“Precious little knowledge has been preserved regarding many of the northern demi-human tribes. Much of their history had been erased since long ago, reduced to nothing more than footnotes extolling the conquests and supremacy of man, all for the glory of our gods.

  Lesser still do we know about the lands far to the north, where the Daemons dwell. Creatures of terrible temperament, extraordinary cruelty and a certain relentless and ruthless nature doth fill countless tales of failed expeditions. An unforgiving land abandoned by the gods, from whence less than a handful of survivors have ever returned, or so claim the others.

  What we do know for sure, however, is that such a place carries with it a weight so frightful that even the flighty fey would rather fight to extinction than venture further north. On the one hand, a pity; think of all the things we could have learned! On the other, a lingering dread.

  Our entire history has been the tale of an inevitable march forward, and many take the Daemon’s silence to mean that the far north is simply waiting for one final push to be ours. But from what I saw in the last war, I fear that we may awaken a slumbering beast. The men here know little more about fighting these creatures than heroic tales from Ebenheim. Yet aged tomes of the soldiers who fought those wars lay hidden within the Great Library, which spoke of harrowing tales and the near collapse of the armies of man.

  Worse still, I can sense traces of an unsettling echo through the veil. What I fear most is that our day is soon to come, and that when it does, the fools in charge will have left us laughably unprepared for the slaughter that will come. My time is soon coming to an end, and I pray you heed my warning. The mana never lies, the mana never lies…” – Epitaph bearing the final words of Archmage Tyrus the Bold

  D staggered back to his feet with a sharp grunt. A viscous wet, red fluid rained down his arms and splattered in large splotches onto the cobbled road. He stumbled slightly, as he stepped towards a line of soldiers and guardsmen further up the road.

  The world seemed awfully quiet, and seemed to roll back and forth.

  He quickly reached for a pouch mounted on his belt, and cursed aloud as soon as he shoved his hand inside, and subsequently yanked it back out with a fresh cut.

  Damnit! Broken… please god tell me there is some left!

  D tried to reach carefully back in to his pouch, and pulled out a half-empty potion flask. Its narrow neck had snapped clean off, but its wide, rounded bottom prevented some of the white liquid from spilling out when he has been floored moments ago.

  Like a man lost in the desert, he downed the little bit that was left of the potion in one quick pour. At the very least, he kept enough distance to keep from stabbing himself yet again with the broken glass. D felt as if he was embraced in a slight warm glow, which dissipated all too quickly.

  The blood flowing down his arm had, at the very least, slowed to a trickle.

  My blessed healing draught… what a damned waste…

  D eyed Gregory he staggered up on his own. A pile of splinters poked out of his back, formed into countless small circles in between the chains of his armor.

  “How come your not bleeding to death?!” D practically shouted, as his ears still rung as loud as church bells in his head.

  “WHAT?!” Gregory shouted back, causing D to gesture wildly towards Gregory’s back. The kid’s eyes opened wide, and then he grinned.

  “Hardened leather! M’ gramps made me take it when he heard I was placed on the wall!” Gregory shouted back, and then stared in concern at the blood trailing from D. “You alright?”

  D shook his head. “Fuckin’ hells, I’d almost rather be hunting vampires… almost.”

  “WHAT?!” Gregory shouted again.

  “LET’S GO!” D shouted back, and waved the kid onward. He looked back towards the fighting on the walls. Some of the grendels had been slain, and the remaining demons were beginning to be cornered. Shield walls were summoned around them, one at a time, boxing the monsters in from above, the side, and below.

  Then, a barrage of arrows and spells were blasted at the cornered demons until they were little more than motionless, bloodied remains.

  So many dead, in such a short amount of time…

  He froze, all the hair on his body prickled again and a sharp twinge of cold shuddered through his back. His danger sense kicked in again, reacting to subtle shifts in the mana.

  That much worse…!

  “RUN!” D screamed, as he tried not to panic.

  The last time it reacted like this… was when a greater vampire slaughtered nearly our entire order!

  “WHAT??” Gregory shouted back once more, then his expression turned to panic as soon as he saw D’s expression. The kid at least had enough sense to run after D, and looked wildly around as he tried to figure out what had scared the man so much.

  It didn’t take long for him to find out, as a thunderous crack roared from the wall behind them. Chunks of thick wooden beams slammed into the nearby houses as a massive creature tore through the wall with a roar. The upper ramparts of the wall began to collapse with the sudden loss of support, while the reverberations caused some of the soldiers and casters to lose their footing.

  While some of the more professional casters maintained their bearing, multiple openings formed in the barriers as the spells were interrupted. The demons trapped inside didn’t hesitate, and charged with a violent glee into the exposed soldiers, gutting some, impaling others and unleashing a shower of bloody gore onto the rest.

  D took one glance at the thing that came through the wall, and began to sprint faster. The remaining soldiers on the wall were much too late, but desperately tried to do the same.

  It’s a god-damned greater demon!

  The creature bore only a slight semblance akin to that of a goat, mainly in its eyes, hooves and the shape of its horns. It was bipedal and had particularly long and thick legs, built like the trunk of a tree. The legs alone were the height of a normal man, while its torso was stout and rigid like that of a dwarf. Its arms appeared surprisingly short, at least in comparison to the rest of its body, although they reached as far as that of a normal man. Then there were those horns… massive, curved things specialized in ramming.

  A specialty the monster was about to unleash again, as it dropped low, and its legs flexed down multiple joints like a coiled spring. It used its arms to stabilize its torso and to aim itself, and launched itself like a bullet through a nearby group of soldiers and then plowed deep into the building just beyond them. The sound of all their bones breaking blended together almost simultaneously, as their limp bodies were scattered about.

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  Toughened Body. Healing. Limit Break. Overdrive.

  D couldn’t waste another precious second, his instincts and mind were in perfect alignment: if he couldn’t make it to the next line of defense, then he was a dead man.

  Almalexia… if your listening, please let them open the barrier to let me through! Just for a moment!

  His muscles strained, as he surged mana into them in conjunction with his spells. The vampire hunter began to sprint as fast as a racehorse, leaving Gregory far behind.

  Healing. Healing. Healing.

  D’s mana was burning just as fast, as a light steam billowed from his skin and he rapidly mended snapping tendons.

  Almost there! Almost… FUCK! It’s getting stronger!

  D twisted his head around, back towards the building the greater demon plowed through. Even with all his buffs, he barely caught sight of the thing as it launched out of the darkness from the partially collapsed structure.

  Agility. Protection from Evil. Swift Strike. Reinforced Strike. Overdrive. Limit Break. Toughened Body. Healing. Lesser Image. Diffuse Presence.

  D’s skin turned flame red, and his muscles tensed and shook fiercely as steam billowed off his body from the burst in mana consumption. His body shimmered, and seemed to become blended with the background around him as another image of himself took his place.

  Without wasting a moment, the hunter launched himself into the air, and twisted his body as much as possible to get out of the demon’s path. The strain of all the stacked and double-stacked spells was tearing him apart, and had all but burnt the last of his mana. He could only hope and pray this was enough, and that the image would be enough to trick the monster.

  If the beast could redirect its path… the end result would be obvious. He couldn’t risk it. Hell, what little mana he could save from not using mirror image wouldn’t even matter at that point.

  If I can hit it hard enough as it passes under me… I should be able to launch over the barrier.

  He struck, making a desperate guess at the demon’s true speed. His arm hadn’t even finished extending when it was hit with a tremendous impact. The force of the blow travelled up his arm, shattering the bone in the process as he was launched high into the air.

  The greater demon slammed straight through D’s image and into the barrier, which blazed in an intense flash of light even in this unrelenting darkness. He crushed his teeth together, repressing his desire to shriek in pain. The glancing blow with the creature’s horns sent him careening over the barrier, and he crashed ignominiously next to the squad of casters focusing on maintaining the barrier.

  His hat drifted down slowly, and landed onto a nearby cart. D gasped, and quickly released his spells. Through sheer force of will, he forced himself to roll over and stand on his shaking legs.

  “Contain it! Now!” The sergeant of this group shouted. He was an older man, with a grizzled air about him, although he wasn’t without fear as his eyes were fixed wide open on the monster before them. Within a moment, the barrier wall broke off into multiple quadrants and surrounded the demon.

  It hadn’t even tried to move out of the way.

  With the speed that thing is capable of, this should have been easy for it to dodge…

  D struggled to catch his breath, and staggered off to retrieve his hat from the cart. He cocked his head sideways as he picked up his hat, as it had landed atop a small pile of potions, with one buried deeper in the pile that seemed almost familiar. Next to it was a scrawled note in handwriting so bad, it may as well have not been written at all.

  Then, he looked back at the monster as he fit his hat snugly on his head and froze as it made a horrendous gargling sound.

  The damn things laughing at us!

  He wanted to run, but stood transfixed, unable to turn away from this monstrosity. Hell, there wasn’t a chance even if he did run.

  It didn’t even try and dodge the soldiers weapons, opting instead to smash down with its hooves on any that came through the barrier and shattered them. A fierce glow of dark magic clad its whole body, and then a bright flash emanated from its palm.

  It was immediately followed by the crack of thunder, and one of the shield walls that caged it in shattered. The casters who supported it collapsed to their knees and reflexively threw up, as a massive burst of steam blew out from their bodies.

  And then… another flash, another crack, and several more casters collapsed. It crushed any who approached it into paste with its hooves, and the fiend gargled in glee as the front line quickly collapsed.

  The sergeant attempted to shout a new set of orders, which promptly turned into a shriek itself as another spell melted his throat. In mere moments, his shrieks turned into gargles as he choked to death on his own melted flesh.

  And then… it clicked. That sight… that gruesome sight… it reminded him exactly what potion he had here.

  D stared at the soldiers fleeing before him, and others who were transfixed as he was. He looked to Gregory, frozen in the middle of the street, looking lost between the demons behind and the monster in front.

  And a pit dropped in his stomach.

  “They’re all… going to die anyways. They’re all going to die anyways. They’re all going to die anyways.” D began to repeat the words to himself like a mantra, before he tore the potion out of the pile. His eyes darted to a campfire, sheltered from the wind behind a physical barrier near the demon.

  Then, he spotted one of the casters who dropped their shield walls. He too seemed almost lost in shock at the sight before him. His expression… was something hard to put into words. A mix of shock, horror, disbelief… and something else that couldn’t be described.

  It didn’t matter.

  D grabbed the man’s arm, and shook him fiercely. “YOU. CAST A BARRIER AROUND US AND THE CART AS SOON AS I THROW THIS. PUT EVERYTHING INTO IT!”

  The man stared blankly back at D, and blinked slowly. A blast of red tore through someone else nearby, spilling sizzling guts onto the cold cobblestone.

  Precise shot. Acceleration.

  “DO IT NOW!” D screamed, as he poured everything he had into pelting the bottle of starfire into the campfire. Then he squeezed his eyes tightly shut and covered his ears.

  Nothing he did could drown out the terrible shrieks of pain. Even if he could block out the sounds from the men, the sounds of boiling flesh… the howls from that monster pierced through his hands as if they didn’t exist.

  And those howls only increased in intensity, for a moment that felt like another lifetime. Through sheer force of will, he forces his eyes open… to watch the monster’s final struggle. To appreciate the true horror of the weapon he unleashed. A simple potion, which on contact with flame turned into a weapon so vile that even a greater demon could not quench it. D didn’t need to understand the monsters language to know it was throwing every spell it had at clearing the starfire from its flesh, to no avail. It seemed almost pathetic as it tore into its own skin, trying to rip the stuff out… only to have it spread onto its hands and began to melt them away too. Almost.

  The caster he was next to had done it. Although the barrier dropped shortly, as he fell to his knees and began to vomit. The man didn’t show any of the telltale signs from extreme mana use. D had to suppress his own urge to retch at the sight before his eyes.

  The wall… was lost. Several Bauthers had torn through the wall, expanding the collapsed section opened by the greater demon. It was already so much… and there was still more coming. It had become almost too much to bear.

  Those goblins had made it in to the city… and through the gap came things he could scarcely believe.

  Ogres… and thunder deer?! Bears and Northern Ramheads?! Why are so many animals and demi-humans with the demons? Why is there…

  D stood silently in shock, and for a moment he ignored the caster who seemed to have recovered his wits, and used D like a post to help him stand up as well.

  A blue creature came through that wall, which unleashed a strange, high-pitched wail. With each call, all the other demi-humans and assorted creatures began to move with it. Another call, and they tore through nearby buildings, ripping screaming survivors out of them.

  All of them would bite onto the living and the dead en masse. The blue creature itself was such a stark contrast to the others. It had a feminine appearance, although no discernable gender. It looked almost akin to a dolled up goblin, with slightly smoother features and longer, pointy ears. The most notable thing was the rotten black flower adorning its head.

  “…hell is that?” The caster’s voice barely came through to D.

  “A frostdyne. It’s one of the northerly fey. They are supposedly very reclusive and shy.” D said slowly, as he stood transfixed, watching the rapid march into the city. Many of those creatures, along with some demons began to pour down the road he was on.

  Many of those who died… began to rise again. And only then did D notice it… that the creatures pouring in were missing limps, were scarred and gutted…

  “That plague… so it really was the demons that brought it…” D muttered to himself, until Gregory had run up and jostled his shoulder.

  The kid seemed frightened out of his wits, and seemed desperate to cling onto D for support.

  “H-hey, don’t you think we should r-run now?” The kid stammered.

  The vampire hunter closed his eyes, and took a long, slow, deep breath.

  Then, as he walked over to grab a nearby torch, he finally answered, with a slight tinge of nervousness in his own voice. “That… would certainly be the smart thing to do.”

  He then tossed the torch onto the far end of the cart, away from the pile of potions. The dry wood began to quickly catch fire, and would probably take no more than a minute to reach the potion pile.

  D made a particularly twitchy smile, and then without another word, all three of them fled as quickly as they could manage for the temple district.

  By my super good very great maths, if I can actually complete the write-a-thon, then it should take us very cleanly to the end of book 2!