Dual Wielding

Deep in the thick of the battle, surrounded by monsters, all Ren could think of was how Tryn was going to miss him. Though they were both only in their early twenties, they’d courted each other for years, and the previous year, they’d finally gotten married. It had been the happiest day of Ren’s life.

He’d expected to spend his life tending to the family farm, living a peaceful life in Straetum and dying with Tryn and their children by his side. Yes, that would be nice…

The crack of his spear snapping in half jerked him back to reality. The cold rain pelted him in the darkness. He’d been divided into a small group of five, with two trained men and three people like him. So far, only one had fallen, a fact he considered a miracle considering the threats around them.

He whimpered as he called out to the group, leaving the front half of his spear embedded in the dead monster. “My spear broke!”

The squad leader, a large man Ren didn’t know, barked out an order promptly, “Let’s fall back and cycle out with another group!”

Ren nearly cried out in relief, cycling out meant moving to the back of the groups, further in the town away from the worst of the fighting. He might actually live.

The world turned upside down as his vision spun as his body was flung through the air. Vaguely, he heard the crack of breaking bones and screams from back where his group had been. He crashed into a heap at the edge of a building, his vision going black.

When he came to, he could only watch helplessly as a giant bear-like creature more than twice his size picked through the bodies of his former squad mates, razor sharp teeth rending flesh with ease. Ren tried to crawl away, but the sound alerted the beast, and its head snapped towards him, cold, hungry eyes bearing into his own. It walked towards him slowly as he pitifully dragged his body across the ground. When it got within a few feet, he could smell its putrid, hot breath breathing down on him.

As the bear raised his claw to slash down at him, he couldn’t even close his eyes. A peaceful life, the one he should’ve had, flashed through his mind. Tending to a farm, raising children, walks by the river with Tryn. He should’ve stayed in the shelter with her, coming here was a mistake. He’d thought he was brave, strong even.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered as the claw of the bear swung down on him with the certainty of the grave.

Until he arrived.

A boy with raven black hair crashed into the side of the beast, impaling it on the end of his sword as the force of his blow drove them both several feet away. He came skidding to a stop as the bear flew off the sword, tumbling across the dirt. Ren recognized him, this boy had been yelling something before the battle, hadn’t he? It was difficult to hear over the storm, but he’d caught the name: Wyn.

For a reason he couldn’t explain, Ren felt peaceful, a sense of warmth and protection radiated from this boy, several years his junior. Maybe he was hallucinating, but a bright purple spirit seemed to swirl around the boy in wide arcs, like a comet streaking through the night sky.

The bear stumbled forwards, still reeling from the force of the last blow. But Wyn stepped to the side, cutting a deep gash along the entire length of the beast’s body with an almost business-like air about him. The monster flopped to the ground to the right of Ren, lifeless. After confirming its death, Wyn glanced over to Ren, keeping his sword unsheathed and his head on a swivel.

“Can you stand?” he asked, holding out a hand. Ren took it, struggling to his feet.

“Thank you,” Ren gasped, clasping the boy’s hand tightly, holding back tears. “I owe you my life.”

“It’s nothing,” Wyn replied hesitantly, “Please sir, seek medical attention at the fallback point, you hit the wall pretty hard. Take the side paths, we’ve funneled them into the main road so be careful about crossing there.”

Ren could only nod numbly as Wyn patted him on the shoulder, “Hang in there. We’ll make it through this.” An instant later, the boy was gone, dashing off through the streets out of sight.

Ren stood there in the rain, the sounds of battle now more distant as he began to chuckle, softly at first, filled with intermittent coughing, until he found himself laughing. He held his hand to his head, the absurdity of it all setting in.

“We’ll make it through this huh?” He asked the air, eyes plotting a path to the nearest shelter to get checked out and get a new weapon.

Somehow, he almost believed it.

***

Ignore it. Wyn thought as his head pounded.

Ignore it. Wyn thought as the exhaustion ran deeper and deeper.

Ignore it. Wyn clenched his teeth, shoving down the aching of his limbs.

He rushed across the battlefield, from group to group, providing assistance as needed. After making sure everyone had evacuated to the shelters, they’d decided this was the best role for him: a mobile skirmisher, moving through town and helping wherever the fighting was worst. It was a good plan, but he was so tired. Whatever Iillia had done that had refreshed him had already run its course, leaving behind a sense of bone deep exhaustion as hours of fighting, and days without sleep caught up to him.

He heard a cry of pain from further in the town, close to the garrison. He turned sharply, dashing around a corner. A squad was being overwhelmed by a few stalkers and streak-bats as they tried to hold the line. The makeshift group was surprisingly coordinated, moving in such a way that they were never surrounded, but they simply couldn’t land a hit on the bats, which were much faster than almost anything else Wyn had seen in the tomb.

Wyn leapt over the defensive ring they’d formed, cutting a bat out of the air with an overhead slash and landing in a crouch. As soon as he landed, he pivoted on his heel, swinging his sword horizontally to intercept a pouncing stalker. He’d gotten used to their tricks long ago, they weren’t smart, relying fully on their camouflage to attack. By now recognizing the tell-tale shimmering in the air was child’s play, they’d stopped being a real threat a while ago. The rain made it even easier, as they stood out as it splattered against them even when camouflaged.

“Regroup on the west side with the others, they’ll need reinforcements there soon!” He barked an order to the squad he’d just saved, and they trotted off in acknowledgement, leaving the rest of the monsters here to him. The small fry like the stalkers weren’t a problem, it was the ones he didn’t know that were the most dangerous. Bear-like creatures with claws a yard long, enormous lizards that spit acid, each new opponent proved more dangerous than the last. He’d used up all his firestones fending off those creatures and a horde of streak-bats earlier that night, leaving him with only his sword and skill.

He dashed off again, but only made it a street over before running across new foes. An elk-like creature stood across from him, though it was distinctly wrong. Its face was too long, like an oversized ear of corn, and its skin was stained black with soot. Large, ornate antlers sprung from its head, constructed of ice rather than bone.

To his right was a second-floor creature that often roamed to the first, a hellhound. Hellhounds were larger than normal dogs, but smaller than wolves, and they had two mouths which blazed with fire. In some ways, it was better to get bitten by them than other creatures, as the wound was almost always cauterized if you could get them off, but their speed and strength was absurd, making them possibly the most dangerous creature on the second floor. Still, it would be manageable.

Shifting backwards, Wyn adjusted his stance, trying to always keep both in front of him. They seemed to be waiting for something, an opening perhaps. Maybe they wanted him to let down his guard—

A wall burst to his side, scattering shards of wood as an enormous snake lunged towards him, jaw stretched wide enough to swallow his upper body whole.

Wyn pirouetted out of the way, the fang of the reptile scraping his arm, but leaving him relatively unharmed as he tried to regain his balance.

The first two creatures chose this chance to strike, dashing across the dead grass. Wyn pushed off the wall of a building, palming the blade of his sword as it clashed against the icy antlers of the elk. As it barreled past, he pulled it back and stuck a leg out, gasping in pain as the beast tripped, falling over.

The hellhound gnashed at his side, but Wyn spun just out of reach, sweeping his sword through its neck in a vicious counterstroke, but he only caught one of the heads. The hellhound would keep fighting until he killed both.

There was a brief lull as the monsters snarled at him, considering their next move. It gave him a precious few seconds to consider the situation. Most of the soldiers were further out, holding a loose semi-circle around the northern side of the village, meaning these monsters had either snuck around the sides, or else there was a hole somewhere in their defenses. He needed to figure out which and deal with it, but first, these would have to die. They were too strong for most of the villagers to handle, and the shelter was only a few buildings away. If monsters made it that far, then the defense had all but failed.

He ran out of time quickly as the clash began anew, all three monsters attacking him in unison. Wyn had never seen such behavior from monsters before. They weren’t exactly coordinated, but it felt as though they had almost no interest in competing for the kill as usual, as if they were following some instinct other than those he’d come to know.

He knocked aside another flurry of antlers and fire-soaked fangs, trying unsuccessfully to drag the fight away from the center of town. He cut off an antler, he stabbed the snake, and the head of the hellhound was still missing, spewing blackened blood, hot like the coals of a fire onto the street. Despite this, as the battle dragged on, he was unable to land a fatal blow on any of them, the pressure from all three keeping him on the backfoot.

The snake and hellhound charged at once, and he shifted his sword to his right hand. As they lunged forwards, Wyn used his hand to shove the hellhound aside as he moved to cut the snake’s head, but just as he swung upwards, his arm went numb. In a split second, he twisted, redirecting the deadly strike—aimed at his neck—to his shoulder instead as his sword dropped to the ground.

Wyn looked down at his right arm and cursed his stupidity. The fangs of the snake must be venomous, and the attack earlier had been all it needed to inject the venom into his arm. Now it dangled helplessly, veins visibly turning to black as it spread from the point of origin. Still, for it to have such a fast and deadly effect, the venom must’ve been incredibly potent. What floor could produce a monster like that?

He flung the snake off him with his left arm and glanced at his shoulder which was now rapidly blackening as well, if he had to guess, he had a minute or two before it was useless. Beyond that, with it so close to his heart, it would only be a few more minutes until it killed him. If he had a tourniquet of some kind, he could try to slow the spread, but he wouldn’t be able to do so while holding off all three of the monsters.

First, he needed to deal with the problem at hand, then perhaps he could find a healer or herbalist to help him. He looked around to get a better sense of his surroundings. Despite his efforts, the fight had dragged closer to the shelter, the entrance to his back, the monsters to his front.

Where are the guards?

There was supposed to be a constant watch over this part of town, but in the confusion and chaos, had it been left unattended? He saw his answer soon enough as his eyes caught on the body of a guard near the door, underneath the body of a similarly dead monster with a spear driven through it. Nearby were the corpses of the rest of his group.

Wyn couldn’t waste time to grieve their deaths yet, and in the dark he couldn’t even tell if they were people he knew. He had to win here and get more guards to the area.

One or two people could sneak by a monster unnoticed, but large groupings of people or spirits drew them like moths to a flame. With the amount of monsters in town, some inevitably slipped by defenses and made their way to the shelter. The purpose of the cycle was to keep people further in to clean up the stragglers that got through. But with the battle getting worse and worse, the shelter guards must’ve been overwhelmed. Despite the garrison’s reinforcements since the last attack, he doubted it would hold against these deeper floor monsters.

If he didn’t hold the line here, everything would be over. Beyond the door lay his mother and brother, as well as countless others. They were all counting on him to keep them safe, and he wasn’t going to fail now.

Wyn’s sword was out of reach, several feet away beneath the hooves of the elk. Armed with nothing but his bare hands, unable to use an arm, and on the verge of collapse, he placed himself between the beasts and the door. He planted his feet and glared at them; his gaze intense enough to kill.

At once, the monsters attacked, and Wyn charged forwards to meet them.