Chapter Fourteen
Teeth In The Mist

It took Vera a few seconds to get her bearings. She couldn’t tell if the ringing in her head was because of the blast of energy that had just barely missed her a second ago, or if it was her blood rushing in her ears. Rubicus had pushed himself upwards and forwards, going from prone to sprint with surprising deftness, considering his age and size. Vera had no idea what it was he was charging at, considering the fog still obscured everything around them, and she had the feeling he probably didn’t either. After a second, it was almost impossible to see him anymore.

Behind her, she heard the Prince shouting, and the sound of his blade hitting… something. She scrambled for her sword, and just barely made out the glint in the thick mist. She grabbed the handle and pushed herself to her feet, and turned around. Clarus was gone too. Looking left and right, she heard the spiteful giggle ringing through the air again, and just barely caught a glint of Prince Clarus running down a path between two buildings. 

Not wanting to do nothing, she broke into a sprint after him, her heart hammering in her chest. The attack had been so sudden. She’d been in fights before, of course, but usually a fight breaking out involved seeing the other party, everyone drawing swords, and then charging. This ambush was something else. Her pulse thudded loudly in her ears, and she could feel it in her fingers as she gripped the sword tightly. 

At the end of the alley, she saw the Prince’s figure round the corner without slowing down, and a creeping suspicion made itself real in her head. Aesling was thinking it too. She could tell. As she got to the end of the road, she skidded to a halt in the cold mud. Clarus was nowhere to be seen. 

“That wasn’t Clarus,” Aesling said. “One of their sorceries.” 

“Aye,” Vera said, clutching her sword more tightly, and quickly scanned her surroundings. “They wanted to separate us.” And they’d succeeded, though she didn’t say that part out loud. The question now, of course, was what they’d do now that they’d achieved that goal. “Do you think there will be Demons?” she asked, just as she heard a rustling from just ahead of her. Something moved in the mist. 

“You’re about to find out, I think. I’ll do what I can to help,” Aesling said. Just as Vera was about to ask her what she meant, something changed. Drastically. All of sudden, the world was pulled into extremely sharp focus. She felt she could see everything much more clearly, hear everything slightly more loudly. Her sword’s hilt suddenly felt coarser than ever, every crack in the leather scraping against her skin. 

And the thing in the mist, skittering towards her, was a lot easier to make out. It was the sise of a rat, or a small cat, and it was moving towards her quickly. At Aesling’s urging, she didn’t lower her guard. “The Cavean’s devilries?” she asked. “Or another foul sorcery?” 

“I don’t believe it matters,” Aesling said as the thing came out of the fog. It had… too many legs, and skittered left and right, like a centipede. Instead of a head, however, it seemed to just have several concentric rings of teeth with what she assumed to be a mouth in the middle. Its long, spindly legs were moving it forward and toward her with unsettling speed, until it was some six feet away, where it stopped. Vera readied her sword. 

The thing pushed itself up on several of its hind legs, and hissed, a spine-chilling screeching sound that reminded her of a time a pebble had been stuck under the door. In that moment, where she shivered and dropped her guard for only a fraction of a second, it launched itself at her face. 

Vera felt a nudge in her back, not from anyone else but from Aesling, and she swung her sword up to meet the creature just in time to catch it only inches from her face, where she bisected it cleanly. She was splattered in a black liquid she was keeping her mouth closed to keep from tasting. The last thing she wanted was that on her tongue.

“Thank you,” she mumbled as she wiped her face. The thing curled up into a ball, like a coiled rope, and Vera looked around again to see if there were more coming.  

“Don’t mention it. You should move. I’m sure there’s more where that came from,” Aesling urged. Vera nodded and began running again. She’d been turned around in the brief fight, and all the buildings here looked identical in the fog. Maybe that was another Sorcerer’s trick. Aesling seemed to be confused. “Where are you going, Vera? I don’t hear fighting, and you don’t know where you are.”

“I don’t have to know,” Vera said. She tilted her head upwards so Aesling could see it too. There, sticking out in the fog, barely visible but nonetheless casting a shadow over the town, was the windmill. “If I get there, I can find Flaveo.” Her boots thudded on the wet ground as she made her way through the alleys, keeping one eye on the windmill so as not to get lost. 

It didn’t take long for more of the skittering creatures to start approaching her through the fog. She briefly considered stopping to try and hold them off, but she didn’t know how many of them there were, and the last thing she wanted was to get overwhelmed. Instead, she tried to keep moving while straining her ears for signs of one of the others. Easier said than done, of course, when noise bounced off the walls of the town, not to mention the fog itself, and while she absolutely did hear the sounds of fighting, she had no idea which direction it was coming from. Behind here, more and more legs joined the chorus of pursuers.

“I have to hope the others had the same idea,” she mumbled to herself as she turned a corner. If she had it right, she was only a street or two away from the landmark she’d been aiming for. All she could do was hope, she figured, slowing down for just a second to catch her bearings. Just then, one of the creatures landed in front of her with a wet splat. It seemed the thing had thrown itself down at her from a rooftop. If she hadn’t paused, it would have landed on her head, something she didn’t want to think about. Quickly she slashed at it with her sword before the thing could get its bearings, beheading it in a swift strike.

“Can you behead something that’s essentially a mouth with legs?” Aesling mused. “Behind you!” Following Aesling’s instincts, Vera spun around, her sword at the ready, and deflected another attack that had launched itself at her from behind. Before she could finish it off, another jumped at her. She caught it, with the brace of her forearm, but instead of bouncing off it seemed to clamp onto her arm with its mouth and clawed legs. 

“Get off get off get off getoffgetoffgetoff GET OFF!” Vera shouted as she broke into a sprint again, hitting the thing with the pommel of her sword. While the idea of the thing being attached to her was incredibly upsetting, it was better than several more. She could already hear the shapes behind her in the fog. Ahead of her, she saw the main road, and she heard the sound of fighting. 

Prince Clarus came into view, his face a mask of concentration. Not particularly worried, he seemed to be focused on advancing carefully. There were bodies of the creatures all around him. Not one seemed able to touch him, though, as his blade wove through the air like a silver thread. 

“Clarus!” she shouted, and immediately clamped her mouth shut when she grasped the impropriety of just shouting his name like that. Nonetheless, it caught his attention, and he swung the sword at her before he had even turned around to look. 

For a second, Vera was worried she was going to be beheaded by the Prince. With the sickeningly slick sound of metal striking flesh, the creature on her arm was cut away, without the blade even coming close to hitting her. Where the creature had been latched to her arm, a circular hole had been chewed almost all the way through her bracer.

“Beautiful Vera!” Prince Clarus said with a roguish grin. “So good to see you! I was worried you’d lost yourself in these accursed mists, but it seems you’ve held your own, eh?” He talked casually as he cut two more of the creatures in half in mid-air, and the two of them moved forward to the windmill.

“Did — did you see the sorcerers?” Vera asked. She deflected one of the creatures and gave it the coup de grâce while it squirmed on the ground.

“I can’t say I have,” the Prince said. “After their initial attack, it seems they’ve sicced their pests on us. Not that it will do them any good. I can do this all day!” He poked one out of the air with deft precision, and turned to look at her with a smile that could only be described as dashing. 

“I love this fool so much,” Aesling sighed. Vera couldn’t blame her. People weren’t supposed to be… well, like this. Not in real life! “And yet,” Aesling said. 

“And yet…” Vera agreed. 

“Hmm?” Clarus asked. Vera quickly mumbled a denial of ever having made a noise, before the conversation was — luckily — quickly interrupted by more of the creatures. 

“I think they’re being directed,” Vera said. She nodded at the windmill. “If they’re conjured up by those sorcerers, that would be the best place to see everything from.”

“Aye,” Clarus said. “We should head up there, then!”

“Well…” Vera hated the idea of splitting up, but they couldn’t afford aimlessly fighting through the mists indefinitely. “I think I can see the house where Flaveo most likely is. If you go up to the windmill, that will likely give me the time I need to get into the house and rescue our friend. And another hand in the fight can only be a good thing.”

“Good thinking!” Clarus said. He started to turn away, then paused, and reached out to her with his free hand. Carefully he cupped her face and looked into her eyes with the kind of intensity she was sure was burning a hole through the back of her head. “Be careful, Vera, Aesling. I can not stand the thought of losing you.” With that, he was gone, slicing creatures away left and right. 

“Bwh,” Vera said. For a horrifying second, she’d thought he was going to kiss her.

“Girl… I know.“

“Fztl,” Vera said as she shook her head and tried to dredge up her brain again from where it had just been unceremoniously flung into a gorge of fuzzy feelings. Thankfully, her legs moved before she did, and the creatures seemed to be focusing on Clarus. 

The Prefect’s house was the largest house in town, easily three floors and an attic, and it had also been the most well kept, until something had torn the door off its hinges. Vera could think of what that had been. She slowed down as she approached the door. Anything could be inside. There were shuffling sounds coming from the entrance hall, but no voices or anything of the like. Sticking her head around the corner, Vera tried to get an idea of what she was up against. 

“Get out of here, girl!” Flaveo shouted. He was seated at a table, tied to a chair, and all of his gear had been strewn onto the table. Behind him stood a… thing. Tall, thin, four long arms with thin, almost sticklike fingers. Its face was featureless, with the exception of a mouth, although there was the idea of eyes and a nose. Its maw was filled with long, thin teeth, all bared in a horrifying rictus grin. 

The creature looked at her, and extended a long, bony finger. That’s when she noticed that there were several of the creatures in the room, and with two of its hands, the sorcerer seemed to be spinning another from sheer shadow. More importantly, there also seemed to be a Demon in the room, snarling as it started to approach her. 

“ASIDE!” 

The bellow came from behind her, and she did as commanded almost before thinking. Just as the Demon reached the doorway, Rubicus’ giant frame crashed into it and the two went flying into the room. A second later, she heard Flaveo’s voice. 

“Oh, hello, Ruben.”

“Flaveo.”

“Thought you were dead, man.”

“That can still happen,” Vera heard Rubicus say as she hurried into the room. The older mercenary had made short work of the Demon, taking it by surprise, but was now finding himself surrounded by the smaller creatures, and having trouble turning fast enough to throw them off. Vera sliced them off him before they could burrow into his flesh. She’d seen what one of them had done to her reinforced braces. 

The sorcerer seemed to be observing them with what appeared to be curiosity, although it was hard to tell. Its grin only seemed to grow wider as the two of them fought with its creations. But Vera knew how Rubicus fought, and she was able to complement him well. Though it was hard to dodge the attacks as they came one by one, she held her ground. When the last of them fell to the ground with another horrible screech, they turned to the sorcerer, who held out all four of its hands. 

“Move!” Flaveo said, just as Vera saw color drain from the area around them, and she knew what was coming. Throwing herself to one side, Rubicus jumped in the other direction, crashing into the table and knocking it — and Flaveo — to the ground. Behind her, with the sound of something heavy and unnatural hitting brick and wood, magic blew a hole through the wall of the building. The creature looked between her and Rubicus and extended a hand to either of them. Rubicus rolled back onto his feet, but Vera could tell he’d landed badly. She knew she could probably get out of the way a few more times, but it could aim at her a lot faster than she could get closer. 

“Hey!” Rubicus shouted at the sorcerer. “Look at me!” It turned its horrible grin towards the man. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, you ugly bastard. Don’t look at her.” He started circling the creature, swinging his sword left and right. “That’s right. Look at me. She’s just a girl. I’m the one that’s going to tear your head off if you look away for even a second for the love of all that is holy Flaveo kill it already.” 

The creature having been distracted long enough for him to have pushed off his restraints and to down some of his magic, Flaveo pushed himself to his feet. “Ten,” Flaveo said, and golden fire erupted from his outstretched hand, engulfing the sorcerer completely.

Elamimax

I think this game has more fight scenes in it than any other story I've written, I think. I hope it works!