by Kindred Ult
"So do you still plan on going through with your plan?" Skull might have been the only one amongst the group who did not appear phased by the changes in the battle.
"Yes. I believe that it is still our only chance at victory. Although now we should all expect a much harder fight since they probably know that we are coming and will have more than just his guard. We must still wait, however, because if we go now, we will have absolutely no chance of victory, and we will all die."
As they stood and watched the circle around the hill close in with a wave, they heard the first screams from the other side of the hill. They were screams of pain, torture, and death. There were few who could stand against a werepyre, and most of them were in the group of twenty one. Faces turned to Demenn as the screams continued to rise in pitch and volume. But he stood, facing away from them, resolute. His face was like stone.
And inside he told himself that he would make up for their deaths by giving his own life once it was time.
'Move faster, damn you!' He silently cursed the circle, which was losing its shape already.
* * *
Daniel, fifth class vampire, watched as the werepyres approached his position and looked unsteadily at his friend, Eric, for support. Unfortunately, Eric seemed as scared as Daniel was. However, once Eric saw Daniel watching him he looked back and smiled, which Daniel returned.
"You know, I never did get a good answer out of you as to what you did before becoming a vampire." It felt silly to ask about it now, but Daniel needed at least one moment to forget what was coming.
Eric chuckled slightly and looked up, far away. "I was a male stripper."
Daniel laughed. "No way, really?"
"I don't want to talk about it. I still have my pride, after all."
This brought one final chuckle out of Daniel, and for just a moment he felt at peace with what was about to happen to him. He was about five men in from the front of the line, and so was only moments away from the battle. And even with that momentary respite, he was damn scared. Sure, he was a relatively new recruit with the vampires, and had not ever seen a werepyre in action, but he had heard the other, more experienced vampires tell stories of them, and if they were half as ferocious as they said, he knew he had reason to be scared.
Just thinking about the stories made him shiver in fear, but he quickly tried to quell them by reminding himself that they outnumbered their enemy a few times over, and that the werepyres could not take flight because of the extensive amount of archers, mages, and necromancers at the top of the large hill that would shoot them down from their elevated position, but these did little to help his mood as he knew that even a grounded werepyre was deadly, and that numbers meant nothing to them.
For a moment, all of his emotions coalesced into one great feeling of fear, and the sheer amount of death being exuded by the army charging towards him made him want to turn and run for his life. Even as the feeling coursed through his body, however, a hand fell on his shoulder. The sudden stop made him jump slightly, and when he turned around, his face stiffened in surprise and fear. Safiria stood behind him with her hand on his shoulder. She smiled.
"Please let me through, warrior."
With speed akin to a first class, Daniel nearly leaped to the side, helped along by her gentle push. He mumbled an apology and cast his eyes down, but as she walked past him, and he shot his eyes up for a moment, he saw her give him the slightest of smiles. He smiled back unconsciously, and felt that, with that, even he could fight this battle to its end. The others between her and the front of the line parted ways and spared her the trouble of moving through them. She walked serenely, slowly, with a sense of calm in every step, even though the werepyres came closer at every moment. Once she stood one step in front of the army behind her, she stopped.
Almost instantly, the line took two steps forward, until she was safely inside their lines. Elsewhere, on the other side of the mountain, it was obvious that the same scenario was being played out by the werewolf King and the Paladin Commander with those around them. Without looking back, Safiria took too more steps forward, placing her once again out of the protection of her army, overextended. Almost before she had stopped, the line shuffled forward until she was one step behind them once again. Finally, she did look back, and all behind saw her lips raise up her cheeks in a smile that looked more smug than happy.
She broke out in a sprint down the hill toward the werepyres, who were at that moment running ever closer. She swiftly passed the line that had moved to protect her, and after a moment of disbelief, there was a flood of curses as they collectively realized what she had just done. There was only one more moment of hesitation—looking at the beasts coming for them—before they all broke their line and began running after the matriarch. All of them knew that she was manipulating them into attacking instead of defending, and all understood that it was a dirty trick, but it was still working on them. All across the large hill, the lines poured toward one another, quickly closing the distance. As they ran, many morphed into their first class or Other forms, and some of the Paladins even grew in size until they were comparable with those first classes around them.
The two lines converged upon one another in seconds, and once they met, Daniel found himself gaining some bit of hope, when Safiria leapt into the air, drew her sword from its sheath, flowed around the strike of the first werepyre to reach her, and sliced off the top of its head. As the upper half of its brain fell to the ground, and the bottom one sloshed back and forth inside its face, she landed behind it and continued her charge forward. Another was dead before the first one's legs realized it was no longer living and collapsed under it.
'Well, maybe we actually have a chance of surviving this thing.' Daniel thought, optimistically.
Unfortunately, any bright thoughts he may have fleetingly conjured at seeing his Matriarch's easy handling of a werepyre were blown away—along with most of the front line of warriors—once the two sides met. As soon as they engaged, it became obvious how hopeless their cause was. The battle could hardly even be called such, and Daniel, who had been in the fifth row, found himself at the front of the army in only a few seconds. Pieces of his comrades flew through the air as they were ripped from their bodies, blood flowed to the ground and spouted into the sky from open wounds, and little bits of flesh showered the survivors.
As the werepyre directly in front of Daniel pulled back its arm, he found himself losing track of reality. For just a moment, he realized that nothing in front of him was real, and that he was actually sleeping. Somewhere inside him, it seemed that his mind was happier with the idea of him dying without knowing that he was. The werepyre's attack was too fast for him to react to, let along dodge, and even if he had been able to, at that moment he would not have tried. For some reason all that he could think of, as the mass of fur and muscle sped toward him, was the Matriarch, and how beautiful she looked. She had kept on running while the rest of the line faltered, and now he could just barely see her amidst the werepyres.
'I wasn't with her in the end.' He lamented while waiting for the dream to end.
But it never did, and the blow never came. As soon as it had come, the feeling left him, and when he snapped back into conscious awareness, he saw that a first class werewolf and an Other form vampire had rammed into it, moved it back, and were even now wrestling with it. In the wake of the initial slaughter of all average, and even many above-average, warriors, the first classes were flying or charging through the ranks and were only now engaging the werepyres. They had waited in the middle of the army until the werepyres lost just that first bit of momentum, and now launched the counter attack.
They may have waited even longer, but seeing their leaders, Safiria, the King, and the Paladin Commader, so far out and exposed had triggered them into attacking now. As it was, they were forming into wedges and aiming themselves directly at the leader closest to them. They were intent on rescuing them and keeping them from fighting on their own.
Wh
ile the werepyre struggled with the werewolf and vampire, Daniel searched for a way to be useful. It was true that a part of him wanted to run and hide, but he was moved far past such emotions by the almost overwhelming desire to be with his Matriarch. Before he could discover either a way to help the first classes kill the werepyre or a way to get closer to the Matriarch, however, the werepyre grabbed both of its opponents and launched them away from it. It only used one hand each, but they still flew back, passed a few feet by Daniel, and finally managed to stop themselves and prepare for the werepyre's counter-attack. It did not disappoint, and just when Daniel threw himself out of the way, it jumped at them. Its wings flapped in mid-air, accelerating its speed until even the two first classes were not ready for it when it hit them. It slammed into them and knocked them back while wrapping one arm around each of them. When its flight ended, it stood high with one of them in each arm and began to squeeze.
Both of the huge fighters struggled, bit, slashed, and attacked, but with only one arm each the werepyre was able to restrain and begin to break both of them. Snaps were heard as bones began to break, but both of them kept attacking even while their bodies began to shrink at the waist. By now, Daniel had recovered from his leap, and as he picked up his sword he saw Eric running towards him and pointing behind him. When Daniel turned around, he saw the werepyre crushing the two first classes, and when he looked back to Eric, who was still running at the werepyre, he got the idea. He turned and ran to one side of the werepyre's back, reaching it at about the same time as Eric, who was at the opposite side.
The two of them exchanged nods, flipped their swords over, and plunged them into the back of the werepyre's knees. They did not slash, as they had been told that slashes were almost instantly healed, but rather stabbed and left the swords inside the wounds so that the healing factor would have a harder time dealing with the wounds. The blades came out of the other side of the werepyre's knees and separated the tendons connecting the bottom half of the leg with the knee cap. The werepyre fell to the ground involuntarily, and the two first-classes took advantage of its momentary weakness to dig into it. The vampire quickly slipped out of its hold, swung around, and started slashing her claws into the back right shoulder of the werepyre, while the werewolf devoted all of his considerable strength to twisting the werepyre's arm off before launching a barrage of blows to its front. The werepyre was caught off guard and was only able to flail around helplessly before it was finally overcome. Once it finally fell to the ground, the vampire and werewolf began feasting upon its flesh before finally ripping out its heart and splitting it.
Daniel and Eric retrieved their swords and ran with the two first classes, and all others that were still alive, towards the Matriarch, who was no longer fighting alone surrounded by the horde of werepyres. Slowly, a circle of warriors had formed about her; vampires, paladins, werewolves, vampire slayers, and even some grotesquely varied skeletons fought fought side-by-side with her in an effort to repel the beasts all around them. They were able to join them, but when Daniel turned about to become part of the circle, he discovered that there were no warriors left alive on the battlefield save those that were part of their circle, the King's, the Paladin Commander's, or the one at the top of the hill where the archers, mages, and necromancers were. Only a few others were still trying to join, and hundreds of others lay dead on the battlefield.
"Damn." He cursed before giving the entirety of his attention to surviving.
* * *
From atop the hill, with a perfect view of the carnage, Demenn clenched his fists. He felt the nails dig into his flesh until blood flowed down his knuckles and began dripping onto the ground. Without looking away from what could hardly be called a battlefield in front of him, he slowly lifted his hands to his mouth and licked the blood from them one after the other. In only ten or twenty minutes, the werepyres had slain thousands of warriors, and had lost somewhere around one hundred of their own. Demenn had come up with his plan so that they would be able to risk their lives in order to save those in the army from being forced to, but now he was forced to sit back and sacrifice them so that he and those with him could have their chance at killing Lueke.
There were only three groups left alive, those around Safiria, the King, and the Paladin Commander. These three circles were doing well, because all of the weak or luck-deprived had already been killed, leaving only the strongest and those with the greatest will to live alive. Still, they were still losing more than they were killing, and it was clear that eventually they would each break and fall. The top of the hill was far more secure, with the werepyres learning early on that they could not charge it without a large force behind them. They no longer tried to assault it, preferring instead to attack those within them, and attack it once all others were dead.
And the circle was still running in! It was as if Lueke were taunting them on purpose. It was about seventy-five percent of the way finished, with only those werepyres very close to Lueke and his specific guard still being around him. Still, there were too many for them to attack, and so all that was left to do was watch and wait.
Even from where he stood, Demenn could see the largest of the fighters in the melee. He was amazed at first at the remarkable diversity of the three circles. He had expected all of them to segregate, with werewolves heading towards the King, Vampire to the Matriarch, and humans to the Commander, but they were mostly even. It seemed that when one is fearful for one's life, one will sprint for the closest rest possible. Hulking werewolves fought next to sleek demon-looking vampires, and gigantic, disfigured skeletons fought side-by-side with large human paladins. Even though these fearsome sights captured the attention at first, small flits of strangely colored spells and pure light showed the powers of those vampire slayers still alive and also those vampires, werewolves, and paladins still in their normal forms. All those still alive were the best or the luckiest, and were proving it at every moment.
If every one of these warriors cut a dramatic figure in the battle, however, then the werepyres themselves were terrifying. It soon became apparent to all that there were basically two types of werepyres on the battlefield: The strong ones and the fast ones. The strong ones could be easily discerned by their hulking bodies, and it was obvious that, though they were slower than Other form vampires, they were still faster than first class werewolves and stronger than both. They were brutes, and blood followed them wherever they went. The fast ones were more slender than their companions, and sometimes actually looked small, but their speed was great. They were faster and stronger than Other form vampires, the fastest in the allied armies, and were stronger than them as well. Thankfully, though, they seemed to be weaker than the first class werewolves.
Both kinds tore through all but the strongest warriors, and even many of the strongest were beaten into submission within a thirty-second time period. Fighting one alone was suicide save for very few, and even groups found themselves overpowered while facing just one werepyre.
The only reason those left alive were still so was because of two blaring weaknesses within the werepyre armies. First, most were very inexperienced when it came to actual combat. It seemed obvious that most of them had never truly battled for their lives before, since the werepyres had to live in secret before this moment, and that those who had fought before had only recently become werepyres and were still becoming used to the way their bodies now operated. These weaknesses were minor, but they did make for many mistakes that seasoned warriors like those still alive were able to capitalize on. Many werepyres were killed because of a trick most fighters would have been able to see through.
Second, and even though it fought against reason, the werepyres were still outnumbered by the opponents that they now had surrounded. From moment to moment, this kept them from truly breaking through the last vestiges of defense and massacring what was left of their enemies. It also allowed Other form vampires and first class werewolves to use others with them as cover until they found the ideal opponent
. It was found that, with their greater speed, Other form vampires had a better chance at killing the larger werepyres; and first class werewolves, with their superior strength, could sometimes manage to kill the smaller werepyres. Although, if the order was ever swapped, the werepyre would emerge victorious every time, and Demenn's allies would lose a valuable warrior if those around them were not able to rescue them before they were killed.
Despite these few inferior qualities, the werepyres were still overwhelmingly winning the war, and there was obviously no chance of them losing it through a straight fight. Somewhere inside him, Demenn sighed. He had not realized it until now, but he had always hoped that their armies would somehow be able to defeat the werepyres without his suicidal plan being put into effect, but now he saw that it was their only chance for survival. What was worse was that, not only would they have to make the attack, but they would also have to make it quickly. The circles would not last long.
He quickly switched his gaze from the battle to where Lueke stood, surrounded by werepyres. The circle had still not fully attacked, and of course it was most dense around Lueke, but the losses at the forefront had made it begin to move more quickly. It would only be a few minutes before they were charging. But could they afford that time?
