Sons of Ironstorm: Book 5 - Griffon's War

A Beginning

The captain was about to turn to face the enemy once more when a battering ram of force knocked him flying off his feet. He wasn't sure how long he was in the air, but he felt every bit of his landing when he crashed down onto the ground a few heart beats later. It was a good thing he didn't need to breath, because his wind would've been irreparably knocked from him.

Rolling roughly, he struggled onto his knees then back to his feet. Just in time to see one of the armored forms cut through a handful of demons in front of them.

As the last foot soldier died with a howl, its essence ripped asunder by the sword in the attacker's hands, it paused to look at him, giving the captain a chance to do a quick examination of his own. Which, to his disappointment, yielded little outside of the grey armor all the mortals wore, the sword in its hands glowing with magical power and subtle hints about how it moved that marked it as a female.

Then the mortal was snapping her sword through a tight series of motions, each leaving a glowing line behind, the mortal using the very air itself as a canvas on which she was drawing some sort of mystic symbol. The sinuously curving lines were enough to push him back to full awareness and reach for his own weapon at his waist. However, before he could take hold of it, or the mortal could complete her symbol, a broad-shouldered urkazaht, or berserker unit charged out of the midst of the churning foot soldiers with a throaty howl, wielding an abyss-forged double bladed battle axe instead of a crystal burst weapon.

The mortal's head snapped around at the howl. Then she was abandoning the symbol she was creating to bring her glowing sword to the ready. As she did, the captain could see more mystic symbols marching down the fuller, each appearing to interact with each other in an intricate dance of light. A heart beat later the sword was swinging to catch the berserker's battle axe on the haft with an audible 'clank', the mystical blade of the sword as unyielding as the forged abyss-stuff of the axe.

In that instant the captain bore witness to the mortal's strength and speed as, with an almost casual twist of the wrist, she pulled the axe out of the berserker's hands before a returning slash moving too fast for him to see cut the big demon almost in half. Armor rent and flesh casing gashed, the berserker's death scream was loud and piercing enough to make the captain want to clap his hands to his ears in an attempt to muffle it. Then it was gone, its armor turned to black ash to drift in the space it had so recently occupied.

The mortal had little time to admire her handiwork as a full dozen berserkers came howling out of the staggered ranks, each wielding axes, giant hammers, or swords themselves in place of a rod weapon. For his part, the captain finally raised his and fired close to point blank at her, trying to strike her in the head and torso.

She didn't even look at him as she deflected several of the bolts with her sword, letting her armor take care of the rest. Then she was scything her way through the berserkers, avoiding their first swings to slice three apart with a single swing of her own.

The captain's eyes were dragged off the mortal at that point by the air behind her suddenly filled with darts of golden light, each moving around the mortals meleeing amongst the foot soldiers to rip apart the demons around them. Following the ranged attack back along its path, the captain found several of the elves had pulled up and now wielded bows with glowing strings and symbols etched into their surfaces instead of the heavy-bladed spears the rest had. Even as his eyes fell onto them, a good couple dozen drew their strings back to let a bolt of light appear in the intervening space between. A blink later they loosed, sending a second volley of golden light slashing into the demonic ranks.

With each golden dart striking home and sending a demon back raging to the Abyss, it wouldn't take long before his company would be obliterated.