Chương 24: False Dawn

"Most mortal armies practice shield-lines, kill-zones, relic volleys, flank discipline, stamina rotations, corpse-harvesting protocols, and retreat formations in order to bite back against demonkind. Meanwhile, most demon armies only practise one strategy against mortalkind."

"Which is?"

"More demons." —Excerpt from 'Common Jokes of the Southern Garrisons', Written by Dobrin Ilyich The horde charging at the four of them broke apart the moment the four-horned demon bellowed his command.

"Fourteen of you, hem in the limping Bratstvo Morosov!" He roared, one arm sweeping towards Kazimir.

"Cut his steps short and let no old butcher dance where he pleases!" Then its silver eyes snapped toward Miriyela and Sharsana, burning with ugly devotion.

"Four of you, bleed the Princess of Kamengrad through her proud seams, and one of you to the mole-drake, bind its claws to the earth!" Finally, that arm pointed straight at Orland.

"And the last demon for the Fifth Hero! Kill the false dawn before he knows the sun!" Well, the four-horned demon sure knew how to make a battle sound important. Its voice rolled through the chamber with enough force that even the floating rails trembled in the weak gravity.

The elkkin demons answered, too, with a chorus of scraping metal and wet-throated snarls—and then all of them split into different groups, over half of them launching themselves left towards Kazimir, while the remaining half launched themselves right towards Miriyela and Sharsana. That left him facing the center of the chamber with only one demon charging at him. Only one.

Orland stared at the lone demons charging him, then glanced at Kazimir stepping forward to meet his demons with a whip of his frostfire chainblade, while Miriyela and Sharsana launched into battle against theirs. Irritation quickly flared hotter than fear. He was the Hero —well, not actually, but they didn't know that. The four-horned bastard had looked at him like he was a world-ending disaster a moment ago, and now he was only worth one demon? Come on then!

As the demon came at him faster—having snapped off both its serrated horns and holding them like cleavers—Orland reared his gauntlet back and ripped up a ten-mana clump of earth, packing stone and soil into a long crude blade that enclosed his fist. A fist wouldn't do. A hammer wouldn't do. A blade. Big, heavy, and mean, the blade would show the four-horned demon he was worth more than one demon. He stepped in and punched, throwing his entire blade forward with the motion.

In response, the demon snarled and stabbed one of its horns straight forward, meeting point with point—and the collision shattered both his ten-mana blade and the demon's horn, earth and jagged metal fragments bursting between them. Orland flinched a little, seeing how easily his ten-mana construct was destroyed when it'd easily killed the weaker elkkin demons above, but the demon didn't even flinch from losing its weapon. It simply pressed on and swung its second horn at his face.

"Dodge!" a lady snapped at him. His body jerked aside on instinct, and he threw himself into a roll as the horn sliced past his mask. It then slammed into a wooden pillar he'd been standing right in front of, shattering into metal fragments while the pillar collapsed with a heavy groan. For a second, all he could do as he rolled onto one knee was stare at the demon's broken horn stumps.

Then he watched them regrow with a wet metallic sound, lengthening second by second until they fully regenerated in less than ten seconds. The demon reached up, snapped its new horns off, and twirled them around in its hands. … These guys can just do that now? His jaw tightened. If he recalled correctly, none of the demons had more than one mana.

That meant this regeneration ability had nothing to do with mana, and there was no stopping the demon from continuously going for mutual destruction attacks that'd shatter both his constructs and its own horns. It could regenerate its horns forever. He could run out of mana. An extended fight meant he'd lose. But the demon didn't give him time to enjoy that miserable thought. It stabbed both horns into the clumps of earth near its hooves and immediately flung a spray of stone and lead-dusted rubble at him.

He grit his teeth and leapt with his sylph shoes, wind bursting under his feet and carrying him up towards a floating minecart. Catch it, catch it, catch— He caught the cart's edge with both hands, threw it off its slow drifting course, and hauled himself onto the side of it while the battles raged beneath him.

"Fine!" he hissed down at the demon.

"You wanna throw things?" He thrust his gauntlet at the ground and pulled up twenty mana's worth of sharp debris at once: broken salt-rocks, jagged stone chips, loose earth, and snapped rail fragments coated in dust. He didn't bother making them look pretty. He just sharpened everything and sent the whole storm of them converging on the demon. The demon's eyes shimmered.

Most of the blunt debris struck its lead-patched pelt and bounced off uselessly, but it picked out all the sharp debris in an instant and sidestepped, dodged, and ducked through all of them. The two larger debris it couldn't dodge were cut apart midair with its horns, and only one stone shard that came from straight above managed to slip through its defenses, drawing a sliver of blood from its neck. But if the demon felt any pain, it didn't give any reaction. Not a single bit.

Then the demon launched up at him, both horns reared back. Shit. He jumped again, sylph shoes bursting as the demon's horns stabbed through the cart. He landed badly on another floating cart, one knee nearly folding under him as the rift pulsed them, and the whole chamber trembled as if the mine had a faulty heart. Floating rails lurched. Minecarts tilted. Dust and loose stone rained from the ceiling, filling parts of the chamber in choking clouds.

Everyone below him stumbled for half a second, even the demons, but Orland was gripping tight onto the edge of his minecart, and seeing the falling dust gave him an idea. Its reaction speed is fast, and its legs are strong. … So this could work. While the demon chasing him snapped off new horns to replace the ones that'd shattered on impact with the cart, he spread one arm apart and shouted.

"Here, antler-face!" The demon snarled and leapt at his cart again. But this time, he didn't jump to another floating object. He dropped instead. As he fell and the demon slammed into the minecart, he yanked his gauntlet down, and ten mana's worth of dust ripped from the ceiling, a sudden thick curtain falling straight over the demon's head. The demon sliced through the cloud on instinct, but there was nothing to cut. Nothing that mattered, anyways.

Then Orland hit the ground on both feet and one hand, and he looked straight up, visualizing gripping a small chunk of the ceiling with his gauntlet and yanking down again. Above the demon, a ten-mana pillar of stone ripped free and came down like thunder. The stake slammed into the demon's back—and then Orland yanked his gauntlet the rest of the way down, driving the pillar straight into the ground before him. The ground rumbled.

The demon screamed as it was crushed into the ground, but it wasn't dead yet, so he clenched his teeth and slammed his gauntlet to the ground again, shattering the top half of the pillar into shards. It was easy to eviscerate the demon with a storm of debris now that it couldn't move or defend itself. He yanked the shards down to stab its horns, skull, spine, and limbs. The demon's screams quickly cut off with a wet crack, and Orland stood there panting, arm shaking from the strain. Fifty mana.

A little more than that if he included the sylph shoes. Between the first earth blade, the first attempt at the storm of debris, and the giant earth pillar at the end, he'd used about forty mana just for one demon—but he'd done it. Dust to blind to the demon, weakening its keen eyes and lowering its reaction speed. Then a pillar from the ceiling directly above it, because its horns don't let it look up easily, which was why that one stone shard managed to graze its neck in the first place.

Then, once its legs are immobilized, I'm free to stab the shit out of it. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it He grinned despite himself, feeling just an ounce of pride for having found the demon's blindspot, but then the hairs on the back of his neck tingled. Danger. His body moved before his brain caught up. He whirled, gauntlet snapping upward and yanking up a five-mana earth wall as the four-horned demon jumped down at him, horns swinging.

He dashed back at the same time as well—the right move. The four-horned demon smashed through his wall like it was made of glass, and the impact would've thrown him off his feet, though the horn also shattered on impact. But unlike the previous demon, this larger demon had four horns to snap off, which meant he didn't even need to wait ten seconds for it to regenerate before snapping a new one off. Orland stumbled back, and yanked another five-mana wall up between them.

The wall barely had time to rise before the demon smashed through it, replacing the broken horn with a new one. Another wall. Another wall. Another wall. Every time, the demon shattered the wall with a single swing and walked through the wreckage, bright silver eyes fixed on him. He wanted to leap away, but the whole chamber was rumbling harder now. The floating minecarts dipped and lurched above him. The rails twisted slowly through the air, then jerked with every bright pulse of the rift.

One bad jump with his sylph shoes and he'd slam face-first into a spinning cart or miss a foothold entirely. He had to stay on the ground, but against this relentless demon, all he could do was back up and raise earth walls to delay the horns.

"What is this, Fifth Hero?" the demon snarled, smashing through another wall.

"Why does the sun's chosen scurry on his heels? Why does the mage throw himself into the fray like a warrior? Why does the Hero not remain behind his companions?" Orland clenched his jaw and ripped up a ten-mana earth blade around his gauntlet, punching it forward at the demon's ribs right after it smashed through a wall—but the blade struck the demon's lead-plated pelt and shattered immediately, not even biting through. The force even jolted back through his arm.

Before he could hiss and recover, the demon's next horn swung at him from the side, forcing him to duck, then leap back up into the air with his gauntlet pointed down. Come! Four three-mana earth shards lying behind the demon flew in, aiming for the back of the demon's knees, but they bounced off harmlessly and shattered as well. The demon growled and spun, throwing one of his horns up at Orland like a javelin.

"Is this all the Hero has?" If Orland hadn't activated his sylph shoes again mid-air, the horn would've speared him through. Instead, it only carved through the air where his throat had been and clipped the edge of his coat, and he staggered back as he landed. There's no weakness. This guy's just stronger, tougher, faster, and smarter than the others—and he also knows how to fight. He glanced left, searching for Kazimir. The old wolf was still surrounded.

Bodies lay cut apart around him, and more demons had lost their heads and arms trying to enter the storm of his chainblade, but he'd dropped his satchels and his bulky bundle of Altars on the ground so he could move a little faster, and that alone told Orland everything. Kazimir didn't look panicked, but he was on the back foot, carving out his space with constant lashes of steel and frost while the demons circled him. They were listening to their four-horned leader.

They weren't trying to overwhelm him, but rather just trying to corner him and make sure he couldn't move as he pleased. To the right, Miriyela had killed half of her demons and was holding on, but only 'just' as well. She blocked one horn with her bracer, twisted to take another strike on the thickest part of her armor, then swung her hammer with a red flash that forced two demons to scatter instead of die.

That counterattack might've worked on the initial demon that tried to kill Orland, but the rest of them had learned quickly. None of them falling for her overwhelming counters. Instead they cut, danced back, jabbed at the gaps between her armor, and kept her from even trying to grab them. Sharsana, too, was furious. The mole-drake lunged and dug and snapped, but the single demon assigned to distract her refused to engage.

It only hopped across floating debris, scraped its horns across the ground to draw her attention, then sprang away whenever she tried to burrow beneath it. It was keeping her busy, and that was all it needed to do. Worse still, far behind the four-horned demon, more demons were starting to fall out of the rift. They dropped out disoriented, bodies twisting in the weak gravity before catching themselves on rails, carts, or the lead-infested floor.

For a few seconds they all looked confused, but then they saw the fighting. They heard the demons' snarling, they felt the rumble of the cavern, and before long, an extra wave of at least a dozen more demons began charging into the fray. Across the chamber, Kazimir's eyes met Orland's for half a heartbeat. Miriyela's head turned a moment later as well, veil hiding her expression but not the tension in her shoulders.

Not one of them shouted a plan—nobody had the time—but all three of them seemed to come to the exact same conclusion either way. There were too many demons. They had to run. Kazimir moved first. A new wave of frostfire crawled along his chainblade as he snapped it wide, the segmented blade whipping in a bright arc that forced the demons around him to back off. Then he used that one breath of space to lash his blade up.

The chain struck the ceiling hard enough to crack stone and astral lead together, sending a fracture rippling above the left side of the chamber. Miriyela roared at the same time on the right side of the chamber, slamming her hammer into the wall. The red discharge shook the entire cavern, splitting stone and astral lead growths, and the two of them causing massive damage to the cavern made the four-horned demon's gaze flick aside for just a second.

"That's your opening!" a lady shouted in his ear.

"Go!" He poured mana into his sylph shoes and launched himself back. The burst of wind threw him all the way back to the mineshaft at the entrance of the chamber, and as he landed, he shot his gauntlet up and visualized grabbing the ceiling. The last time he'd try to rip down a ceiling, it was in the leech's cave. But unlike last time, he was much, much deeper into the earth, so there was more weight above them.

There was more stone, more soil, more everything for him to yank down—so he grit his teeth until his jaw hurt, poured all fifty mana he had left into his gauntlet, and pulled. The ceiling caved.

"Move!" Kazimir barked.

"I am moving, old wolf!" Miriyela snapped back. Kazimir, Miriyela, and Sharsana made a mad dash towards the mineshaft behind him while the elkkin demons pursued, but when a small mountain of stone, salt, timber supports, rails, and astral lead growths fell from the ceiling, the demons hesitated. The first of them made their decision—they recoiled, sprang back, and scrambled away so they wouldn't be crushed by the avalanche.

The last thing Orland saw through the falling debris was the four-horned demon standing beyond the collapse, silver eyes fixed on him with hateful certainty. No words reached through the roar of the collapse, but he felt like he heard them anyway.

'You shouldn't be here.' … Then the cavern vanished behind a mountain of rubble, and his knees buckled immediately. He would've kissed the dirt if Miriyela hadn't caught him by the back of his coat. But the mineshaft was still shaking. The entire mine was still shaking. The vibrations were racing up and everywhere, dust pouring from the ceiling and timber supports groaning all around them. Orland's stomach dropped. A chain reaction? The entire mine's collapsing?

Before he could say anything, though, Miriyela hooked an arm under him and hauled him onto her back. She was also sweating and panting hard, but if the exhaustion was too much for her to bear, she didn't make a fuss out of it.

"Sharsana!" she barked.

"Carry the old wolf and make haste for the surface!"

"I don't need you to carry me!" Kazimir snapped back.

"And if we leave now, we won't be able to return! Right here, we have to—" Sharsana didn't care. She sprinted into Kazimir's good leg, shoved upwards, and practically scooped the old wolf off the ground and then onto her scaly back. Kazimir cursed in a rough northern dialect Orland didn't understand, but before either him or Orland could protest, Miriyela was already directing Sharsana up the mineshaft. The mine collapsed around them as they ran. Timber supports snapped behind them.

Dust rolled through the tunnels in thick waves. Even astral lead flakes spun through the air like glimmering sparks, but Miriyela and Sharsana were living battering rams, bashing through every obstacle that fell in their way and then some more. They passed through the lower shafts in a blur. Chambers they'd cleared one by one shook all around them as demon corpses slid into the cracks opening in the ground.

The ground even caved before them once when they reached the second lower shaft, but Miriyela cleared it with a single leap, and so did Sharsana, running like they were born in the earth. Well, maybe they were born in the earth. Orland knew very little about dwarves and mole-drakes, so all he could do was think, think, and think as he clung onto Miriyela's back for his life. Ten minutes later, daylight burst ahead.

Miriyela and Sharsana exploded out into the town square while the mine entrance collapsed behind them, stone and timber crashing down in a huge choking cloud of dust. While the two of them screeched to a halt, the townsfolk who'd been pacing, praying, or watching the soldiers butcher demon corpses all around the square snapped their heads towards the sound.

Even the soldiers who were holding knives over opened demon chests—likely harvesting the hearts from the bodies they must've recovered from the first lower shaft—turned to flinch at the billowing cloud of dust. Because by the time the dust settled, the mine entrance had vanished behind rubble, completely sealing away the darkness. Nobody breathed. Not a single person. Then Nikolai alone—who was one of the soldiers butchering the demon corpses—stepped forward, hope fighting dread across his face.

"Great Hero," he said carefully.

"Did you do it? Is the rift… sealed?" Orland said nothing at first. But when Kazimir turned over on Sharsana's back, grunted, and slid himself back onto two feet, Orland knew exactly what the old wolf was going to say. So he took the initiative, saying what he'd been thinking and rehearsing in his head for the past ten minutes.

"It will be sealed!" Orland announced, pushing off Miriyela's back and landing lightly on his toes. He still almost buckled because of his near complete lack of mana, but he managed to smile as he turned towards the townsfolk, looking them in the face one by one.

"The demons were stronger than I expected, but… that's all! We found the rift, we know what's happening, and I've got a plan, so don't be afraid! Just one more night! By tomorrow dawn, the rift will be sealed!" For another breath, the square held still. Then someone cheered. Another voice joined in. Then another. Soon the townsfolk were shouting again, chanting for the Hero, for the gods, for Zimnerudik, and for anything that sounded like hope.

Nikolai immediately looked relieved enough to nearly collapse where he stood. The soldiers around the square lifted their weapons, and even the men butchering demon corpses straightened, bloodied hands raised in a rough salute. Only Kazimir stared at Orland with a scowl sharp enough to cut stone, while Miriyela said nothing, clutching her waist with an air of worry around her.

For his part, Orland ignored both of them as he turned away from the cheering crowd to start limping towards the town hall—and he made sure nobody could see his mouth before he let his lips purse tight. … One grade an hour. What now?