The Vault's carved doors shudder under an external impact, sending tremors through the water. Her Guard (at less than half its original strength) assumes
battle positions; tightly packed squads, bristling with spears, spread out around the entrance in a rough double-layered net.
There is no time for fear or doubt – she knows her duty. It matters not that the levianths outnumber her force ten to one. She will not allow them to take
anything from her city.
They will not leave with slaves,
she vows to herself. They will not leave with treasure. They will leave with nothing; not even their lives. Her enchanted blades hum in
anticipation; they have not tasted blood in weeks. Soon, she knows, they will be drowning in the stuff.
She calls out to her Guard: "Remember your training! Reap a bloody harvest, then retreat behind your fellows. Let the enemy come to you, and stain every
inch of their advance with their blood." They nod determinedly.
"Trust in each other," she says. "We are the Slithereen Guard, and we will not fail."
There is silence for a moment, then the barricades give way with a crash and the levianths pour through the door.
~~~
The battle is going well,
she thinks a short while later, cutting down a pair of levianths and darting away from the reprisal of their fellows. They have forced us back from the doors, but we have traded half an empty hall for five score of their warriors.
Her fighting instincts take over, leaving her conscious mind free to strategize, and she nudges her berserker-self toward another knot of enemies – a flick
of her tail brings her in close, and she tears through them like sharks through a shoal. Thick blood drags at her scales, but it hardly slows her down.
Five more bodies sink slowly to the ground as she disengages.
Nearby, a squad of her fellows rushes to the attack, smooth spearheads puncturing armor and flesh with equal ease. They fall back as the levianths charge
in a vain attempt to pin them down; the backup squad takes advantage of the enemy's thwarted momentum to dart in and claim a few more lives.
Will they run out of bodies, or will we run out of space?
She wonders. Weaving through the fray, she leaves a trail of twitching corpses in her wake. A few of her comrades (the slow or the unlucky) fall, snagged
on the retreat by primitive hooks or barbed pikes, and the levianths roar in exultation.
Morale is becoming a problem
. I have to break the enemy. She looks to the center of the enemy formation, where the bodies are pressed the tightest. There!
A tattered (almost tentacular) black standard flutters slowly in the current, hoisted aloft by a knot of heavily armed and armored levianths. She grits her
teeth – those pledged to the Dark Banner are granted supernatural strength and endurance by their abyssal master, Maelrawn. It matters not. If I can get in close, where they cannot bring their numbers to bear…
One of the standard-bearers shouts a warning when he sees her coming. He is far too late; she is already among them, twisting and stabbing and slashing.They are too used to seeing foes break and flee before their might, she thinks, grinning madly. But even the mightiest arm in the world cannot wound me if I sever it first. Her armored tail flickers out in a deadly arc, its blades lopping
off heads and limbs. Clouds of blood conceal her movements and break her opponents' coordination, and she takes full advantage of their confusion to snatch
the enemy standard.
A howl of dismay rises from the massed levianths as she emerges from their ranks with the banner, ripping shreds of soft, black cloth – is this cloth? – from the pole. Dark slime sticks to her fingers like coagulating blood, and she begins hacking at the writhing black material with her
blade as she heads for the back of the hall. The levianths ignore her forces, instead charging as one to prevent their standard from being desecrated any
further, and her Guard takes advantage of their single-minded focus to fall on them from behind. Victory is at hand, she thinks. In the end their numbers meant nothing.
The last scrap of tough leather falls from the standard, and she raises her tail to snap the pole in half. A black-clad figure at the heart of the enemy
formation staggers to its feet and points a bleeding palm at her. Clouded with blood, the water around its hand begins to warp and shimmer, and for a
moment she can feel
The veil is tearing; The Lord of Dead Waters awakes–
She instinctively flings herself to one side as the water tears itself open
and Maelrawn the Abyssal reaches for her, one huge limb lashing out through the wound in the world–
~~~
An eternity later, she opens her eyes.
Her cheek rests against cold stone. Her Guard's tails flash before her eyes, packed too closely for to fight effectively. What are you doing? She
wonders, shaking her head sluggishly. Stick to the plan. If you don't spread out, you'll be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
As she looks on, one of her Guards falls, a wicked hook embedded in her eye. Another is impaled in the stomach by a barbed pike and hauled wriggling into
the mass of levianths surrounding them.
Gods below.
Clarity returns to her in a rush. They're protecting me.
Instantly, another thought: If this keeps up, we're all going to die.
She springs up and rejoins the fight, driving her point through the groin of an unlucky levianth and dragging the blade upwards. Flesh and crude armor part
with little resistance, and he (or she? It doesn't matter, she will kill them all) grasps at unfurling intestines in an attempt to keep them in.
She finishes it off and moves on to the next, slamming her tail through its skull and whipping its corpse into its fellows on either side. None of them
gets up.
Their commander did this. I have to reach him before he strikes again.
She parries an oncoming blow, follows up to divest her assailant of three limbs, then turns to bury her blades in another belly.One or a thousand; it matters not, something dark inside her hisses as she tears open another sack of flesh and blood and bone. If they keep coming, I'LL KEEP KILLING.
Someone is crying "To me" again and again as she slaughters her way through the throng. Then the rallying call stops as she snakes under a polearm to rip a
throat out with her teeth, and she realizes the voice is hers. She spits out a bloody lump of cartilage and screams for the charge.
The ten or so Guards remaining form up into a wedge, slamming through the opening she's made in the enemy line. With her at their head, they hurl
themselves down the throat of the enemy. Straight for the heart, she thinks. I erred, not tearing it out when I had the chance.
She pushes herself for every ounce of speed, weaving between levianths who break ranks and run in the face of her Guard. As she nears the enemy commander,
a foolhardy (or unlucky) enemy steps into her path, launching its hook-and-chain in an attempt to stop her headlong charge. Dodging the slow attack with
contempt, she dives under the levianth's right arm with a flick of her tail and takes both limbs on that side. Pushing off her foe's crippled bulk for
additional speed, she sees the black-armored figure shed one vambrace and cut deep into his arm with a runed dagger. Blood stains the water red, and he
raises his arm as she cries out the command to scatter–
This time, the tear in the world is slower in coming. Most of her forces are already split up, pursuing the fleeing remnants of the marauding force, but a
few of them are still hot on her heels. As they dart away in different directions, she crouches low (his arm tracks her movement) and waits as
The veil tears once more; The Lord of Dead Waters is angry–
She springs diagonally forward as
Bone-pale, as wide around as she is tall, Maelrawn's limb
cracks through the water, leaving only death in its wake, but she sees it coming and is nowhere near the plane of its attack–
Eluded for the second time, the tentacle retracts slowly and she takes the chance to dart close. Her blade slices deep into the rubbery flesh–
Surprise. Pain. Anger.
HOW DARE YOU?
An outraged scream slams into her, sending her spinning through the water. Maelrawn's limb stops its retreat and thrashes about, hooked suckers on its
underside pulsating obscenely.
YOU ARE NOTHING! KNOW YOUR PLACE – A WORM GRUBBING IN THE MUD HAS NO RIGHT TO TOUCH ME.
The rip in the water bulges outward, countless more tentacles pushing against the tear in the veil. She can feel the crushing pressure of
the Old One's malice; she can taste the bitter sharpness of its hate. But a mixture of exultation and anger and sheer purpose courses
through her, and in a moment of perfect clarity she knows: I was born for this. She stops her tumble with a flick of her tail and throws herself
forward, a wordless shout of defiance on her lips. Maelrawn's wounded limb draws itself back in preparation, like a snake about to strike.
The world slows down, water turning to syrup. She sees the ragged shimmering around the edges of the tear; sees the black-armored commander shudder and go
down to one knee, a cloud of blood exploding from his hand. She knows what she has to do.
The tentacle spears through the water just as she enters its range, but she contorts every muscle in her body and twists aside just in time. Then she
lunges – not for the base of the limb, not for the opening in the veil, but for the figure kneeling just behind. Maelrawn cannot reach me here,
she thinks. It is over.
The commander staggers to his feet, grim determination in his stance. The dagger falls from his fingers as his uninjured hand whips to his scabbard, but he
is not nearly fast enough. She collides with him, knocking him off-balance, and drives three feet of enchanted steel into his brain as he falls.
The enemy's remaining morale dies with their commander. Her comrades slaughter levianths in droves around the Vault's only exit, killing as fast as they
can thrust their spears into the huddled mass of flesh. Cries for mercy mingle with the screams of the dying, but the Guard is trained well. There is no
mercy to be had, here.
In mere moments, nothing within the Vault draws breath save her and her Guard. It is done, she thinks, heaving a sigh of relief. We have prevailed.
Yet there is no celebration, no triumphant roar or jubilant cry rippling through the water. Nine-tenths of her comrades lie fallen amongst the mountains of
slain levianths, a loss made no less crippling by the knowledge that their places will be taken within a week, ranks swelled by a flood of new and eager
recruits.
How many times must this happen?
She asks herself, sorrow in her heart and bitterness on her tongue.
Again and again the levianths threaten our cities. Again and again we beat them back – and for what? For a new generation of cold-eyed youths, suddenly
bereft of mothers or fathers, anger and hate running through their veins…
"No more," she vows. "Never again."