In the long hours of night the stench of blood augments his dreams. Dark fingers claw into his mind through the cracks of his subconscious. This place is a barren wasteland of opposing force, there is a silent hush over the battlefield. An army made of some of the greatest soldiers to have fought for this realm is trapped in a conflict against an enemy who's only tangibility is the fact that they don't actually exist at all. General Karyln of the 11 Degree, a master in the art of warfare and of its tactics and technicalities, is running out of ideas. The enemy was killable but the sheer force they exuded was such that Karlyn himself felt slightly awed in there prescence, a fact he'd refuse to admit to all but his patron lord Brisqua of The Battle, the diety of the inner ring whom most of his regiment were aligned to. He breathed into his hands, the condensation rising into the atmosphere. Someone was jogging towards him. Marshall Sallern, a good soldier, rescourceful but lacking the brutality needed to gain a rank above his post as officer which a man like him so desperately craved.
"They've stopped their attack, sir." Sallern says,
"Yes I can see that" Replies Karlyn, and it was true, the endless onslaught had seemingly ended suddenly as if by some invisible cue, "And what do you promise we do now?"
"Look at them, sir, look at them" the General looks to the direction Sallern is pointing, "They're frozen stiff, immobile" He is right, curiously their more than human enemy parlyzed themselves on the spot as if time itself refused to let them fight. "So, I promise that what we do now, is lop their bastard heads up"
Sallern grins the same smile Karlyn is hiding behind an expressionless face as he thinks that his decision on Sallern's lack of controlled violent tendencies to take the General's own place may have been misled.
"There I think" the General says, levelly "You may indeed be right, Acting General Sallern"The newly commemerated officer stands up straight "Go, sound the order."
Karlyn watches as Sallern walks off proudly. The large man himself does not have a wish to die, despite his slight morbid curiosity as to the inner workings of death, and feels relieved to know that there may be a chance for them all to survive this after all.
Blood splatters against his helmet. Sallern is lying there on the floor with his heart torn clean through by an impossibly sharp arrow pinning the wet organ, still struggling to beat, to the ground. And then it rains metal, wood, and fire. Jumping into animation, Karlyn charges down to face the army barely registering that he is the only one to not be shocked into motionlessness by the pressure of the now fulling functioning army. With a scream he raises his brutish broadsword, Ion as they swarm at him. Knowing he is to die tonight far a way from home and those he loves pushes clarity into his bloodfrenzied mind. He slices a limb off an attacker, spittle dripping from his mouth, following through with his sword Karlyn decapitates another, he speaks a prayer to Brisqua, the last prayer of the warmongers to make this fight his best. Filled with the magic of his veangeful diety he pushes forward, hacking and slashing, his elegant black armour lightening to a vile crimson with every hit.
A daemon with the body of a human faces him. His claws pass straight from the great generals armour and straight through his lungs, rupturing them. Killing him instantly. Power reverberates through out the battlefield, a hero has fallen and all of his army can feel it. Simultaneously, every single man and woman trapped in this unholy carnage, lowers their heads. A prayer starts out, in the form of a hum. A low, powerful hum that gets stronger and more confidents as hundreds and thousands of voices join in, those of the good and the holy, the criminals and the just praying together in harmony, the last prayer of the warmongers. To give them strength, speed and power but at an unpayable price.
"May my sword strike swift and my arrow aim true,
May fires burn in my enemies as they fall,
Lend me strength, this is the day I truly fight
And this is the day I die."
