Baleful Wings (Dragon's Dogma Fanfiction)

Part 39: Eminence

 "That makes sense," said Thorne as she stretched her neck and leaned over her knee, staring at the Chimera. The monster snapped back to its senses, seeming to have come to an agreement with its Goat counterpart and focused back on the Elites.
Larkey chuckled, standing on a limp until Nathy healed his leg with an Anodyne Spell. "So all we've aught do is fight this beast in earnest. Seems easy enough." With his words, the remaining soldiers rallied behind him, readying their weapons to finish their campaign. 
The Chimera approached them slowly, studying their chain for the weakest link, with Spano having gotten the courage to start fighting back against the Snake. 
"Slater, Meyer," started Ser Innick, "We've got to be fast, but if we work together we can end this before suppertime."
Witnessing their new resolve, the Snake opened its mouth and readjusted his bite into Spano's torso. 
"Ua..agh!! Save me, you bastards!" He screamed in anguish at his freshly pierced ribs, not daring to struggle as he was lowered to the Goat.
Thorne flexed her lip, staring directly at the Chimera, "Shut your damned trap, Spano. Alright, let's behead that serpent," she said, while readying her weapon.

 "Uaaagghh!!"

With a horrid crunch, the Goat began eating Spano, picking through his armor like bones on a roasted hen. His helpless screams paralyzed even the likes of Thorne, whose sword hand twitched at the gruesome scene before her. The usually laid-back Innick couldn't help but wince at the sight.
The eyes of the soldiers suddenly became aglare as the Goat's head caught ablaze. Arya wasted no time in slashing at its neck with her enchanted cinqueda. 
"Don't let it distract you!" Said Arya, tears flowing from her eyes during her descent. The Goat shrilled at the well-placed assault, with Spano's blood gargling in its throat.
Using the distraction, Ser Oxface jumped off the Lion's head and dealt a lopping swing, cutting off the Snake's head and freeing Spano's bloodied body, covered in a burning green venom. The Chimera swatted Arya to the ground as she landed, its immense strength skidding her body into the dirt before turning back and pinning Oxface to the ground. 
He said nothing, only posting a meaningless struggle against the mutant's strength as the Lion's head was splinted with the arrows from Innick's longbow. Ser Slater swung his two-handed sword into the beast's head,  unable to draw the blade from the bridge of the Lion's nose. Pushing through it, the feline tore into Oxface's body, tearing his being beyond recognition. One could comment on his silence during his violent death, but in reality he was dead with the first shredding of the monster's razor sharp teeth into his innards.
"Noo!!" Screamed Innick, firing ruthlessly at the Goat head, finishing it with a fatal arrow through its neck. Crunching through bones, the beast dealt a clawed swipe at Slater, tearing past his armor and brutally knocking him to the ground.

Nathy summoned another Anodyne aura around the downed knight, closing his wounds but not able to restore his consciousness. As Meyer started dragging his body away from the battle, the bloodied and emblazed Chimera began a desperate limp toward him- interrupted by a sudden combustion to its face.
"Not so fast!" Said Arya, readying another alchemickal concoction otherwise known as a Dragon's Spit.
The sudden attack caused the gargantuan miscreation to tumble on the ground in efforts to exhaust the fires that encased it.
"Now's the time to strike!!" Innick drew back his bow, firing off as the remaining knights slashed at the struggling monster, soon rendering its thrashing futile and granting the abomination a painful death in its own blood. 
The Lion uttered one last roar before falling lifelessly to the ground, in denial of its decisive defeat. Meyer fell to his knees at the sight of the creature finally dying, before gagging and throwing up right next to its carcass.
Arya pulled her sword from the monster's bizarre back, plopping down into the dirt and looking at the remaining knights. Just last night they were singing into the night sky, and now they lay strewn about the landscape. She couldn't even bring herself to look at Oxface's corpse.

 "My apologies," said Arya during their journey back to Windbluff Tower, the northern fort. "I wasn't able to save them.."
"Shut your piehole," retorted Thorne, sheathing her sinister blade at her hip. "You talk like it was your responsibility. At least grant the Enlistment Corps an 'onorable death, instead of pitying them."
Eight men died in the bloody campaign, their burning bodies illuminating the backs of the remaining Elites. Arya couldn't help but wonder if her future would only be laden with the deaths of her comrades. "I'll scout ahead," she said, fastening her lantern to her belt.
"You're out of your mind," commented Larkey. "Never scout ahead alone, especially when night is almost upon us. I'll come with you."
Arya nodded in response, silently griping at missing the chance to just be alone.

 "You've a good eye," started ser Larkey, keeping his weapon drawn and remaining alert. "A natural talent for hunting beasts."
Arya knew exactly what he was talking about. She could feel the heartbeat of the Chimera before it attacked, but didn't say it. She was afraid of that ability within her, that ability that separated her from the rest of humanity. Even when the beast attacked, she could see its movements three times ahead.
"The only other person like that, was the Honorable Duke Edmun."
His name was something she had been wanting to hear since the hunt began. The man who slayed the Dragon.
"He was a brave mentor, never showing fear in the face of danger. Peculiar though, I looked up to him for years but can't see him as anything other than the battle-ready thirty-year-old that marched off to face the Dragon."
At this point, the young Hearthstone girl was thoroughly confused. Ser Larkey had to be at least fifty. "But.. that couldn't have been that long ago, then?"
Larkey chuckled and looked back at her. "'Twas twenty-five years ago." 

 From the darkness of the moonless night, something flew into their space, illuminated only by their lantern light. Larkey caught the arrow in his fist easily, before being pierced in the back by two more. "G-agh!" He flexed his back in agony, serenaded the sound of arrows whizzing past in the night. Arya turned toward the direction of the attacks before getting pushed down by the knight. "Don't ever do that," he said, before smashing his and her lantern. "That human instinct is based on being able to see your attacker, so against multiple foes in this dense blackness you'd only make yourself a target."
"You're wounded..!" Noted Arya, grabbing onto the torn frock of his purple coat, trying not to lose him in the black veil of night.
"I'll live. Let's move." With that, he hustled in a random direction, struggling to move quickly with arrows in his back. Arya's fingers were snatched away by his sudden falling, joining him in a rocky tumble down an unseen cliff.