David Bishop and the Mystic of Creation T.C. Crawford (icecream ebook reader txt) 📖

his sword down on the back of the wolf’s head – severing it completely. It fell to the ground with a sickening thud, rolling several times before coming to a stop, his tongue hanging halfway from his mouth. The leader of the Northern Wolf Guard was dead.

After hours of tireless fighting and heavy casualties, the demon army began to wear thin just as the sky began to dip behind the mountain range to the West. The final remaining enemies were quickly dispatched by the elvish forces, and the ones who had tried to flee were quickly hunted down and slain. When they saw that they had finally triumphed, they all cheered together in victory.

They had suffered great losses, but they had ultimately won the battle.

Gilric, Reingard, and Holzer looked up together towards Draco’s Pass where the last of the sun’s rays was starting to disappear, sending a brilliant array of golden light scattering throughout the painted sky. In the distance they could see the silhouetted outline of the Dwarven army, all holding up their weapons in victory.

“It appears our friends have also been victorious!” said Gilric, a clear expression of relief etched onto his face as he approached Reingard and Holzer who were both covered nearly head to toe in sticky demon blood. He looked to Reingard and Holzer and tilted his head towards the mountains, “Shall we go congratulate them?” he asked with a rare smile, which they both returned in full.

“Aye, we shall!” replied Reingard, clasping hands with the Elven Prince.

And they began their ascent with the remaining Elven forces up the mountain pass to greet their new allies and prepare for their march to Ravenfell’s aid.

Chapter XXIII

Look out!” shouted Rex, as a ten-foot-tall demon came charging over the top of the wall, tearing off the arm of one of his soldiers before lunging at General Owen.

General Owen turned just in time to dodge the attack and quickly decapitated the demon with his two-handed sword, sending it tumbling off the back of the wall and into the spikes below.

“That was too close!” he replied, laughing more out of relief than anything.

They had been fighting constantly for over twelve hours straight. The first of the three defensive walls had been overrun, forcing them to retreat to the second tier, but it too, was quickly becoming overrun.

The men had been fighting tirelessly and valiantly, many refusing to rotate from their shifts or leave to seek medical attention despite their wounds, but the demon army was relentless and greatly outnumbered their own.

It was only a matter of time before they would have to fall back to the third defensive wall, leaving them to defend the final barrier between the increasingly violent enemy and their main forces. It seemed the more they fought on, the more ferocious the enemy became, as if they were in a bloodlust battle rage intent on killing anything and everything that got in their way.

The defenders on the other hand, were growing weaker with every passing hour – they simply couldn’t continue at this pace for much longer, even with the constant rotation every few hours with fresh troops. They just simply didn’t have the numbers, and with each passing hour, they had more and more men killed or forced out of the fight from their wounds.

“Fall back!” yelled Rex, indicating it was time to move out to the third and final barrier.

The men quickly complied, filing out one by one down the stairways to the ground level and moving their way through the maze-like barricades as they had done several hours before when they had been forced to abandon the front line. While the majority of the forces retreated safely to the third barricade, several others stayed back to hold the line and keep the demons from getting through.

Finally, Rex, General Owen, General Ryan, and Orin were all that were left on the middle wall. Seeing that everyone else had safely escaped to the final barricade, they each slowly made their way to the final defensive position, fighting back the demons and undead every step of the way with archers from the wall behind supporting their escape and helping hold back the enemy hordes.

When they reached the wall and got into position, Orin held up his hand with a ball of fire, the signal for the archers to light the barricades.

Immediately, hundreds of archers each dipped their arrows into the oil filled gutter and Orin sent his flame into the pitch, igniting each of their arrows before they sent a volley into the pitch-soaked barricades below.

The entire area ignited into a roaring blaze, catching hundreds of demons and undead afire who had been pursuing Rex and the others through the barriers, sending them flailing around and screaming, trying to escape the inferno. In their frenzy, some of the demons managed to impale themselves on the spikes, causing them to scream even further in anguish, while others simply trampled one another into oblivion. The trap had worked, but in the end, they knew it would only slow them down. The hundreds who died would quickly be replaced by equal numbers as soon as the blaze subsided.

With the pit below afire and preventing any enemies from crossing the gap for the time being, Rex looked over to General Ryan and Orin who both agreed the time had finally come to utilize the elixirs that Orin had prepared.

He began running up and down the lines, telling his men to drink the contents of the little vials, and prepare for their final stand. One by one, the men took out their vials and began downing the clear liquid. The effects would last anywhere between twelve hours and forty-eight hours, depending on the size of the user and how much energy they were using. Given the ferociousness of the fighting thus far, Orin suspected they would be lucky if they got half of that before crashing, but the alternative was for their men to begin falling down