“Understood.”
When she was given a nod to leave, Emerie finally escaped.
Now that she was alone, her eyes narrowed. Her lips pulled tight to one side as worry twinged.
Shit. A Duskwalker?
She’d signed up to slaughter Demons, not face an omen of death.
Rope? Check. Whip? Emerie tapped the whip loop on her weapons belt to make sure it hadn’t somehow unbuckled. Check.
Sword? Check. She didn’t need to feel for it, since it was smacking against the side of her thigh.
Four Elders in front of me? Check, check, and double check.
It was an odd experience being assigned to their unit. She was the only Master rank present, and she thought of herself as a toddler.
She knew all of their names, not that she could currently tell them apart from behind. It was an even split of genders between them, with Emerie making it outnumbered.
Why am I the fifth person? She didn’t understand why Wren was assigning her to such an important task.
Capture a Duskwalker? What a pitiful, laughable feat. I’m going to die tonight.
There was no doubt about it. Death awaited her, and she wasn’t as prepared for it as she thought she’d be.
She eyed the backs of the Elders in front of her once more. Are they scared? She wouldn’t say she was petrified, but never in her wildest nightmares did she think she’d have to fight one of those monsters face-to-skull.
Demons were predictable, even if they were pesky to battle. Duskwalkers? Nothing could take them down. Nothing could weaken them. And… it was rare someone came back alive.
Cool air blasted over her as their troop shoved open a wooden side door to the fortress wall. It was well hidden behind shrubs and trees, and not even Emerie had known of its existence.
Figured we wouldn’t be waltzing out the front gate. Which was where the army could be heard fighting.
Her gaze lifted to the waning moon shedding a streak of light through the trees, allowing a curtain of moonbeam to touch the ground. The stars were bright, distant, and sparkling, and slowly fading as rain clouds continued to thicken. Any moment now, and the last remaining gap would shut, shoving them all into foreboding darkness.
A beastly roar vibrated her bones. She swallowed thickly, before taking in a calming breath through her nose – not that it helped much against her panting.
She tried to switch off her heart and emotions, putting her training to use.
There are plenty of foot soldiers. She’d been informed that they were a distraction for her team. Their fear will mask mine. Her own wasn’t strong, but it was present, radiating a tightness in her chest.
A handful of screams pierced the air.
Demon or Duskwalker, I have to do my duty.
The leading member of her team clenched their gloved fist near their head to halt them, before signalling to approach the edge of the tree line slowly. When the area opened up before her very eyes, mainly an expanse of dirt leading to the fortress gates, bile rose in her throat.
A line of Demonslayer foot soldiers were frozen, except for the odd one or two that ran to their very quick deaths.
The Duskwalker stood on the other side of the clearing. The moonlight coming off the grey clouds and the discarded torches that lay about was just enough to highlight its horrifying features to her.
Standing on all fours like an animal, black, oil-slick scales almost covered its entire body from neck to the tip of its long and tapered tail. She shuddered at the sharp, protruding spine bones that trailed all the way down that length – the shape of its vertebrae inhuman. More bones covered its body, almost all of them visible, including its hands, forearms, rib bones, and legs.
A small amount of fur ran down the back of its neck and shoulders, but the lizard spikes that jutted out from its body, down its back, legs, and arms, looked hard and frightful. One stray knock of a limb could see a human be severely injured on those spikes.
Even compared to Demons, she’d never seen anything more monstrous. Its raven skull and short, upward-jutting goat horns made it appear like a corvid devil set to feast on death.
Raindrops fell faster, splashing into blood puddles and creating little ominous ripples. Mangled, broken bodies with missing limbs lay discarded all across the area. There were at least a dozen of them, if not more. Many were headless, as though the monster had decided the quickest course of action was to decapitate.
Currently, it fought while hunkered over a corpse it was almost finished eating. Anytime a guildmember ran forward with either a spear or sword raised, they wouldn’t last more than a few breaths. With a swipe of black claws, or a downward smashing fist, it obliterated the attacking human.
Then the Duskwalker would go back to its meal.
She was about to throw up her entire stomach, not just the contents, when it parted its beak and simply swallowed the limbless torso it had already picked apart. It was quick to start consuming the next closest kill.
It started by tearing off what remained of its victim’s loose arm. Then the Duskwalker swallowed it whole with its bony face pointing upwards, letting gravity do most of the work.
It didn’t chew – she imagined that would be impossible with its beak – but it did use it to help crush up bones for easier swallowing. And it kept eating, like its stomach was a bottomless pit that was incapable of being full.
How many people has it already eaten? she thought, her hands trembling. Fuck.
It ignored the arrows sailing through the air and impaling its monstrous body all over. With the number already imbedded into its back, like it was an echidna of arrows, she imagined it was accustomed to the pain by now. It would roar and then continue to devour. It looked insatiable as it ate comrade after comrade.
Emerie’s face paled as she looked over the dead bodies, hoping none of them were Bryce. She darted her gaze to the line of foot soldiers who were too wary of rushing closer with the sea of bodies between them and it. Please be there. Please be safe.
There was a list of other people she hoped hadn’t found salvation within its stomach.
It had been nearly an hour since the first bell rang, and the carnage just this one monster had produced in that short amount of time was terrifying.
A stick breaking in the trees behind her had all the hairs on her body rising. Wren said it usually travels in a pair. Where was the winged one she’d spoken of? Surely this one Duskwalker hadn’t produced this much death on its own.
Gloved fingers snapped directly in Emerie’s face, and she flinched. Her frantic gaze darted to her team.
She noted all of them had irritated squinted eyes.
“Sorry,” she whispered, ducking down to be at their level. “What’s your orders?”
“You’re not going to fuck this up for us, are you?” Lily, the finger snapper, quietly bit at her. “I’m not interested in dying because Wren paired us with a coward.”
“No,” she said as she shook her head. “I was just shocked. I hadn’t expected to see so many dead yet. It’s barely been forty minutes since the fighting started.”
“Never seen a Duskwalker before?” Connor said behind his mask, his voice easy to pick out.
“Have you?” Sahira snapped back. “Look, I was freaked out too, but as long as we all keep our resolve, there’s no point in judging the newbie yet.”
Newbie? She was a Master rank Demonslayer!