Chapter 9: When The Mist Blows Away - Part One
Jon moves closer to Markus, who suddenly and panickedly starts chanting. He looks at Markus, trying to figure his pattern. As soon as he does, he also joins the chant, only more furiously. They both follow a deep tune, Jon an octave lower. The earth starts to shake beneath them. The swordmen start to exchange looks, they are shaking, but not entirely because of the earth.
Before the trail of explosions reaches the prince, Markus manages to raise a giant magical ice shield out of the earth, almost two meters high but extremely wide to protect a majority of what remains from the army. The explosions finally stop at the shield, Markus's friends and several dozen to a hundred men at least are saved. Jon's chants empower the shield and it a few extra layers of sharpness, causing it to cover the entire line between the explosions and the remaining men.
As soon as the explosions calm down, they stop chanting, causing the shield to disappear. One of the knights still alive behind them, panting, barely manages to utter his next words;
"W-We are no match for the wards- y-your highness!" cries the knight. "Let alone the Dark Lord!"
"Stand your ground!" cries Markus, unsheathing his new sword and walking forth, with a valiant and confident gaze upon him. "The day Nexonia falls to the Dark Lord is the day I die!"
The dark army had already started marching towards them. Jon moves back to stand by the warriors. Markus gives him a quick look, eyes widened, a subtle expression of worry is now starting to show.
"You've got this." says Jon, nodding to him, in an attempt to destroy this sudden slight of worry, as he continues his enchantments on the men.
"Archers, engage!" cries Markus, staring into the battlefield. To this cue, the archers atop the wall set their first line of arrows loose, sending them flying towards the incoming army. Hundreds of arrows start raining down, gracefully penetrating the dark army.
Markus and the other swordmen march forward, preparing for the battle. They are quickly surrounded by dashers preparing to lunge at them.
Markus and his men start to take them out, one by one, or at least they try, as the men are killed as quickly as they could lay their eyes on the dashers. They mercilessly tear the men apart with their razor-sharp claws and fangs. Markus starts to panic, his left foot tapping on the ground as he looks around himself, but he does not let his guard down.
Hod slowly lumbers closer, only stopping a distance away from the battlefield. He clenches his right fist and pulls it backwards, before launching it forwards, detaching and flinging it towards them at an immense speed. The fist starts emitting, and surrounding itself with, an aura of atrocious flames.
The fist leaves a large trail of smoke behind it, dimming the sky. As its shadow overcomes the archers atop the walls. The ones closest start to panic, attempting to run away, but in an instant, the flaming fist loudly crashes and takes down an entire section of the wall, almost instantly smashing and killing around a dozen archers and throwing off another dozen. The rock from the walls starts tumbling down, dropping like an avalanche and brutally crushing several more panicking swordmen below.
The dashers continue to pursue and kill the men, one by one. Markus starts looking around, his feet still tapping vigorously, sweat trickling down his face and feet. An idea comes to him. He starts chanting again and shoots an arc of ice from his hands, waving it around, freezing the dashers around himself, which makes it easier for the men to kill them with their swords, some even pushing them over with their hands and shattering them.
A new flung fist crashes into another side of the wall, very close to Jon. He hears a loud CRASH from above his head, quickly and panickedly stopping his enchantment and starting a new one, creating a magical shield above to protect himself and the men around him. However, due to the rush and lack of time, the shield is small enough for the falling debris to simply roll off the shield and crush the men on the farther end of the group. A cloud of dust blinds their vision outside of the shield. Another crash is heard and as soon as the dust clears, Jon looks around, and notices Hod's fist, dropped several feet away. He suddenly grows angrier, clenching his fist, obviously remembering a rather unpleasant detail of his past.
The goblins and orcs of the dark army finally reach the battlefield, raising their swords and maces. They start to clash with the swordmen.
"There's thousands of them and only a few of us!" cries one of the swordmen while looking away for a mere second, which was a mistake, as he is instantly beheaded by an orc's mace.
"We could use that summon right about now, Fangs!" cries Markus, still freezing the dashers surrounding him.
Finally, Fangs stops humming and opens his eyes, which glow of sharp orange mana. He opens his arms wide and lets loose a large wave of orange mana, a hypnotic sight that causes almost every single man on the battlefield to stop and staggeredly gaze upon his spell.
A dozen summoned trolls formulate, holding swords, running towards the dark army. Dozens of gargoyles, three manticores, around fifty weak-bodied goblins, and a large bear, the same size as the one Fangs turned into, several chapters back. The summons start to clash with the dark army, and they are quite effective, the battle between the two armies finally starts to balance up.
"Quite monumental." says Tamer, who is casually walking across the battlefield, hands in his pockets, across the dead bodies. Fangs stares at him from afar, feigning almost the same carelessness as him.
"You're not the only man who controls shit." calls Fangs.
Suddenly, Fangs starts getting dizzy and drops to his knees. One of the knights approaches him, helping him up, worried.
"Are you alright, sir?"
"S'all good." says Fangs, getting up and staring at the battlefield, hand on his head, tired and slightly pained.
The bear maniacally rips the dark goblins to shreds, roaring as loud as could be heard. Markus is still taking down the dashers with his ice. Fangs's trolls, though not more than around 10 at the moment, are serious trouble to them, since every time they are dismembered, they can easily grow their limbs back, and they aren't having much of a problem killing the orcs. All is going well it seems.
The kingdom's men start to slowly pull back when they see the summons taking control... but that doesn't last, as a loud, maniacal laugh is heard in the distance. So demonic that it instills fear within the men. It is Hod, he starts enthusiastically running across the battlefield, raising his fists, smashing through the summons very quickly, and to him, enjoyably.
His flames seem to be the trolls' weakness, the burning trolls fail to regenerate, thus they are easily destroyed. Hod quickly reaches the back, where all the men are hiding. They stare at him, trembling in their places, raising their swords. Hod gives them a silly, wide smile before he lunges his fist through a man's torso, knocking his chest out of his body, sending it flying back as his limbs and head fall to the ground. He starts to crush the men's skulls and smash their bodies, instantly killing them.
"Woohoo! Hell yeah baby!" cries Hod, as he grabs a screaming knight and violently rips him in half and throws the two halves away. The men near him immediately lose their shit and scream as if they were going through labour. Hod grunts and pants as he enjoys his killing. It's basically Christmas for him.
Tamer stands in the back, he starts to whistle, and from behind him, a few herds of pigs start littering the place, knocking down the taller summons, and anything that stands, to their backs. They cause no pain though, merely a very distracting inconvenience. One of the trolls is knocked to the ground, before a group of dark goblins start to surround him and tear him to pieces with their nails. The skin, the limbs, the neck, the eyes, one of them even manages to behead the troll, but it continues to fight back without it, trying to regenerate it but ultimately failing.
Markus notices Hod's shameless slaughtering of his men. His nostrils flare, he is enraged. He chants and creates a large arc of ice that freezes every dasher around himself and starts running towards Hod.
Jon notices Hod coming close, laughing maniacally at him. Everyone around Jon creeps back, screaming, terrified, except Jon, who stands his ground, giving him a deadly stare. Hod laughs, raising both his arms wide.
"Jon! You are alive I see!" cries Hod.
"You better fucking believe it, Hod." says Jon, persisting his angered stare.
Hod swings his fist at Jon, who jumps and stands on his fist, then jumps from his fist and wraps his arms around his skull.
"What the hell?!" cries Hod. Jon tightens his grip, before Hod starts taking a very deep breath. Jon feels the air tighten around himself.
"No you won't." utters Jon, chanting quickly and creating a blue magical shell around his body, merely a second before Hod's skull starts shooting flames around himself.
Hod waves his arms, trying to hold Jon. Jon continues to wrap around his skull. He starts poking his empty eyeholes with his hand. Hod grunts, annoyed, and starts moving and shaking, trying to get him off.
"Markus, now!" cries Jon, as Hod turns, seeing Markus instantly impale Hod's torso with his ice-enchanted sword.
Hod screeches in pain, waving his arms like crazy for a very short moment before his entire body bursts in flames, tossing both Jon and Markus away. They turn to look at Hod, who is dashing to escape the battlefield, gray, weakened and tired.
Jon lays on the ground, trying to get up but ultimately failing because of some problem in his iron leg. Emit and Fangs approach him, concerned.
"What's wrong?" Emit says.
"Leg's broke... I think it's the heat." says Jon.
"I'll fix it up for ya." says Fangs, going down and observing his leg.
The mist starts to creep up on the battlefield, as an ominous breath-like noise starts to rise beyond it.
"The crawwwwwlerrrrr is heeeeeeere." it hums.
The royal army struggles to get a clear view of anything from the mist, becoming even more fearful, their breathing tenses, they wave their weapons around, but they quickly start to get stabbed and killed in their places.
Jon, still on the ground being checked up, chants once more, slowly giving everyone some of his mist-vision. They start to locate the enemies' positions and slightly retaliate, though still struggling.
"Markus!" cries Jon. "This won't stop until you find him! You need to find the bastard!"
Markus thinks for a moment. I guess he's right. He nods, taking a breath, and then turns to one of the knights.
"Send out the second swordmen, and then the cavalry." he says. "And make sure the mages are preparing their defense."
"Yes sir!" cries the knight, as Markus turns and runs off into the distance.
Tamer stands in the back, watching calmly. One of the dark elvish ladies from earlier walks up to him, seductively holding him closer by the shoulders and whispering something into his ear. He smirks.
"Finally, he's ready." says Tamer. He whistles once more, before a figure starts soaring out of the sky, beyond the mist, at a menacing speed that almost eats up the mist as it passes, letting out a loud and deafening screech... the thunder wyvern, he's back.
The wyvern munches down and eats the gargoyles in the sky, one by one, before it is met by the summoned bear, pouncing on it and knocking it to the ground. They start clawing and biting at each other, fiercely trying to take each other by the throat. The bear grabs the wyvern's neck and digs its teeth in, a few short lines of blood trickle across, before the wyvern's eyes start glowing light blue and it lets off a roaring bolt of lightning that throws the bear back.
Markus continues to run across the battlefield, beheading dashers and monsters on the way, surrounded by a magical ice shield to protect himself.
"The chosen one hides himself underneath the ice , yet fire rages within his heart ... is his fear of the Dark Lord so prevalent that he must do so?"
Markus turns to his side, and sees him with his own eyes... The Dark Lord, the donkey-snouted, pale gray-skinned dark creature, mist surrounding him, as well as a dark and grim presence, with his face tilted-downwards, giving him the ol' Kubrick Stare.
"I fear no man... or ass!" cries Markus, raising his sword, as it starts to get surrounded by ice, while Markus quietly chants under his breath.
"Learn to fear ... it might save your quite overvalued life."
"You should consider doing that yourself." cries Markus. "Save both of us the time and effort, and one of us a life."
"Looks to me like the bigger loss is not on my scale."
"Let us have our swords decide."
Markus moves closer. The Dark Lord lets out his signature sinister laugh. Thorns start to emerge from the ground around himself, he starts to rise from the ground as his legs stretch upwards. His menacing fangs grow, and his hands turn to sharp thorns.
Markus dashes towards the Dark Lord, his sword pointed forwards. The Dark Lord laughs, stretching his arms to hold the prince, but he merely jumps over his hand, only taking a scratch to his foot before he leaps up and aims at the creature's throat.
The dark lord backs down instantly and smacks the prince with his hand, sending him flying sideways.
"You've got moves, mate!" says Markus, barely sustaining a mocking smile before he stands and starts humming.
The dark lord screeches, thorns fill the area, all reaching to grab the prince. He starts to cut them up, one by one, still persisting with his humming. Two thorns reach to get him, almost impaling his torso, before he leaps and front-flips to avoid them, landing just before a third thorn that he instantly cuts.
He stops humming and points his arms forward, sending a wave of orange mana that surrounds the dark lord. He looks around himself confused, before the mana starts taking the shape of three wolves that start biting and clawing at his limbs.
-
Fangs is finished repairing his iron leg, and Jon gets up, struggling to recover his balance.
"You good?" says Fangs.
"I'm fine." says Jon. "Listen, we need to find the prince. Fangs, can you summon?"
"I'm afraid my last summon exerted most of my mana," says Fangs, "I'm barely on my life reserve, if I do anything else... I'ma die, man."
"You stay here. Give your summons some morale, or something." says Jon. "Come on Emit, let's find the prince."
"Can you walk?" says Emit, looking him up and down, concerned about his condition.
"I can fucking run if I need to." says Jon, wiping his face and hair. He definitely means it.
-
The Dark Lord angrily throws the wolves off, which keep returning to attack him. Markus chants, casting an arc of ice that freezes the ground around himself and everything on it, thorns included. He dashes at the Dark Lord, sword raised.
The Dark Lord raises three thorns from the ground, impaling the wolves, but before he even notices, he is met by Markus's sword impaling his chest. Markus stares him in the eye, giving him a wide and proud grin. The Dark Lord looks at him, still.
"The prophecy has been fulfilled now, Dark Lord!" cries Markus. The Dark Lord laughs at Markus.
"Your gods have a terrible sense of humor if they think I would be defeated this fast."
"Wh-" he starts to say, puzzled, before the dark lord sheds his skin in a second and vigorously blasts it off, Markus with it. He lands a distance away, grunting and crawling ahead to look at the creature.
"Shame, now I have to exert some real effort."
The dark lord starts taking a more humanoid form, thorns and claws shrivelling up to dust. He creates a sword from thin air, a mighty blade, strangely glowing with an aura of darkness and blackness that almost absorbs the light around it. It is so large that he carries it with his two hands, but as his power grows, he picks it up with his right hand easily and tauntingly waves it around. He walks towards Markus, laughing, madly lifting his sword. Markus stands and lifts his own as well.
"I have not met a worthy opponent in years, decades even ... Your father, though not a speck of dust's worth of my power, was the only man that saw me in my current form ... But trust me, Markus Wyvern of Nexonin, you will not meet Harry's fate, but Gary's."
-
Jon and Emit are running across the field, past the various bodies and the patches of scorched grass.
"What's the plan?" says Emit.
"Plan? ... I don't know!" cries Jon, in a frenzied and rushed manner of speech. "Can you do any fighting magic?"
"Just... healing, is all." says Emit.
"Healing is all you can do?" says Jon. "How did you get this far in your position without knowing any fighting magic?!"
"Uh, by fighting like any other bloody knight?" says Emit. "Like... with a bloody sword? Do you even know how the bloody army works?!"
"Okay, okay, what can we do?" says Jon. "Can you protect him, somehow?"
"I can cast my greater sanctuary spell." says Emit.
"Greater sanctuary?" Says Jon, puzzled. "Like from Thornridge?"
"Yes, like that, but the normal one, not the two-wizard one." says Emit.
"How does it work?" says Jon.
"Well, there's the lesser sanctuary spell, the green circles I drew back there, little circles where our men can stand and it'll fix them up slowly as long as they are still," says Emit, "and there's the greater sanctuary, it's a circle that is usually linked to one person, where that person could stand and be completely protected from anything on the outside... But I can only cast that once every 13 hours and a bit."
"Complete protection?" says Jon.
"Alternatively, I can teleport the linked person to the sanctuary in case of danger, but that completely depletes the sanctuary." Says Emit.
"Can you cast that on the prince?" says Jon.
"Already have, like two hours back." says Emit.
"Perfect." says Jon.
-
Markus and the Dark Lord stand in front of each other, swords raised, getting ready to clash once again. Markus dashes towards him, attempting to slash at him, but he instantly teleports a few feet back. He goes for another slash, but once again, he teleports back.
"Stay still!" cries Markus. "Fight like a man, you coward!"
"You do not make up the rules in this game, boy."
Markus slashes once more, before the Dark Lord leaps sideways and barely waves his sword, giving the prince a rough cut to the shoulder. He holds his shoulder with slight pain, grinding on his teeth and hunching his shoulders. He starts thinking, and looks around himself, before the Dark Lord teleports again at a distance from him.
Markus stops in his place and straightens his back before he starts chanting, casting a heavy ice shield around himself and standing patiently.
"Now what are you waiting for?"
"I don't make up the rules, do I?" says Markus, giving the dark lord a slight smirk. "Well, neither do you. Bloody deal with it."
The Dark Lord stares into his eyes lifelessly. Playtime is over. He raises his hands to the sky. Markus watches him in confusion. Thorns start rising from the ground, directly surrounding the ice shield. They start to gather and whirl around him.
The ground underneath Markus starts shaking, and Markus finds himself losing his balance and dropping to the ground, before the ground starts cracking and a boulder starts rising from the ground, Markus above it.
Before Markus could leap towards the Dark Lord, he flings both the boulder and the prince a distance away. He rolls off, trying to get as far away from the rock as possible before he hits the ground, but it comes crashing down directly behind him, crushing the back of his legs. Markus screams in pain, grinding on his teeth and panting before turning to look at the Dark Lord, who slowly approaches him, sword raised above his head.
Jon and Emit finally approach the scene. Emit unsheathes his sword.
"In the name of King Harry Wyvern of Nexonin, I command you to stop!" cries Emit.
"You command me to stop? What a funny man."
"If you're not going to get the fuck back, I will get you the fuck back, you filthy bastard." cries Jon.
"You and what ar-"
A wolf pounces on the Dark Lord, suddenly, dropping him to the ground. He is a rather eccentric wolf, with sharply orange-glowing eyes, an elegant fur pattern almost similar to an owl's, and sharper claws and fangs. He keeps him pinned down.
"How about an army of shits not given-" cries the wolf, "-led by Captain shut the hell up-"
The Dark Lord slaps him roughly, causing him to drop off to the side, as he raises his sword and swings at the wolf. The wolf parries his swing with his claws, struggling to hold onto his sword.
"Do it, Mark!" cries the wolf. He notices now that his voice is very familiar, it is-
"Fangs?!" cries Emit.
"What the fuck, Fangs?! you're going to kill yourself!" cries Jon.
"Then just do it!" cries Fangs, before the Dark Lord sweeps his claws away with his sword and goes for another swing. Fangs grabs the sword by his teeth and starts shaking it off, trying to grab a hold of it. He starts to slightly moan from the pain in his teeth, it is clear that the dark sword is hurting him badly.
Markus raises his sword and gets up, looking at his legs that are now better. He turns to Emit, who had just been finishing his healing spell.
"You're good to go, your highness." says Emit. "Be careful, please."
Markus runs towards the Dark Lord, and prepares to land another blow. The Dark Lord notices him, and grabs Fangs with his legs, tossing him away at Markus, causing them both to crash into the ground.
They retaliate and start taking the Dark Lord at once, together. He blocks their blows and claws with difficulty. He struggles to fight with both of them. Perhaps two of the strongest fighters in all of Nexonia, of course he would.
Fangs grabs him by the chest, digging his teeth deep into his torso, as Markus approaches for a final blow towards his chest. The Dark Lord gives off a deep grunt, enraged, and suddenly, he warps his sword from his right hand to his left. He ruthlessly thrusts it into Fangs's chest.
"Fangs!" Cries Jon.
Fangs starts to cry loudly and painfully, as a beam of darkness starts shooting out of his mouth, deafeningly shattering all his teeth and blowing his tongue out. He drops to the ground, turning back to his human form, unwounded but unconscious and slightly bleeding out of his nose and mouth.
Markus, who had been dashing to stab the creature, stops when he sees this sight. He freezes for a second to gaze at Fangs. The Dark Lord doesn't even give him a chance, he kicks him in the stomach and sends him rolling back. The prince, still grounded and too exhausted to stand, glares at him, his eyes burning with rage.
"You think you are strong? You are nothing. NOTHING. Your prophecy is nothing, your gods are nothing ... The only god in this realm ... is ME!!"
The Dark Lord raises his palm towards the prince, it eerily glows with a tint of pure darkness, growing in power and glow by the second, almost ready to blast the prince.
The prince, still grounded and apparently slightly wounded from where Emit hastily healed his legs, raises his sword and whimperishly chants, creating a shield. The Dark Lord laughs maniacally as his blast grows bigger and bigger. Markus knows he won't handle it, but he is still trying to push forward and stand his ground ... For his kingdom and his people.
Emit watches, eyes widened and mouth opened, terrified, he doesn't know what to do now, whether he should do what he had been thinking of doing or not. Suddenly, he raises his hand, and sings two short notes and a long note.
The Dark Lord sends a giant beam of dark mana towards Markus, so strong and otherworldly that you could hear it whistle across the field and kill the grass underneath it, but a very short moment before that, Markus perishes.
---
He appears with a quick spark of light, sitting amidst an atrociously messy field, surrounded by rubble. The area is saturated with shouting and screaming and clashing and other chaotic noises. Rubbing his eyes, he can barely see anything, his vision is blurry from the teleportation spell.
"What..?" says Markus, puzzled.
A herd of pigs scuttles right beside the prince, startling him. He looks around and, as his vision starts to become clearer, realizes that he is back in the capitol, a few dozen feet away from the city's walls.
Dark goblins and orcs and elves litter the area, murdering the terrified folk, pillaging the houses, wrecking havoc. The prince starts to slowly and carefully get up. He looks down, realizing that his legs have been healed completely.
"Where is he?" Markus says to himself, rubbing his head.
A deafening huge crash is heard, Markus turns to the walls, as he watches a large, flaming fist crash through the wall, causing it to drop and tumble to the ground.
"He's back?!" cries Markus, suddenly awakening to his senses, raising his sword and moving towards the wall. He is just about to engage with the dark army once again before-
"Your highness!" calls a panicked female voice, as a hand is laid on his shoulder. He stops to see that the caller is a beautiful, young woman in a cloak, her voice trembling, traces of tears decorating her innocent, pleading eyes. "His majesty... The king-"
"Is he alright?! What happened?!" cries Markus.
"The Dark Lord is afoot!" she cries. "He has captured the king!"
