The group of twelve survivors walked through the ruined church.
“What is the situation?” Astrid asked, back to her closed, analytical self.
“Gulschak saboteurs blew up the walls,” Wretch said. “The fortress is overrun. Anyone still human is heading for the station.”
“Then we should arm ourselves, with spears preferably. I am at one fourth flame, you?” Astrid said, looking at him through glasses that somehow were undamaged.
He was low, so low something itched at the edge of his consciousness, whispers and growls. There was a truth there. A truth at the end of flame, one he knew mustn’t be touched.
“All out.”
The edge of Astrid’s mouth twitched at his words.“Let’s get moving, take command,” Astrid said.
Wretch blinked. “What? You're Richter's second in command. That makes—”
“They’ll follow you,” she said, cutting him off. Her hand gestured towards the carnage. Hounds, all dead. Some ripped in two, others reduced to wet smears. “You did this.”
Wretch turned. The group stared at him with awe, fear and relief. Maybe she’s got a point.
“Listen up!” he said with the roughest voice he could manage. “I’m taking command of this group. I am Wretchy, a Fireling. I killed the ones here, but don’t expect me to repeat that trick for a while.”
He looked over the bunch.“The city’s evacuating, and we’re deep behind the secured lines. We must fight our way to the station. Or we die.”
The motley group shifted. Some prayed, others nodded. A big man with a thick beard and a bandaged eye gripped a warhammer.
“Grab a weapon, preferably with long reach. Spear, pole, sharpened plank, anything pointy. You listen to me or Astrid, and maybe we’ll see tomorrow.”
They moved, filled with a purpose and scavenged the desecrated church.
The bearded man approached. “You did all this?”
“I did, wasn’t pretty,” Wretch said. “They were newborn, fought like shit.”
He nodded, resting his hand on the hammer. “I almost wish I’d seen it.”
“Stick with us Corporal Conrad,” Astrid said. “You’ll see worse.”
The group gathered with broken spears and chipped swords. Wretch nodded, handing Gulner’s Blessed crossbow to Astrid.
“I recognize this weapon, did you…”
Wretch shot her a glance.“Let’s go.”
The gates of the church swung open. The suns were rising over the horizon while steam-cannons rang in the distance. War drums thumping through the stronghold filled with screams and laughter. On the street, two hounds fought over a corpse.
“Spikes forward, keep moving!” Wretch shouted. The hounds saw them, bloodied snouts pulled back to toothy grins. They charged.
“They’ll find no weakness here!”
The hounds leapt in a sorry attempt at an attack. Sharp metal and wood meet them, piercing guts and muscles. The pair howled in pain and fury, reaching through the spikes. Wretch slashed a throat while Conrad’s hammer shattered the other's skull.
The group cheered.
“Dogs ain’t got nothing on us, let’s move,” Wretch shouted, impersonating his own image of a certain Captain.
They stuck to the alleyways and stairs, moving through the stronghold, picking off straggling hounds and gathering survivors as they went.
An hour later, the train station came into view, nestled at the heart of the city. A fortress inside a fortress. Morning haze colored the walls gray, below ground lay the station, their only path to salvation.
But it wouldn’t be easy, a horde clawed at the struggling gates, a sea of yelping hounds, no doubt freshly turned. Climbing over one another to reach for a wall manned by panicking crossbowmen and a lone steam-cannon.
“Any other ways in?” Astrid asked.
Conrad shook his head, “not that I know.”
“If we charge the gate, we’ll be crushed.” Astrid said as if describing the weather.
Wretch scanned the walls. “Let me get a better look.”
He swung up a pipe and vaulted up the roof, the tiles slick from morning dew. He crouched, biting a claw while watching the chaos. There were too many. His ragged band couldn’t push through, the station was isolated.
There has to be a way…
Then he saw him, a tall figure on the battlement, hair combed back and yelling orders. Wretch shot to his feet.
“Edmund!” He said out loud.He had to alert him, and with a hint of guilt, he imagined hurting the captain. If he looked in the right direction, his Blessed name should appear even across the battlefield.
Edmunnd froze, trailing his gaze along the rooftops. Their eyes met and relief washed over the Captain's face.
“Good to see you too, Cap,” Wretch said.
Edmund traced the letter A in the air.
“Oh, I already thought of that,” Wretch said out loud, giving two thumbs up and pointing down to the alley.
Movement caught his eye, past the hounds, across the street, another band of survivors cut through a distracted hound. Around thirty, led by a blood soaked woman with a cleaver. Elenya.
Wretch flashed a crooked smile, “the whole team’s back together.”
She spotted him waving and he pointed to Edmund, then to the horde between them, drawing a finger along his throat.
She nodded.
He climbed down, Astrid tilted her head and he gave her a wink. The survivors clung together, a haphazard and wounded bunch. Let’s peddle some resolve.
“Did you know we used to own this land,” Wretch said.
The others watched him with blank expressions.
“But the creatures took it from us. Now we hide behind walls and still, they tear them down. “Rude. Unfair. No manners,” he scoffed
“Where are you going with this?” Conrad asked.
Wretch’s black eyes became slits, “a hundred hounds between us and the gate. There’s no way in, but through.”
The glimmer of hope in their expressions vanished.
“Another Blessed is on the far side of the horde. She’s strong,” Wretch said, tapping his claws together. “If we charge together, we’ll squeeze them to death.”
The group went quiet, a few whispering prayers to the Saint.“It’s a death sentence…” Conrad said.
“No, it’s the opposite,” Wretch said, locking eyes with him. “It’s our only path to life.”
“There has to be another way inside,” someone pleaded.
“The horde will swarm by then,” Astrid answered, matter of factly. “ Listen. The drums, they’re approaching.”
She was right, the beats and yelps were louder. The fortress was falling.
“They want you to lie down and die,” Wretch said. “Don’t you hate that? How little they think of us?”
Wretch pulled his lips back in an unsettling smile of sharp teeth. “But we’ll not lie down. We’re dangerous, you want to corner us? We’ll show them why the land was ours to begin with.”
The alley grew silent. Then Astrid stepped forward, Conrad followed. One by one, the group raised their weapons and inched forward with grim expressions.
“Good, good. That's it,” Wretch said with a grin. “Let’s give them the same courtesy they showed us.”
They formed a line of spears and blades.
“That was a decent speech,” Astrid said in a hushed tone. “Little on the nose.”
“It was the best I could think of.” Wretch said. “Elenya is a fireling now, by the way.”
“Then we might actually have a chance.”
He glanced at her as they moved out the alley, “stay in the back with the crossbow. Survive, no matter what.”
She furrowed her delicate brow and looked straight at him, neither breaking their gaze, “Can you really fight with that reckless abandon while filled with worry? Let it go.”
Wretch turned to face the horde, a crude smile on his lips.“It’s hard not to worry when you’ve got things to lose.”
Above, flaming projectiles soared across the sky, their impact shaking the city. From the other side of the pack, shouts rang out in a chorus of human cries.
Elenya’s group thundered across the cobblestone, thirty uniformed men and women with sabres and pikes. Whatever words Elenya had chosen, they’d been more effective than his. The laughs stopped, twisting maws and wild eyes turning towards the red-haired woman leading the charge.
“Kill them all,” Wretch roared at the top of his lungs, breaking into a sprint. His own group did a cry of their own, fueled more by desperation than anger.
Their steps drummed across the stone. Elenya’s soldiers crashed into the hounds first, spears and flesh colliding with a daft crack.
A moment later, Wretch’s survivors slammed into the other side. Howls of pain from hounds and humans alike mixed in unison. Wretch hurled himself into the midst, ducking under a pouncing jaw and slit the throat with the Blinking Blade. Before the body hit the ground, he had already moved on.
A claw dug into his side, but a war-hammer burst the hound’s head, Conrad charging into the fray with him.
Wretch dodged under a wild swipe, skewering a chest through. In the corner of his eye, the gate drew open. An explosion of force followed, he knew the sound of his captain’s Blessing’s as well as his own name.
He gutted another beast with his claws. A maw shot towards his throat, but a bolt skewered its eye at the last moment, Astrid far more effective with the Blessed crossbow than he’d been. The scent of Iron and leather flooded his nose as the fight turned into chaos, tightly locked humans and hounds in a violent maelstrom of bodies.
A hound slammed its jaws around Conrad’s forearm. Wretch pierced the Blinking Blade through its sternum and swiped another hound across its throat. Another maw shot towards him, he sidestepped, but bumped into a woman missing a part of her face.
There was no way to dodge. Without hesitation he pummeled his fist straight down the gullet. Teeth shredded through his skin but Wretch didn’t flinch.
He tugged at a thought with his last remaining flame, willing the Blinking Blade into his hand. The hound’s eyes shot wide, something bulging out its neck. Cartilage cracked and the blade burst through in a spray of blood. The hound sank to the ground, another two already upon him.
Come get it then, Wretch thought, ripping his mangled arm free.
Metal flashed. The upper bodies of the two hounds slid off their hips.
Elenya waded through the battlefield, cleaver blurring around her without pause. She was bathed in red, armor soaked in blood. Skin, seeping with shades of her power and covered in cuts from the drawback of her weapon. She limped, a nasty wound on her thigh.
They only locked eyes for a moment, and something twisted inside him. She was hurt.
They fought side by side, slaughtering their way forward. The hounds were being squeezed between Edmund’s forces and them, bolts raining from the battlement above.
She butchered another beast, clutching his shoulder in passing. Without a word, flame rushed into him through the Linked flame medallion dangling around her neck. How she had so much he didn’t know, nor did it matter.
Now he could rip and tear for all his worth. “Throw me into the worst of it!” Wretch shouted.
In one smooth motion, she swung the cleaver in one hand while the other seized him by the collar. In a blur, he was catapulted into the sky.
Wretch sailed over the carnage. For a moment, he hovered in the air, incapable of anything but taking in the scene. The hounds were surrounded, Elenya and the survivors from one side and Edmund and his soldiers pushing from the opened gate. Astrid stood in the back, crossbow in hand.
They were thinning the horde, but every fallen soldier rose as another hound. He had to finish this fast.
Don’t think, hunt.
Ashen arms rippled out from his back, unfurling in the wind. His momentum shifted and he crashed down towards the middle of the slaughter.
The impact shook the street. Dust rippled and bones crunched beneath his palm. The massive arms smashed through bodies as if they were made of clay, hurtling hides and splattering blood in a whirlwind of brutality. He was getting used to them now, Jonah’s arms were a fine weapon.
A hound leap, clinging to his true body while its claws raked at his head. A giant hand caught its legs and slammed it into the stone, its head cracking against the rock.
Jaws bit into the long arms as the tide drowned him. He let it.
The world turned red and gray. He cut, maimed and crushed. His muscles, steel and claws spoke in a song of sundered flesh and his flame sang with it.
He lost track of time. One of his giant hands, now missing several fingers, ripped a head clean off. He turned to crush the next one.
There was nothing there.
He blinked away the haze spotting Edmund dismembering a hound on a carpet of its dead kin, his soldiers behind him.
Wretch’s flame was low and his breathing harsh. He let what remained of his extra arms crawl back into his skin, staggering forward, he flashed a smile. The soldiers stared at him with wide eyes and trembling hands around pikes and sabres. Edmund quickly stepped forward, holding him under a bleeding shoulder. His black collarbone poked through his skin. He hadn’t even noticed.
“Good to see you, Captain, were you worried?” Wretch said, looking up at his captain.
“To the point I considered mutiny,” Edmund said. “Can you stand?”
Wretch nodded, then the intoxication of blood dissolved and his expression stiffened.
“Astrid and Elenya!” he said, spinning around.
Elenya knelt on a mound of corpses, the cleaver laying to the side. Her breathing was fast and her chest rose and lowered asymmetrically. Astrid stood before her in a torn black dress. She placed two gentle hands on the cheek of the hunter’s bloodied face.
“Hey sis,” Elenya wheezed without the strength to smile.
“On thy feet Fireling,” Astrid answered as her power closed the wounds of her colleague.
Edmund called over the battlefield.“Everyone inside the gate! These were newborns, if the true horde hits us here, we’re finished.”
The survivors stumbled towards the gate andConrad limped up to Wretch’s side with his hammer bloody and beard stained.
He clutched Wretch’s shoulder. “Thanks for the save back there, If you ever need anything, let me—”He paused, then his eyes shot wide.A fiery hue washed over his pupils. A faint burst of ethereal flame flowed out of him like mist, weak compared to the burst Elenya had just endured.“Don't listen to the whispers,” Wretch said. “Let your wounds ground you.”
After a moment of visible struggle, the man breathed out and his eyes returned to normal.
“Did I just?”
“Welcome to the club, junior. Let’s get inside,” Wretch said as he watched out over the dead people scattered among the hounds.
A scratching heat and bestial growls swept through his mind as well. Not painful, at least not compared to seeing the people he had led dead on the ground.
He shook his head free of that thought and the residual ache from kindling his own flame. It was the seventh time as a Fireling. He was approaching the next rank fast, just as he wished.
Edmund shouted orders, pulling Elenya to her feet. “New Ember, with us, the major will want to meet you. Richters, on me.”
The survivors swept into the gate and soon, the metal doors slammed shut.
“Well… you caught up to me,” Wretch said with an exhale and looked up to Elenya. “But what power did the flame see fit to grant you?”
She looked down at him, battered, a crooked smile through exhaustion. Still, her eyes shined with childlike joy.
“You are going to love this, you reckless flame-guzzler.” Authors note: Hello everyone and thank you for reading! I see you wondering if the Gulschaks have any ideal or if they are just mindless bad-guys to be killed an maimed. Rest assure that it will be explored later. I am taking a minor step back from answering all the comments and personal messages. This is to insulate myself from some of the negativity coming my way. The overwhelming comments and reviews you people post are positive (And I love you for it) but you can't write a story for everyone and I'll still check from time to time. As always, thank you for reading and I'll see you all on Tuesday.