light in the dark

Holding in reserve at the base of the Castle inside the triangle, Saba’s army waited. The four hundred Arrbani archers divided their forces to line the towers and platforms on the north and south sides of the triangle alongside Hell’s Gate.

 

Beo was the first amongst his peers to hear the sound. That horrible mixture of click and screech that formed the language of the dulvok.

 

As soon as he heard it, he went rigid. Alysa heard it next and grasped his arm with a vice-like grip. Vinn saw both of them react and called out to the Hana-sei. “They’re coming!”

 

There was a sounding of a Saban horn that alerted the Arrbani archers. That’s when it began.

 

They were too far away to see the dulvok, but they could see the flight of hundreds of arrows in the night, humming through the air like a tempest of angry hornets. After a while, there was a shouted order, and the firing ceased. In the next instant, hundreds of lit arrows streaked across the night sky like fire and brimstone. There was a roar of flame as the oil across Hell’s Gate ignited into an inferno.

 

The screeches of the burning dulvok sent chills down his spine.

 

The world burned for what felt like hours, yet he knew from experience that it hadn’t even been one. The screeches still split the night as the tides of hell did not recede.

 

“SABA!” The Hana-sei roared as he raised his massive war axe high into the air. “FORWARD!”

With that, he laid his axe leisurely across his right shoulder as he led half of his army toward the left entrance of the battlefield.

 

Alvaero, commanding the second half of Saba, raised his silver sword before heading toward the entrance on the right. Vinn had been commanded to serve under Alvaero, and so, Beo found himself being led into hell by a skyron prince.

 

Though the Arrbani archers fired arrows relentlessly, the dulvok crashed into the jagged wooden stakes angled out toward the nest. The dulvok that followed began to use the corpses of their impaled kin to climb the walls of the checkpoint.

 

The first dulvok that crossed the wall landed face-first into the dirt. It screamed its frustration as it began to claw its way to its feet, until an Arrbani arrow slammed into its rotten head.

 

Further down the checkpoint, another dulvok dropped from the wooden stakes. Then another. Followed by another. Before he knew it, it was raining demons.

 

Alvaero was the first to move forward. He did not charge. He walked, giving the Arrbani archers plenty of time to pick their targets. The rest of the right side went with him, spreading out as they did so.

 

From the corner of his eye, he saw Hana-sei’s forces moving forward on the far left, but he put it from his mind. With the fires from Hell’s Gate mostly extinguished, he opened his kovanic eyes and focused on his first target.

 

Taking long, swift steps, he chose his exact moment to strike. With a swing of his sword, he decapitated a dulvok, missing half of its face. He spun to the side and took the head of another. With a quick step, he shot to the side and hacked his blade into the clavicle of a dulvok with an eye hanging from its right socket. His sword cut the demon from shoulder to sternum. The dulvok screeched at him as he wrenched his blade free from bone. With one last strike, he took the creature’s head.  

 

There came the sound of a horn, and he cleared his head enough to take in the battlefield. Saba was cutting through dulvok like farmers reaping wheat. Arrows continued to rain, but those in the field had engaged the enemy outside of 400 yards from the towers of Hell’s Gate. Arrbani bows could not touch them.  

 

Soon enough, the only dulvok remaining on the surface were the ones crawling from loss of limbs.

 

Someone started cheering, and it spread throughout the triangle like a wildfire. Beo joined his roar to theirs, expelling the tension and fear within him.

 

They were far from through with this war, but for now, they were victorious.

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