of the dumb mortal humans was his birthright.
It all fell apart when his grandfather the king of the Fenshians lost a battle that would have allowed him to continue his reign over the lands of all Fenshians. Now, he was only a scout for his general, General Yget, instead of being king like his grandfather. It was always the rule that a losing king would be exiled for two generations and has no ties to the throne. So, it should have been his time to return to Fenshian Alpha Prime and become king.
This army that was formed against them from the remnants of this planet’s people was all that stood in their way and today they were having joy. Tomorrow they would all know terror.
As he was thinking this, his General and father hovered in beside him and spoke as softly as thunder if thunder could whisper,
“I do not usually come to check out my scout’s position, but you have been out here for some time my son. They will all be gone in the morning let us wait till they be drunk and the sun shines in their eyes and we will smite them.
“This planet then will be ours after so long ago when the Great War pushed us from here. We will be royalty again son, just you wait and see.
“It is sad though that the new king expects us to die in this mission. Why else would he send us here together, but for us to die?
“Us two are the only intelligent Fenshian
s left on this mission. We have no sorcery, no magic except our fire. Your sister was a very good sorcerous, but I am afraid that she is lost and I have no idea whether she is alive or dead.
“The warriors with us only number to ninety-eight thousand and each of them are old and tired. They may have knowledge, but I am afraid that they do not have the speed, agility and strength that they once knew.
“Truth be told, for some of them this will be their last battle. The humanoids have no fortifications, but that will not be seen as a weakness because in a castle we could burn them all.
“Scattered we will have more trouble and thus we will have to surround their armies and people in a forest fire. It will be a glorious day, my son.
“Let us go to our army there is a lot of work to do to prepare for the carnage we will bring to these people that will be destroyed.”
Zhexa flew with his father. His father’s plan was not fool proof, but it never failed to amaze him the way his father could lay down a battle plan. Like all plans though, things could change to mess up that plan and if the plan did not adapt to all and every kind of situation, it would certainly fail.
As the expression went, his father thought well on the wing, in flight and even on the ground if it was absolutely necessary. Their humanoid allies were expendable, especially the one that was always shrouded in darkness. He did not trust the man. By all rights the necromancer should have been dead long ago. Michael Cronin was his name he thought.
The man had to be more than twenty five thousand years old and his dead flesh was covered in maggots and every once in a while he would kill one of his followers and drain him of his blood. Some said that he was a lich. Zhexa did not like his practices, but his allies were his allies and he had to warrant him something since he did summon them to this planet.
Despite his abominations he was more amusing to Zhexa than the other humanoids that seemed to propagate their annoying existence like ants. Zhexa hated insects and could not understand why his god allowed their existence. One thing he never could understand was how Michael Cronin, a mere human, was allowed to worship his god. Zhexa landed near his father’s troops roughly one thousand miles from the enemy.
This was their base and it was also where they usually met with Michael Cronin and he was tolerated because no one desired to eat rotten and spoiled meat from a carcass long dead. Zhexa went to his roost to say a prayer to the darkness within his heart. The darkness that all men shared no matter what world they were from. He relished in the darkness of night and the peace it brought him seeing others in fear.
Fear, hate, despair and worry held back the hope, joy and love that hurt him so much. Once someone had courage and faced him and their fears and he nearly ran because their love for someone was defeating them. It gave him great joy when he chewed on the little blond child and reveled in her father’s eyes, the loss of hope. Since then he was somewhat fearful of any of the battles against the pitiful humans because he could not stand against those after they had lost everything and still had hope, however rare that was.
Some worlds even had an account of events that shined with hope, of a god that could destroy all of the evil no matter where it dwelt. On those worlds the Fenshians could not even come close to them without sicking up and becoming gravely ill. It was only the primitive lands that they could come to now because they did not yet follow this god. The Fenshians had to destroy all of these primitive lands before they found this god that would ruin everything for them.
All that it would take was one faithful zealot to face them and even in their brutal death they would defeat the Fenshians. At least they would know fear tonight when the dead walked and terror tomorrow morning when all of them are burned in the unquenchable fire.
Fire was everywhere his god dwelt. Where the smell of death and destruction arose from the ashes of humanity was where all Fenshians wished to live out their days. It was a place that he hoped to rule where his grandfather, his god, ruled.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
Michael Cronin and his army of undead marched towards the tree line where more than one million horses were tethered and most of the human army was asleep, most likely dreaming of conquests that they would never have, with only a few guards posted. His aim was to destroy the only army that stood against his dark masters for far too long. His body was no longer young and he needed a replacement soon.
This army was said to have drunken themselves into a stupor only a few short hours ago. A clang of steel hitting upon steel alerted him to his left. Looking to his left he had noticed one of his men engaging the enemy and then he noticed more of the enemy as they swept in like a tidal wave flowing freely through his troops. Some of the enemy would go down, but even more went down of his own men. Fighting to the right of him brought his attention to the right.
The cascade of soldiers of the enemy mixed and mingled with his men and thus he found it hard to tell the difference between the two. Something dug into his shoulder and pulled him down to the ground. When they reached into his chest and pulled out his heart, he realized what was happening and cast a spell. A spell he had prepared for a long time that let him enter another body in another place.
His heart was all that was left of him that still had life in it. Even though it was out of his chest cavity, he could feel the slender hand that held it in the palm of her hand. What she would do with it he did not know? Feeling great pain as she somehow destroyed his immortal heart, he finally died or thought he did. His body turned to dust and blew away on the strong wind.
With their master finally dead or at least somewhere else, the undead soldiers did not really exist and what was left of them fell to the ground far away from where they should have been buried long ago. The living was left to grieve for the fallen. Their comrades fought bravely during the night, but it was not even over yet nor had it really begun. It had only started and would continue for a long, long time. Compared to the Fenshians the undead soldiers were a walk in the park. Just by killing one the whole army would not fall.
All of the Fenshians would have to be destroyed before even a temporary peace could be had. Time seemed to be against the humans. The Fenshians could in fact live forever, if they were not killed first. The humans only had fifty thousand men left after only fifty years of war. Sure there was only about fifty of the Fenshians left to fight, but without people left on this planet it would just be dead or close to it. Many civilians were killed in the first forty years of the war and along with it about every chance that there would be anything left to rebuild or people to inhabit it was almost gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
There were many heroes from the war so far, but they were all dead due to that heroism. Many more would die by the fires of the Fenshians. That first morning surrounded by fire in the great forest caused many civilians and soldiers alike to have nightmares even now. There were no forested parts of this world anymore and the rivers and oceans were all but dried up from the constant bombardment from fire.
Even though most of the fifty thousand in the army were venerable warriors who had been fighting the war for the last fifty years they continued to fight bravely. Some new recruits were added all the time even though reproduction was kind of low and almost nil. At the start of the fifty-year war an armourer came up to her and gave her a large shield as light as a feather.
It was told to her that it should be able to withstand the fire from the breath of a Fenshian. Alexandra did not know it to be true until she had faced many Fenshians after given the shield and it did repel the fire. She had also since acquired a spear from one of the Fenshian warriors that she slew. Now, a lot had happened in the last fifty years that still made her stomach lurch.
She had lead many soldiers to their deaths being new to the army. Despite her more than one thousand years of training she had never even been in a war before. It was better for her to go and fight the enemy rather than lead the army into a slaughter where she was most likely the only one to emerge from it ali
ve.
Today, fifty years into a brutal war, she was discussing the foolhardiness of all of the commanders left to lead troops in an obviously suicidal charge as a last effort to rid this planet of the Fenshian beasts. The charge consisted of thirty thousand venerable soldiers lead by Richard, Mhekah and Shiantara leaving Alexandra with twenty thousand men and women soldiers between the ages of ten and thirty years old.
Their reasoning was that she needed an army for defense in case they did not succeed and the army she had was all they had for a future. Alexandra finally had to give in to their plan. Their plan was simple enough except Zhexa knew their plan and planned an ambush. Even if they were all equipped with shields they would be hard pressed to defeat an aerial unit equipped with spears that were more than sixteen feet in length.
Upon the Fenshians’ approach they had to pull back at the last minute because the men were ready for them. Zhexa did not like it. Before they realized that the humans and trolls had twenty-foot pikes that they set to receive a charge from the sky, it was too late. Many of those men were killed but Zhexa and his father Yget were the only ones left of the Fenshians. Dumb humans did not realize that once you kill a Fenshian it must come down.
And so the forty eight Fenshian corpses plummeted to the ground and crushed more than twenty thousand of the dumb soldiers. While the humans were in a semblance of a panic the two Fenshians left sent fireball breath after fireball breath into the remaining ten thousand troops. Once satisfied that they had killed the remaining soldiers they went up into the air and went to their base in the mountain caves. Alexandra got to the battle scene just as the two Fenshians left.
