The Shadow Battalion

Prologue

It hadn’t always been like this. The Shadow Battalion used to be one of the most renowned and feared guilds in all of Adyria. Now, the Battalion is down from it’s previous hundreds of members to ten.
    There’s me, Storm, my friend Wolf, who’s an extreme annoyance and always picking fights with my other friend Elk. Elk is smart, and has a way with using the environment to his own benefit. Then there was Bear. Bear was a loveable giant made of pure muscle and strength. He gave the best hugs, and the put up the best fight. Us four were the youngest in the Battalion.
    The Commander was our leader, obvious by his name, and his second in command was Tiger, who was, literally, a tiger. I’d asked Tiger if he’d ever thought of having a name other than the animal he is and his reply was short and curt. “No.”
    The last four members of the Battalion were Dog, Raven, Loch, and Worm. All four were skilled mages and they each had control over one of the four elements, Dog controlled water, Raven air, Loch fire, and Worm earth.
    All ten of us made up the Battalion and all were part of one big family.
    Worm, the oldest in the Battalion would always talk of the guild’s glory days; when battles commenced, leaving the fields littered with bodies, none of which belonged to the Battalion.
    We’d lost that power about thirty years ago, before Elk, Wolf, Bear and I were even born. It all happened in one night, or so I’m told. Worm tells it like this…
    “All around us were enemies, but we had no idea. It was the stupidest night in our career.
“Our last Commander had let us all drink till we were black out. We’d just finished an extremely bloody battle and, keeping our record, no Battalion member was killed. The battle happened just north of Gloda and the town’s lights could be seen sparklin’ in the distance. I remember those lights distinctly. They haunt me every night.
“By the time They reached us, everyone but the Commander, Tiger and I, was half dead in their drunken blindness. The three of us sat by a fire off a ways from our base camp, so as not to disturb the men who were getting it on with ladies they’d gone and picked up from the town.
“We didn’t even realize what was happening until those aforementioned ladies began to scream. It was one or two at first, but then more and more began to wail, sending the serene night into a cacophonous mess.
“The three of us jumped up at the noise, but by the time we’d gotten back to base camp, all the men were slaughtered. The women could be heard screaming off in the distance but there were only three of us, and the sheer number of men it would have taken to kill all of the men in that camp meant that the three of us alone wouldn’t be able to do nothin’.
“So we lit some torches and looked for survivors. None. But the weirdest thing. The thing that makes this entire tail so utterly strange, was the bodies. They seemed to be drained of all fluid. The skin of the dead would tear like paper if we’d tried to touch it and all the men’s eyes were shriveled like Desert Raisins.”
It was always at this point in the story when the Commander would stop Worm and order him to speak of it no more before taking his leave. But after the Commander walked out, Worm would always whisper the ending of the story.
“We have no clue what really happened that night, but whatever killed those men still lurks out in those woods, just waiting to drain you dry.”
He’d told that story many times, always when he thought that whatever we were going to do was not smart. Worm had always said this all was a bad idea, and I knew he was right, but we had to do it anyway. I mean, if someone’s going to take over the world wouldn’t you want to be on the winning side?