Capítulo 47: Retribution of the living
In the blink of an eye, she swoops Das from the ground and carries him through the streets, embracing him in a deadly squeeze as she sucks the life out of him. Like Ann when they first fought, Das's soul is slowly drained, feeling the strength in his body weaken as his consciousness twinkles, he struggles to cast anything that may help him.
When the ghostly woman screams and lets him go, flying away while he crashes on the ground at high speed, rolling several times before lying still, his left arm broken in several places.
Breathing heavily, his still half-dragged-out soul slowly rejoins the rest of his body, until he is once again full and can stand up, then he sees dozens of new ghosts flying down to him.
It's then that the reason why she let go of him appears, Drachen, in her owl form stretches her wings as she floats above him and a huge beam of light showers from the sky, eradicating more than half of the ghosts and gifting Das with all the strength he lost, healing him up.
"Are you alright?!" Drachen says turning back to her human form and helping him to get on his feet.
"I am now, thanks" he looks behind him, hearing the mournful melody of the ghost as she flies above them "She is creating more of them"
"So we must end her suffering now" Drachen replies, turning back into an owl "but be warned, I can only give you mana one more time" the clouds of Ann and the Phantom fly above them like shooting stars, quickly disappearing from view "And we still have to face him"
"I know" Das glances around him and notices they are much deeper inside the town, there isn't a single living person around them, only corpses. Hollow husks, or maimed victims.
There is a fire in a few of the buildings, raising black smoke above them as the shining red flames slowly spread. This image, this smell, it all comes back in a series of memories that threaten with turning Das mad.
He can hear the laughter of the madmen once more, see the faces of the dead burning in piles, and the head of the little girl resting on the pike. His breathing quickens, his legs shake and he falls to his knees, gasping for air as terror settles in.
Why can't he let it go? Every thought related to Eversmile is like a dagger digging itself deep inside his head and his heart. He wanted to run away, he knew he had a duty and without him, more people would die.
But why care? People would never see him as anything else than a monster, as one of the ghosts flying above the town, like one of the ghouls tearing people apart. This was a question he asked himself often, and while there were many answers, today, he was more certain than ever of what was the right one.
His father. His father's legacy of a mass murderer was a heavy burden to carry, to be the son of such a monster made him feel the greatest of guilts, and Eversmile was like a mocking repetition of what he had done.
The raging fire that consumes it all, the burning corpses that can be counted on the hundreds, the mind-controlled bandits driven mad. It mirrored his father's actions, how he burned the homes of the mages, and the mages themselves, how he controlled their minds to force them to die quietly.
And the Phantom, he wondered if his father had the same look on his face when he committed such an abominable atrocity, a smile, the type you get when you help an old beggar or give some food to a stray puppy.
Like if you had helped them...did he look like that? And the question he was the most afraid of was if he would ever be like that.
All it took was letting go of it all, giving in to the familiar sensation already swelling deep inside of him. To forget about the fear, about the doubts, about the pain, and give in, to his wrath.
He could feel his blood burn like the red mana coursing through his veins thickens and rapidly expands all over his body. A cursed shield that comes to his rescue when his mind and spirit falter, or when he is at his limit and wants to stop fighting.
But he can't give in, it will consume him, replace him with a hollow husk like the ones littering the streets all around him, a puppet being controlled by his hatred, someone like his father, someone like the King.
The woman screams and all nearby ghosts head her call, while also freeing Das from his trance just in time before his wrath could affect Drachen.
"I will protect you, so focus on them" just as she finishes to speak, all the ghosts swarm to them from above, the woman joining them "We are together in this, Das!!"
The young archmage blasts them all with blinding and all-consuming light and a fight for survival ensues like no other, Das flies from one place to another on the wide street, barely dodging the ghosts and their life-sucking hands.
Those that grab him have their limbs immediately cut off by Drachen who kept close to Das at all times. The two of them unleashed a barrage of light beams and mana-filled fireballs against the dozens of ghosts.
Each time the largest of them, the woman, approaches enough, Das creates a blast of light that forces her to retreat. This exchange continues until the number of ghosts dwindles enough that only a quarter of them remain.
Suddenly, all ghosts retreat, leaving Das and Drachen alone for long enough to breathe again, they are tired, but not yet exhausted.
The woman looks more enraged than ever before, she takes a glance at the few ghosts she has left and cried out as they are sucked into her. She twists and screams again as a pair of deformed arms pop out of her back.
Falling to the ground she changes further, her legs snapping in weird directions, her mouth stretches impossibly long, and her hair grows more than the size of her entire body. Her ethereal appearance solidifies and she looks like something made out of flesh and bone, no longer mist.
The new monster screeches as she crawls faster than it would seem able, Das shoots another beam of light, but while it hits her and burns her, she doesn't slow down at all.
Das raises a shield as the woman strikes him with his arm, the shield stops the attack the first time, but when she goes for the second attempt, her entire body becomes ethereal like before and it goes through the shield like if it was nothing.
It goes through Das as well, but it still inflicts pain and sucks the air out of his lungs, making him fall to his knees and lower his shield. She becomes corporeal once again and pounces at him, but Drachen's fire blasts her away.
"Keep your distance, we don't know what else is she capable of doing"
The monster screams and rushes to meet Das's raised staff head-on, he holds it with difficulty, and there is still fear in his mind, but he endures it all because this time he isn't alone.
"Here! run through the forests and try to reach the border camps, you will be safe there!!" Petra shouts at the fleeing townsfolk.
They have steadily run to the outskirts of the town and now the forests at each side of it are close enough, along with them there are small groups of guards and priests, most of them injured or exhausted.
Petra looks at the enemies in front of her and sees how little support there is left, most guards are now protecting the townsfolk running into the woods, or lay dead on the ground or barely standing as they keep the hordes of ghouls in line.
She is panting, her body hurts, and her heart races, she takes a glance at her spear, bloody and worn, it's thrown away to her side so she grabs a nearby sword one of the guards must have dropped.
Maybe this will be the place she dies, surrounded by monsters that she never imagined would appear in a place like this, it sure felt like this was it. There were less than a dozen guards in front of her, they were outnumbered one to five.
But it didn't matter. She would die fighting for the King, for the people around her, for the Light to cleanse the soul of the damned. The defenseless needed her, and she would gladly die to save them.
With a thunderous war cry, she carries her sword in hand, running at three ghouls that pass through the few guards left, ready to cut her into pieces.
"I will release you all!" she thought, feeling her heart moved by the pained expressions of the monsters she was fighting against.
Then, something flies next to her face, close enough to cut her right cheek, and pierces the head of one of the monsters. She halts her charge as two others, now visibly projectiles of light, kill the other two ghouls.
Trumpets blast from afar as the galloping of three hundred horses becomes louder and louder. She looks back and sees at a distance the soldiers coming through the road that cuts into the forest. Clad in full steel armor and riding in front of the charge is a general of the Kingdom.
A helmet that resembles the head of a hawk, a large bundle of red plumes that looks like its tail on the wind. His cape was short and feathered, green in color but with the shield of the Kingdom on its back. He prepared to shoot an arrow from his runed longbow, both string and arrow manifest out of thin air, made out of pure energy, and he shoots with deadly precision at the ghouls.
The heavy galloping of the cavalry is loud and powerful, but more so are the swing of their blades and piercing of their spears as they rush past the fleeing townsfolk and enter the town, ending the suffering of any ghoul they run near.
Half of the cavalry stays there while the other half moves around the edge of the town, led by the general who shoots as many arrows as he can, killing even the ghosts that exit their deceased hosts.
"Make sure everyone leaves this place safely, the rest of the soldiers are coming," one of the knights says to Petra quickly leaving after delivering his orders to join the rest of the riders.
She nods and rushes to her exhausted companions barely standing, helping him onto his feet as she shouts to anyone who would hear "Retreat back to the woods! Help anyone who stays behind!! Leave this to the knights!"
The battle turns against the ghouls as they are pushed into the town, the cavalry of knights expertly trained and heavily armored tears through their numbers like a sharp dagger pierces the flesh with only a few of them falling to the attacks of the ghouls. Their willpower is too great to be quickly defeated by the ghosts.
Meanwhile, deeper inside the town the large monster is a smoking mess, most of her body is covered in bruises and burns, while having only succeeded in harming Das a couple of times, he was tired, but still with plenty of strength to fight.
The monster returns to her more human form, looking beaten and badly damaged, she flies up as Das prepares to go on with the fight. But then, she sings.
like worms getting deep inside rotting meat, crawling their way to his deepest parts, the mournful melody filled with pain, and regret seeps inside his mind and floods all thoughts.
He looks at her once more, and the thing he sees is not the woman that almost sucked his soul out, but his father standing in mid-air surrounded by the burning spirits of the mages he doomed to die.
It is him, exactly how he remembers it. Wearing his old brown cloak, covered in bandages from the tip of his fingers to the top of his head, barefooted and wearing beneath the cloak only his dark blue pants.
No matter how many times he blinks, he doesn't go away. It's his father...no, it's Vater, the Archmage of Cinder.
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