They were a multitude and a minority, a horde and an elite. They were formless, shapeless. Made of matter, Galukar thought, but no kind he’d seen before, and endlessly dynamic. Their bodies shifted, melting, boiling, freezing from one shape to another. In one moment the Demons were animalistic, as if their forms had been welded together from the material of several lesser beasts. Then they were things of artifice, fanged boulders and taloned trees. He saw one take to the air as a string of numerals, another begin to glide its way beneath the ground, propelled by a subterranean wind of whispered prayers.

  All of them, though, were powerful. He could feel that much. All of them were true Demons, not familiars.

  Galukar let his roar cut the air to ribbons as he charged past them, heading on an intercept for their commander. The Dark Lord was just halfway to the Vampire when Galular’s Godblade came flying for his head.

  To the bastard’s credit, he was fast as ever. Perhaps faster. The Godblade whistled by him, and his mace was coming around like an arrow. Galukar caught it, felt the strength disparity between them and grit his teeth. He slid back, heels digging trenches in the ground, body slamming into undead swarming behind him and reducing them to scraps of pulped meat with the collision.

  Just as he stopped, the Dark Lord swung again.

  Galukar had not felt a pressure like this since…Well, the last time he’d fought the Dark Lord. It was novel, to be the weaker party. To feel his unyielding strength at risk of surrender, to gasp at the twinge of pain lancing down his bones as they absorbed impacts greater than their own musculature might have conjured. The novelty wore off fast, however. Soon all that remained was the fear of it.

  The Dark Lord swung, and Galukar melted to one side. His enemy’s mace hit the ground like a certain fortress Galukar recalled falling from, and he saw the dirt erupt as if thrown high by a volcanic blast. Everywhere within paces the ground disappeared, making way for a jagged crater littered with pieces of pulped undead and misting ichor.

  It was, perhaps, the greatest testament of pure strength he had ever seen a man’s weapon make. It was casual, over in an instant. The mace was after him before the dirt had even finished its flight. Galukar parried again, this time launched fully from his feet and sent to drop down hard atop a row of undead.

  Fortunately, they made for rather a soft landing. If a disgusting one. He felt bones break beneath him, and got up to the sickly sensation of ground viscera clinging to his back. Galukar ignored it, forcing himself to his feet and watching ahead to see the Dark Lord closing properly on the Vampire Queen.

  He expected the fight to end quickly, even instantly. It did not.

  Vampires were not made of the same stuff as humans, Galukar had to remind himself as he watched Lilia duck back, flit away, weave beneath and around every swing that came for her. She was faster than him, Galukar thought. Nothing near his strength of course, and not still closer to his fleetness than one would have guessed by their sizes. But fast enough for an advantage.

  And with more than just speed to her name.

  Galukar saw the Vampire lunge forwards and burst apart, illusion so life- undeath-like that it almost fooled him until the creator had finished preparing her next attack. Blood, a great wave of it as weighty and high as any which might churn atop the skin of an ocean. It smashed into the Dark Lord faster than a sling bullet, dozens, hundreds of tons of mass washing over him. Had he been a castle wall, Galukar had no doubt there’d have been nothing left but stony detritus stretching to the horizon, and a ground scraped clean of all structure.

  But the Dark Lord was not a castle wall, he was tougher. The blood parted against him, sending him back a step and scything apart the ground around him until he stood at the tip of a great, elliptical trench eroded yards deep into the dirt. Everything behind him was obliterated. He was unhurt.

  The Vampire didn’t pause to stare, and that was what saved her. When the Dark Lord swung his mace she was already leaping to one side, and the concussive blast missed her. It continued onwards, punching a jagged, bloody hole in the ranks of undead at her back then continuing on to drill through a gritty hilltop fifty paces back. By then, the Dark Lord had closed in and started swinging.

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  But then so had Galukar.

  Their weapons met with a sound like lightning striking a boulder, and the impact ran along Galukar’s arm with such intensity that he felt the hairs wither atop it as force turned to heat and ignited them. He turned the Dark Lord’s mace aside, stepped in, then punched him.

  It surprised Galukar, to find himself resorting to such a low blow. It certainly surprised the Dark Lord, sent him back a step, even, and left a dent in his helm. A small one, barely even there, and a sorry reward for the throbbing of Galukar’s knuckles.

  But evidence, nonetheless, of a mortal enemy. Those thoughts were buried however by the attack of an immortal ally.

  Her blood was not a wave, this time, but a streak. One that moved so fast it had already passed the Dark Lord by the time Galukar’s vision caught it, a great, sustained jet of liquid which chased the enemy as he fled from it. A wise decision, Galukar thought, for such velocities would surely be devastating on impact. Still the caster ran, darting back, ever ahead of the attack, yet slowly finding his ground shrinking. Finally he stopped, planting his feet and raising his mace to guard it.

  The attack passed through him, and Lilia appeared at his back. The real Lilia, not an illusion, and wielding a very real torrent of blood which she now cast out into a jet just as fast and dense as the first. This one, though, impacted directly.

  A flash of light, and a rain of stinging impacts ran down Galukar’s body. A moment later the sound hit him, sharp like a whip crack. He realised what had happened only when he saw the Dark Lord sent flying, and smelled the acrid scent of cooked meat upon the air.

  Impact, direct and unbroken. An impact so great as to send droplets of blood rebounding outwards faster than the noise of their collision, and flash-burn the organic tissue as it smashed into metal.

  The Vampire was gathering more blood, now, and Galukar stared at her while she worked. If it came down to it, if he had no choice, could he kill this creature?

  No. Without a doubt, damn it, he could not.

  Galukar roared, swinging just in time to force the Dark Lord back. He watched as the caster wavered, drawing away from him, head flicking to the Vampire. Body shifting slightly. Then the Demons came.

  They were a mist of matter, and even that descriptor seemed too concrete a term for the stuff they were made of. Talons came for him, Galukar ducked and swung blindly, his sword biting into something that wasn’t, but felt like it was, and cutting apart the not-stuff with a paradoxical jerk of his arm. He rolled, came up, felt something hit him with force but no mass, then soared backwards to roll, churn the dirt, rise again. He swung, swung, swung, screamed and swung. Backing, ducking, fighting the whole world at once. The enemies were without number, without counting, they closed from every angle they could have, and all the rest as well.

  Occasionally, Galukar caught flashes of other combat. Little glimpses. A Ranger on the walls, a Knight at a breach, and of course the Vampire Queen still locked in her hopeless battle against the Dark Lord. But mostly all he saw was the abominations swarming him from all sides, and the great edge of wrought iron he was using to fell them.

  He felt his panic rising, fear growing, doom looming. There were too many for him to defeat, too many by far. And the undead swarming around them were keeping any of their magical units- casters and the line- from pooling their strength behind his to vanquish the Demons. His body was accruing damage, losing strength. And faster than the enemy’s abominations were losing numbers.

  Galukar let out a roar of fury and frustration that seemed to shake the ground. No, not seemed. It did. Except it didn’t stop as his screaming did, in fact it even grew more intense. A trembling before long, intense enough that undead were visibly rocked by it. Galukar had time to stare in incomprehension and wonder at it.

  Then the dirt beneath him burst upwards.

  It was a creature of such size that for several moments, Galukar’s mind refused to even believe it was a creature to begin with. A worm, he thought, though larger than any he’d seen. Its body spanned the width of a castle gate, at least. Mouth extending outwards far enough to swallow entire squads of men. Galukar saw as much when it did just that, undead disappearing by the dozen within its maw as it burst from the ground. Its body continued upwards for a few moments, turning, arcing down, then landing upon a separate section of enemies.

  They, too, disappeared. Swallowed instantly without so much as a struggle. Galukar saw ridged armour around the creatures, deflecting magic and arrows like they were pinpricks. Thick musculature contorting as the creatures landed back down and propelling them back under the earth. He saw heat hissing off them, air rippling with the temperature of their gargantuan bodies, and he saw the hand of their maker as clear as day.

  It seemed Silenos Shaiagrazni had finished his latest project. Galukar looked around for the man, even while the battlefield turned to mutilated chaos around him. It did not take long to find the caster. He had never been one for discretion.

  Shaiagrazni flew high overhead, and he was in his abominable “combat form”. It towered, rippling with jagged muscle and armour plating, eyes a pair of bottomless pits, body adorned with a multitude of weapons. Some, through their travels, had made their purpose terribly obvious. Others were horrifically unknowable. All he wagered would tear apart the fortifications behind their creator in moments.

  But he had another goal today, and he was staring at it with a monomaniacal heat.

  “That trembling.” The Vampire Lilia called out, snatching Galukar’s eyes around to find her lying prone and wounded before the Dark Lord. “I suspect that will be the last sound you ever hear.”

  Shaiagrazni charged.