The courtyard was simple; it held a modest church with a small overgrown yard. Gravestones stood askew on its grass, the symbols upon them worn off by time and nature. The front of the steepled building was the same: a once magnificent stone carving of a god reduced to the rough impression of the sun and moon above something unearthly. The shadows inside the church were too deep for their eyes to penetrate. And looming behind it was a bell tower, the top half having long fallen down; in its place a vile orange-red mass of fungus was shaped into a rough square. It had a hollow where the bell once was.
Solamin took the lead with Arthur and Ura just behind him; Aurora and Carver took a slightly wide flank position. Arthur felt the hair on his neck rising with each cautious step they took down the dim street. He pulled streamers of light from the air, sending them forward like a beautiful golden river to illuminate the way ahead. Everything here looked wrong; the blades of grass peeking through cobblestone twitched as they stepped around them. Strange chittering mushrooms with dark holes strewn throughout lay on rooftops ahead.
The most obvious and concerning thing before they would reach the belltower was the sole glowing green tree just inside the courtyard entrance. And the hazy green figures descending from the sky above, cooing gags echoing from them as the flock lazily split up to descend upon all the squads at once.
Arthur began gathering the river of light back around himself. “Get ready; the second they smell anyone’s blood, they will charge. Let Solamin or Ura take the hits and kill them quick once they are still.” Carver nodded, switching his crossbow bolt to a mean-looking hooked barb.
As they looked up in anticipation, a distant scream cut across the twilight, a shrill yet deeply inhuman bellow of pure terror, followed by thudding footsteps that shook the ground beneath them. Everyone in Arthur's squad looked around warily. Arthur looked through a ruin window; the squad on the next street over seemed equally concerned. The Devourers simply circled curiously for now, the thuds growing louder by the moment.
Then a fog of icy mist billowed into the courtyard ahead, accompanied by a beautiful operatic voice. It rang throughout the streets, a promise of peace and safety amid the hungering swarm above them. He took half a step forward towards the safety of the song before Aurora cast a shimmering purple dome around them, abruptly silencing the song but letting other sounds through. Arthur broke out into a cold sweat; he knew this was going to be dangerous, but he was now certain they all dramatically underestimated the depths of depravity they were walking into.
“An angel Rembrand has sent us an angel!” A warrior the next street over cried out joyously.
“Stand fast, you fool! No!” The paladin's voice barked out in slight panic, followed by the distinct sound of running feet on cobblestone.
A warrior of Rembrand rushed into the courtyard ahead of them, looking around with a dazed smile on his face. He wandered past the tree unconcerned. The tree opened a single hateful eye with such force the clunk of its barken eyelid echoed down the ruined streets. It happened so fast Arthur could barely comprehend it. The creature exploded, roots and all, upward from the cobblestone in a shower of rubble and displaced corpses. It lurched downward, all its gnarled branches grabbing the man across his body with knobby, blunt, two-pronged claws; nearly fifty of them gripped him from head to toe with such force bones were audibly snapped like hundreds of breaking branches. Then it pulled apart suddenly and mercilessly. It ripped him into dozens of pieces in one explosive heave, splattering the man across a vast swath of the streets. A kidney rolled to a stop directly ahead of Arthur.
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Arthur wiped a slight spatter of blood from his brow with a snarl. “Show no mercy, for these things do not know the meaning.” He preemptively began forming his rivers of light into a focus above them, ready to smite the first threat from existence. Crossbow bolts screeched past him, plucking Devourers from the sky.
Then the Devourers changed, “Dear gods, help us.” Ura whispered.
“We should have just left this fucker alone.” Carver quipped, but his voice lacked any humor and held a slight tremble.
Aurora stifled a scream and began gathering all the mana she could.
The devourers directly above them peeled their faces open and all the way back across their bodies. Entrails spilled from them grotesquely, followed by dangling, bone-tipped feeding tentacles that twitched in excitement. “This man must be stopped,” Arthur spoke loud enough for his squad to hear and summoned a column of purifying fire and light upon the closest Devourer as it careened towards them, melting through flesh and bone with ease as it plummeted from the sky.
The Devourer made it halfway down to the street before it exploded in a shimmer of dimensional magics gone wrong, followed by a nearly endless deluge of blood and bone; hundreds of gallons splattered down like a river through the streets. Shards of bone and needlelike appendages whizzed past and into the squad, rocking them with superficial slices before Solamin managed to interpose his shield.
A Devourer hit Ura like a cannonball, tearing her straight through a wall and into a ruined storefront. A maddening whirring noise screeched out over her screams as the beast plunged its needles into her. She rose up, pulling out tentacles by the handful before kicking it back against the wall and bringing her sword down with a crimson-hued slash that sheared the entire front of its face off.
She looked down at the gaping wounds all across her front and a gushing wound dangerously near her throat. “Fuck...I...heals!” She gurgled out through a mouthful of bloody bubbles.
Carver dashed to her, potion in hand as the others fended off another of the vile creatures. He slid to a stop next to her, ripping the cork free, and went to pour it over her torn neck. The faceless beast next to them slowly rose, ripping torn hunks of its face free and piecing new ones on like a demonic seamstress. Carver froze in confusion for just a moment too long.
The beast attacked again while it pieced itself back together. One tentacle shot out straight through the back of Ura’s skull; a filament-like wire shredded her skull from the inside out inches from Carver’s frozen form, potion still held hovering next to his headless friend. He dropped his potion and spun towards it, but it was too late; needles pierced him through his armor near his heart. Carver rolled backwards before the thing could finish him.
Arthur spun just in time to see Carver roll backwards out the doorway directly into the path of a charging Maneater Daisy. With a scream, he lunged forward, rays of light cascading down his armor and into his sword. It pierced the Daisy mid-charge through its face. He poured mana and hate into the blow even as it tore into them both. His sword glowed, and nearby grass smoked as his blade carved through the beast, ripping it from top to bottom in a shower of burning plant matter.
His breath hitched as he saw Ura’s remains being sucked dry by the creature in the house. The thudding footsteps were so close now that the ground jolted under them. Solamin And Aurora still battled the Devourer ahead, and Carver was bleeding badly down on one knee, firing burning bolts back down the street behind them at an oncoming tide of Daisys. Dozens of them flung themselves down the street across walls and roofs with suicidal abandon.
Arthur shouted to his friends, “Solamin, Hold them! Aurora, you have to dominate the Devourer now!”
Arthur didn’t wait for a response, ripping the waning rays of twilight from the very air around them and slowly forming it into a swirling maelstrom above his beleaguered party. Solamin heaved the Devourer away with a desperate pulse of mana, shifting gravity away from himself as he heavily stumbled past Arthur and slammed his shield down before the onrushing tide. The light in the alley continued to dim as a ring of golden ethereal shields slowly extended in front of Solamin. The daisies hit the shields in a writhing mass, pulling chunks free from the magical aegis.
“ Solamin grunted, sliding back as more and more creatures piled onto his bulwark. “Arthur!” He cried out as the first creature broke through, flinging itself straight onto him. Solamin didn’t move, holding back the rest of them and patching the break in his shields as the beast’s tendrils sank into the seams beneath his armor. Blood saturated the cobblestones around him as he held fast. Arthur saw the beast's tendrils reaching into his helmet as his hateful light washed out.
The maelstrom of twirling golden light above Arthur compressed down to a fine point before surging forward, washing through the street like the breath of a true dragon. It was a pure white flame reducing flora and fauna alike to ash and ember. The ravening horde crackled and writhed for just a moment before being returned to the cold embrace of the cycle. As the blinding flare of hate faded, the alley was awash in the red glow of blood and molten stone.
Solamin had ripped the daisy clamped to him in half and was smiting the impossibly wrathful creature over and over; blood was pouring down his breastplate in ruby rivers. Arthur rushed forward, pulling forth a potion to staunch the mortal wound. He made it three strides before the wall next to them exploded in a cascade of molten stone, as a massive beast fled straight through it into them, screaming in terror.
Arthur saw the troll’s horrifically scarred body and sobbing visage for just a moment before a massive foot sent him spinning up the alley away from the bleeding form of Solamin; he cartwheeled to a stop and watched in dread as the troll flailed about madly, ripping down the last smoldering remains of the nearby buildings, collapsing his way back to his party.
Everything around Arthur was madness and blood; he saw glimpses through the narrow alleys of swarms of bizarre creatures assaulting the other squads. Devourers circled above before shooting down to ravage the warriors of Rembrand. A man ahead wandered through the courtyard missing an arm with a twisted look of bliss on his face. Arthur went to shout to him but the man simply walked into the icy mist, lost forever from sight.
Arthur breathed heavily, his emotions roiling. It wasn’t fear, at least not of dying. It was hate. The paladin did all this; he had killed so many and would continue to if no one could stop him. Arthur cast one last glance back towards the rubble between him and his friends and began thundering forward towards the courtyard. All this violence and death, and the coward still hasn’t even shown himself.
Arthur slid around the edge of the last ruined building before the courtyard, diving away from the gore-coated tree that had turned to face the last street to feed it. He rushed into the cover of the solitary well standing as a lone monument of peace on the edges of the icy mist, barely two strides from the slowly freezing gravestones and creaking stone of the chapel. He looked up into the tower and finally saw the monster.
He stood shrouded by shadow and the malignant growths comprising his nest in the bell tower. Calmly watching as his minions savaged the brave men of faith below him. Arthur braced against the well and prepared to sunder the tower and monster within as the last rays of hope faded from the sky and darkness took hold.