CHAPTER 102: EARTHWYRM

By the time the bull’s team had downed the first demon, about a quarter of the smaller fiends had been dispatched by the front line fighters. The orc and beast army had taken minimal losses up to that point, and it showed no signs of changing anytime soon.

Stahl dove at the nearest target, cutting through the fiend with ease. The she-wolf noticed something coming towards her from the corner of her eye, and turned just in time to see Chief Crag swat the leaping fiend away midair with a hefty swing of his club.

The orc turned and gave the wolf a smug grin. Stahl grunted before she tossed her words at the orc, driving her longer sword through the center of the squirming mass of another fiend.

"I had it."

The chief laughed once before he answered, crushing a longer bodied one with a mighty swing as if it were an afterthought.

"Unity, remember?"

Just as the orc finished his statement, the wolf felt a light rumbling beneath her paws on the earth, but it faded just a moment after. Stahl paused at the sensation briefly, but quickly had to resume her battling without delay as she cut through another mindless, charging enemy with skilled and practiced precision.

She glanced down at the ground beneath her warily after, certain she had felt something that unsettled her instincts greatly. However, she had no time to worry about it in her current position, though, and turned her attention back towards the battle at hand.

Another boom of thunder rocked over the battlefield, signaling that Mollis was preparing to activate her second rune. Stahl jumped back a few paces and slowly began back stepping alongside her allies, fending off any advancing fiends as they did so.

They were putting a bit of distance between themselves and the spears of stone, which now held back a large mass of the fiends as they climbed over one another to find passage through the narrow spaces. The demon captured on the spines was still squirming as it flailed against the piercing stone through its lower half briefly. The second rune was to bury all of them.

Stahl felt that rumble beneath her paws again, only this time, it steadily became stronger, causing visible vibrations around the battlefield as the smaller stones bounced against the earth below.

The most unsettling clicking sound filled the landscape as the pebbles danced for their ascending visitor.

Just as the second rune lit up to activate a short ways in front of the wolf, something burst from the ground near the pillars, shattering the glowing circle from the impact as the shining white light of the concentrated magic turned a violent red color.

___

Midway through speaking the second key, Mollis stopped abruptly as her trigger sharply changed colors. The rabbit’s eyes widened in fear, and Mollis turned as quickly as she could, already shouting, praying the human would be fast enough.

"Aste-"

The trigger rune flashed brightly three times and exploded with the most consuming light, cutting the rabbit off before she had even managed to get his name out.

Aster had a shield over the rabbit by the moment the first strobe ended. He had a second shield over Prince Tyfin just as the third flash finished... And suddenly, Aster was falling, or at least, he thought he was. His vision had been stolen by the flare, his ears were ringing from the sudden and drastic shift in pressure, and his breath had been claimed by the crushing force of the exploding rune rocking into him.

All the human knew for certain was the familiar feeling of his shields still holding steady. He didn’t know if it had been enough to spare the two beasts with him, but the light of those shields didn’t fade until the earth below also stole his consciousness from him upon his abrupt impact.

The boy’s stubbornness could truly rival that of Captain Rix when it came to making sure that shield held for his friends at any cost.

___

Stahl covered her eyes as the dust before her swirled into the air, leaving a hazy smokescreen of dirt lingering over the center of the battlefield.

The wolf squinted towards the place the new enemy had disrupted the magic circle, and her eyes slowly registered the shape rising higher and higher into the air.

The last traces of light faded from the background, taking with it what seemed like their last traces of hope as the figure became more and more clear through the haze.

It had an incredibly large serpent like body, its scales made of the same rocky, black obsidian substance as the rest of the greater demons. The creature had glowing, wispy red eyes that shone brightly through the darkness, offering a looming gaze down at the orc and beast army gathered in defiance.

The mouth on the creature was intimidatingly large, a circle of teeth that came to a meeting point at the center, forming a cone like spear on the end of the massive frame.

The serpent had to be holding itself nearly twenty feet in the air, with an unknown amount of length still buried beneath the earth. It let out a roar that sounded oddly glassy and pointed its mouth towards the nearest group of stunned orcs.

The spiked teeth tilted backward against the flesh, revealing a hole in the center around three feet wide. The serpent reared back just the slightest bit and roared once more down at the orcs, shooting a blast of sand down at them with blinding speed.

Stahl heard the agonizing screams of the orcs unlucky enough to find themselves before such a demon as the sand cannon shredded their skin to pieces.

As the dust settled, the she-wolf looked back to where the victims lay and found herself truly repulsed by the sight of their skin stripped, bloodied corpses covered in a heavy layer of mud.

The most disturbing part of the sight was the way their partially absent eyes bled, as if the tears of blood were the final act their body managed before meeting such a painful end.

The serpent reared back again and dove atop the bodies, catching several within its crushing jaws as it burrowed back beneath the earth, causing light quakes to rock the area mercilessly. Stahl shuddered as her senses returned, realizing how much trouble they were in.

There was no mistaking it. This was the Earthwyrm, a nickname given to the mighty greater demon that ruled over the Crimson Sands. Many expeditions had been led to slay the demon in the last fifty years since the monster first made its appearance, but all had ended with decimated forces, and a few broken survivors deemed the lucky ones.

Eventually, it was declared easier to simply avoid the creature. The Earthwyrm usually stayed near the southern part of the wastelands, and the prince’s party had carefully mapped their travels to avoid going anywhere near its lair, but it seemed the demon had decided otherwise.

The Earthwyrm disappeared back into the craggy earth below with a grinding sound coming from its tunneling. The rumble only amplified for a moment before finally, Stahl realized exactly why it had waited to make its appearance.

The demon had been busy burrowing crisscrossed tunnels a few meters below the surface, tunnels that began collapsing all around the battlefield, dropping rows of orc soldiers, beasts, and fiends alike into the ditches left behind, decimating their formation.

Many soldiers were fully or partially buried, leaving them defenseless as the smaller fiends writhed free, and began leaping atop the victims, sinking their nasty teeth into their satisfyingly fleshy opponents while they devoured the less fortunate soldiers as they could only scream on helplessly.

Stahl felt the earth below herself quiver, and suddenly, a falling sensation overtook her as the ground beneath her paws gave way, aiming to bury the she-wolf as well.

As the battlefield imploded, the spears of stone that had stifled the flow of the fiends shattered and collapsed into a trench. A moment later, the lesser demon that had been speared by the stone climbed out free, snarling viciously as the gaping wound in its hindquarters closed up rapidly.

The demon looked much like a feral cat of sorts, standing at seven feet tall with sharp, vicious claws on its four legs. The demon’s long, fidgeting tail split into three then, and each one took with it a piece of the pointed, bonelike tooth on the end.

The tails bobbed and flicked their narrow, pointed tips dangerously in the air as a trickle of fiends began quickly popping out of the trench near it. Soon, a flood of monsters found themselves without the barricades to hold them back.

The catlike demon led the fiends as they crashed into the center of the disparaged front lines. The fiends began rapidly swarming the soldiers with their sheer numbers as all chaos erupted through the orc army.

Within seconds, disarray overtook the allied forces, and the tides of the battle took a harrowing turn.

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