The Korchra Reapers

     “From above,” yelled Cora, and Delara looked up to see huge bats, larger than horses, soaring overhead, wheeling around the moonlight columns at the commands of their riders. One of them dived at a phalanx cluster, who raised their shields to form a roof over their heads. The giant bat pulled up, releasing its bomb to strike the phalanx dead center. Thick green smoke spilled out, pouring between the gaps of the shields, and the phalanx began to collapse, succumbing to the poison, while the zombies swarmed over them. 

     The song of the wardancers changed, a further warning added to the melody. Delara peered around the edge of the hull shield and saw the true strength of the Korchra Reapers, who’d used the distraction of the zombie charge to close the distance to the Amazon battle lines unmolested. She counted at least eight more of those shadow golems, a dozen Arachnes—centaur-like fusions of dark elves and horse-sized spiders, along with some warg-riding orc warriors, conventional cavalry, followed by a battle line of heavy infantry, and, worst of all, five titanic spiders, as big as houses, each carrying a rider on its back.

     Grimly, Delara kept right on with her task of zombie execution. They had to clear out as many as possible before the main forces hit them. From her right, a warning was called, as the phalanx raised its shields over their heads, as a pair of giant bats dived down.

     No, scatter, Delara thought, too late, as the bats released their bombs. Delara froze, torn between her impulse to maintain her position defending the line and getting clear of the bombs, but then two tuned nuns leapt overhead, hurled by their fellows. Delara gaped in amazement as they both caught the bombs midair and redirected them, tossing them safely out beyond the battle-line. The momentum of the tuned carried them over the phalanx to land in a mass of zombies, (the moonlight column had vanished) but they actually managed to use the head-cages as stepping-stones, and began kicking waves of fire into the masses of undead around them.

     The giant bats pulled up, avoiding a hail of stalker arrow, save for one brightly-colored arrow from Halfrid clan Hagen, which passed through one of the creature’s eye sockets, burying itself deep in its brain. It dropped like a stone, while the other bat rose out of even Halfrid’s range, only to be struck by a bolt of lightning from the sky. The bat rider slumped over, dead in his harness, while the bat screeched in pain and terror and fled, its natural instincts taking over.

     Delara breathed a sigh of relief, and that was when one of the shadow golems hurled a huge chunk of masonry right into the phalanx next to her. There were screams and the sounds of shattering wood as the center of the phalanx collapsed, and zombies began to pour through the gaps, overwhelming the shocked Amazons. Even worse, they were preventing the unhurt soldiers from administering their emergency healing potions to any of their mortally wounded comrades.

     Delara would’ve moved to reinforce them, but she was barely managing to hold her own position, the reprieve they’d earned from their earlier withdrawal now gone, and zombies were threatening to overcome them with sheer numbers. All along the line, phalanxes were failing and it felt like they were seconds from being overrun. 

     “Evil creatures, wretched and pathetic in monstrous unlife,” came a voice from behind them. From the corner of her eye, Delara saw one of the holy acolytes walking up to the line, accompanied by her Champion, her holy crescent sickle held before her, her maiden mask amplifying her voice in concert with the other acolytes and the High Priestess as they recited their holy litany.

     “In the holy name of Shoskara, Mother of the Amazons, Shoskara the warrior, She of Far Sight, Shoskara who nurtures and protects us always, I command thee, foul abominations, BE GONE!”

     And with that, a wave of pure white light blasted out from the holy women, washing over the Amazon battle line like cleansing fire. In an instant, every zombie within ten yards of a priestess was gone, blasted into dust, and there was an cascading, echoing clatter as all their empty head-cages fell to earth, while Amazon hoplites scrambled to treat their injured and reassemble their formations. 

     “They were just sitting on that?” said an exasperated Rue.

     “More like saving it,”said Cora. “They might not be able to do it more than—”

     And then the whole world was plunged into darkness. Delara whipped her head about and fought down a wave of panic. She was completely blind. Everything around her was pure blackness, like nothing she’d ever experienced before. She tried to get her bearings through hearing, and, over the confused shouts of other blinded Amazons, she could still hear the song of the wardancers, advising calm.

     But then a new voice echoed out through the pitch blackness—cold, haughty, and sourceless. 

     “Foolish mortals. You think, with this pathetic, squirming display of resistance, that you will escape your fate? You think to challenge me, here? At the very seat of my power? You imagine that your pitiful forces are a match for a Vampire Lord? For the great Grigore Olarescu? Now, prepare to suffer for your impudence. All of you shall die or become my thralls!”

     Delara steeled herself and listened for immediate threats, hearing heavy thumping on the other side of the hull shield as the next wave of zombies started piling up. The war-song was now dominated by flute melodies, instructions to the magic-users that Delara didn’t understand. So, she prepared to feel out for the top of the shield with her spear, but before she could, a small sun appeared overhead, turning the black night into day.

     Delara winced and blinked the spots out of her eyes, just in time to see one of those massive spiders, its grotesque multi-eyed face a bare arm’s length away from the top of the hull shield. It hissed and recoiled away from the localized daylight, and it wasn’t the only thing that did. 

     All around the priests and holy champions stood pale fanged women, each adorned in tight-fitting black leather dresses with plunging necklines, hissing and shielding their faces with their hands. And, closest to the high priestess loomed the only male figure, white-haired and gaunt, nearly seven feet tall, his jewel-adorned leather armor partially covered by rich black-furred robes with gold trim, a crown of twisted black metal atop his brow. His response to the magical sunlight was more of a roar than a hiss, as he spat out blood-covered silver chain links, tossing aside one of the holy champions, whose neck armor had been torn open by the force of his jaws. 

     The high priestess and her other holy champion were beset by three of the vampire women, the champion heroically keeping all three from reaching the priestess. But she was badly outnumbered, and Delara realized that the vampires had been waiting for the holy warriors to stretch out their formation to deal with the zombies. She looked for the maiden-masked acolyte, and indeed, she and her champion were stuck fighting two more of the vampire minions. But then, a beam of bright sunlight blasted in, cast by Asha, and the two vampires shrieked and clutched at their eyes, blinded, as their undead flesh began to blister and burn away.

     The maiden acolyte took the opportunity to dart past the blinded vampires and run to the aid of the high priestess, whirling her holy censer overhead and releasing it to fly out and wrap around one of the lesser vampire’s throats. The creature shrieked and began to dissolve as the censer doused her with holy water. This gave the holy champion an opening, and she skewered another vampire through its unprotected torso with her sword. The vampire just tipped her head back and laughed, until the champion shouted out in praise to the Goddess, channelling holy fire through her blade, and the vampire’s laugh turned into a screech of agony. The third vampire hurled herself at the champion, seeking to rescue her companion, but stopped short in surprise, looking down to see an arrow sticking out of her chest, its wooden shaft impaled through her undead heart. She dissolved into dust, leaving the parrot-feathered arrow to fall to the frozen ground.

     The vampire lord Grigore snarled and sent tendrils of black arcane energy to wrap around the throats of the maiden acolyte and the holy champion, but High Priestess Xanthe raised her holy scepter and shot out her own ray of sunlight. Grigore’s spell fizzled as he hissed and hid his face behind his cloak, while one of his vampire minions was incinerated entirely.

     Grigore dropped his cloak to reveal a face covered in blisters. Sneering, he shot huge spectral bat-wings from his back and made to take off, only to be stymied. He looked down to see the holy champion that he’d bitten, one of her hands pressed to her neck, pouring healing energy into herself, while the other hand had driven her sword through the top of Grigore’s foot, pinning it to the earth.

     Grigore stomped on her head with his other foot, but she she didn’t release her grip on her sword. Grigore tried to stomp again, but the chain from a holy censer wrapped around his throat. The crone-mask acolyte had gotten free and joined the fray. Grigore screamed as the high priestess blasted him with another sunbeam, but then a shout tore Delara’s attention from the vampire battle.

     “Incoming,” said Cora. “Oh, shit!”

     Delara dodged to one side, as a tree-sized hairy spider leg came down in the space where she’d been standing. The gigantic spider, having overcome its aversion to the magical daylight, easily pulled its body over the hull shield, crushing a few zombies as it did. The thing was horrifying, its multiple sets of bulbous black eyes hovering over a pair of massive, hairy fangs. It reared up, its fangs flaring outward like a pair of giant shears, while Cora and Delara’s spears just skittered off the thing’s armored underside. 

     “Cora, no,” said Rue, shoving her companion aside as the monster pounced. The dwarf screamed as the fangs punched through her armor, the metal buckling under the pressure of the powerful jaws. Delara felt a surge of rage course through her, and she lunged forward with her spear, catching it in one of its secondary eyes, the only vulnerable point she could see. 

     The huge spider released Rue, who slumped lifelessly to the ground, and rounded on her. The strike came too fast to dodge, but some instinct prompted her to get behind her shield and lunge forward. The massive jaws clamped down on her shield, but she’d gotten it jammed up close to its mouth, so its fangs jabbed into empty air behind her. Delara choked up on her spear, gripping it right behind the head, and thrust it deep into one of the spiders bulging, pupilless main eyes. 

     The great arachnid hissed and reared back, yanking Delara off her feet and carrying her back over the hull shield and into enemy territory. Delara felt herself whipped about, slammed into zombies, but she didn’t let that break her concentration as she alternated between stabbing more of the monster’s eyes, and using her spear-hook in its eye-sockets to hold herself in place, sometimes bringing a leg up to brace herself against the thing’s giant mandibles, keeping her head moving in response to the spider’s strange mouth-arms, that jabbed and prodded at her constantly. She was doing damage, but none of it seemed close to fatal, and she could feel the thick wood of her shield start to buckle under the strain.

     From somewhere nearby, she heard a thickly-accented voice say, “Enough of that, you,” and a crackling bolt of arcane energy came from nowhere, shooting right at her head. Instinctively, she ducked, just as a mouth-arm also jabbed at her helmet, taking the bolt and exploding. 

     Delara heard cursing, and also felt a wet, stinging sensation on her legs. Her shield started to smoke as the spider vomited acid all over it. She needed to act fast or she’d be melted and crushed. She drove her spear-hook as deep as she could into one of the monster spider’s eye sockets, and slid her arm out from her shield-strap as the beast reared back in pain, using the momentum to vault up and over onto the creature’s back, letting her hand slide down the haft of her spear as she did, as the hook spun around the monster’s chitinous eye-socket. Delara used the leverage to direct her descent, right towards a strange empty saddle, only to feel her knees collide with something, that made an “Oof,” sound, and she had to clutch at the saddle to avoid falling off. 

     Delara looked around in surprise, and saw a figure in black pants and robes dangling from a stirrup at the spider’s side. She couldn’t see much more than that, because the person was upside-down, and their robes were inverted. Delara grabbed a saddle strap to steady herself and jabbed at the enemy with her spear, catching them with a glancing blow to the thigh that knocked them loose of the stirrup. She lost sight of the figure as it disappeared beneath the spider’s body, so she returned to her task of trying to kill this monster, with little success.

     She now had an advantage in that this animal didn’t seem to have any idea about what to do about an enemy getting on its back, but she also didn’t have any way to hurt it, other than gouging out its eyes. Its heavy chitin resisted both her spear and axe. She tried focusing her blows at the eye-holes, hoping to create some kind of crack, with no luck, not even when she stuck the tip of her axe-blade in and tried to use it as a lever. 

Delara was wracking her brain for some plan of attack when an arrow suddenly buried itself in one of the creature’s eye sockets. And this arrow didn’t have parrot-feathers for once. Delara looked across the battlefield to see Mina nocking another arrow. The spider lurched beneath her as it charged its new opponent, its senses unerring, despite the fact that Delara had destroyed all its eyes. 

     Delara looked down at the arrow, and an idea struck her. She shifted her grip on her axe and swung the flat of it down to the arrow’s nock, like a hammer driving a nail. The spider shuddered in response, halting its charge for a second, and when it resumed, it was no longer so fast or certain. Mina’s second arrow bounced of off its chitin, but the third hit home, and Delara pounded it in further.

     This time the great monster spasmed and bucked, forcing Delara to dive free as it flipped all the way over on its back, twitching and hissing. Delara dropped her axe and reversed her spear, thrusting her butt-spike deep into one of the arachnid’s primary eye-sockets, driving it nearly half its length into the monster’s skull-body before piercing its brain and ending its suffering.

     Delara retrieved her gore-covered spear and tried to wipe it clean as best she could on her trousers, as she looked about to get her bearings. She’d been carried a good quarter of the way up the hill and had an elevated view of the battle below.  

     Incredibly, two of the giant spiders lay dead on the field, while the other two faced forests of spears jabbing up at them. Delara saw one of the great beasts shudder as three lightning bolts struck it simultaneously, which was enough to make it turn and flee from the pain and the harsh light, its rider having already been killed. Four of the shadow golems had already been reduced to empty skeletons. Delara saw Halfrid clan Hagen fire an arrow into one of the giant’s onyx eyes with enough force to shatter it, and it collapsed into a broken doll. The overall battle line had been broken into segments, but those segments had consolidated into defensive squares and the corpses of many Reaper cavalry lay at their feet. There were still at least a hundred zombies, but their behavior had changed. Rather than charging the line like madmen, they milled and shuffled about, slowly making their way towards anything living. 

     The vampires were all gone, but Delara saw all the priestesses, the holy champions, and two of the shamans gathered in a tight circle, the champions hacking away with their weapons like they were chopping wood, the shamans blasting away with their sunbeams, and then a figure rose up from their center, Grigore Olarescu, who looked awful. Barely any of his flesh remained, and, even at this distance, Delara could see the panic on what was left of his face. He rose up, his figure becoming indistinct, almost misty. But all three of the acolytes had wrapped the chains of their holy censers around him, and they pulsed with divine energy, solidifying his form and dragging him back down into the killing circle.

Grigore’s voice echoed out over the battlefield, but it had lost all its confidence. What came out now was hysterical shrieking.

     “You think you can get away with this? Once I get free, I’ll—nggh! I… I have allies. Allies who will not countenance such an insult—Aiigh! This isn’t the end. A curse on you, a curse! Do you… do you have any idea—Gah!—any idea who I am? You can’t do this to meeeeeee!”

None of the holy warriors paid any mind to his ranting as they hacked away, and it was almost enough to make Delara crack a grin. But the wardancers were calling everyone to regroup and consolidate their forces, which she’d do as soon as Mina joined her.

Except, instead of meeting her, Mina ran right past her, going the wrong way.

     “Just a sec, hot stuff,” she said, as she zipped by. Delara watched her go in puzzlement, as she appeared to be chasing nothing. The catkin stalker kept running for another eighty feet, dropped her bow, ripped her last three black oil bombs from her bandolier and threw them, rapid-fire, at a section of empty hillside. The first bomb simply broke open on the rocky ground, lighting up in a pool of fire, but the second had its trajectory oddly altered at the last second, and when it broke open, a gout of flame shot up in a strange pattern. Then the third bomb erupted midair, its flames wreathing around a robed figure who appeared from nowhere, waving a skull-headed staff about and howling in pain.

     The man’s screams rang out across the hillside, increasing in pitch as Mina picked up her bow and shot him in the shoulder. But Delara’s attention was caught by a nearby section of loose dirt that suddenly moved, as a giant metal skeleton unfolded itself from where it had been lying flat, silently rising up until it stood twelve feet tall, its form bulking out with magical shadow, a trap left untriggered until they’d blundered into it.

Mina was re-nocking her bow when a brightly-colored arrow descended from nowhere and caught the flaming man dead between the eyes, causing Mina to whirl around back to the battle-line.

     “What? Really, Halfrid?” she yelled in exasperation. “That was just straight-up kill-stealing. You know, just because you can make that shot, doesn’t mean you always should—“

     “Mina, look out,” yelled Delara.

     “Eh?” she said, as the shadowy giant closed in on her, lashing out with a sweeping kick from its massive leg. Mina only noticed at the last second, juking sideways just enough to turn a lethal blow into a glancing hit, but it was enough to knock her clean off her feet to land into a stunned pile downhill. The giant closed in on her, raising its shadow-and-steel foot for a killing stomp, and the sight of it sparked a surge of white hot rage in Delara, rage like she hadn’t felt in years. She channeled it instantly, cocking her arm back and hurling her spear, never mind that it wasn’t intended for throwing. It flew straight and true and slammed into the golem’s knee joint, knocking it to the side and jamming itself into the gears.

     The giant twisted and lost its balance, its stomp going high and wide as it pitched forwards and tumbled down the hill. Delara roared, drawing her axe and chasing after it. She ran it down as it was pushing itself up to its hands and knees, and Delara did a fast self-check as she charged into its melee range, sublimating her rage into focus, prepared to evade even as she swung her axe into the golem’s leg. 

Her axe passed harmlessly through its shadow-flesh and bounced off its brass-plated steel leg bone, and she had to leap back to avoid its retaliatory swat. She backpedalled down the hill as the golem stood up, one leg stuttering a bit before it straightened, shattering her embedded spear as it did. 

     The thing closed in on her with frightening speed. Its huge legs meant it could easily catch up to her, but it wasn’t terribly nimble, so she was able to dodge its strikes with relative ease. She played a game of cat and mouse, constantly changing direction, as she gradually led them both away from Mina and back towards the Amazon battle line. Delara knew she didn’t have to defeat this golem by herself, but she couldn’t resist getting her own hits in where the opportunities presented themselves, focusing her attacks on the giant’s steel ankle joints, seeing if she could at least hamper its mobility just a bit.

     It was all going great until Delara backed right into a zombie. She threw it off her with no problem, but it messed with her timing just enough for one of the golem’s steel toes to clip her on the helmet, sending her reeling into another bunch of zombies, which clutched at her and pulled her to the ground.

     Immediately she fought back, kicking and shoving and hacking off their grasping hands with her axe blade, knowing all the while that it was too late—they’d already slowed her down too much, as she glanced up to see the golem’s massive foot raised high, poised to come crashing down and end her life, but there was something else there, unexpected. Mina was clinging to the monster’s head, and she jammed her dagger into a gap at the base of the golem’s cycloptic onyx eye, cranking on it to pry it loose. 

     The giant seized up in a jittery spasm, stumbling backwards and away from Delara, but at a cost, as arcane energy flowed back into Mina, and Delara saw her whole body go rigid, unable to let go of the golem as it continued senselessly staggering backward, until it reached the chasm that bordered one edge of the battlefield and plummeted into the crevasse, taking Mina with her.

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