"Hold up, priestess." Oak lifted a hand to stall the woman. "You should stay behind."

Yellow miasma, thick with corruption, hung heavy in the moist night air and black clouds held the light of the stars at bay, leaving the gloom of Al-Badra undisturbed. Oak shifted his weight and the wooden steps of the church creaked under his bulk. He, Ur-Namma, Sadia, Geezer and Yakubu had just exited the church, ready to take the fight to the Demon when Jehona followed them outside.

She had her long-knife and hatchet in hand.

Jehona scoffed. "If you think I will sit inside the church and suck on my thumb while you slay the Demon, you have another thing coming, boy."

Boy? I'm a man grown, and probably twice your height, priestling.

"But–but you are blind, Jehona." Sadia swiped a sweaty lock of hair from her eyes, staring at the priestess in disbelief. "You are going to get yourself killed, and for what?"

"Don't fret. My death is bought and paid for, girl." Jehona pointed the rotting holes in place of her eyes straight at Sadia and shook her head. "The Rot has its hooks in me. By their grace, the Erelim have given me a chance to die on my own two feet, blades in hand. I mean to do so."

Boy? Really?

Ur-Namma nodded at Jehona, his gray eyes glinting with unmistakable approval, but it was Yakubu who gave voice to his admiration.

"If you ever grow tired of the Crows, the 66th Legion would be glad to have you, priestess." The Koromite's smile was all teeth and viciousness. "You would make a fine cultist of Glorious War."

"Stop it. I might just blush, and that wouldn't be proper." Jehona spun the long-knife and the hatchet, making the weapons dance with her dexterous fingers. "The Erelim do not encourage fraternizing with the enemy, and you are still a bunch of heretics."

"I prefer to think of you as an ally of convenience, priestess." Oak growled. "I suggest you do the same, if you intend to join us."

It wasn't worth it to try to dissuade the woman from her chosen path. After all, she was right. Death would claim her soon, whether or not they slew the Demon.

"Hmm. Allies of convenience, huh? I think I can work with that," Jehona said and walked past Oak, stepping over the dead blighted arranged on the church's steps without a care in the world. As if her empty eye sockets were no obstacle for seeing the world around her.

"CREEPY," Geezer said and shook himself from snout to tail. "DOWNRIGHT UNNATURAL."

Oak snorted and followed the blind priestess down the steps. Right you are, Geezer. Right you are.

***

"Well, there it stands." Oak spat a glob of spit on the muddy road between his own boots. "A proper hive of scum and villainy, if I have ever seen one."

"What he said." Yakubu grinned and pointed his spear at the keep. "The welcoming committee doesn't look friendly."

The Demon knew they would come, and it had rallied all of its forces to defend its lair. A mass of former citizens of Al-Badra swarmed around the base of the formidable stone keep like flies on carrion. A few taller, shambling blighted stood out from the rest. They hunched over their bloated stomachs, long lines of drool spilling from their ruined mouths.

Oak didn't want to find out what those abominations had filled their bellies with, but he had a feeling he would soon learn, anyway. Having seen all he needed to see, he jerked back behind the corner. Yakubu followed suit. The six of them hid behind an old general store teetering on the brink of collapse. It stood on a sideroad crossing the main thoroughfare of Al-Badra, right by the heart of the dying town.

So close to the Demon, many of the wooden buildings around the square had already said goodbye to structural integrity and crumbled to the ground.

"Can you describe them to me?" Jehona asked.

"Uglier than an oxen's asshole, every single one. Got some fat fucks among them, too," Oak replied. "Those look like a child tried to make a man out of clay and forgot what people look like halfway through. Used too much material. And then the end result melted in the sun.''

Jehona sighed. "After further consideration, losing my eyes doesn't seem so bad."

"Losing your sense of smell would have been the better bargain, methinks," Ur-Namma said, wrinkling his nose at the stink emanating from the square. There was enough rotting meat on the square to make anyone swear off steak for the foreseeable future.

"Sadia?" Oak asked, scratching at a tangle in his beard.

"Yes?"

"Can you do the thing you did in the alley? Turn the ground into mud under their feet?"

"Sure, I can slow them down for you." Sadia shrugged and pulled up her sleeves. "Want me to start right away?"

"Ur-Namma? Any thoughts?" Oak asked, biting at his lip. Feeling jittery, he unsheathed the two handed falchion hanging on his hip and rolled his shoulders. Killing was easy. Waiting for the killing to start was the hard part.

The ancient elf tapped his lips with a single, long finger and blew a raspberry. "Go ahead, Sadia. Time slips from our fingers. We must deal with the world as it is and leave complex stratagems for another time." Ur-Namma bared his own blade and twirled the longsword around. "A frontal assault suits me just fine."

Sadia walked past Oak and knelt on the road, eyes fixed on the horde of blighted swarming around the keep. He and the rest of their company fanned around her, ready to shield the spellcaster from harm. Her chant began as a low murmur, rising and rising until Sadia sang her demands out to Creation, her voice laden with might. The world was one way, and the little spellsinger would see it changed on her terms.

Some of the blighted on the front rows of the horde turned their rotting faces at the road and the kneeling girl, cocking their heads in an animalistic expression of confusion.

A ripple crossed the earth.

Moisture fled from the muddy road under Oak's boots, leaving a dried out stretch of dead ground behind it. From all around the square, water flowed at the churned up section of land around the keep and sank into the mud, turning soggy earth into a knee-deep pit of sludge.

The front rows of the horde, on the borders of the mud pit, got moving. They did not roar in anger or defiance. Instead, they wailed in pain and sorrow, marching towards Oak and his companions on feet which should not have been able to hold them upright. Decay and agony held sway, where the Reaper should have swung his scythe long ago and taken harvest.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Praise be the Heavens, praise be the Host most valiant," Jehona prayed on Oak's right, her expression twisted by the ecstasy of faith. "Let my blades strike true in your hallowed name, oh Erelim."

Sadia staggered to her feet, face pale and her knees trembling. She breathed hard, taking deep gulps of air like she had just run a mile through hard terrain. "That should do it." Sadia swiped the sweat from her brow. "Your turn, Oak."

"We will gladly take it from here, sweetheart. Come on then, killers." Oak grinned and stepped to meet the charging abominations. "No one needs to feel left out. There are enough monsters for all of us."

Oak stomped forward, blade held high. Yakubu and Jehona on his right, Ur-Namma on his left. Sadia and Geezer brought up the rear. The first stumbling blighted reached him in ones and twos, feeble moans on their rotting lips.

Come, good folk. Have a taste of my mercy.

A few swings of his falchion cut them down without fuss or fanfare. The poor things could not hope to assail Oak without the force of numbers. Sadly, they had numbers to spare. Single droplets became a steady stream, and soon he stacked corpses by the dozen, the Corse of Bloodshed beating inside his soul like a second heart.

Unnatural strength sank into Oak's flesh. He roared and bisected two shambling blighted with a single monstrous swing of his blade, sending black blood and putrid intestines flying. Since death had not seen fit to snatch these poor souls away from the mortal coil, he would do so in the Reaper's stead.

Ah. Such disgusting little piglets, fit for slaughter, the Butcher whispered. Oak tasted iron and felt a hand, wet with blood, grasp his shoulder. It was hot, steaming with heat from a fresh kill. The Flesher stood in his shadow, risen from the pit of his mind.

Oak should have felt worried, but he didn't. There was killing to be done, and the joy of red carnage set his mind ablaze with delight.

"Wrath! Wrath and struggle eternal!"

Flexing his pyromancy, Oak flooded the ranks of the blighted with flame, setting the victims of the Demon alight. The rotting meatbags burned with a sickly glow and wove freakish shadows upon the square, dancing and twitching in manic delight as death claimed them at last.

On Oak's right, Ur-Namma wove a net of Elven steel through the blighted, marching forward without once slowing his step. The old elf was control made manifest; every movement of his stick thin body and the longsword he wielded carried with it a lethal end.

On Oak's left, Jehona thrived next to Yakubu. Oak had been prepared for the priestess to snuff it against the first enemy that got close, but she put her hatchet and long-knife to holy work, hacking and slashing at each blighted that made the mistake of getting within her deceptively long reach.

She didn't miss, either. Heads tumbled and black blood spilled by the bucketful as the priestess opened rotting throats with her blades. It was clear as day that an Erelim guided Jehona and acted as her eyes on the field of battle. Oak felt his doubts had been reasonable, but he was happy to be proven wrong.

They needed all the help they could get.

One of the tall, fat blighted had cleared the mud pit. It rushed right towards Oak, stepping over its smaller brethren. He blasted the abomination in the face with a pyrokinetic lance of flame. To Oak's surprise, the bugger stumbled, but powered through it. With a disgusting gurgle, the bloated mass of diseased flesh shot a thick stream of greenish bile from its ruined mouth.

Despite Oak's best efforts to dodge the disgusting liquid, a splash landed on his right shoulder. The acidic sludge ate right through his jacket and burned blisters to his skin. "Fuck!" Oak shouted, stumbling away from the bloated menace. Without the hardiness afforded to him by the Corse of Bloodshed, the bile would have eaten straight into the muscle, maybe even crippled his shoulder entirely.

Ooh, what sweet pain. Let's return it back to the sender, won't we? The Butcher whispered and dragged his bloody fingers soothingly over Oak's burns.

"Watch out! These bastards throw up on you!" Oak roared and drilled the offending monster's face in with three telekinetic hammer blows wreathed in flame. Burning skull fragments and blackened grey matter rained on the ranks behind the abomination.

It flattened two blighted under its massive bulk as it fell to the mud.

From then on, the battle turned ugly. Moving forward was unthinkable as the horde descended upon him with its full might. It took all Oak had to stand his ground. He dug his roots in and held fast, like a mountain pine in a snowstorm. He was the fulcrum. If he fell, all around him would perish to rotten teeth and claws.

A step back, then another. Oak hacked rotting men, women, and children apart, his falchion cleaving through diseased flesh and bone, but it was no use. The enemy was too many. Slimy, clawed hands closed around his right wrist and rotting teeth bit into his forearm. Roaring in rage, Oak punched the blighted off of his arm. It took a chunk of flesh with it. He stomped on the monster's skull, and two more jumped at him, their dislocated jaws opened wide.

A spear flew from Oak's right and skewered the one on the left. Yakubu stepped past Oak and kicked the other in its rotting face, sending it tumbling to the mud. "Honor to the Hounds of War!" The Koromite shouted and pierced the bugger's skull with his sword.

It would not be enough. In a matter of moments, they would be overrun.

Geezer came to their rescue. The hellhound hopped into the gap Yakubu had created and roared. The sound slapped the air from Oak's lungs and sent him reeling. He had warned Sadia, Yakubu and Jehona of the hellhound's ability, but words did not do the roar justice.

Just like in the City of God when they faced the wolf-chimera, Geezer's roar shook the foundations of the world. Hellfire blazed in the hound's red eyes and his shadow drowned all others in its black emptiness, leaving both friend and foe standing in the void. Creation tinkled and rattled like glass. Inside that forbidden noise was a moment. The final hour when all would seize and even the stars, grown cold, would be unmade.

The long dark. The beginning and the end.

Blighted fell where they stood, keening and clawing at their own putrid flesh. So rotten were their brains that the Demon's victims no longer held any capacity to hold back the terror stalking the corridors of their decaying minds.

"By Samael!" Yakubu shouted, stumbling back to his feet. The Koromite warrior stabbed his sword through the nearest blighted's throat and beheaded another, trying to claw at his boots. "That was something!"

"It sure was, wasn't it?" Oak murmured, trying to claw air back to his lungs. Geezer was the best. When we get back to civilization, I need to buy him a steak.

"Less talk! More killing!" Ur-Namma walked past Oak and threw an annoyed look at him. "You too, Northerner!"

"Right." Oak shook himself and got back to reaping souls.

***

+ 29 Souls

+ 29 Fuel

So much death, the Butcher murmured. Lovely, lovely death. Can you feel the call? The moment is ripe for slaughter, and what do you know? We are in a target rich environment!

Oak stumbled away from the field of corpses and the group of meatbags standing behind him. Friends? Bags of flesh and bone. Blood and offal. The gray, ichor stained, stonewall of the keep loomed ahead. He fell against the cool stone, breathing hard, muscles twitching.

You cannot run from me, mewling ape.

Demented laughter roared in his ears. Oak pulled his head back and smashed his forehead into the wall. Stars danced in his vision and blood dribbled into his eyes. There was a hiccup in the laughter, like a snag in a rope. Oak smashed his skull into the stone again. And again. The laughter seized, and he hung onto the wall, blinded with pain.

"My mind is my own," Oak whispered to himself in the darkness, clawing at the mortar and stone with chipped fingernails, oozing blood. "My own."

Blessed silence lingered for a time, but all good things came to an end.

"Am. Are you okay, Oak?" Sadia asked, her voice wavering with concern and doubt. Sound painted a picture to his mind's eye. The girl would have come closer, but Ur-Namma held her back by the arm. Wise elf. Oak might have broken the girl in half and taken a bite.

"O–Oak?"

"Never better, Sadia." Oak grinned and dragged himself upright, swiping blood from his eyes. "Never better."

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