“It’s going to be near impossible to reach our destination with our current losses.” Hannah admitted, strolling towards a hill in the distance with me. We were on a large meadow, filled with nothing bur rather spiky grass.
This was the place we chose as our first camp as the area was rather open and didn’t offer many opportunities for surprise attacks.
“I know … I know. I’m working on it.” I said, stopped near a tree and threw the torch I was holding in my hands at its base. Slowly, the fire latched onto the bark of the tree while Hannah sat down nearby.
“Are you sure this is the right way? It could end very badly for us. Secrecy is a weapon … and you may handing it away easily.” She repeated my earlier words and made me laugh loudly. Secrecy was indeed a weapon, but there were no secrets regarding me.
“Aska knows what I’m capable off … more or less at least. The demon king should know as well, which is why he is probably hesitant to attack us right away.” I stated and smiled bitterly. It wasn’t the demon king I was fighting in all honesty. It was more or less Aska, without his full power obviously. I had no doubts he was calling the shots in the background after all.
“Still …” Hannah said unsure and grabbed my hand as I stepped away from her.
“It’s going to be fine.” I said and smiled brightly until she let go of my hand reluctantly.
And then, under the cover of a burning tree, I extended my arms to the side and began to sing loudly.
“I’ve been hearing symphonies …” I started in my beautiful voice and looked at the fires in the distance which shimmers protected my army from the darkness.
For a few second I just sung relaxed, happy to do so after a rather long time and smiled at Hannah who was listening intensely.
“And now your song is on repeat
And I’m dancin’ on to your heartbeat” I sung, spinning around my own axis slowly while looking to the crystal clear sky.
“And when you’re gone, I feel incomplete” Thousands and thousands of souls exited the ground at breakneck speeds, searching for their old bodies under my command.
“Will you hold me tight and not let go?~” Feeling how the first few souls already entered their corpses, I smiled happily and gave Hannah a glance. Stopping to sing, I looked to where we came from and extended my hand.
“Rise my dragons. Rise from your slumber and let the demons feel your wrath. Rise all my undead friends! Rise and show the demons my fury! But be aware I want to stay hidden. No human nor elf shall see your strength!” Thousands and thousands of dead demons, animals and three dragons rose from their deep slumber and heeded my call. “My faithful servants … be my army.” And I could feel every single one of them. For the first time since coming to this world, I used the control I had over my undead to its maximum potential and gave each and everyone my newest orders while my nose started to bleed.
Giggling quietly, I closed these connections in a hurry as they sheer amount overwhelmed me and collapsed into Hannah’s arms.
“We could have invaded them using undead right away. Why go out of your way to form a normal army?” Hannah asked a bit worried about my health.
“Do you think a mere dragon is enough to fell the demon king?” I said, pressing her shoulders towards the ground slowly.
“No.” She admitted, not resisting my approaches at all, but rather leaned her head to the side while I exposed her nape.
“See …” I mumbled quietly and pinned her down, my knee between her legs. “Are you sure about this?” I asked, my mouth inching closer to her skin.
“Someone has to feed you, right?” She said, breathing roughly as soon as I touched her fair skin with my mouth.
“One or two humans missing every night wouldn’t make any difference, would it?” I whispered into her ear and turned my full attention to her exposed nape afterwards.
“Too dangerous …” She muttered, placing her hands on my back, securing me in place. For some reason, I kind of thought she was looking forwards to this even though she certainly shouldn’t. Ignoring her weirdness, I focused solely on mine and opened my mouth to bite into her nape.
She tended up right away and even though most felt pain whenever I bit them, she never said anything but rather pressed her palm on the back of my head. Greedily, I sucked up all the red gold flowing into my mouth for several seconds until I pushed myself off her and closed my eyes to fight the still all to present thirst.
“There is more …” Hannah said, pointing out that I hadn’t drunken that much.
“Even the whole army wouldn’t be enough to sate my thirst, so don’t even try to do it alone.” I explained and stretched my arms refreshed.
“I see … so you aren’t holding back because it is me?” Hannah asked suspiciously while watching her healing wound with utter amazement.
“That is … probably true if I’m honest. But I’m fine Hannah. I can do without blood for a little while.” The thing with being in an army was that there were blood bags everywhere, even though I personally couldn’t take bottles of blood with me. The danger of falling onto my back and smashing some of them to pieces was way too high for the benefits.
Standing up, I gave her my hand right away and lifted her up as well. Then, we walked back towards the camp where all of our troops not guarding the area were laying on the grass around the fires, probably worried for what was to come as much as I did.
“You should take a rest as well.” I commented as soon as I laid down on the grass and stared at the sky.
“Are you sure about that? They could attack any second.” She answered, but laid down as well, her head surprisingly on my belly. Not quite bothered to reply, I merely pointed to the sky where a huge dark figure blocked off a few stars for several seconds.
Louis wasn’t the only one who could keep watch out from the sky. I was able to do so as well, especially now that I had several dragons under my wing.
Reassured, Hannah closed her eyes and drifted off into sleep quickly while I kept in contact with the undead dragon above us in case he noticed anything. The only negative part of resurrecting them in comparison to Louis strategy of creating birds and using them as his eyes was that I couldn’t see through them. They could tell me what they saw, but that was it.
As I didn’t want to rely on the undead dragon alone, I closed my eyes and concentrated on all the sounds I heard through the whole night. Except the breathing of the men and chirping of Louis birds flying around him, I didn’t hear anything else.
The night was deadly silent. And if no normal animal made any sound, it usually meant something was wrong … very wrong.
But during the whole night, I was unable to hear anything out of the ordinary and as time passed by, so did my sharp senses. Placing the broken glasses onto my nose, I woke up Hannah quickly and opened my backpack to munch on a few dried crackers. Our diet wasn’t exactly diverse which meant that hundreds of people were forced to eat the same horrible stuff meal after meal.
But apparently, we aren’t even allowed that. Flowers started to sprout on the meadow at visible speed, faster than what should be possible.
“Fascinating …” I mumbled and plucked one of them right away. These flowers had spiky glass-like petals which broke off the moment I touched them and latched onto my fingers with barbs.
“Do you hear that?” Hannah asked, looking eastwards in confusion. I followed her gaze, but was unable to see anything out of the ordinary. Sniffing on the flower a little, I smelled it’s sweet nectar and looked towards the horizon once more.
I couldn’t hear anything through the whole night not because it was dangerous, but rather because there was simply no reason for anything to be there. There was no food and that meant there were no demons.
But these flowers would make a great source of food for …
“Bees. BEES! Run!” Hannah shouted out, grabbed her backpack swiftly and pointed nothwards. For several seconds, the others had no clue what she was talking about until they noticed the dark cloud on the horizon as well.
Quickly, everyone grabbed their things and rushed northwards in a rather uncoordinated formation which got on my nerves a little.
But even more nerve wracking than that was probably the wall of bees rolling across the meadow, threatening to reach us faster than we could arrive at the other side of the meadow.
“All around Ellie!” I shouted out and my orders were promptly relayed by mouth until everyone heard it. Seconds from being engulfed by this moving wall of bees, I looked at Ellie hopeful who placed both her palms against each other and concentrated.
With the buzzing getting louder and louder, there wasn’t much time for us left. I’m fact, the first bees were already flying around our heads, quite angry for some reason.
“Barrier.” But before the bulk of them could arrive, a thin barrier engulfed the army, shielding it from the weak bees. They started landing on the barrier, walked across it and blocked off every bit of light entering the bubble for several seconds. And then, it was over as quickly as it started as the wall of bees went onwards, buzzing their way though the lands.
Ellie’s barrier broke down quickly afterwards, even though they were still some rather angry bees around us.
“Run!” I didn’t know what they would do to a human. I knew for sure that this meadow was devoid of any corpses though, so it couldn’t be too bad. And if it was, only a few unimportant people were stung by the bees who then lost their lives.
Running onwards, fearing the wall of bees would turn around, we made our way towards the edge of another forest where we caught our breath.
“What the heck was that?” Hannah asked, clearly worried about being stung somewhere which didn’t seem to be the case. Those who were started to scratch themselves at that place after all.
“This is fascinating … eight years ago none of this existed. And during that time, the demons have managed to create a completely different ecosystem from what we know.” I explained, staring into the forest which could hold another surprise for us. The trees already looked quite odd, with leaves growing very close to the bark and nowhere else, creating some pillars of leaves rather than a proper forest.
“Is it poisonous? Infectious?” Hannah asked, still worried about the bees.
“Let’s ask Sofie.” I said, and looked over to her right as she inspected one of the places where one was stung.
“How does it look?” Hannah and I asked in unison.
“Actually … pretty good. It’s definitely poisonous, but it doesn’t look like that poison is targeted at anything humanoid. It’s like we see a completely different branch of evolution in this place, completely separate from the one we are on. At least, that’s the only explanation I have right now. Someone seems to be artificially engineering this place, otherwise I cannot explain the rapid change we see here.” So she did came to the same conclusion I had. This place was made into a habitat for demons by demons. And we were in the middle of these unknown lands, only capable of seeing from the air.
bloodyWriter
Symphony from Clean Bandit
“It’s going to be near impossible to reach our destination with our current losses.” Hannah admitted, strolling towards a hill in the distance with me. We were on a large meadow, filled with nothing bur rather spiky grass.
This was the place we chose as our first camp as the area was rather open and didn’t offer many opportunities for surprise attacks.
“I know … I know. I’m working on it.” I said, stopped near a tree and threw the torch I was holding in my hands at its base. Slowly, the fire latched onto the bark of the tree while Hannah sat down nearby.
“Are you sure this is the right way? It could end very badly for us. Secrecy is a weapon … and you may handing it away easily.” She repeated my earlier words and made me laugh loudly. Secrecy was indeed a weapon, but there were no secrets regarding me.
“Aska knows what I’m capable off … more or less at least. The demon king should know as well, which is why he is probably hesitant to attack us right away.” I stated and smiled bitterly. It wasn’t the demon king I was fighting in all honesty. It was more or less Aska, without his full power obviously. I had no doubts he was calling the shots in the background after all.
“Still …” Hannah said unsure and grabbed my hand as I stepped away from her.
“It’s going to be fine.” I said and smiled brightly until she let go of my hand reluctantly.
And then, under the cover of a burning tree, I extended my arms to the side and began to sing loudly.
“I’ve been hearing symphonies …” I started in my beautiful voice and looked at the fires in the distance which shimmers protected my army from the darkness.
For a few second I just sung relaxed, happy to do so after a rather long time and smiled at Hannah who was listening intensely.
“And now your song is on repeat
And I’m dancin’ on to your heartbeat” I sung, spinning around my own axis slowly while looking to the crystal clear sky.
“And when you’re gone, I feel incomplete” Thousands and thousands of souls exited the ground at breakneck speeds, searching for their old bodies under my command.
“Will you hold me tight and not let go?~” Feeling how the first few souls already entered their corpses, I smiled happily and gave Hannah a glance. Stopping to sing, I looked to where we came from and extended my hand.
“Rise my dragons. Rise from your slumber and let the demons feel your wrath. Rise all my undead friends! Rise and show the demons my fury! But be aware I want to stay hidden. No human nor elf shall see your strength!” Thousands and thousands of dead demons, animals and three dragons rose from their deep slumber and heeded my call. “My faithful servants … be my army.” And I could feel every single one of them. For the first time since coming to this world, I used the control I had over my undead to its maximum potential and gave each and everyone my newest orders while my nose started to bleed.
Giggling quietly, I closed these connections in a hurry as they sheer amount overwhelmed me and collapsed into Hannah’s arms.
“We could have invaded them using undead right away. Why go out of your way to form a normal army?” Hannah asked a bit worried about my health.
“Do you think a mere dragon is enough to fell the demon king?” I said, pressing her shoulders towards the ground slowly.
“No.” She admitted, not resisting my approaches at all, but rather leaned her head to the side while I exposed her nape.
“See …” I mumbled quietly and pinned her down, my knee between her legs. “Are you sure about this?” I asked, my mouth inching closer to her skin.
“Someone has to feed you, right?” She said, breathing roughly as soon as I touched her fair skin with my mouth.
“One or two humans missing every night wouldn’t make any difference, would it?” I whispered into her ear and turned my full attention to her exposed nape afterwards.
“Too dangerous …” She muttered, placing her hands on my back, securing me in place. For some reason, I kind of thought she was looking forwards to this even though she certainly shouldn’t. Ignoring her weirdness, I focused solely on mine and opened my mouth to bite into her nape.
She tended up right away and even though most felt pain whenever I bit them, she never said anything but rather pressed her palm on the back of my head. Greedily, I sucked up all the red gold flowing into my mouth for several seconds until I pushed myself off her and closed my eyes to fight the still all to present thirst.
“There is more …” Hannah said, pointing out that I hadn’t drunken that much.
“Even the whole army wouldn’t be enough to sate my thirst, so don’t even try to do it alone.” I explained and stretched my arms refreshed.
“I see … so you aren’t holding back because it is me?” Hannah asked suspiciously while watching her healing wound with utter amazement.
“That is … probably true if I’m honest. But I’m fine Hannah. I can do without blood for a little while.” The thing with being in an army was that there were blood bags everywhere, even though I personally couldn’t take bottles of blood with me. The danger of falling onto my back and smashing some of them to pieces was way too high for the benefits.
Standing up, I gave her my hand right away and lifted her up as well. Then, we walked back towards the camp where all of our troops not guarding the area were laying on the grass around the fires, probably worried for what was to come as much as I did.
“You should take a rest as well.” I commented as soon as I laid down on the grass and stared at the sky.
“Are you sure about that? They could attack any second.” She answered, but laid down as well, her head surprisingly on my belly. Not quite bothered to reply, I merely pointed to the sky where a huge dark figure blocked off a few stars for several seconds.
Louis wasn’t the only one who could keep watch out from the sky. I was able to do so as well, especially now that I had several dragons under my wing.
Reassured, Hannah closed her eyes and drifted off into sleep quickly while I kept in contact with the undead dragon above us in case he noticed anything. The only negative part of resurrecting them in comparison to Louis strategy of creating birds and using them as his eyes was that I couldn’t see through them. They could tell me what they saw, but that was it.
As I didn’t want to rely on the undead dragon alone, I closed my eyes and concentrated on all the sounds I heard through the whole night. Except the breathing of the men and chirping of Louis birds flying around him, I didn’t hear anything else.
The night was deadly silent. And if no normal animal made any sound, it usually meant something was wrong … very wrong.
But during the whole night, I was unable to hear anything out of the ordinary and as time passed by, so did my sharp senses. Placing the broken glasses onto my nose, I woke up Hannah quickly and opened my backpack to munch on a few dried crackers. Our diet wasn’t exactly diverse which meant that hundreds of people were forced to eat the same horrible stuff meal after meal.
But apparently, we aren’t even allowed that. Flowers started to sprout on the meadow at visible speed, faster than what should be possible.
“Fascinating …” I mumbled and plucked one of them right away. These flowers had spiky glass-like petals which broke off the moment I touched them and latched onto my fingers with barbs.
“Do you hear that?” Hannah asked, looking eastwards in confusion. I followed her gaze, but was unable to see anything out of the ordinary. Sniffing on the flower a little, I smelled it’s sweet nectar and looked towards the horizon once more.
I couldn’t hear anything through the whole night not because it was dangerous, but rather because there was simply no reason for anything to be there. There was no food and that meant there were no demons.
But these flowers would make a great source of food for …
“Bees. BEES! Run!” Hannah shouted out, grabbed her backpack swiftly and pointed nothwards. For several seconds, the others had no clue what she was talking about until they noticed the dark cloud on the horizon as well.
Quickly, everyone grabbed their things and rushed northwards in a rather uncoordinated formation which got on my nerves a little.
But even more nerve wracking than that was probably the wall of bees rolling across the meadow, threatening to reach us faster than we could arrive at the other side of the meadow.
“All around Ellie!” I shouted out and my orders were promptly relayed by mouth until everyone heard it. Seconds from being engulfed by this moving wall of bees, I looked at Ellie hopeful who placed both her palms against each other and concentrated.
With the buzzing getting louder and louder, there wasn’t much time for us left. I’m fact, the first bees were already flying around our heads, quite angry for some reason.
“Barrier.” But before the bulk of them could arrive, a thin barrier engulfed the army, shielding it from the weak bees. They started landing on the barrier, walked across it and blocked off every bit of light entering the bubble for several seconds. And then, it was over as quickly as it started as the wall of bees went onwards, buzzing their way though the lands.
Ellie’s barrier broke down quickly afterwards, even though they were still some rather angry bees around us.
“Run!” I didn’t know what they would do to a human. I knew for sure that this meadow was devoid of any corpses though, so it couldn’t be too bad. And if it was, only a few unimportant people were stung by the bees who then lost their lives.
Running onwards, fearing the wall of bees would turn around, we made our way towards the edge of another forest where we caught our breath.
“What the heck was that?” Hannah asked, clearly worried about being stung somewhere which didn’t seem to be the case. Those who were started to scratch themselves at that place after all.
“This is fascinating … eight years ago none of this existed. And during that time, the demons have managed to create a completely different ecosystem from what we know.” I explained, staring into the forest which could hold another surprise for us. The trees already looked quite odd, with leaves growing very close to the bark and nowhere else, creating some pillars of leaves rather than a proper forest.
“Is it poisonous? Infectious?” Hannah asked, still worried about the bees.
“Let’s ask Sofie.” I said, and looked over to her right as she inspected one of the places where one was stung.
“How does it look?” Hannah and I asked in unison.
“Actually … pretty good. It’s definitely poisonous, but it doesn’t look like that poison is targeted at anything humanoid. It’s like we see a completely different branch of evolution in this place, completely separate from the one we are on. At least, that’s the only explanation I have right now. Someone seems to be artificially engineering this place, otherwise I cannot explain the rapid change we see here.” So she did came to the same conclusion I had. This place was made into a habitat for demons by demons. And we were in the middle of these unknown lands, only capable of seeing from the air.
bloodyWriter
Symphony from Clean Bandit
