Riding konganroo, a larger, more aggressive relative of the kangaroo with flesh-piercing teeth, the living mages spread out in the sea of possessed bodies, surrounding themselves within the crowd for protection against the strong metal of Ikarus swords. Demitri would let the dead take the brunt of the initial strike.
The two armies were only yards from contact. General Indrid Cole led the charge. His survival instincts took over. His fear disappeared. He knew that he needed to fight to protect those that mattered most to him, particularly, Anna.
Apollo ran faster than the horses. Indrid felt the cat’s body rumble before she roared and they stormed into a carnival of deadly weapons. Apollo’s next lunge made the first strike in the battle of metal against magic. The cat’s huge paws crushed the charging line of dead elders like twigs. But then the konganroo of the mage clan stampeded through the frontline, kicking Ikarus men. Even with armor, a single strike to a soldier’s chest could kill him. But Apollo, twice their size, snagged konganroo after konganroo by the neck, flinging both beast and rider across the battlefield.
Indrid slashed at the spell-casters from the height of Apollo’s back. He stayed close to the brush of the small forest. But in the open field, Indrid saw some mages throwing small glass stones with a liquid inside that shattered off of men’s breastplates, setting only the metal on fire.
The soldiers’ armor would get so hot, some suffocated to death before their skin burned. Others were slain immediately after dropping their scalding hot weapons, while a few lucky ones managed to clear themselves of the burning metal. Other mages threw packets of deadly powder at Ikarus soldiers and horses that disintegrated their bodies straight to the bone.
Suddenly, Indrid was hit on the side of his helmet. His grip on Apollo’s thick fur came loose, and he slid off of her back, landing hard on the ground, patched with grass and gravel. He could tell that he was hit by something that had been thrown at him. It didn’t have power behind it and bounced off of his helmet. And it didn’t feel like metal. When Indrid looked around, he saw a bloody femur lying nearby.
Unable to remount, Apollo was quickly surrounded by konganroo.
Through the smoke of burning flesh, a man wearing a stitched mask charged him, carrying a trident. His lizard-like eyes flared. There was no doubt it was an elder mage—but he looked bigger and more focused than the rest.
The masked elder slammed his shoulder straight into Indrid’s chest, sending him through the air, crashing into the trunk of a tree at the forest edge. The blow knocked the wind right out of him. Luckily, Indrid never let go of his sword. It was clear to him that the much larger elder was also much stronger.
Indrid got up. He quickly composed himself by mentally scanning his body for injuries. But nothing felt broken. And he wasn’t bleeding any more than he was before, at least not externally. He ran towards the elder as hard as he could. It would be better to end the ancient mage quickly before he could cast a spell. Indrid couldn’t withstand many more strikes like the one he had just suffered.
As they raced towards each other, Indrid pointed his Graleon-forged sword forward, and the elder held out his trident that glowed orange. Just before impact, Indrid slid onto his knees, slightly to the elder’s left, and scythed him through the torso. But instead of the elder’s body splitting in half, it dissolved into dust. The particles then reorganized into five reptilian birds, each the size of a bear, flaunting large teeth. Indrid and his men around him stood in awe. They had never seen anything like this before.
Instead of having feathers, they had scales. The birds tore into the ground with their clawed feet, running off in different directions and biting men in the neck, ripping their throats. Indrid and his men surrounded three of them within a circle of torches and blades.
He could see in the distance that Apollo had broken free from the surrounding konganroo and was hunting the other two birds that had run off into the sea of battle.
Ikarus soldiers tried to rope the armored birds’ feet to cut their heads off. But when one bird raced straight at Indrid and flapped its large wings, slightly lifting off the ground, Indrid dropped his sword, jumping out of the way. The bird grabbed him by the breastplate with its talons and pushed Indrid into the ground, clawing and snapping at him. Its beak drooled with the flesh and blood of the fallen. Before it could tear into Indrid’s skin, his first officer shot an arrow through the bird’s chest. But the bird still pinned Indrid down and snapped at him. Indrid reached for his dagger with his other arm and slammed the bird through the heart.
All of the birds shattered into pieces, just like the elder’s original form did, but this time the dust reassembled into a monstrous fifty-foot crocodile. It immediately began to erratically thrash its tail, clobbering both Ikarus men and mage alike. The monster snapped and swallowed six grown men with a single bite.
Apollo jumped out from the tree line and onto the creature’s back, mauling at its armored skin. Even with the cat’s massive size it looked impossible to penetrate. There was no scale penetrated and no bloodshed. But when Apollo bit into the croc’s neck, squeezing it, its mouth opened wide. At that moment, Indrid considered a soft spot. “Arrows! Into its throat! Light them up!” Indrid yelled.
Indrid was relieved to see Apollo again.
