Destined To Die

Chapter 10 - Last of The Palatine

-10-

-Last of The Palatine-

Bastian hit the base of the elevator with the force of a meteor, the elevator all the bottom of the shaft crumpling like a tin can. An explosion of dust and debris erupted out into the throughfare of Old Prague. The steel doors were ripped off their hinges, slamming into the masses gathered around the shaft and reducing the closest to a bloody pulp.

The dust cleared with a powerful gust of wind as he stepped out of the small crater, lifting his massive maul from where it had embedded into the solid rock. Jun fell down into the space he'd left closely behind, the wind cushioning his fall as his feet touched down in the crater with a must softer tap. There was a long silence as the inhabitants of Old Prague took stock of the two intruders, the violence of their entrance, the deadly weapons in their hands.

A voice sounded in Bastian's earpiece, crackling slightly as the signal struggled to push this deep underground. He listened to his superiors, pulling the Maul up over one shoulder and stepping forward towards the masses.

"Understood," he muttered in reply as Jun followed behind, armoured boots crushing the old flagstones he walked on.

"What's the verdict?" Jun asked, almost bored as he looked over the sea of faces.

"Attention!" Bastian roared, maul lowering into an easy one-handed grip, his voice echoing like thunder through the caverns of the vast undercity, "I'm here for the student of Kento. Nobody else need die, but I have authorisation to kill anyone that interferes with my duty."

He stepped forward, advancing on the now still crowd of the residents of Old Prague. Some shifted back nervously, the others, the more monstrous among them, growled their own warning. The variety was greater than he'd expected, beasts and flesh eaters from multiple continents had congregated in the caverns beneath Prague, forming something akin to a community. It was sickening. His jaw locked as he continued forward, rolling a shoulder and raising his large shield into place. The first to advance was a Bies, a monstrous carnivore from the ancient Balkans, itself towering a good five feet over Bastian, almost outmassing him in muscle. No small feat. Big, nasty, but quite stupid.

The heavy shield, an imposing slab of runed steel, slammed against the Bies's antlered head with enough force to shatter the bone, a wide swing of the maul landing like the fist of a god and reducing the creature's ribcage to pulp, muscles torn as what little remained of its chest was splattered against the flagstones. The Bies let out a shrieking wail of pain, a sound that many would have thought such a predator incapable, before Bastian's boot came down hard on the skull and ended the noise with a wet crunch. He continued forward, not so much as breaking his stride.

"I want The Godslayer," he growled as fear spread throughout the caverns in a rippling wave, "Bring me to him, or you will be considered an accomplice to his blasphemies."

Jun flicked his sword to the side as a creature leapt from the shadows, slicing an opportunistic vampire clean through the chest with practices ease as the pieces fell to the flagstone floor behind him. He flicked the blade once again to clear off the dark red blood, a gust of wind following that sent a low howl throughout the cavern.

There were whispers in the space as the hulking armoured form advanced, the elder among the crowd faintly recognising stories of the order of unstoppable warriors that appeared seemingly at random, purged all in their path. Those that swept through tides of horror with the fury of some long-forgotten god of war, those that put entire races to the sword in an endless crusade that only they could fathom. The Palatine.

Jun followed a few steps behind Bastian, eyeing the crowd carefully. The young and the foolish, those with something to prove and no idea what they were up against, they would be the first to advance against this attack on their home. Next would come the elders of those same young, attacking in a desperate attempt to save their spawn. The legend of The Palatine had long since faded from the memory of most of the world, and only blood would reawaken it to its former glory. This shouldn't take too long.