Demon Core - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: The darkness within

~ [Demon General Sieben] ~

Terror, Male, Demon General Location: Kobold Coast, on the far eastern edge of the Demon-King’s continent

Ocean winds hammer down onto the coast, together with the crashing pressure of countless waves of the black ocean, which surge against the slowly eroding coast. The land itself is being swallowed by the black water of the night that never ends.

He stands beneath the dead apple tree on the edge of a plantation, reaching close to the cliff-side by the ocean. Screams ring out around him as monsters claw through the darkness, cutting down the humans who run this farm that he’s been born on — a spirit arising from the soil, from a blackened, rotting apple seed. They don’t kill them. They just cut their legs, their hamstrings. They eat their knees and break their shins. They gouge their eyes and stick long, jagged claws into their ears, robbing them of their senses so that they can’t escape.

The master wants them alive.

The entity, tall and slender, with robes of rotting leaves that flow down past his legs that fail to touch the ground, looks down at his hand, which materializes into existence, taking the whole shape in the lightlessness of the night. For those humans who might remain alive, he isn’t distinguishable from the darkness. His long, broken silhouette with seven arms, each with seven fingers, is not discernible from that of an apple tree.

The fingers are long and slender, numbering seven on both hands, with nails as long as the leaves of the dying tree that lie scattered all around his feet, soaking into a broken slurry as the heavy rain tears into them.

He lifts his gaze, staring out over the dark ocean.

Others come. The master can sense them, sailing on their ships and boats across the great sea, a competing force to the people of this nation, yet they arrive in the spirit of mortal cooperation, determined to help destroy the great works of the Demon-King.

— Something thumps into him from the side and falls down to the soil, scrambling and screaming.

A human.

In terror, she spins around, staring up at him in the darkness of the night with eyes as wide as the obscured moon, hidden behind the thick clouds, just as hers are muddied by terror. Her glistening, freshly oiled blonde hair, soaked to her skin, clings to her neck.

His seven eyes examine her as she crawls backward, her legs failing her because of the weakness of her own spirit and flesh.

A voice rings through his head, seeing what he sees.

“Yes… master…” replies the demon general to the whispering voice of the Demon-King, looking at the miserable creature down below, her form obscured behind the forty-nine, black, jagged nails of his hands that separate her from his clear vision.

An apple falls from the tree, thudding against the soil.

~ [Seaman Minani-ni] ~

Vildt (Feline), Male, Master Sailor Location: High-seas of the great eastern ocean, The Abigalia Level: 76

Seaman Minani-ni plucks an apple out of a barrel of preserving oil, wiping the greasy fruit off on his clothes as he maintains his balance, the rain pelting his face as he takes a thick bite of the fruit. Somehow, the old Abigalia has managed to weather the storm. He has no idea how. The primary mast is broken, and they had to throw most of it overboard. They just got incredibly lucky that the secondary sails survived and the hull remained intact after the chain of explosions.

“Land, ho!” cries a voice out over the storm. A bell cuts through the night.

Minani-ni turns his head, running to the front of the ship together with many others, as they look off into the distance at the land of the distant continent that slowly comes into sight.

No lights burn in the lighthouses. No fires burn in the windows of the towns along the coastline. No ships sail through what is usually a busy stretch of water, full of merchant vessels moving between the continents.

Murmurs move through the sailors as they stare at the black, lifeless continent. There are no birds and no movements. All that lies in the distance is a colorless, vague splotch that is hardly separate from the ocean as masses of water from the rains that never end stream down the cliff-sides in new falls that have never existed before, washing away unsecured houses and buildings which hang off of cliff-sides, some lost to the ocean, others having got tangled and snagged on old roots and each other now simply hanging from the side of the landmass, as if the continent itself had tipped over sideways.

There is nothing to see except for a single, glowing, red pinprick of light far, far, far off on the horizon. It is the light of a star that has fallen down to the world, killing and destroying everything in its path. The ruby red glow, so very faint, paints the sky far off beyond the coastline.

— It is the light of the Demon-King.

Minani-ni takes a bite of his apple, grease infused juice running down the sides of his soaked face, washed away immediately by the rain that has never left his fur and features since they left port on the other side of the ocean.

“Signals!” calls the look-out.

A moment later, a series of lights come to life on the coastline. Torches and lanterns lit up one after the other, illuminating the landing zone.

They’re expected, after all.

He takes another bite of his fruit, making a disgusted face and looking down at the apple, inside of which half a black worm crawls around, having somehow survived all of this time.

The man makes a disgusted face, throwing the apple over his shoulder, overboard.

~ [Knight Captain Filanze] ~

Elf, Male, Knight Errant Location: The Eastern Coast, Point Nordost Level: 90

Point Nordost is a cape on the rural, eastern shore of the continent. It has steep cliff-sides all around it, high above the ocean, with a single natural point of entry, which is a single path that leads down to a cove with the only beach that can be landed on for days.

“Barriers!” calls the man, marching along the coastline, not too bothered by the thousands of eyes that wander the darkness outside of his grouping of soldiers.

A series of prismatic, magical shields light up the night, establishing a barrier from the outside world. It’s an ingenious system, maintained at specific points of interest throughout the country. Usually, a magical wall would need several men to maintain each section. However, at some key leyline nodes, a rather simple construction has been erected, such as here at Point Nordost, the designated landing zone for intercontinental arrivals.

The elf looks over at a slightly elevated stone platform, only about the width and length of a few strides. Inside of it is carved a detailed sigil, and running out of it is a series of stone channels that almost look like rain-gutters on the sides of city streets.

In the center of the node sits a single priest, holding onto the sigil with his hands. The man’s energy channels through the stonework and runs through the thin channels, out of which arise tall, prismatic walls of holy energy.

Knight Captain Filanze lifts a hand as he walks, idly waving a finger. “Send them back to the Demon-King,” he orders, turning his head to a group of ten wizards and sorcerers, who salute and form a line, lifting their hands into the air.

— Glows of fire and ice surround their fingers, and an instant later, thousands of tiny, crystalline projectiles of both sorts of magic are volleyed up into the air against the storm and the heavy winds, calculated by the professional casters so the magic drops down exactly on the other side of the wall, on top of the monsters of various shapes, sizes, and breeds.

He can’t be bothered to identify them all, as there are just monsters of every type.

Knight Captain Filanze stops for a moment, turning his head to look through the wall that hundreds of hands and claws press against, inches from his face. Undead with horrifically mangled faces, goblins of many tribes and breed, slimes and ogres, trolls from the distant hills as great vipers from the swamplands lash against the walls, smashing their bodies, hands and faces against it.

He’s never seen anything like it before.

Monsters never cooperate like this. Even inside the dungeons of the world, monsters of violently different species will often engage in their natural instincts and eat one another if it comes down to it.

— The wall of raining shards that pellets down from above cuts through the swarm he’s looking at, the spells aimed perfectly by the line of casters that slowly rotates from left to right along the wall. Dozens of the monsters die instantly; others become horrifically mutilated. But rather than running in fear, they continue to howl, frothing at the mouth and striking against the wall. In seconds, more pour from the endless night to take the place of those that have died, simply stepping over the corpses and crushing those beneath their legs who have fallen, unable to get up in their frenzy.

He shakes his head, continuing onward. “Get those docks ready!” he calls out at the team of carpenters and military engineers who are already at work, establishing the landing zone and medical centers with the carts of materials they had brought with them. A team of medical assistants runs after them, putting up dozens of tents per minute with the help of crafting magic.

He points to the side of a team surveying the cliff-side to check its stability. “Get that cannon ready,” he says. “The Demon-King’s knocking,” explains the captain, pointing over his shoulder at the wall. “Knock back.”

“Sir!” replies the head engineer, rising to his feet as they run off to set up the experimental weapon they’ve brought from the capital.

Knight Captain Filanze stands where they stood, his hands behind his back, as he stares out over the ocean, watching the ships come to the horizon. The Vildt.

It pains him to let their kind step foot on his continent, but the orders from the capital are absolute, and they need as many bodies as possible to push the Demon-King back into hell.

~ [The Demon-King] ~

“It’s beginning,” says Cartouche. “The generals are securing the continent.”

Swain nods, looking at her. “Cartouche. What does our route look like from here?” he asks.

The dancer lifts her head. “Now that we’ve passed the western city and the magical research center, we have to make a choice,” she explains. “The road diverges here into a fork,” says Cartouche. “We’ll have to choose our path.” She lifts her left hand. “The western fork leads us to the edge of the continent. It’s an extremely mountainous area,” explains the gallu as she looks at a statue. “There is a massive fortress along the mountainside, spanning several towers and ancient bridges that are interconnected,” she says. “There isn’t a big population, but it’s home to the old orders of paladins.” She looks back at him. “If we turn our backs to them and take the other road, they might become a problem.”

Swain nods. “And the eastern way?”

“That’s where the scary witch-swamp is!” says a voice. He turns his head to look at the ghost, Kirsch, who flies in holding her stuffed toy. “We can’t go there,” says the ghost, shaking her head. “Witches are scary! They’ll eat me!”

Swain lifts a massive hand that the ghost looks at and then lands on. “They’ll do no such thing while I am here,” promises the Demon-King. “Cartouche.”

“The witches are a problem of their own,” explains the dancer as he looks back at her. “They’re old and distant from human society. They might leave us alone if we take the other road,” she explains. “But they might not, and honestly, I’d be afraid of them and their strange magic before I’d worry about the paladins.”

“How so?” asks Swain.

Cartouche shakes her head. “Witches don’t use normal magic like other casters. They’re far, far worse. They adhere to the old rules of the world and work beyond the normal confines of the system. Humans hate them.”

The Demon-King leans on his throne, the ghost crawling up his arm towards his shoulder.

So there’s the choice between a guaranteed threat of modest proportion, or a possible threat of major proportion.

He lifts his gaze, thinking.

~ [Demon General Sieben] ~

Terror, Male, Demon General Location: Kobold Coast, on the far eastern edge of the Demon-King’s continent

The Demon-King whispers to him, his words overflowing in his mind and dripping down his senses like a thick ooze that coats over them, drowning them in his will.

He looks out through the night, his seven arms tirelessly working out of his line of sight as he plucks the long, golden hairs off of the woman’s head one after the other, tying the strands together into tight cords. She screams incoherently, her state of coherence having long left as she did too as he works, tying her limbs to the many boughs of the apple tree.

The humans have begun their defense of the coast, where the intruders from the distant lands are set to arrive, as foretold by the Demon-King.

The general turns his head around, looking at her.

An apple tree doesn’t grow perfectly straight, well aligned branches. They are knotted and twisted, moving up and down and from side to side. It’s very difficult to perfectly align a human body well with the winding boughs of the tree.

One of his hands grabs her wrist, lifting it up to place it flat on the bottom of a branch. She screams, froth leaving her mouth, as her forearm breaks in half as one of his other hands ties the rope of her own hair around her wrist, fastening the end of the limb with many broken places to the tree just as her legs, her torso, and all the rest of her have been secured to it.

He tilts his head.

It was very troublesome work.

He stares at the woman, blood dripping from her hairless, red crown, dripping down to the muddied soil below the juice of an apple. Her limbs are twisted and mangled, splaying out left and right as they follow the branches of the tree, the same as her torso and waist.

The demon general lifts a hand towards the distant darkness, down towards the coast.

~ [Knight Captain Filanze] ~

Elf, Male, Knight Errant Location: The Eastern Coast, Point Nordost Level: 90

“Captain!” calls a sorcerer. The man turns his head to look, watching as the night immediately turns quiet.

The air, which only a second ago had been filled with screams in the same number as the songs of larks in spring, now carries nothing with it except for the crashing of the waves against the shoreline and the splashing of the rain down at their feet.

Hundreds of monsters turn away from the wall, vanishing back into the night in total silence. Even the mangled, half-dead monsters at the foot of the wall crawl and claw their way away, back into the darkness.

The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as he approaches the fortifications, watching the now silent night.

Something is wrong.

“Ships on the coast!” calls a voice. He turns his head around, looking back to see the masts arriving on the shoreline, just down below their basecamp. He lifts a hand. “Send a group to the boats. Collect the wounded and bring them to the tents.” He looks back at the wall and then at the casters. “Continue the bombardments. Lower your intensity and aim further into the darkness.” He looks back out through the wall. “They’re still out there.”

“Sir,” replies the head wizard.

Knight Captain Filanze rubs his chin, narrowing his eyes.

This is very unusual behavior for monsters. Obviously, he knows that these are very unusual circumstances. Something is up. He’s loath to attribute intelligence to them, but if he didn’t know better, he’d say they’re up to something.

Who knows what the Demon-King can make possible in the night that never ends?

“Fortify the walls,” he orders. The man turns his head, looking at a high ranking priestess. “Check everybody in the camp for signs of corruption or possession,” he orders. “Once you’ve finished, start over and do it again. Don’t stop until we leave.” He thinks for a moment, looking up to the sky. “Throw out any food and drink that has been touched by the rain. Just to be safe.”

“Sir!” She salutes and takes her team to start looking for any internal signs of demonic influence.

He’s been informed of the Demon-King’s penchant for trickery. He’s not going to take any chances.

— Something howls in the night.

The man turns his head, looking at all of the other soldiers around him who have come to a stop, all of them staring through the glowing wall. A single voice carries through the darkness. It’s wretched and broken, screaming with a shrillness to it that is… otherworldly.

“Watch the cliffs,” he orders, passing by two soldiers as he walks off. “Make sure everything is locked down tight.”

“Sir.”

He’s not going to let whatever is out there ruin his mission.

The scream carries through the air, like the wail of a banshee it cuts through the heavy rain and the crashing of the tide.

~ [Demon General Sieben] ~

Terror, Male, Demon General Location: Kobold Coast, on the far eastern edge of the Demon-King’s continent

His long fingernail runs along the base of the human’s stomach, cutting her open from the bottom of her ribs to the base of her hip-line with one long, slow drag of his hand.

Her intestines fall straight down out of herself.

The Demon-King has ordered him and the other generals to only take prisoners so that their souls can be claimed for the power of the demon-core. But in some cases, you need to break a few humans to catch a few more.

— She screams like an animal, her body hanging loose as her steaming insides plop right out of her body. Her stomach, her entrails, sagging out of her like bloated, gorged and dead worms, sagging and filled warm with the contents of her meals prior. Human waste and blood pool all around below the limbs of the tree, together with her blood and spit.

The nature of the Demon-King’s magic is one of beauty and the conniving trickery that life itself often embodies. It is a playfulness, almost, that one encounters during their days in this world when confronted with the universe in its happier moments. For those who know only suffering, this fact of life sounds absurd and perhaps almost esoteric, but for those who have glimpsed a twinkle in the glowing light of the sun, as if it were the mischievously shining eye of God, they know that there is a game-like quality to life.

He picks up an old apple from the ground with one of his hands, looking at it.

With another hand, he pulls back her head and shoves it into her mouth, breaking several teeth, and then forcing her to chew with his other hands, which ends up breaking several more. He watches as the apple slides down her gullet and then into her stomach, which drapes out of her open torso, hanging beneath her and being washed over with rain.

She screams, but she isn’t in a state of awareness. It is simply the animal state that lies dormant behind the facade of humanity.

Bending down, he picks up her still attached stomach, feeling it in his hands, feeling the apple inside of it.

Life may be a game in many ways. But games can turn ugly, fast.

But if you’re in it to win it, you need to be a little ugly yourself. Especially if you want to use that special magic that life has for those willing to dig deep enough into the rules.

— He pulls on her stomach, pulling down her head, and then shoves it into her own mouth as the cycle continues.

Her wails carry through the air.

Playful worms, dancing in the rain, rise out of the soil and play around in her entrails that remain down on the grass.

~ [Seaman Minani-ni] ~

Vildt (Feline), Male, Master Sailor Location: The Eastern Coast, Point Nordost Level: 76

The Abigalia strikes the shoreline, beaching itself almost too vigorously, as if the wind were intent on helping them arrive as fast as possible.

The other, less damaged ships of the armada remain out a ways, anchored, and their crew come to the shoreline on small boats. But the Abigalia and several other ships are lost causes for the home journey.

Minani-ni looks down over the edge as people begin to disembark.

Ropes and ladders are thrown off of the front of the ship, as people begin to climb down, eager to touch soil, even if it is only the soaked, wet sand of the beach.

Guardsmen and priests come down the hang of the cove where they’ve beached and where the smaller boats are starting to land.

He sighs in relief and then grabs a rope, sliding down himself.

There’s work to do. Supplies need to be unloaded, the wounded need to be brought to medics, and a full meeting of all of the surviving ships needs to happen so they can see what their numbers are like.

His boots touch wet sand, and, despite the fact that the world isn’t moving, he still feels like it is. His head wobbles from side to side, as if he had too much to drink, and the vildt falls over, turning and landing on his back as he stares up at the sky.

A great sense of relief comes to him.

They made it.

He’s spent his life at sea. But he’s never experienced anything like this before. This was different.

The other men around him all collapsed too, in their own way.

It’s not bad. It’s just that a lot of them have a bad case of seaman’s legs and severe sleep deprivation. It’ll take a little while for them to get back on track.

A priestess leans over him, looking down at him.

“Are you well?” she asks, her tightly bundled black hair dangling in one knot over him. She smells like work and fear.

He looks up at her. “Never been better,” replies the man, as the water of the ocean rises up to his feet and then pulls back down away without him again. “We’ve come to help fight the Demon-King,” says Minani-ni.

“Water!” she calls over her shoulder to a team of attendants who are doing their best to get to everybody.

He closes his eyes, sighing in relief once again, just because it feels so good to do it. With his darkened vision, the wobbling of the world intensifies even more. But he just lays there and enjoys the sensation.

— Something grazes his hand.

The vildt opens his eyes and lifts his head, looking down at the half-eaten apple that has washed up on shore.

The worm seems to have gone for a swim.

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~ [Knight Captain Filanze] ~

Elf, Male, Knight Errant Location: The Eastern Coast, Point Nordost Level: 90

He takes the admiral’s hand, shaking it and nodding his head. “We’ll see to your wounded,” says the captain. “Point Nordost is currently being besieged. So we’re trapped here,” explains the elf. “Once it’s done, you and your men will be escorted to the demon frontier.”

“I see, thank you, captain,” replies the admiral, shaking his hand, a long, scarred set of ears hanging down below his hat. “Is it the Demon-King?”

“Something of the sort,” replies the captain.

“We have men to spare for lookouts and guards.”

He shakes his head. “That won’t be necessary. Thank you,” replies the captain. He gestures up the cliff-side of the cove. “You’ll find the camp up there. You and your men have accommodations waiting.” The admiral looks at him and then nods.

Knight Captain Filanze turns his head, watching as the Vildt admiral and his group of officers are escorted up to the lodgings above.

As if he’d let some Vildt soldiers mingle in with his own men on the wall. He might as well throw the key over the wall into the Demon-King’s hands himself. The elf turns his head, spitting on the ground, before walking off to continue his duties. Now that the Vildt have arrived, they have to break the siege so that they can get them to the Demon-King as fast as possible, where they can make themselves useful as meat for the slaughter.

For every day longer that a Vildt stands on his continent, the world becomes just a little less worth living in.

Filth.

“What’s that sound?” asks a sailor, referring to the wail in the air that belongs to some dying wretch.

“Just the wind,” replies a soldier, escorting him to the camp.

~ [Demon General Sieben] ~

Terror, Male, Demon General Location: Kobold Coast, on the far eastern edge of the Demon-King’s continent

The serpent eats its own tail.

In alchemical practice, the ouroboros, the depiction of a serpent doing exactly this, refers to a great many things — the cycle of rebirth and recreation, the endless pursuit of the forbidden knowledge of the world, hidden from mortal eyes by the gods.

The transformation of one object into another.

The woman has gorged on her own entrails, which loop down around below her chin before being pressed back into her face.

— Her fingers twitch, and her eyes roll back into her head.

He watches the process continue, cycling over and over through herself until seven loops have been completed.

And for the first time, the woman stops screaming.

Her body, tied upside down to the bottom of the branches of the tree, falls limp. Her hands drape downward, and together with her head, her neck presses against the rope of her own hair that had tied her to the branch.

The demon general reaches into the mass of her confused, knotted entrails to find her stomach once again. Grasping it, he rips it fully free from her dead body, clutching it in his hands, and then cuts it open with a black nail.

A fetid, oozy mass runs out over his hand as the stomach, sliced open from side to side, flops open and drapes over his hand like a wet rag.

Inside the mess are several beautiful little apple seeds.

Magic is indeed a curious thing.

And forbidden magic is even more interesting.

He does as the Demon-King instructs, heading to the prisoners. They lie, shackled in a bundled heap of screaming meat. He picks them up, one at a time, forcing the seeds down their spasming, screaming throats.

~ [Knight Captain Filanze] ~

Elf, Male, Knight Errant Location: The Eastern Coast, Point Nordost Level: 90

“The cannon is ready, sir,” replies the head engineer. He looks over at the device. It’s an interesting, if not limited, prototype weapon.

It’s a long tube mounted on a platform that can be rotated from side to side. It is mounted on one of the leyline nodes, the same kind that the priest is using to amplify his magic in order to empower the point’s walls. With only normal casters around, it isn’t worth using the device, as they could just spell-cast themselves. But by hooking it into the leyline, it’s essentially a free source of magical attacks, as one can channel violent bursts of the world’s natural energy through it.

The theory is that it’s an excellent coastal defense weapon, which is moot at the moment.

He looks back up towards the horizon.

But it will be important when the order comes to sink the Vildt ships. With its range and power, the device, which is the size of two men, will easily be able to accurately hit even those ships anchored out in the waters off the coast.

“Good work,” he says. “Aim for the sky above the orchard,” he orders. “I want some light.”

“Yes, sir,” replies the head engineer as he and his team rotate the gun towards the orchard, lifting its barrel up to the sky. It’s, in essence, just a big tube. But the inside is lined with an intricate series of refracting crystals that take the magic, bouncing it off of a series of perfectly aligned fragments in just the right order to collect them together into one coherent blast.

“Charging.” He watches as the ring of gemstones, embedded in the platform around the device begins to light up in order, the glow traveling around the circle until it makes a full pass. “Salvo is ready, sir.”

“Fire,” says Filanze, turning back to look at the wall.

In an instant, the night changes. The wet, heavy hairs on his head rise up into the night, as if grasped by a witch’s fingers. The air smells oddly clean all of a sudden, as if he were standing within a lightning strike. A resonant hum fills his ears, and then, the world turns bright.

An arc of light shoots out over the wall and into the night, cutting through the sky like a flying star, launched into the air by the hands of men, as if they were throwing one of the god’s own lights back at them. The streaking orb flies, hanging heavy in the sky and leaving a glow in its wake that lights up the landscape all around them, as if the sun had chosen to shine only on this particular spot.

“Sir!” calls a voice from the wall. He looks, seeing what the guardsmen see too.

There aren’t any monsters left in the orchard. The gaps between the fallow trees are empty. All of the claws and teeth are gone, leaving only a few mangled limbs here and there. But what is of note is there, off in the distance, are a group of humans and elves, chained together and being led off into the night by a group of armored undead.

He narrows his eyes, watching them march on the back edge of the tree-line. One of them stops to look up at the light and is pushed forward by the armored creature behind them.

“Should we send out a rescue party?” asks the soldier.

He thinks, staring and watching the people slowly vanish. It’s his duty as a knight to keep as many people in his country safe and from falling into the clutches of the Demon-King, but… “No,” replies Knight Captain Filanze.

He doesn’t trust this.

Sure, there’s no way the enemy could have known they would illuminate the night and reveal their prisoner transport. But he’s not taking any chances. If the stories of the Demon-King’s wiles are true, then this could easily be some sort of trap. What if they’re undead, pretending to be people? What if they’re possessed and are just waiting to be ushered into the walls where they can knock them down from within?

He’s not falling for it.

“They’re dead. Leave them,” replies the captain.

“Barbarism,” says a voice to the side. His eyes twitch as he gets ready to order lashings for one of his soldiers. But his eyes see the Vildt admiral, surrounded by his officers. “You would leave civilians that you could save to die?” he asks.

“It’s my job to ensure the safety of this camp and of your men, Admiral,” replies Filanze, doing his best to suppress his disgust at being talked back to by such a creature. He has to take the high road here. “You don’t understand the nature of the Demon-King. This is clearly a trap.”

The rabbit Vildt steps forward, adjusting his hat and waving over his shoulder for his men to gather themselves together. “Knight Captain,” says the admiral, shaking his head in dismay. “I would fear that in your craze to protect your country, you have lost your humanity.”

Filanze’s eyes go wide as he clenches his fists. He does his best to calm himself, before he engages in an act of war. “Where are you going?!” he barks. “You can’t leave the camp!”

The vildt admiral looks over his shoulder. “My men and I are going to fight the Demon-King here, Knight Captain. Now.” He looks back forward. “And not just when we arrive at his castle.”

The man’s thick accent digs through his head, along with the presumptuousness of his statement. It’s a mockery of his rank, title, and position. “Admiral,” he barks. “You and your men are guests on our continent. I am the ranking officer here. You will do as I say!” commands the man.

The vildt ignores him, walking away and lifting a hand. “I believe that as an admiral, I outrank you, captain,” replies the vildt, jokingly. His men laugh as they walk towards the wall.

“You won’t be let back inside!” yells the captain.

The vildt seem unphased and simply walk through the magical wall, exiting its safety as the night begins to fall down again, the salvo launched into the air from the magical cannon beginning to die out.

The man clenches his teeth, froth practically forming on his lips as he spins around. “LOAD THE FUCKING CANNON!” he orders, screaming at the engineers, who don’t dare make eye contact with him. “FIRE AGAIN!” he orders.

He wants them to die out there, being torn apart limb by limb. He wants the monsters that are still out there, clearly, to crawl over them as darkness falls and eat them alive.

But it would be a pure diplomatic disaster and a critical failure of the mission that he himself was tasked with, that is, to keep the Vildt safe and bring them to the Demon-King’s castle.

So as much as he hates them and wants them to die, he’s just going to have to be patient and wait for the Demon-King to handle it personally.

“FIRE!” he orders.

Another blast from the cannon launches into the air, illuminating the darkness with a fresh star in the sky.

~ [Demon General Sieben] ~

Terror, Male, Demon General Location: Kobold Coast, on the far eastern edge of the Demon-King’s continent

He looks at the many monsters that lurk in the shadows, hiding where they may from the brightness of the human’s illumination.

The humans saw his bait a little early, but that’s fine. He managed to do what he needed to do while their eyes were all focused on the front wall of their little fortification.

The demon general turns his head and watches the waters of the ocean, which just need to do their part now in fulfilling the grand will of the Demon-King.

~ [Knight Captain Filanze] ~

Elf, Male, Knight Errant Location: The Eastern Coast, Point Nordost Level: 90

It is half an hour later.

He stands there, impatiently staring off into the glowing night, with a team of guardsmen and priests at the ready, as a sound fills the air.

His ears perk up; he perceives them to be screams at first, but then, to his confused dismay, he notices that it’s a song. They’re singing sea-shanties.

Those bastards.

Knight Captain Filanze watches with his emergency crew as the vildt admiral and his men return, weapons and prisoners in hand. The wounded humans and elves they’re carrying over towards the wall. It doesn’t look like they lost a single man.

“Knight Captain,” says the admiral, holding a wounded and shackled elf in his arms. “We have returned from our most perilous journey,” he says. The vildt smirks, tilting his head with his annoying, stupid, over-sized hat tilting with it and his floppy ears. “It was quite the task, but me and my men managed to beat all five level nine skeletons,” he says, lifting his eyebrows. “Just barely,” says the man, mockingly.

“Let them in,” orders Filanze. “Quarantine them here immediately. Nobody goes into the main camp.” He looks at the priestesses. “Check them from head to toe, inside and out.”

“Sir,” replies the head priestess, walking over to the wall with several of the knights.

He looks back at the engineers and the coastal cannon. “Cease fire,” he orders, before looking back at the men coming into the camp.

Knight Captain Filanze rubs his chin, thinking.

He’s trying to view everything that happens through the lens of the question, ‘how could the Demon-King use this?’ Infiltrating their defenses is the obvious answer, but maybe that’s not the case? It seems too easy.

Maybe the provocation insinuated between their factions is the goal? Maybe getting him angry and making mistakes is what the Demon-King is planning.

Maybe his overthinking is the exact weapon being wielded against him.

Knight Captain Filanze narrows his eyes, running through every single possibility in his head. The wall goes back up, the priestesses look everyone over with their magic, and then give him a thumbs-up, clearing all of the survivors. They’re real people, untouched and uncorrupted. Maybe they really were just prisoners?

“Sir,” says one of his men. “Bodies are starting to wash up on the shore.”

He looks at him. “It’s probably just the dead Vildt,” he says. “Throw them in a heap and let them be claimed by their own.”

“Please!” cries a desperate, frantic woman. “You have to save my husband!” she pleads, grasping onto the admiral’s arm.

He looks at her in confusion for a moment. “Ma’am,” says the admiral. “We only saw your group out there,” replies the vildt, lowering himself down onto a knee and placing his hand gently onto hers, which clasps his sleeve with dirty, bloody fingers.

She shakes her head. “No, the cliffs,” she explains. “It took him and the others to the cliffs on the coastline!” yells the woman.

“It?” asks the admiral, looking at her.

The woman doesn’t reply, the question of the identity of whatever she saw causing her to break down, as she falls over and clutches her face, screaming as the priestesses rush over to her.

Knight Captain Filanze stands there, looking at them.

The coast.

That drop from the cliffs all around this region is high enough to kill anything, even the strongest of monsters. Point Nordost is the only place anything can set foot on here for miles on end.

“Sir,” replies the soldier from a moment ago, leaning in. “They’re human bodies,” whispers the man.

Filanze’s eyes go wide. He spins around. Shit. SHIT.

“ALARM!” yells the captain. A bell starts ringing in the camp, followed by another one and then another one. “Guards, get to the cape!” he orders. “MOVE!” yells captain Filanze, running off in a full sprint through the rain through the camp, running through the rows of huts and tents as they make their way to the only path atop the cliffs that leads down towards the ocean.

Lanterns and torches light up the beachhead below, which is littered with corpses that have washed ashore. Yes, most of them belong to waterlogged vildt. But many fresher looking ones lie there too, and they are clearly human.

The corpses bulge and twist as something moves around inside of them, squirming and twisting as if great worms were pressing through their entrails.

Their stomachs bloat and burst, the living around them running away in panic as, from the seven human and elf corpses, twisted, gnarled trees press up unnaturally towards the sky, their roots digging into the blood and salt-soaked sand of the corpse-littered beach as they grow with sickening speed, looking like clusters of veins.

Red, thick apples drop readily from their fruits that regrow over and over, falling to the water.

Shit.

“CASTERS!” calls Filanze. “Bombard the beach!” he orders. “Destroy those trees!”

“Sir, there are still vildt there,” says a man.

The apples that have fallen begin to break apart, the sickly fruit rotting and from the mush emerges a claw and then a tooth and then an eye. An instant later, a red, screaming monstrosity pulls itself out of the apple, a creature of impossible size, compared to the egg it came from, as if it were simply pulling itself straight out of a hole in hell.

“It’s a monster spawner!” barks Filanze. “FIRE!”

The casters lift their hands, firing salvos down into the beach at the trees that drop dozens, hundreds of fruits that continuously regrow over and over. A swarm of nameless, faceless creatures, demons from another era, born of unnatural, horrific magics, begins to swarm the area, climbing up the beached ships and raiding them, pressing their way towards the few fighters who manage to hold the line down below.

He knew it.

The Demon-King really is always up to something. But he’s ahead of the game. He caught it early. They can still control this. Stopping invading forces from rising up the beach is the entire point of this entire location.

“Ready the cannon!” he orders, lifting a hand, listening to the energetic hum fill the air.

The Demon-King might think he’s clever. But he’s lost the element of surprise now. The game is over.

~ [Demon General Sieben] ~

Terror, Male, Demon General Location: Kobold Coast, on the far eastern edge of the Demon-King’s continent

He lifts up a worm from the soil down below the bloodied apple tree to his mouth, whispering to it.

The worm wiggles and jiggles in his overabundance of fingers.

~ [Knight Captain Filanze] ~

Elf, Male, Knight Errant Location: The Eastern Coast, Point Nordost Level: 90

“FIRE!” orders Knight Captain Filanze.

— The world shakes, the knight glowing alight far too brightly.

He turns his head just in time to watch the explosion of the cannon blast impact into the center of the camp, into the ward-powering sigil, evaporating it and the priest entirely. Stones and shrapnel fill the air.

The wall around the fortification fades, faltering immediately. The heavy darkness from beyond encroaches on the camps, snuffing out flames and lanterns as it crawls towards them.

No…

NO.

It turns dark, and he doesn’t see to whom the hands that drag him into the night belong, only that there are too many of them.

The beach was also a distraction.

~ [Seaman Minani-ni] ~

Vildt (Feline), Male, Master Sailor Thrall to the Demon-General Location: The Eastern Coast, Point Nordost Level: 76

Seaman Minani-ni and his group stand at the shore cannon that they have commandeered on the orders of the great general as the camp falls fully dark, monsters parading through the screaming harrow, clawing into tents and huts, dragging out the sleeping and the injured and tearing them alive off into the night.

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The half of the apple-worm he had eaten earlier wiggles around inside his brain.

Minani-ni turns around, lifting a hand and saluting the demon general.

The worm whispers words of praise to him, and he helps, taking apples full of worms and feeding them to the others, so that they too can obey the orders of the great general, servant to his majesty the Demon-King.

May his night never end.

The last light shining during that night, being that within the eyes of a man, dies out as a worm crawls past it.