Unnatural Remedies
Blood sprayed in vast obscene arcs. Two, four, six. Corpses flew back against the trees. The gray tide of an army was moving outside Tremali Keep, and each time a furry hide would show itself from behind one of the stone pylons, it would be struck by bolts and daggers and arrays of magical darts.
One tan wolfen, with leather armor and spiked pauldrons, made it as far as the gate at a full run. A small crowd of wolf warriors scurried on all fours behind him, snarling.
Nicodemus stepped forward from the gate’s threshold, a chunk of rotting, maggot-covered meat clutched between the fingers of his bare hand. He balled the hand into a fist, and spoke the final word of his incantation, punching the tan wolfen in the gut.
THUNK. The tan wolfen’s eyes bulged from the shock of the spectral force. A hole, about the size of a cannonball, exploded from his midsection, showering the wolfen behind him with gore. Each chunk whispered as it flew through the air, wet entrails cascading amongst them. Immediately, covered with red speckles, they all fell to the ground retching. Lady Balthes took her time aiming between their eyes as they rolled along the ground. Plink, plink, plink; they all stopped their writhing. The tan wolfen staggered back, hands wavering at the enormous hole where his intestines used to be, and then with blank eyes fell face down in the mud.
Still, the other wolfen kept coming.
“We be done for,” Keepers whispered.
Diyn’s last sentry stood atop a sparse hillock, waving his sword at Tremali like a conductor with a baton, herding in more wolfen. He shouted commands to different groups, getting them to position themselves behind cover and ready for a massive flank. The moonlight behind him silhouetted his proud form, and he raised his shield, shaking it with vigor. Then, a much larger silhouette emerged behind him, enveloping him, darkening the blue hue about his shoulders. He turned and looked up when he felt its rank, humid breath on his cheeks.
The creature was enormous. Its head was like the bottom end of a colossal split tree, branches coiling back like a horned crest, wriggling roots and tendrils where teeth would normally have closed into a jaw. Its hide was stone and moss and bark, the sinew of vines and plants visible on its legs and shoulders as it reared up. Two glowing yellow eyes, like flickering torches, raged on either side of the gigantic snout. It gleamed madness, and let out an unhallowed scream.
The dhampyl swung his sword. The creature opened its maw, jagged with root and stone teeth, letting loose a terrifying screech, and then with a snap closed its jaw around the sentry with a single crunching swipe. Only the dhampyl’s armored boots hung out, twitching. The creature lashed its head back and forth, threw its head up, and finished the job with a few decisive chews.
“That’s the thing,” Keepers moaned as he looked out a murder hole, “that I saw in the woods.”
Balthes was busy reloading. “What in the hells is it?”
“I don’t know,” Keepers said. He took out the last card from his deck, The Paladin, and touched it to his chest. A thin nimbus of bluish-white protective energy fluttered about the two of them, fizzled in crackling sparks, and vanished. “But I think it’s going to kill us all.”
“Let’s hope it just kills a lot of them,” Lady Balthes said, taking aim again.
“Aye. Let’s hope.” The pleading and pitiful look on his brow spoke of other thoughts.
As another wolfen broke the line, the nin’ki leapt up from the shadow between his legs, stabbing up into its pelvis and raking his blade along its spine. The wolf man dropped to his knees, coughing out its death, but more were mounting the ridge. The nin’ki scurried back through the gate to the party, sweat and panic all over his face. They slammed shut the oak doors.
Keepers and Balthes looked back to Nicodemus, but the necromancer was now sitting at the far end of Tremali’s entrance, with his eyes rolled back into his head. His back was arched, and he swayed gently in the breeze.
“Great.” Balthes said, “He’s lost it, and we’re about to eat the dirt.”
The plant-creature stomped over the hill and into the herd of wolfen. It dipped its massive jaw into their midst, taking two or three at a time, and stampeded through the rest. It galloped like an angry mastiff that stood twenty feet tall. The wolfen were terrified, filled with religious horror, and began to break off from their siege.
Keepers watched the slaughter, and chuckled, “Well, maybe we’ve got hope!”
The wolfen shaman stepped up, staff in the air, and began to weave green runes into a circular pattern. The neon light looped around the creature’s neck, like a leash, and smaller ringlets began to shackle its arms and ankles. With his other paw, the shaman began to direct the creature toward Tremali.
Balthes spat and fired her crossbow into the ranks of wolfen, with her last clip of ammunition.
Keepers wailed as he saw the creature charging over the hill, “Aw hells. Maybe not.”
Balthes emptied the last of her bolts into the oncoming tide of wolfen, but there were too many. The tremendous creature, coming up behind them, tore through the horde and crashed forward into the Gates of Tremali. Close behind was Diyn, sword out, cutting through the wind.
The repeating crossbow clicked empty.
The creature was tearing into the stone. Dirt and mortar and brick fell around them.
The wolfen were everywhere.
Diyn slid forward and rapidly slashed his blade, face blank and emotionless, efficient as a threshing machine. He saw through the gaps in the wall and the party to Nicodemus, and his blade glimmered in the moon a green spark before it cut away what was left of Tremali’s doors in a steady forceful swing. Wood flaked away, and the threshold was laid bare. He stood, a black silhouette in the starlight, with scores of writhing beasts behind and a towering monstrous giant at his side.
As the dhampyl came upon them, sword slicing through night air with the hum of a hornet in their ears, Keepers quickly drew Lady Balthes in his arms and uttered, “I won’t let you die. I won’t let you go.”