Tales of Death´s Daughter

“That’s not looking good.” Luna admitted quietly by my side, looking at the thousands and thousands of demons right at our doorstep.

“Is there a way for us to get through this?” I asked, leaning onto the merlon and counting all the different races I had never seen before. In comparison to the last battle, this one would be far worse.

“Not for everyone.” She said and gazed over to the sides where men and woman stood, manning every part of the wall, even though the situation seemed entirely hopeless. But they also understood that our job was to buy time which was why none of the men I trained gave up. And even though I didn’t value adventurers in general, I had to admit that these ones were on par with my men. None of them cried and even the medics had their weapons in hand.

“We need to search for the person controlling these demons. Louis, can you sent out your birds?” Luna asked quietly.

“They are getting shot down, even though I copied the local birds as much as I could.” He admitted but promptly knelt down to create another batch of animals, this time a few strange lizards which climbed down the side of wall facing the city by themselves.

“So you got nothing?” I asked a bit depressed by our situation. I wanted to win this fight if possible. Even though I was kind of stuck babysitting the army, I also wanted to go out there and cause trouble for the enemy.

“I wouldn’t say that. He’s not shooting at anything I have on the ground but finding our target is going to take time.”  Well then, there wasn’t anything we could do, was there?

“Luna? Your orders?” I asked, waited patiently for her magic to run out and looked at her with a hint of hope.

“I believe they will try to open the gate with a few trolls.”

“Why have they even left it intact?”

“That is a good question actually …”

“I’ll check it.” I said, walked away from the merlons and jumped down the twelve metre wall easily. Carried by the wind, I landed exactly in front of the metal portcullis and eyed them a little suspicious. They looked a little rusty, but we’re otherwise in great shape … maybe a bit too much though. Grabbing it with my hands, I froze part of it right away and just as I started to assume everything was alright, the frozen parts broke off. “Shit.” I mumbled, dashed back towards the stairwell and threw the two ‘metal’ onto the ground where it quickly turned into some kind of thick liquid.

“Slime?” Luna asked right away which made me nod a bit happily, even though I naturally didn’t show that. “How many men do you need?”

“Considering I still need to take out that commander and archer when we found them … all you can give me.”  I concluded, watching the slowly approaching army.

“We cannot spare that many … try to close that gate with earth magic.” Luna said, but that wouldn’t serve us that well. As soon as the mana left the earth magic, it’s creations usually turned brittle really fast.

“It’s going to be brittle.” I stated dryly, but still waved an earth mage over to me and told him what we needed. He quickly collected more mages and made his way downwards while Luna still whacked her brain.

“And take seventy percent of the close combatants down, along with ten percent of the mages. Make them fortify the area.” Luna said, which made me chuckle a little because the enemy was so close already that we didn’t have that much time left. Still, her orders were quickly relayed and a column of men marched down the stairwells.

“Louis…” I grabbed his shoulder and whispered into his ear. “I cannot protect Luna this time, so that task falls in your hands, alright?” I whispered threateningly. There was just too much on my plate and I wouldn’t be operating close to Luna anyways.

“Yes, mam.” He said and nodded eagerly, even though I could see he was scared. Hoping he would do his task well, I once more jumped down the wall and landed in front of a slowly closing gateway.

“I want all kinds of barricades in front of us! Wood, stone, whatever you can find. The mages will try to take out the larger enemies, but –“ At one point I was speaking to a small, but fearsome army. And then I was speaking to eighty percent of that small army as a boulder the size of an house crashed through the gateway, slammed into the ground right in front of it and rolled a few more people to death.

That was a truly a loud I didn’t want to have a second time, especially not this close by my side.

“We are off to a great start.” I mumbled quietly and looked upwards to the wall. “Do something Louis!” Well, the plus point was that we had a nice barricade in front of the gate now, shrinking the places we had to defend to a minimum. Always look on the bright sight of life … or so it goes.

Well, on the other hand, no more stones were thrown at us apparently because someone on the walls had taken that thing out. But that didn’t help us at all as the animalistic battle cries of far too many reached our ears.

It was a rather shrill and chilling sound, mixed with rhythmically deep voices resounding sometimes. A melody of death was approaching quickly unhindered by the barrage of magic coming from the walls. Standing in the middle of the small place we had secured, most of the demons attention focused on me as they streamed through the gateway. Bowing respectfully, I brandished my black sword and sliced through three orc throats at the same time. The wind I made with the blade accelerated on my command, piercing through the carcass of three more demons whose abilities I couldn’t judge.

Once again, I heavily focused on the more difficult demons and twirled around in between the thrown boulder and the gateway.

My blade took the life of an uncountable number of demons within minutes and as the bodies piled up, I continued to fight on them.

But even that wasn’t enough. There were far too many races we had never seen before and I couldn’t take out all of them. And sadly, the others didn’t have the strength to adapt to the situation we were in. It didn’t even take minutes before the first dead started piling up on our sides as well, especially as some of the demons exploded right in front of our defensive line.

The explosions punched a hole into our ranks which were luckily quickly filled, but that was honestly the last bit of replenishment we had.

Jumping backwards out of the mess I created, I landed on the big stone with one foot mere minutes after we started. Our losses were far too great to continue like this. Clicking my tongue, I eyed the top of the gateway and merely hopes that Louis could help out.

“Louis! If you cannot find that commander, at least collapse this gateway!” I shouted towards him, but was quickly met with another explosion, this time underground. The earth beneath our feet buckled up dangerously and gave way immediately afterwards.

Stones were already falling down all around me as the explosions were still going on to the sides, following the wall closely.

“Shit.” I mumbled, jumped off the boulder towards the wall which was partly crumbling underneath its own weight. And one of these places was right above the gateway, where Luna and Louis where before. Even in the air, I made them out and directed my wind towards them, allowing me to scoot through the falling debris and catch both of them by their collars.

“You are way to heavy.” I grunted, pulled backwards and blasted wind towards us, making us fall backwards onto the boulder while deadly stones and screaming humans rained down on top of the demons.

“What … happened?” Louis asked as the dust settled a little which revealed a nearly collapsed wall with large portions simply gone while other parts were still standing.

“They dug tunnels and planted explosives beneath the wall … why didn’t I come up with that?” I could answer Luna’s question fairly easily. It was because humans didn’t siege down any other cities for hundreds of years. No noble wanted to damage the city they were attacking after all and rather hungered the citizens out. Digging tunnels to damage structures wasn’t widespread these days, neither in daily life nor in literature.

“Forget it. Louis, tell me you found something.” I asked and watched the demons streaming over the debris into the city. We had to stop them quickly, otherwise they could ruin everything, no matter the outcome of the heroes fight.

“Maybe … on top of the hill we were attacked first.” He said while I looked around. Grabbing them once more, I quickly took of and bought them to a seemingly stable part of the wall where the constable and a few other trustworthy men fought.

“Take care of them.” I said, jumped off the other edge and tilted forwards. The wind picked me up right away and threw me forwards. My ears were ringing from the sound of the wind, as I flew back the way I came. The strangely absent archer suddenly targeted me once more, apparently having figured out where I went. Concerningly though, that arrow came flying from my right and not from the hill. But he wasn’t my target at all.

Instead, I flew towards the human who was surrounded by demons. Before I could do anything though, a violet light erupted along with magical circles on the ground.

“No, you aren’t getting away.” Even though he was highly concentrated before, he must have noticed me and attempted to teleport away. I was too far away to stop him though, even with a lightning attack as teleportation – once the magic appeared – was usually instantly.

But it came completely different from expected. Instead of him disappeared, two girls appeared behind him, drawing my whole attention to them. Carefully I landed in front of the man, but they apparently didn’t intent to fight me at all.

In fact, they didn’t give me any attention at all, and rather bit into the mans nape from behind. He opened his eyes abruptly and his concentration slipped but his magic didn’t seem to stop yet.

Only as I rammed my sword into his belly did the screaming man finally let go of the quickly dissolving disc and set the demons free once more. The two short girls, looking suspiciously alike with their bloodied blonde hair and red eyes, were still drinking his blood feverishly until the demons looked at them as well. Then, blood spilled out of the wound I made as well, transformed into a knife and flew to the right, circling around us and creating some kind of aggressive barrier with more and more blood.

Wary, I pointed the tip of my sword towards them while they merely closed their eyes and slurped up the rest of his blood. And finally, they let go of the corpse, completely drained of blood and opened their eyes at the same time once more, looking at me with interest.

“Who are you?” One of them asked.

“Maybe she is food?” The other one added without giving me any chance to speak.

“But I don’t like eleven blood!” The first one shouted out and puffed her cheeks.

“Yeah … me neither.” The second one admitted a bit bummed out.

“You are two demon generals, aren’t you?” I questioned them, still wary of their every move. As they high fives each other though, I couldn’t help but think they weren’t interested in fighting at all.

“She can speak!” The right one said happily.

“A wonder! Maybe we should introduce ourselves?” The other one asked and giggled a little.

“Yeah. Maybe we should … my name is Clarice.” The first one said and smiled childishly.

“And I’m Clara! Nice to meet you.” Clara added and waved happily.

“Lucy was supposed to fight against you. What happened?” I asked a little concerned. If they were here, it could only mean the fight ended with them fleeing.

“You are her friend?” Clara asked astonished.

“Clara, we are gaining so many friends today! Can we drink your blood? Please, we vampires forge friendship through blood!” Clarice said and licked her lips hungrily. Sadly though, I knew very well that vampires didn’t drink the blood of their friends, at least Lucy abstained from doing so whenever possible.

“That’s a lie. What happened?” I growled a little angrily. I didn’t have time to waste there after all.

“Oh … how boring!” Clara said and scratched her cheek a little confused.

“You aren’t like Lucy at all! She would have accepted …” Clarice added saddened.

“What happened.” I growled a third time, making it unmistakably clear that I wasn’t willing to wait any longer.

“Uhh … scary.” Clara said and held her hands in the air.

“She had beaten the crap out of us.” Clarice added, and snipped her fingers happily.

“Yeah, that was fun. And then she became our friend.” Clara concluded, jumped around happily while the wall of blood lifted, revealing hundreds of slain demons.

“Where is she now?” I asked swiftly, wary about being attacked by that massive ball of blood above me.

“She walked towards the wall …” Clara said and scratched her cheek.

“Don’t know why. We could have teleported her now that I think about it.”  Clarice added.

“Can you teleport me back?” I asked swiftly.

“Nah … the only magic we can do is …” Clarice stated a sentence which was swiftly ended by Clara.

“Blood magic! The only chant less magic provided by the system!”

“Isn’t it awesome?” Clara asked and giggled a little, folding her hands in front of her chest.

“Yeah …” I said as the blood turned into a dragon which then flew off into the distance, only to lose all structure a few metres away from us and spill to the ground. If that’s was the only magic they could do then there had to be one way teleportation circles all around the city.

“Oh, right! You might want to head back fast!” Clara admitted.

“Huh?” I asked worried and looked back to the thousands of demons either attacking each other or fleeing as fast as they could. Crucially, they all made sure they weren’t anywhere close to the two vampires in front of me.

“The first demon lord is a rather sly one.” Clara said.

“And a bully.” Clarice admitted while frowning a little.

“And a bully. He likes to pick fight with the weakest first.” Clara said while I was already activating my magic.

“What an asshole.” Clara mumbled, shielded her eyes from the wind which picked me up once more and bought me back towards the wall.

“See ya!” Both of them shouted loudly. Honestly, these twins were rather friendly … even though they were definitely a few screws loose in their heads.

But I wasn’t wasting any thoughts on them. All that was on my mind was the first demon general. I needed to kill him before he could do anything.