The Dreamfarer

41

╣Folco╟

He had been in so many fights, but never something like this.

It just endured. He heard panting, he saw the sun continue to rise above the horizon, he felt stabs of pain all over his body, but none severe enough to render him unfit to continue. His comrades fell around him in bloody heaps just as his enemies did, but he could never stop his motions dead, could not look down to see if he recognized a face, or else he would be one of them. 

He knew that there were guards sticking close to him, defending him from magical attacks as best as they could, but a few still got through. He was blinded for a few terrifying moments at one point, and that was when he received the largest gash he thought he had on his body, a deep wound in his right thigh from a spear that had been thrown at him. He had broken the shaft of the weapon, leaving just a few inches of it along with its tip inside his leg so that he would not pass out from blood loss in the middle of the fight.

Though the thought of passing out was growing more and more appealing by the second. At least in unconsciousness, the graveyard that was his dream would not be filled with dead bodies.

He could not stop worrying about Mae, even in the midst of the madness. Without the blizzard hiding the city from sight, he felt a fiercer urge than ever to break free of the fighting and run through the gates to find her. However, he knew what his place was, what he had to do. Besides, there were others that knew that Mae needed to be rescued. At the very least, Hune would do all in his power to find her, and Caleb would do anything to keep her safe. She was only with Vivienne, anyway, and as long as she could keep her sister's demons at bay, she should be safe enough until someone found her.

Folco was seeing spots, and he hoped fervently that he would be able to stay on his feet until he had the chance to stop Dael. If he died before then, all of this would be for nothing. 

Suddenly, the right side of his body jerked backwards as a horrible pain ignited in his shoulder. He bellowed and lost his balance, his right leg not strong enough to hold all of his weight alone. Somebody caught him before he fell - a warlock, he assumed, since they did not attack him - and set him back on his feet. He glanced down for a split second to see an arrow protruding from his shoulder, and he broke off the shaft with a cry of pain just as he had with the spear. 

It's like I am being used for target practice, he thought to himself, smirking through the agony that was sparking through his body, starting fires in his open wounds as it went. 

A warlock jumped in front of him as an ogre appeared out of nowhere, swinging his club like a giant buffoon, not caring who he might hit. A gremlin vanished under the monster's foot even as the warlock was knocked to the ground, where he moved no more. Folco looked at the man's back just long enough to be sure that he did not have brown, graying hair before wiping the blade of his bloody dagger against his pants and bending into a lunge once more. 

Another warlock appeared and took down the ogre with a single curse before Folco had to do any more than raise his weapon. However, that did not mean that he was given a break. He spun on his heel to face his next opponent immediately, knowing that anything more than a millisecond of hesitation in a bloodbath like this could easily mean his doom, and his doom was something that had been reserved.

He thrust his dagger into the stomach of a woman who had whiskers and the flicking ears of a cat as she pounced at him with claws that were so polished that they glowed and so sharp that he winced as his blade sunk inside of her, not wanting to know what they would feel like if they were to dig into his skin.

He lifted a foot up to her hip and shoved her off of his blade, but he was too slow to turn around. A man with horns like a bull was just feet from him, running full-tilt and ready to ram him. Folco stood in place with wide eyes, knowing that he would not have time to fight the creature off, knowing that those horns would impale his chest twice over and that the battle would be over for him.