Chapter 39: DD2 Chapter 033 – Procession

Holding hands in a chain, the children moved together as one. It was painfully slow, and Arilla was terrified that something would go tragically wrong at any moment, but for now it appeared to be working. Over two hundred children, ranging from barely mobile toddlers to sullen teens who were only a few weeks away from gaining their first class, all marched down the road with just five adventurers for protection.

The sight of such a large procession had drawn countless more civilians from their homes who flocked to the slow moving column. They sought the protection offered by the Shining Swords and—to a lesser extent—her, and while Arilla doubted that they could guard so many, she knew that they didn’t have the manpower to turn them away. On the one hand she was glad that so many people were attempting to evacuate the Crafters Village, where the majority of Rhelea’s poor dwelled. On the other, she despaired, because they now marched far slower than even the slowest child, and they did so with a target on their back so large, that it pulled the tentacled horrors towards them in droves.

It was roughly one and a half miles from the orphanage to the west gate, adding in the need to navigate around the city’s streets it became an even two. Thanks to the additional travellers, the short journey that could have taken them as little as thirty minutes was now stretching into its second hour, and the gatehouse itself still wasn’t in sight.

Other classers, mainly adventurers and soldiers, had stepped forwards to help, but none had made it past high-pewter, and lacking the appropriate gear, they were next to useless against the waves of horrors. In her travels through Rhelea with Liam, Tamlin, and her ill-gotten-gold, Arilla had seen pewters beat the monsters back, but never without the advantage of significant numbers on their side. As humans died to the horrors that spread throughout the city, that particular advantage was becoming increasingly rare.

Arilla’s fears were compounded by the fact that Typh had yet to return to the sky, and the warrior was starting to worry that maybe Liam was right. She worried that the dragon was dead and everything would fall to her to sort out. She knew the plan back to front, and was prepared—in theory—to carry it out in Typh’s stead, but she had never truly imagined that the responsibility could fall to her.

The Monster had to be killed. If she waited for a great power like Erebus, or one of the other dragons who lived in the ‘Spines to do it, then their help would arrive far too late for Terythia to survive. There was a very short window of opportunity when the Monster would remain within their capability to destroy, and once that passed in a matter of days, then the country she loved was done for.

A part of her wondered if they were being too hasty to abandon Rhelea, if the city could still be saved, but she quickly rid herself of that thought. Succumbing to blind optimism would get her killed, and people—children—were depending on her. Arilla had seen the true Monster for herself, how that thing in the square, only a scant few minutes old, had fended off steel ranks and Typh. How it had then unleashed a veritable horde of those tentacled monstrosities which had now spread through the city like a plague, tearing through pewter classers and below like they were made of wet paper.

“I hope you’re alright out there, Typh,” Arilla wondered out loud. 

The missing connection between their classes ached, and for a moment she wished that she hadn’t cast it aside. If she was a Dragon Knight rather than a Noble Slayer, their bond would be stronger now than it ever had been, and she would already know if Typh was coming back. The allure of that certainty in this trying time was more than just appealing. She craved it. She needed to know that Typh was alive, that for all of its gruesomeness, the wound she had taken high above the ground was just another grievous injury the dragon would shrug off like it was nothing. 

If the stakes were any lower, Arilla would have already abandoned the dragon’s insane plan to instead go search for the woman, but they weren’t, and she couldn’t.

The Noble Slayer swung her sword, and with a spray of ichor another horror was split in two. The monstrosity shuddered and spasmed on the icy flagstones while another foe rose from the chaos to take its place. Arilla stepped back, interposing her zweihander vertically between herself and the creature’s flailing tentacles. Mismatched eyes glared at her, teeth as large as her hand scraped against her looted runeplate, and wherever the aberration’s flesh touched her sword it burned.

The beast recoiled, frustrated by her refusal to promptly die and surprised by the welts that had formed on its grabbing appendages. Into that space the warrior moved, her weapon thrusting forwards and spearing the horror through its spherical centre. Arilla got lucky. She must have hit its core with her blade as the entire creature promptly melted into sludge that began to boil around her feet.

The warrior took a steadying breath, and stepped forwards swinging her sword again, finding another aberration to kill in no time at all.

The disconcerting howls of the creatures were unending. They flowed over rooftops and emerged from windows, doors, side-streets and alleyways to hurl themselves at the slow-moving procession. Children screamed, and then monsters would crash into Enora’s barrier, falling to the ground where they were set upon by either Caeber or Myorik. The two iron-ranks managed to be everywhere at once, always arriving just in the nick of time. Arilla was profoundly jealous of both their levels and expertise, but she was far more grateful for their presence. She certainly couldn’t have escorted the orphans alone, not without losing far too many children, and in her mind even one loss was an unacceptable failure.

The zweihander gifted to her by Typh was a marvel. It had held its edge in Doomhold, but here in Rhelea it was really proving its worth. It carved through the tentacle monsters with such ease she barely had to use her one active skill. When she did, it was almost always to wrestle them off her, or to bat them away when she had a reason to deny them the sharp edge off her sword. The enchanted weapon didn’t even draw on her mana to use, which was a blessing, as her amour was steadily eating its way through her deep reserves.

If there were more swords like hers, then maybe things wouldn’t be quite so hopeless. But there weren’t. While Caeber and Myorik were able to easily fend off the creatures, slaying them a handful at a time without any real difficulty, they did so with runic gear far more ostentatious than hers, and with skills a full rank above her, and two above her own abilities which lagged behind her class level.

Another horror died spasming on her blade, and she helped an awestruck butcher to his feet. The man’s eyes were wide with fright, and he bore several large gashes from the monster’s fangs across his broad chest.

“Thank you,” the man spoke, his deep voice shaking with adrenaline. He bent low to collect his battered cleaver from the ground, before straightening. His eyes scanned the chaotic crowd moving around them where people screamed and fled as he searched for another monster to fling himself against. Arilla desperately wanted to tell him to give up, to seek safety by making a break for the gates, but she couldn’t. The butcher was one of the few useful volunteers she could rely upon. Empowered by his class skills his short little cleaver cut through rubbery flesh and reliably severed tentacles, but a cleaver was not a weapon of war, and a cloth apron was a far cry from runeplate. 

“Good luck,” she said instead. 

Arilla made a point of picking another direction from the one the butcher chose to head off in. She had no desire to watch the man die, and she was certain he would. 

They were finally getting close to the west gate, and more people streamed onto the wide road from every intersection. The sudden influx of terrified civilians caused a new mass of congestion to form that would have ordinarily brought the fleeing crowd to a standstill if it wasn’t for the palpable terror that kept everyone moving at a brisk pace. Of course more people meant more monsters, and where before their paths had always been easy to predict, now the horrors came from practically every direction, although always thickest when coming from the east.

A pair of bards lugging an expensive looking piano of all things turned a corner onto the busy street. Sweat dripped from their brows, and the same expression of exertion featured prominently on their startlingly attractive faces. Almost immediately the presence of their large instrument caused fleeing refugees to bunch up around them, and, seeing this, Arilla was incensed. Before she knew what she had done, she had sliced the wooden piano in half, and the two bards were screaming obscenities at her, which only stopped when one of them was bowled over by a monster that Arilla quickly slew.

She didn’t wait to see if he got back up from underneath the bubbling pool of ichor. Arilla didn’t particularly want to know if the man had survived. The knowledge that she might not have been fast enough would eat at her if she let it, and she had enough things to worry about.

Tight beams of fire flashed in front of her eyes, travelling mere inches in front of her face. The heat from the spell warmed her helmet and scorched the air which she then inhaled into her lungs. Arilla recognised the spell. Enora’s magestaff was out, which meant that the barrier protecting the children was down and when Arilla craned her neck to the left, she saw that all of a sudden, the orderly march had devolved into a stampede. Adults and children alike rushed for the gatehouse which had finally appeared in the distance at the end of the road. 

Turning her head to the left, however, was a mistake.

Something that burned crashed into her blind spot, and as heavy as she was with her skills and her armour, she was tossed head over heels into a nearby building that broke around her.

Lying amidst shattered bricks and broken wood, Arilla stared up at the ceiling and exhaled a tired breath. 

She had spent a few days laid out on her back, just like this, while she waited for Tamlin to find a high-level healer who could fix her spine. [Dragon’s Resilience] and [Dragon’s Mettle] had both levelled several times while she rested, but besides from sending a few possibly imagined tingles down to her toes, neither skill had done anything to help her walk on a timescale that she could notice. Staring up at the ceiling with nothing to do but think, she had thought of nothing but Typh.

The first time they had split, Arilla had been so angry. The lies, the betrayal, her extremely recent torture, it had all played a part in the hurtful words she had chosen when she rejected Typh’s advances. She still had the nightmares and the scars, she still woke up most nights screaming with the vivid memory of Rolf’s hand inside of her chest, and she knew that if Typh had just told her the truth a little bit earlier, then none of it would have happened. She wouldn’t have been tortured, and instead of learning what her kidneys looked like in exacting detail, she would have sat on her hands and waited patiently to be rescued.

Typh’s carelessness and lies had gotten her hurt, and it was hard to move past that, but somehow over the three months they had spent apart she kind of… had? Arilla didn’t want to admit it, but on their return trip from Doomhold she was willing to give it another go. For her, their brief time in the snow was not a goodbye, but a new beginning, at least until Typh ate a man in front of her.

Arilla didn’t know what to think about that. It was abhorrent, wrong and all kinds of bad. But it was also who Typh was. She was a dragon, and eating people was in her nature. It wasn’t a betrayal or another lie, it was Typh being who she was, what she was, nonhuman. When Arilla compared it to the more recent betrayals in her life, like Father Mihalis trying to sacrifice children, or Lord Traylan pushing his people to riot, it seemed so tame.

“You should always eat your kills.”

It was one of the first things Typh had told her, and while Arilla was in no way about to convert to a life of cannibalism she could almost respect it.

Almost.

The warrior sighed, feeling her sore ribs protest at the motion. She didn’t know if she was making sense or not, but she was self-aware enough to know that she was trying to justify letting herself love Typh.

If she’s even still alive.

The treacherous thought was like a bucket of cold water down her neck. Typh might very well be dead and Arilla had no way of knowing. Gods, how she wanted to go track her down. Even if it meant crossing blades with the Monster itself she would, if doing so meant that Typh would be all right.

“Fuck!”

It wasn’t even a choice to make was it? The heart wants what it wants, and hers wanted Typh.  

“You know talking to yourself is a sure sign of madness,” Myorik quipped.

Arilla looked down from the ceiling until her eyes fell on the bearded warrior. The stocky man looked surprisingly relaxed despite the ichor dripping from his armour, and he was leaning casually against the wall she had been flung through. She grimaced at the realisation that she was starting to make a habit of that. 

What the warrior was actually doing babysitting her inside this abandoned house when there were monsters to fight, she had no idea.

“You seem… in good spirits,” Arilla commented cautiously, only for Myorik to shrug. 

“The fight’s about done. Wasn’t particularly hard, although there was far too much running about for my tastes,” the man said. He then walked over to the supine warrior and helped her to her feet.

“It’s over?”

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“Close enough to it. Enora’s letting loose now that the tykes are safe. Turns out there’s a few squads of bronze rankers watching over the gatehouse. All prepped with arms, armour, and potions. Hired by a templar, wouldn’t you believe, to protect it for the day.”

“Good…” Arilla sighed.

“Exactly how many adventurers did you hire today?” Myorik asked, looking Arilla squarely in the eye, and Gods help her she couldn’t stop herself from grinning.

“All of them.”

“Fuck me...” the man trailed off seeming genuinely surprised.

“Well, all of the pewters and up who weren’t already contracted out,” she corrected. “It took a lot of legwork, but I had the time to spare, and thanks to the issues with the Guild, most established parties had the availability.”

“So… the gold?” 

“Is to pay them, and a few merchants who’ve stockpiled grain, lumber and canvas outside the city,” she shrugged.

“Well, you are an audacious one aint ya Dragonrider?” Myorik grinned.

“Don’t call me that. My name is Arilla Foundling.”

“Alright, Arilla Foundling. You ready to get back to it?”

“I thought you said the fighting was over?”

“I said the fight’s ‘close enough’ to being over. Enora’s letting loose and the orphans you’re so worried about are passing through the well-protected gates as we speak. There’s still people fleeing and tentacle monsters chasing them, but now at least we can breathe a little easier.”

“You’re talking like killing these things is fun,” Arilla spat.

“Are you going to pretend that it isn’t?” Myorik smiled.

She chose not to answer him for fear of saying something she might later regret. 

While the past few hours had done much to lower her expectations of her fellow Rheleans, the city was still her home and today was the day it died. She walked past the iron-ranker to the hole in the wall she had made with her entry and looked out across at the street.

Fires burned, and buildings had collapsed where vicious fighting had taken place. Skill-enhanced arrows now rained from the sky, joining the spellfire that zipped over peoples’ heads and striking down monsters that would otherwise tear through the crowd of fleeing civilians. Discordant cries filled the air, screams and the clash of steel too.

A building exploded in the distance with a loud clap of thunder that echoed out across the city. A significant blow had been struck, and she instantly knew that it came from the market square where the real fight against the Monster had apparently yet to end. It was a pleasant reminder that not all steel ranks had abandoned Rhelea in its time of need, although it was bittersweet, because that brave soul wasn’t going to make it by themselves.

Arilla knew that she should raise her sword and race out to fight again, that every second she delayed, someone died, but she was so very tired and she had already done so much. To say that she was emotionally drained didn’t begin to cover it.

“Go on without me, I’ll catch you up,” she instructed.

“But—”

“I said, go, Myorik. Kill monsters. Save lives. I need a moment.”

The older adventurer left without another word, but she hardly noticed his absence. Arilla stood there in the makeshift doorway and allowed herself to weep for her home.

In all of her dreams, she had never really imagined leaving Rhelea. Her fantastical imaginings as a gold-ranked adventurer always had her with a home in the heart of the city that overlooked the River Pollum. She had thought that she would go to the same bard-friendly taverns for all of her life, and witness the esoteric sights of a settlement built entirely by classers with vastly different ideas as to what constituted architecture. Rhelea was a squat, ugly thing that had sprouted organically from a small prospecting village; it had its quirks and flaws, but also its beauty. The urban planning was a joke, and in the summer the whole place reeked to high heaven, but it was her home and she had loved it.

“Goodbye,” she whispered.

She didn’t know how long she wept for, but when there were no more tears to give, the Noble Slayer stepped out from the abandoned house she had sheltered in, and walked back into the street where violence was immediately all around her. 

Arilla raced towards the nearest monster, her zweihander flashed, and she was moving again. Always forwards, always towards the next creature harassing some poor soul destined to die if she didn’t step up. Time blurred into a messy cascade of violence. Grateful faces intermingled with the grieving and the fearful while Arilla gave her all to protect the people on the short stretch of road leading to safety.

The adventurers sticking to the gatehouse helped, they had been assigned their positions because of the rangers and mages in their ranks. With arrows and spells, their offensive skills thinned the herd of onrushing aberrations long before they could get to the gates. Despite all of her planning, it still wasn’t enough, it could never have been, not with only a week to prepare. A lot of people had died, and while the ground beneath her feet was thick with black ichor that crept its way back towards the centre of Rhelea, it flowed over countless bodies sprawled out on the street.

Arilla’s eyes scanned over the fearful crowd looking for more horrors to kill, but in her exhaustion she found herself focusing above the panicked faces that rushed past. Bakers, labourers, warriors and more fled down the wide road leading to the gate. Their tags showed that most were mid-pewter, something that would earn them respect literally anywhere else in Creation, but more than a few were bronze like herself. She saw a blacksmith sprint past with an anvil thrown over her shoulder like a sack of flour, a warrior with a greatsword even larger than her own zweihander, a scribe with a stack of books tucked under their arm that hurt her eyes to look upon, and so many more classers carrying the tools of their trade.

She tried to console herself. So many people would live because of her actions, because of the plan, but the reassuring words she told herself felt hollow. Propelled by guilt, she refused to stop and rest. Instead she flitted through the crowd, saving the last lives that she could, swinging her sword until her arms were numb, and the inside of her mouth tasted of the horrors’ foul blood. When her mana finally started to circle the drain, and she couldn’t in good conscience risk her life anymore without knowing that Typh was alive to finish the plan, she turned her back on those behind her, and joined those running to the west-gate. 

Without her efforts, and with the other adventurers’ fatigue mounting, the wave of horrors pursuing the fleeing crowd grew thick. Spells weakened, arrows had less of a punch to them, and soon more horrors than people raced down the paved flagstones.

The adventurers she had hired watched her pass in silence and once she was through, they only waited for a few more minutes before they did as they had been instructed to do ahead of time. 

Arilla still remembered their faces, when she told them their role in this. How they had all laughed at her and told her that she was insane. But Father Mihalis was right, and adventurers thought with their coin-purses and were more than happy to take her money all the same. When it came time to carry out her instructions, their mood was solemn. They worked in silence, and not a soul dared to laugh.

The western gates to Rhelea closed, the wooden bar dropped from the stone gatehouse sealing it shut, mere moments before the portcullis slammed down in front of it. The mechanism to reopen the gates was destroyed and the handful of adventurers still inside the walls lowered rope-ladders out over the other side and fled the city.

As Arilla walked away from her home, she could hear the cries of those who didn’t make it in time. She tried not to imagine their bare fists hammering on the barred doors while the horrors grew ever closer.

At the northern, eastern and southern gates, the same thing happened. Rhelea was sealed shut, trapping the people who had yet to flee inside with the Monster that would consume them all.

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