Though the world around me has descended into chaos, I remain at peace within the eye of the storm. Death watches us all, and a bountiful harvest falls before her scythe. Kimelidae is her name, and I pray she finds me needing more time to mature before she returns for me. Until then, I, Friend-Not-Food, will continue doing my part in this greatest of battles.
Another dozen corpses fall off the wall. Excuse me, “high road”, as the proprietor insists it be called. Makes no difference to those manning it and those trying to break free from its confines. These ones were dead before they hit at least. The blueshift in the screams of those not yet dead as they approach their demise always creeps me out. Checking over the bodies, I see that they are a bunch of humans and orcs this time, some rank-and-file troops.
With practiced efficiency, I activate [Cleanse the Foodstuff], which removes all their personal effects and neutralizes any poisons or other toxins that may be present in their bodies. [More Hands Make Light Work] conjures translucent but not entirely incorporeal hands to help maneuver the bodies into a cart and their former equipment into a barrel that holds many times its apparent capacity. Wonders of magic never cease, that is a handy storage option, for without it, I would be buried in a mountain of gear worth a small fortune.
Just as I finish loading up my cart, a long neck and head strikes out towards me. Within a heartbeat, a hydra has positioned one of her necks above me, a sickening crunching sound from above announcing that another body would have landed upon me if not for such timely intervention.
“Thanks again, Big Red,” I shout fondly to my favorite hydra of the bunch.
Big Red, as I call her, sings sweetly to me in response, her eyes darting towards my cart without a hint of subtlety until they glance back to me, no shame to be found where begging has made its roost. With careful steps lest I slip on the viscera around me, I push my cart over to her body proper.
“There you go, Big Red, eat up.”
Though the battle hasn’t been going on for more than two hours, she and I have established a good amount of rapport in such a short time. She is a wild hydra of some specialization, but she knows me to be the one to bring her food, and thus she knows better than to bite the hand that feeds her. And I don’t mean some generic hydra, which is any creature with many heads on one body, but the actual Magical Beast, a Hydra, or a True Hydra, as some call them.
I step back and marvel at her meticulous process. Only one head at a time bends down to snatch up a corpse. Swallowed whole, something special happens that seemingly only the red hydras are capable of. A while later, that same head will regurgitate up a pellet of bones, much like an owl would, minus the fur. More importantly, an egg of sorts comes with it. Well, more like a clump of meat inside a leathery and waxy pouch. A skilled eater, she can pre-digest the bodies of the fallen, their bones spared to join the army of creepy skeletons that are fortunately on our side. The food she regurgitates will be distributed to other hydras to help keep their strength up, as it is far more efficient to allow those like her to pre-process food than to let each hydra do it, as many of them would be loath to resist eating the bones.
In short order, a second cart is full of these “eggs”, and with my own cart empty, I return to the high road to find more discarded bodies. Along the way, a few skeletons run past, each one carrying the corpses of the fallen and depositing them on a pile there as more bodies rain down upon it. Though dead, the skeletons still avoid the hydras, for they lack the Skills to safely interact with wild beasts, and those that “pilot” the skeletons don’t want to risk being eaten. Big Red is fairly well-behaved, but I have seen more than a few skeletons and their prizes get picked off by hungry hydras when no one was looking, except perhaps me.
Big Red covers me again as a deluge of bodies rain down upon us. Some are screaming the whole way down, and given their distance from the high road, it appears that they were pushed or perhaps blasted from where they stood. Poor bastards. Bunch of kobolds mixed in this time, and oddly enough, some have pitchforks and torches. I spare a glance upwards, but I see no clue as to what would merit such armaments.
As I riffle through the bodies, I recoil in disgust at one most aberrant in nature. Though wearing armor and other trappings of an officer or sergeant of some kind, his body is malformed, his flesh blue, purple, and gray like old bruises on a cadaver. Tentacles and strange growths, still writhing despite his death, desperately try to grasp at anything nearby in hopes of remedying their predicament. I know not what to make of him other than that he is somehow akin to those from beyond that we fight. If they have infiltrated our ranks, then I may end up a meal for Big Red sooner rather than later.
I duck reflexively as a dragon dashes towards us. With effortless grace, it plucks a body out of the sky before it could land upon my ever-growing pile. Must be a live one, considering the screaming and how it thrashes about impotently, but why the dragon chose that person over any other is none of my business. This whole maneuver is met by a chorus of perturbed roars from a host of greedy hydras that don’t appreciate scavengers. The fine details of those bound for the body pile actually being dead or not appear to be trivial concerns for the endlessly hungry beasts around me.
Oh well, another day, another few coins for my retirement, should I live that long. If only Ma and my Pas could see me now and how I was one of the few [Beast Handlers] in all the world with the Skills and experience needed to fulfill this job, why, they would be beaming with pride. I guess I will just have to ride out my deployment and take a vacation back to Tarr to visit them, but until then, more bodies and more hungry hydras.
“Alright lads and lassies, you took the king’s coin, now it’s time to earn your pay! Get a move on!”
Fear grips me like a petulant child demanding attention, but courage takes me by the hand and drags me along like a mother that has had it up to here with such behavior. Crammed in with dozens of others like me, we jostle along after Sarge as he leads us up stairs and through hallways. Orders must have come down the chain for us to deploy, but as to what those orders may be, I knew as much as the next man.
Even within the confines of our fortress, the roar of battle could still be heard, a blood oath uttered upon the wind that will come to claim its due, seemingly sooner rather than later. I almost slipped upon the stairs in some viscera, the screaming soldiers in their litters nearby most likely the source of such a hazard. However, a hand behind me holds me upright, a friendly reminder that our teamwork can see to it that we don’t end up back down here before our shift ends and with fewer body parts than when we started.
We form up again in a staging room, one wide enough for us to fan out into a formation. A ramp allows us access to the battlements, and even that glimpse to the outside causes me to tremble in my boots. Dragons and beasts battle monstrosities from my darkest nightmares, and we are somehow expected to make a difference in all that. I had thought myself real proper smart when I took the signing bonus to join the Crimson Spears, a relatively respectable mercenary company and one quite accomplished, at least as far as swords for hire can be, but now I feel the fool who took the bait that lured him to his death.
Sarge barks orders, his words encouraging with a dash of roughness to keep us in line. He saw us through The Battle of Black Skies and was instrumental at holding Dagger Pass. He would see us through this, too, and so I tightened my grip on my spear and tucked away my fear.
Before we could advance up the ramp, a rabble of kobolds led by a goblin of all things entered the room from the other side. Many dressed as common folk, but I could tell by their torches and pitchforks along with the garb of their leaders that they were on a witch hunt. We each turn about to face them, maintaining our formation at these unknowns, just like we had drilled time and again.
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“By order of the Emperor of the Crossroad Wayfinders, you are to comply with our investigation! Lower your arms or you will be guilty of collaboration!”
The goblin looked every bit a [Cultist], if not one of them leader-types. Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black, but Sarge will put them in their place.
“You do not command me, vermin!” challenged Sarge with indignation. “Now you lot clear out or we’s gonna hafta clean the floor with you’s.”
The goblin looked at something seemingly only he could see before he smiled proportions too creepily wide for a proper face.
“Ah, Sarge, I see it is you who is the heretic here. The rest of you are innocent, but under the-”.
I couldn’t make out the rest, some loud sound ringing through the room having neutralized his voice. I know not where it came from, but I do know the little bugger was too overly familiar with calling Sarge “Sarge”. He has a proper name, it's… it’s… Not important right now. What is important is these bastards think they can do what they want to him and us, and I know I won’t take that without a fight.
To my left and my right, good men and women ready their shields and lower their spears. If they want Sarge, they can take him from our cold dead hands. It was he who sounded the alarm on The Night of Hundred Fires during the siege of… Well, that was a long time ago, but the point is…
A nosebleed and a headache grip me as I try to remember the details. It must be some foul sorcery on part of the enemy. No time to think now, as the mob is closing in on us and Skills are being exchanged with violent abandonment of further civil discourse.
[Heels Dig Deep, Spears Thrust Forward] activates as our banners empower us. Their onslaught barely even pushes me as we start slaughtering them wholesale. Sarge takes the goblin’s head in a single swing of his sword, Foe… Foe-something. Two fancy kobolds cry out in anger, those two dressed like witch hunters, before they throw themselves at us to avenge their leader, only to also fall to Sarge’s blade.
Still the rabble swarms us, but like grain before a scythe, they are reaped, each one in turn. Soon we-
We are on the ramparts. Confusion grips me as fear returns with a laugh and a smile. A sound like shattering glass echoes around me, like one of them fancy chandeliers or something crashing into the floor. Only half our number are still standing and our backs are to a ledge, the drop below as perilous as it is frightening. I look at Sarge, and he is doubled over, his arms covering his face, but something is wrong. Not just wrong like he is injured, but wrong in the sense that something has transgressed against nature.
I see that very few of the kobolds are dead or injured. The leaders remained unharmed, but I know I witnessed them perish not moments before. Sarge killed them, just like he had killed countless foes before. He will save us, just like he had in the past. He will-
I try to remember his name, the words he said to me when I joined the unit, the specifics of the battles we fought in, but the deeper into my memories I search, the more it unravels into a web of lies. With a sickening feeling rising in my stomach, I watch as Sarge uprights himself and uncovers a mockery of a face, one putrid and gray. Tentacles cover him in odd places and his limbs have all the wrong proportions.
“You may have won this battle,” he growled out in a poor facsimile of speech, his voice guttural and unnatural, “but your world is doomed.”
I remember now. I watched Sarge die, this thing ripping him apart as it spoke words of black magic and enthralled us to his cause. False memories had supplanted truth and reason, and as that realization hit me, rage followed in its wake. On his memory, I swear I will-
Before any of us can react, power explodes from Not-Sarge. The kobolds, quicker on the draw than we are, have raised a magical shield that protected them from a blast. Well, most of them, as some of them and most of us have been cast from our earthy perch and flung out into the open air. None of us can fly, and so only doom awaits us below.
And despite the turbulent upset of circumstances and the tempest of emotions, I find myself resigned to my fate. Perhaps this is penance for failing to avenge Sarge sooner, and worse yet, for following the commands of his killer. As the ground approaches, I welcome the sweet release of death. Soon I will be in the arms of-
A dragon! A red fucking dragon just snatched me out of the air. I squirm in its grip, but it holds tight as it turns away from the wall and flies us up and away back towards the combat. With aerial acrobatics, it spins and flicks me so I land on its back, where two kobolds are sitting.
“No time to explain! Drink this!” one shouts as he shoves some sort of potion towards my face with the opening of it going into my mouth. Half choking, I swallow down its contents, something spicy with a bitter but not entirely unpleasant aftertaste. I don’t understand what’s going on. Only minutes ago I was forming up, then there was some sort of mind-control breaking, then Sarge-
No, not Sarge. Sarge died days ago. That memory filled me with rage, and power unknown heeded my call and rushed into me as my vision turned to shades of red. Whatever this potion is, I feel as though I can crush mountains and bring gods to kneel before me, that I may pass judgment upon them for letting all this happen to me.
“What’s your name,” one of the kobolds asked.
“Timothy,” I responded as I looked for something to vent my rage and power upon.
“Good, Timothy. We need you to fend off enemy fliers for us so we can kill these invaders. Simple really, just stab them with your spear if they get close.”
I nodded knowingly, my whole life having led up to this moment. Serene rage guided my every movement as I lashed out at anything that got close. It mattered not what they were or what form they took, all fell before my spear, as they should. The world had reached a state of harmony, the mortal temptations of vengeance for my squad and my larger unit having been left behind as I soared to greater heights. Where I stuck, they fell, these misshapen monstrosities from beyond. Talons, fangs, fleshy maws with spirals of teeth, undulating tentacles, none could find purchase upon me as I bested them all.
Minutes and hours swirled together as time and circumstance lost meaning. I only needed to destroy, and such a purpose elevated me beyond tedious concerns like rest and relaxation. Like the smallest of sparks turned into a raging inferno, all ran before my power, the quick only delaying the inevitable and the dead falling to the earth below. I hungered for more death, more bloody fulfillment of my only remaining passion upon these things, my spear promising them a swifter demise than what they offered me. I slew a dozen, then a hundred, and no matter how many came at me, I could not sate this hunger for battle or slake my spear’s thirst for the black blood that spilled from the bodies of the fallen.
Just as I had reached the summit of the gods, I felt a small prick in my leg, barely noteworthy other than that I felt my strength fading away soon afterwards. Reason returned to guide my senses afterwards, only to be pushed aside by horror. Who was I, what had I been doing for who knows how long, and what is happening? These questions and more hounded me as the memories of the past few days caught up with me, not the false ones, but the real truth, bitter and naked.
I had killed comrades in their sleep. I had sabotaged supplies. Not-Sarge had made all of us commit atrocities, and now, not even death would accept me for such transgressions. And Paila, sweet Paila, my dearest friend.
“I slit her throat,” I wailed out in anguish before another prick followed, and with it, darkness.
“There, there, Timothy. It’s going to be okay. Just rest now and we will fly you back to safety.”
The voice felt distant. Everything was too confusing and happening too fast and too slow at the same time. I had betrayed my own and been betrayed in kind. What gods would accept me now if I died? Only the darkest of hells awaited those like me, those forsaken by the gods. I would never see my comrades again, I would never be able to atone for letting down Sarge, or be blessed with the opportunity to apologize to Paila. I would-
Darkness enveloped me, promising me an escape from such troubles. Before it could swaddle me fully, I heard one last irrelevant string of words from one of the kobolds.
“This potion works better than expected! We’re gonna need another Timothy!”
