Colhern’s sweat beaded down his face. The pain was intense. His throat felt dry. He felt constricted, bound, down to his very soul. He writhed and wrestled for a while, but it was no use. By then, he had been suspended in midair, his head pointed toward the sky, his arms extended out to his sides, and his helmet removed.
Colhern heaved dryly, painfully, and looked down at the leader. The leader was tall, lean, and wielded only his hands. He held them behind his back, faced the main entrance to the arena, and waited.
Colhern swallowed his own blood and said hoarsely, “He’s not coming.”
Accrecious Kesthl turned his head over his shoulder to look at Colhern. He was a Master of the ------------------s. His squadron was elite at their tasks, and they were here for a very specific purpose. He addressed Colhern out of indifferent curiosity, “What makes you so sure?”
“I haven’t seen him in weeks.”
Accrecious smirked, “That does not matter.”
“I told him he was,” he swallowed more metallic red, “disgusting. He got the hint. I never wanted to see him again.”
“I am sure he will not give up the chance to see you now, regardless of your feelings.”
Colhern’s lip twitched as he sighed, “Maybe.”
Just then, Colhern’s spear, dropped and forgotten across the arena, began to crack along its shaft. A greenish light bloomed from those cracks, caused more to form, until infant flames of radium green flickered upward and outward.
Immediately, when one of the------------------ noticed, they alerted the others. A small task force trained their sights on the spear.
“Heh, I believe he is trying to save you.”
“What?” Colhern’s eyes widened as he looked over his shoulder back at the spear. “The fu-”
The spear exploded into shrapnel splinters that soared through the air as flaming shards slammed into the------------------ with such velocity it cracked some of their armor as the green flames burned brightly.
Where the spear was, a great inferno of cold green flame erupted to life, released an echoic cry that reverberated around the arena, and grew three heads as it became a size large enough to fill a townhouse. The serpent immediately moved, its body soaring through the air as it crashed through the ring and tumbled toward the------------------. The first to get in its way fired an explosive bolt, but when it entered the flaming serpent’s body, it was immediately redirected and its explosive charge was infected and corrupted by its own arcana, flying toward the woman’s head with pinpoint accuracy. She ducked low, it slammed into the ground behind her, and an explosion of green flames screamed to life as it made a geyser’s eruption of flames, each of those globs of green flew through the air and slammed into the bloodsoaked ground. Like regular flames to oil, the green flames became ravenous as they became a scourge upon all the blood there. It was attracted to organic matter.
The vampires shot up into the air, their armor all allowing them to float, and the vampire mages shot out their hands, delved into the arcana that made the serpent operate, and struggled with whatever master consciousness commanded it as it barreled toward any and all in its way. It encircled the ring over and over, its three heads firing projectiles of flaming vomit-like termite-flame all over the arena, turning it into a spectacular sight as a horde of vampire assassins came together and used their magic and superior weaponry to battle with the serpent.
At the same time, the flames created a protective ring around Colhern so that he did not have to touch its chill. Colhern’s eyes were wide as he watched the entire arena covered in flames, enraged by the existence of life itself.
Lightning, protective wards, and actual fire seemed to do the job of quarreling with the beast quite well. It was assaulted from all sides, but did not go down without a ruinous battle that sent vampires to and fro haptically, until one of the mages finally cracked the spellwork and rushed forward through the air. He slammed a rune onto the serpent’s middle head, it blasted outward in all directions as a pulse through the air, and caused the serpent to decompose into the raging inferno of the ring itself.
Accrecious stared at the serpent, toward Colhern, and his lip twitched. “No teleporting, bastard, and apparently, no touching. Pig.”
His heart hardened.
It only took moments for the ceiling above to become wet.
The canals around the arena were losing their water level fast. The water that remained was being stained crimson, until it became a solid redness.
As for the stolen water, it dripped from the ceiling onto the------------------ and Colhern. Then, those clear droplets began to turn red. Finally, a torrential downpour of blood began to fall. Accrecious stared up at the sight, mildly impressed by the scale of it, but his mages were no less skilled. The vampires raised their hands to the sky and, instead of dispelling the blood rain, they created invisible barriers with it, still completely able to control it through hemomancy.
The flames below licked up the blood rain, eager to climb up the downpour to reach its heights, but could only go so far in their growing masses.
“Hah, he gives us ammunition. Fool.”
His heart hardened.
All around the arena, for the residents of Dimside to witness, frogs leapt up from those bloody canals. Screams echoed from all directions over the tall walls and stands of the arenas. As those frogs got further from their bloody wombs, their bodies began to twist and mangle and shift and mutate. Their heads ballooned in size, their limbs elongated and grew talons, their bodies became desner and heavier, so much so that their large mouths were forced to fall open to release their dozen tongues covered in serrated fangs. Their tongues swarmed around their heads like tentacles as he jumped high into the air, used their sticky fingers and bodies to cling to the arena walls, and rushed them in a grand, supernatural siege. The------------------ outside were in for the fight of their lives as they combined both blood and metal and magic to stop the oncoming horde whose numbers refused to cease. They made their battle cries as they were backed further into the arena. From below, more frogs surged from the depths, from the Champions’ passages, forcing the vampires down there to rise toward the surface, all of them being pushed directly toward the flames. Their armor was being sliced and cut by stray tongues left and right.
When the first vampire touched the flames, those licking tongues of green death, with the slightest bit of skin exposed, her body was infected. A piranha-like force surged into her body and writhed around her flesh, surged across her flesh, and feasted upon all things outward from its origin. She screamed a bloodcurdling, nightmarish roar as her very soul was being tortured by the flames, her screams becoming more echoic and deep and rapturous as her body was decomposed from the inside out. When her body finally fell, only bone remained in the lake of fire.
The frogs crowded, the further they got from the bloody canals the more their bodies decomposed and fell apart. Their fleshy forms decayed before the vampires’ and Colhern’s very eyes, but they got just far enough to push two more vampires into the flames to meet their soul-torturing doom.
Accrecious watched his people die, his lips twitched, and he felt a surge of deep, violent hatred rush him. He and his mages got closer to Colhern, floated above him as close as they could, those green flames below immediately surging upward to lick at them and demand their deaths. Accrecious’s lip twitched, “Weak. Too weak to stand up to temporary beasts.”
His heart hardened.
Only seconds later, dust gathered. All around the arenas and its surrounding neighborhoods. Dust clouds rose enmasse from the nearby buildings and streets, formed a roiling ring around the arenas, and began to close in. Rapidly, those clouds of dust started to mutate and transform. Their amorphous bodies became pale. Then, they all swarmed through the natural air currents into the arenas.
Accrecious’s squadron conjured flame and employed the blood around them to burn away or drown the gusts of lice as they were carried towards them by some enchanted breeze, but the raining blood extinguished the flames it came into contact with. Accrecious roared as he held up his hand, closed his fist, and used the blood rain around him to form a bubble of opaque blood around him, every single lice that flew into the trap becoming reduced to the fluids within them, their bodies being reduced even further into a fine powder that mixed with his blood shield. The ------------------s all surrounded themselves in dripping, crimson runes and glyphs and sigils, but for those who were not fast enough, and few they were among his squadron, the lice landed on the armor and began to feast. They feasted on the advanced fabric material, digested it into acid, and blew themselves up as masses of tiny vermin that melted their armors and clothing to reveal their flesh as it burned and sizzled.
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The mages around Accrecious were whipped up into hysteria, their eyes wide and their terror clear as one of them screamed, “This is the work of a foul god!”
“No! There are no gods here! Only a charlatan and his tricks!” Accrecious affirmed, steeled their wills with his power as he created tsunamis of blood in the air to take out massive swaths of lice at once. His underlings did the same, creating waves of blood that took over the masses, until the green flames below found one such wave and immediately cascaded across it, creating massive plumes of fiery light.
His heart hardened.
Colhern was terrified. Was this all Xala? How?! What on merces was he?! “Please, let me go! Don’t kill yourselves!”
“SILENCE, MORTAL!” A whip of blood slashed across Colhern’s chest, sending him reeling in pain with a sharp scream.
Colhern’s tears welled in his eyes from the pain and horror around him.
Thus, from the food markets, from the rot left out to feed on, from the homes of those slightly filthy and most filthy, from the backs of horses and other beasts, flies surged. The flies became black storms of wretched buzzing as they braved through the rain toward their targets. Like the lice, waves of blood surged forth to decimate their numbers. But, the flies were winged and swift, many of them evading each attempt to obliterate them, and eventually landed on their first victim. The woman’s armor and clothing had been feasted on by the lice and where her skin was exposed it steamed and bled profusely. Blood that was not hers. The flies burrowed into her wounded flesh, nestled themselves into her skin, and immediately laid eggs. There, they died. The eggs incubated for seconds before they hatched into larvae. The larvae feasted on the corpses of their dead mothers and fathers and eventually burrowed into the flesh of the vampire. She screamed at the top of her lungs as she tried to contort the blood within her body to expel them, but as she did, the flies became an overwhelming odd. For every fly and larvae she expunged from her insides, the more landed on her flesh and delivered their presents of life and death.
Lightning became the tool of the vampire mages. Their fingertips crackled with elemental power as they surged the lightning through the air, watched it crackle and bounce between droplets in the air, and then take out whole swaths of flies as it jumped to thousands of insects at a time. Legions of flies fell from the sky, into the hungry fires below, and were consumed in the same way they lived, with a wretched buzzing as their souls were tortured as it was severed from their bodies. No matter the size, the flesh screams when its soul is stolen.
Accrecious barked orders left and right, created an aura of static shock around his squadron, and watched as the flies slammed into the field. However, some managed to crack through, and continued to breed and die wherever they could.
Colhern screamed at the top of his lungs, “PLEASE! XALA! STOP!”
The flies ceased their carnage, and let themselves die with ease and no effort to stop it. Waves of blood and arcs of electricity surged through the insects and obliterated them.
Accrecious stared at the carnage all around him, at all the mayhem, at his dead, and roared furiously.
His heart hardened.
The blood rain around the vampires erupted into ear-piercing shrieks. The tortured souls of their dead, the ones consumed by the green flames, echoed back to them through every droplet, as a chorus of carnage and despair that made them cover their ears and scream to try and drown out the screams, but it was no use. The screams of dying souls were in their minds, in the blood, in everything they saw, felt, saw, smelled, and heard. They were like cattle being brutally murdered by a thousand cuts, pigs being impaled but not through the brain, sheep being sheared of their flesh alongside their wool, and horses whose hooves were ripped off by the stray rock in their thunderous charge. The vampires all began to scratch at their ears, cutting open their helms with the claws in their gauntlets and gloves, until they could slice and hack at their own ears and guide the blood most easily, directly beneath their hands, to silence their ear drums. Even then, they heard the horrible noise.
Colhern stared up at the screaming vampires, unable to hear a single scream. He gulped as he watched the madness unfold, tears streaming down his face. He weeped and whimpered, his heart unable to take the dread he saw, “Please, Xala, it’s too much!”
The screams ceased.
Accrecious opened his eyes, blood streaming down from his ducts, alongside his fellow vampires, as he dry heaved, sucked in air, and began to seethe. He looked down at Colhern, ground his teeth together until he could have sworn he reduced their tops to powder, save for his fangs, and raised his hand to cast a spell that would snap the man’s neck.
His heart hardened.
As he conjured his spell, summoned the runes and glyphs, he clutched his fist and the spell brightened right as it was about to be cast.
In the same instant, the sigils, all of Accrecious’s spellcraft, were systematically dismantled and turned into floating strands of shredded red.
Accrecious stared in awe, utterly shocked by the swiftness of the counterspell. He turned his head toward his squadron. They were covered in boils. The blood rain touched their flesh and formed massive welts and boils whose shiny bodies pulsated angrily along their paled flesh. Most were concentrated around their ears, but rapidly, they began to tear off their armor and clothing. The masks over their faces stayed on, the boils did not migrate there. They cried out as the boils spread and burrowed underneath their armor, blew up, constricted themselves under the armor, and caused discomfort unlike any other. One man’s mask was missing, and his mouth was open while he screamed, which caused some of the blood rain to enter his mouth. Rapidly, boils formed inside his mouth, down his throat, up his nasal canal, and burrowed into his brain. More formed all over his face, his eyes were covered in boils. A putrid plague of popping boils and puss and blood overcame him until his head was decaying from the top down into his body, as more boils formed deeper in his rapidly exposing meat, and continued to burrow further and further into him to reduce his physical makeup.
Finally, for all the vampires to witness, the man’s entire body combusted and sprayed blood, guts, and gore in every single direction. It coated their bodies, fed the flames below, and left behind an echoic scream where his head once was, a scream that was nowhere and yet exactly, specifically placed or left behind that echoed through the rain and into the minds of its listeners.
“Mages! Cleanse us!” Accrecious called out to the mages, but they were in too much agony to speak or cast, while Accrecious heaved and panted and shook violently, but held his composure as well as he could, determined to be his team’s bedrock foundation for stability and focus.
Then, the rain stopped spreading its boils.
The vampires floated in the air, howling in agony as the boils popped one by one and melted off their bodies.
Accrecious heaved, panted, seethed, growled, roared, cried, and shouted at the top of his lungs, “I REFUSE! I REFUSE! I WILL KILL YOU! I WILL KILL YOU! I SWEAR IT!”
His heart hardened.
Then, came coagulated, hardened clumps of blood. They slammed into the bodies of the vampires at crushing speeds. One of the vampire mages, so weak from the fighting and boils and carnage, was slammed directly in the head. He went unconscious. He felt forward, his feet remained suspended in the air by his boots, and his head hung low. The green flames below flicked upward, caught the smallest bit of traction on the tip of his head, and immediately reached up to consume him.
Accrecious shouted with a general’s fury and determination, “SHIELDS!”
Coagulated blood formed above their heads as Accrecious and his remaining mages hardened the blood rain that were not clumps of raining death, formed layers upon layers of protection over their heads, and received a moment of reprieve as the loud thuds of those clumps clamored above their heads.
Accrecious assembled the survivors, shouted at them, and said, “His power is not infinite! He cannot maintain this forever! When he is exhausted, kill Herne! Kill him now if you can! Kill him!”
A vampire mage closest to Accrecious sobbed as he spoke, “We will die first! This is no mere wizard! He is death incarnate! You have killed us all!”
“SILENCE! PERSEVERE OR DIE BY MY HAND!”
His heart hardened.
Those clumps of blood began to shatter across the shield above the vampires’ heads. They were no longer solid and dense. Instead of clumps falling, bouncing, and rolling off the expansive shield, little pellets were falling toward the green flames.
Accrecious narrowed his eyes as he inspected the falling pellets, held out his hand to catch one, and brought it close to stare at it. It was an insect, its legs and wings tight along its back, but it was frozen in place.
Inside, something moved. Accrecious’s eyes went wide.
“Carrion Locust.”
Before he could drop the insect, the molt completed. The shell broke. A red locust sprang its long, black wings, opened its pincers, and chomped down on Accrecious’s fingertip. It breached the fabric. It was designed to break bones. Accrecious roared, killing the insect with a reactionary, reflexive spell that burst the blood in its tiny body outward, just as his underling had been destroyed.
Below, as more molting shells fell, right above the flames, the Carrion Locusts breached free, their bodies engulfed in flame, and lived just long enough to form a swarm that surged upward as a flaming mass of rageful buzzing and screaming souls directly toward the vampires.
“I PREFER DEATH!” One of the vampires turned off their boots and let gravity carry them into the fire. Immediately, she was consumed by that ravenous horde of pincers and flames.
Accrecious’s eyes were wet with blood, his mouth was covered in it, his nose dripped it, his breath was ragged, his voice had given out from his roars and battlecries, but he persisted. He wept and screamed hoarsely, painfully, agonizingly as he conjured wave after wave of electricity-infused blood waves down upon the swarm. He retreated upward, found his back against the coagulated shield he had commanded his underlings form, and became a cornered rat as he spewed spells in every direction, wept blood down onto the swarm rising up to him, watched the green flames rise to greet him, and began to beg for mercy in a blabbering manner unlike any other.
He had brought a dozen elite killers and soldiers to their death.
It was all his fault.
It was his responsibility.
It was all up to him.
His heart hardened.
Everything went dark.
In Colhern’s mind, he heard Xala whisper,
In the darkness, in the dreadful silence those vampires lived within, spells targeted each of them from all directions. All but Accrecious had their minds utterly reduced. Lobotomized, except for their memories of the last few moments. Only those remained. Thus, their faces were twisted in perpetual agony.
