Grimoires and Gunsmoke

“I knew it!! Traitors!!” Commander Elarion bellowed, snapping his head towards Raf and pointed at the two running deserters with his lance. “Bring those cowards to heel! They shall rue the day they turned their back on the empire!”

Caught off guard by the situation, Raf sat there on his horse, momentarily stunned as he watched Ryffka and Talarion sprint away. His head snapped back and forth between his commander's enraged shouts and the fleeing figures of what he had thought were at worst stragglers.

With a frustrated click of his tongue, the gruff skirmisher finally made his decision after a few scant seconds of hesitation. He knew the consequences of disobeying an order, especially one barked by someone as frivolous and flippant as Commander Elarion. Jabbing his heels into his mount, he spurred the horse forward, rallying his men with a sharp command. "After them! Don't let them get away!" he shouted, as he jolted forward.

Five of the fifteen horsemen broke off from the main group to give chase. The pounding of hooves resounded as the horses galloped after Ryffka and Talarion and quickly closed the distance. The riders themselves seemed to be as amused as they were bewildered by the fact these two even entertained the thought to run, let alone actually make a break for it.

Fueled by adrenaline and confusion, Talarion glanced over his shoulder and stared at the charging cavalry with a mix of fear and disbelief. He couldn’t help but wonder what in the hell had just happened. What prompted Ryffka to suddenly take off and drag him along? Did the commander spook him? Did he just panic?

Talarion’s mind raced in an attempt to make any kind of semblance of sense of what just happened, but every thought running through his mind was abruptly cut short by an ear splitting blast.

A bone rattling shockwave hit Talarion and Ryffka, causing them both to stumble off their feet and eat the dirt. The commander and a few other men who had been standing around him were the target of the blast and all of them, including the horses, crumpled to the ground.

Chaotic and terrible screams filled the air as a voice cried out in agony and utter disbelief, "The commander's dead! Gods preserve us! What in the infinite hells was that!?"

More riders started convening on the epicenter of the explosion, trying to make sense of what just happened, but they were only greeted with both panic horses and men. All they knew was that an explosion had claimed the lives of 3 and left 4 others sprawled on the ground, trying to manage their wounds. Their leader's body was strewn haphazardly as he and his mounts stared lifelessly at the sky

“Calm yourselves! Form up!" Raf shouted, 20 or so meters away as he struggled to regain control of his startled steed.

The remaining riders, though shaken, seemed to respond to Raf's command, albeit with visible hesitation. They shuffled around, in an attempt to control their own steeds as they did their best to follow orders while their eyes darted around in search of any further threats.

“I said form up! Get into ranks!” Raf bellowed as he looked down towards Talarion and eyed him with suspicion. “Tal! What the fuck was that!?”

Still sprawled on the ground from their fall, Talarion and Ryffka exchanged a look of shared dread before they turned their eyes to the Horseman. This was all too familiar, a haunting echo of the terrifying onslaught they had experienced at their fort. The only thing missing was the dark silhouettes of those nightmarish flying beasts and the oddly garbed warriors descending from them.

Talarion hastily stood up as he pushed his kettle helm firmly on his head. The man’s heart pounded heavily against his chest as he recalled the terrifying events that had transpired at their fort. "It's the same as at the fort, the explosions! They were always followed by—" Talarion's words faltered as something in the distance caught his eye.

His head snapped to the figure emerging from the tall grass, holding onto a large, strange object. It bore a resemblance to a crossbow, but everything about it was off, alien, and ominous. But it was the uniform that truly struck a chord of fear and recognition in Talarion. It was the same as the ones worn by the strange attackers at the fort, the otherworldly invaders who brought destruction and death from the sky.

All of a sudden, the air was torn apart by a long staccato of deafening cracks, nearly as loud as the explosion that had just occurred. The tip of the figure's strange weapon spat fire like a dragon as he swept the thing across the field.

Swaths of men and horses were cut down as more otherworldly monsters appeared, their strange weapons spewing death in every direction. The once orderly field was now a nightmarish landscape, with the once proud and disciplined riders thrown into disarray and terror.

While his instincts were screaming at him to seek cover, Talarion looked to Raf and the other horsemen gawking at the scene. "Get down!" he bellowed, spotting the otherworlder with the larger weapon turning his deadly gaze towards them. The air around them seemed to tremble as the deafening long string of cracks erupted in their direction.

Without hesitation, Talarion threw himself to the ground, pressing his body into the dirt as flat as he could as the world around him vibrated from the otherworldly barrage. A Cacophony of hisses and snaps were punctuated by the yelps and cries of men and the panicked neighing of horses resounded in every direction.

As heavy thuds of the horsemen and their steeds falling echoed around him, Talarion clenched his teeth and shut his eyes tight as he gripped his kettle helmet tightly. The man did his best to curl himself as small as he could in an attempt to use his pitiful helmet as a shield to protect him from the horror unfolding around him. But as quickly as it came, it left, with a slew of pained curses and the frantic neighing taking its place.

The crackles of strange weapons and screaming still dominated the field, but it was no longer directed solely at them. Cautiously opening his eyes, Talarion realized that the immediate danger had passed, but the battle raged from all across the field. Mustering his courage, he began to crawl through the grass, moving toward the sounds of struggle and pain.

As he approached the source, the image that met them was one of pure carnage. Raf lay trapped beneath his thrashing horse, his armor punctured in several places, each wound oozing blood. His face was a mask of pain, yet his eyes burned with a fierce determination to survive. He struggled, pushing and wriggling in an attempt to free himself from the weight of his dying mount.

Talarion and Ryffka exchanged a glance, knowing they needed to act fast if they were to help Raf in any way. Without a word, they moved to his side, each taking a hold of the horse in an attempt to lift it off him. The task was Herculean, the horse's spasms of agony making it difficult to get a good grip.

"Raf!" Talarion called out, his voice laced with urgency. "Hold on, I’m going to get you out!"

Raf's labored breathing was the only response they got as he continued to push against the ground in fruitless attempts to slide himself out from underneath the animal as it thrashed. And as Talarion came up to him and started yanking, the two managed to make some progression. But it wasn’t until Ryfka approached that they actually started making some headway. The Stymph quickly surveyed the situation and wracked mind racing for a solution beyond brute force. With a deep breath, he began to chant in a melodic yet powerful language that seemed to resonate with the air itself.

"Kyreetha sarintha lykeon!" Ryffka's voice reached a crescendo, and as he uttered the final syllable, he extended his arms towards the horse, palms facing outward.

A visible shockwave of force erupted from Ryffka, hitting the horse with a concussive push. The animal, caught off guard by the sudden burst, was lifted slightly and pushed away, freeing Raf from its oppressive weight.

"By the gods..." Raf gasped, his voice a hoarse whisper. "What... just happened?" He looks down and starts undoing the straps of his armor with shaking hands.

Panic started to take hold of the gruff warrior as he pulled his armor off and saw a flood of his own blood gushing from his torso. The punctures in his chest and stomach were far more severe than he could have ever imagined. No bolt or arrow was capable of creating such wounds.

The man’s hands immediately went to cover the holes in a pathetic attempt to stop the blood from pouring out. “Oh gods…! Oh gods…!” Raf's rugged face contorted in pain and horror as he frantically pressed his hands against his abdomen, but no matter how badly he wanted the bleeding to stop, it just gushed through his fingers.

As Raf’s breathing became erratic from the blood filling his lungs, Talarion and Ryffka watched in shock and despair, knowing that even with a healer the horseman was most likely dead. The man was basically drowning and even if a healer got to him, there wasn’t a spell powerful enough to mend wounds that looked like they’d been hit by a damned Needle Demon.

Raf's eyes were wide with terror as he looked up at them, trying to shout over the cacophony of strange weapons. “Tal…! Tal, you gotta help me," he pleaded through gurgled coughs. “Tal! I can’t die here!”

Talarion sat there, frozen in horror, as the deafening cracks of the otherworldly weapons echoed in almost every direction. In a panicked haste, he crawled forward, his hands trembling as he tore open Raf's tunic, flinching away at the sheer volume of blood that gushed forth. The small piece of cloth had been acting as a dam and now released a flood, showing the full extent of Raf's wounds.

The ghastly punctures were so deep and numerous that they left Talarion feeling helpless and lost. He glanced back at Ryffka, whose expression mirrored his own horror and confusion as he sat there with his feathers pressed low against his head. With no knowledge or means to stem to help them man, let alone stop the bleeding, they could do nothing but sit there and gawk.

“Fuck… fu….” Raf’s eyes went wide open as he attempted to gasp for air, but only gurgled. “Tal… Tal, I can’t breathe… I can’t…”

Slick with Raf's blood, Talarion’s hand shook as he stared at the horror of the situation. Raf's pleas for help and gasping breaths filled with gurgles of blood seemed to have had paralyzed him in that very moment. The once rough and assertive man was reduced to a trembling, mewling, mess.

But suddenly, the rustling of grass broke through his morbid trance. Talarion, fueled by fear, whipped out his falchion, and pointed it towards the source of the moment, praying to whatever god that would listen that it wasn’t one of those horrible beings.

“Sergeant!” A call screamed out as a limping figure burst through the grass.

Talarion and Ryffka both, couldn’t help but heave what was more like a gasp of relief as another skirmisher, clutching onto a mage's bladestaff and and his own wounds. But as his eyes landed on the scene before him, his shouts died in his throat.

“S…Ser…” The man stammered, lowering his blade staff as he took in the gruesome scene. “Sergeant…?”

No longer capable of forming words, Raf could do nothing but flail and gurgle as his lifeblood continued to pool beneath him and in his lungs. The man’s eyes went wild with panic and pain struggles became weaker, more sporadic as he grasped at his wounds.

It wasn’t long until Raf's movements stilled, his eyes fixing on some unseen point. Everyone remained still, staring at the horror they just witnessed until in a fit of rage, the Mage stood up grasping onto his staff, and pointed it in the direction of the chatter of otherworldly weapons.

In a desperate bid to retaliate, the mage stood up to his full height and began to chant. "Esha vintil, pyri astu!" His words filled with a strange power and seemed to pull at the very fabric of reality around him and a small orb of fire then began to form in air with each uttered syllable.

The mage’s eyes swung to his target, several of those demons sprinting across the field while another contingent covered their maneuver with those infernal weapons barking incessantly towards his compatriots.

As the mage focused on his incantation, his gaze fixed on the distant figures bolting through the grass. However, he struggled to get a proper fix on these monsters in the form of men. Their uniforms were unlike any he had seen before, their forms broken up by the strange foliage patterned uniforms that made them blend seamlessly with their surroundings, making their silhouettes only intermittently visible. Coupled with the way they moved through and how they kept their head down, made it nearly impossible for the mage to target with a precise fireball.

Meanwhile, the target that the mage had focused on popped back up with his horrible weapon roaring back to life. A continuous thunderous rattle tore through the air as the fearsome weapon turned towards a contingent of auxiliary reinforcements that were rushing to the aid of their beleaguered allies.

However, the reinforcements were caught in the open and were unprepared for the onslaught that was to come. Bunched together, tightly in a formation, large swathes of the reinforcements were mercilessly cut down. Each burst of their weapons spelled the death of countless men, leaving the once orderly ranks in disarray and panic.

A repeated series of cracks rang out as Talarion and Ryffka watched as the mages head snapped back and watched as the man crumpled to the ground as if he were a puppet with his strings cut.

Crawling over to the man, Talarion looked down and nearly puked at what was left of the newest victims of the otherworlder’s face. And what was worse, the poor man was still alive, garbbling something unintelligible as his hands moved to where his jaw was supposed to be.

“We need to get the fuck out of here!” Talarion looked over his shoulder, back at Ryffka as he scrambled away. “We need to get the fuck out of here right fucking now!”

Talarion's command was all Ryffka needed. In a frenzied state of panic and survival, the Stymph didn't hesitate. He spun around up and began to crawl away from the horrifying scene, keeping his body as low to the ground as possible. But as he moved, his eyes caught sight of the mage's bladestaff a few meters away, discarded like an unwanted item. Without a second thought, Ryffka grabbed it, remembering he had lost his own during his getaway in that fort attack

But just before he had made it out of eyeshot, Talarion’s voice rang out once again. “Wait!” The Sun Elf yelled after seeing his companion loot the bladestaff.

In a moment of quick thinking, Talarion had spotted something else of value. He quickly rose to his feet and ran towards the fallen horse, his body hunched to make himself a smaller target. And after reaching the beast’s corpse, Talarion's eyes lit up with a glimmer of hope as he saw the massive waterskin still attached to the creature's side. With a few quick slices of his dagger, he cut it free.

And none too soon, because just as he pulled it free, the ground around him and the mangled mage was peppered with several weighty thunks.

Deciding he wanted absolutely nothing to do with whatever in the hells that was, Talarion decided that what he managed to grab was enough and basically sprinted after Ryffka, ducking and weaving through the grass.

And it seemed that Talarion's instincts had never been sharper; his decision to just grab what they needed most was validated mere seconds later. As he and Ryffka made their hasty escape, a multitude of bone-rattling and deafening blasts erupted behind them. Talarion held his breath as he glanced behind him and saw a sight that sent a chill down his spine.

"Go! Keep moving!" Talarion shouted out to Ryffka when he saw the Stymphs head turn to look.

They didn’t have time to gawk. Their only chance to get out of this hell was to put as much distance between themselves and these demons as possible. Because he was more than certain that they'd be coming to check for any that still breathed sooner or later.

Ryffka didn't need to be told twice. He clutched the blade staff tightly and ran like the very hells were chasing him. Because, as far as he was concerned, they were, and they took the guise of men with green faces.