lolatooyoulPrologue I walked around the caves, my demon feet thudding against the ground with each step. I turned the corner and saw a human standing in the doorway to our caves. I ran up to him and grabbed his neck with my claws. I slammed him against the cave wall, his right shoulder cracking as I broke it by sheer force, and shouted, "How did you get here?!" "I - I was told to deliver a m - message to this place." his voice trembled. "Tell me the message!" I shouted. "'We are watching you' is all th - that it says!" The human said. I roared and stabbed his head with the talons on my left hand. "Someone knows we're here..." I growled. I shouted to the other demons now coming into the chamber, "Come, we have work to do..." lolatooyoulChapter One "Race you to the archery range Jason!" My friend Mia said. I started running, hoping to outrun the wavy black hair that was Mia's in front of me. We kept running past the kids in the lower grades who were practicing sword fighting stuffed demons with wood swords. After passing the arena, the mess-hall, and the river I finally got to the archery range a few paces behind Mia. She turned around and grinned at me, both of us panting. The archery range was a scene of chaos, lower graders trying to shoot the teachers, only to be caught and thrown into a sandbox, older kids surveying the fights with joyous faces, and the usual deadpan teachers watching the kids our age shooting the targets. Mia and I stepped forward into the waiting box and pulled our bows from our shoulders. I pulled out my favorite bow: Maple short-bow with sights and red hairs marking my families clan. Mia pulled out her blue dragon-hide bow with teal strings for her clan. I've always told Mia that the bow brings out her blue eyes, where she always answers with a sideways glance and a small smile. "Jason Colnier and Mia Merella, please step forward and take your shots." I looked up at the advisor then stepped forward into my range, whispering to Mia, "May the best man win," I said, putting the emphasis on "man". My first shot went wide, earning a groan from me when I saw Mia's first shot make it close to the middle. I must win this, I think to myself, tensing for the second shot. I let loose my arrow, earning a satisfied thunk as I hit just outside the bullseye. I glanced over at Mia's range, which showed a shot just close of being wide. I shot a few more shots, exchanging small-talk with Mia about what we'll do in three years when we're both 19, when a war horn sounded. The camp erupted into immediate chaos, young kids scrambling for cover, the older grades running for their weapons. After gathering my weapons and arrows I looked to the sky, noticing how quickly the clouds were gathering around our camp. Auroran's POV Today was another boring day, running around tackling my friends in a game of "Quellentra", swordfighting, swimming, and now finally lunch. I was sitting down, chatting with my friends and eating a roasted Gurnan while cleaning my knives. The doors slammed open, an Elf woman and here courier walking through the hall. I stood up, immediately studying her frame, gait, clothes, and weapons, and I must say, I'm impressed. Someone tried to push past me to get a better view. I instantly grabbed him by the collar and threw him behind me, scraping him with my razor sharp knives. "Get off, she's mine!" I shout in his ear, gaining a few looks from bystanders. I ran after her, following her upstairs into the library. I waited a few minutes until her courier left her to herself, and approached her. "Name?" I asked. "Quem WideEyes, you?" "Auroran Sowethdalis. Funny name, yours." She slapped me on the cheek, earning a look from me, "You think that's suppose to annoy me?" She slapped me again- backhanded. Now THAT pisses me off! I jumped on her, pulling my knife. I held my knife against her neck, feeling totally in control. One second I was on her, the next second I was flying across the hall only to crash into the wall at the far end. I stood up, shaking my head and feeling groggy. Stumbling a little bit and resting my hand on the wall I looked up, seeing Quem holding a staff with an emerald sphere on the top. "That will teach you not to mess with me," she said cynically. "Wait a second, do you hear that?" she said, holding her finger up to her mouth. I listened closely, all I heard was the creaking of floorboards and the wind whistling past the window. "Let's get out of here!" She whispered to me. I followed her outside, and looked up at the sky, seeing black clouds surrounding the entire camp. Quem was already running into the woods. I looked around the campus, wondering when I would see it next, shrugged, and followed her into the forest. I kept following her, wary of all the animal sounds echoing around the forest, when we came to a stop. She looked behind me, eyes widening. I turned around just as a bear slammed into me, picking up my body and throwing it. All I heard before my vision went black was a few shouts from Quem coming from far away and a splash. I woke up to an immense pain, looking down, I see an amazingly clear sky blue pool of water, rivulets of the water running down the side. I gasped and fell down, feeling as if a knife was stabbing me from the inside, earning a few screams from me. In seconds it was over. I stepped out of the pool, seeing it disappear in front of my eyes. Now that's not something you see everyday, I thought to myself. I looked down at myself, eyes widening as I took in that my body was in the shape of a hydra, the default shape of a shapeshifter.
lolatooyoulChapter Two Mia's POV I glanced at Jason, "Whoever we're fighting, let's get our bows and shoot from up the hill," I say, jutting a thumb behind me. "Good I idea", I hear him say absentmindedly, while we both pick up our bows, ammunition, rapier, and a suit of chain mail before running up the hill. At the top of the hill we turn around, and examine the battle setup that the teachers had already set up consisting of the students. The setup was a normal army stance: Spearmen in front, cavalry behind them, swordsmen, and then archers in the back, plus all the smaller kids. I pulled out a telescope from my bag and looked through it. All I saw was sand rolling up from the wind, and the occasional human skin peeking out from the dust and sand. I gave the telescope to Jason while telling him what I saw, earning grunts of acknowledgement as he looks through himself. The war horn sounded one last time, marking the beginning of this battle, which was clearly a battle, because they weren't holding up any flags, and were running toward us with weapons. In seconds the enemy was past the wind that was obscuring their approach. I could almost hear the gasp from the students, making me grab the telescope from Jason's hand and putting it to my eye. I beheld a truly horrible sight: The enemy was human flesh, head to feet, with no real indentations, all it was was the shape of a human body, except for the head, where four hands were sticking out. The four hands were at 90 degree angles around the head, one atop the forehead, one on the chin, the others stretching out from next to both ears. The hands looked like they would grab your head, and bring it close to their head, where it looked like they could literally eat you. Jason must have seen my eyes widen, because he grabbed the telescope away from my hands, widening his eyes almost the same way I did. I pulled out my bow at the same time as Jason. The enemy had already reached the first row, only a few of them getting killed by the spears, the rest of the living bodies of flesh jump over it onto the students body knocking him onto the ground and covering his entire body head to toe. I covered my mouth to stifle a scream, when I saw the body of the student get absorbed into the body of the flesh, and get up, only to continue fighting. Jason saw it too, because he cocked an arrow into his bow. The enemy had gotten past the spearmen, most of the students consumed by the beings. Our archers released a hail of archers, knocking down many enemies, but not close to enough. The horsemen galloped forward, being consumed immediately, not even having a chance to retaliate. A few archers broke rank and ran to the woods with a few swordsmen, breaking the moral of the swordsmen and archers that were remaining even more. The swordsmen fought valiantly, but were consumed soon, while most of the archers broke loose into the woods, causing chaos and disruption in the other archers. Jason and I started backpedalling, while hearing screams from the archers, but not before 3 flesh beings caught sight of us. Jason and I started running backwards into the forest, and realized it was no hope to outrun the three beings. We turned around and each let loose and arrow at one of the flesh beings. The first one fell, and we pulled out or rapiers, slashing at one being and ripping its flesh apart. The last being knocked both of our swords loose and jumped on me. I felt its warm human and animal flesh sink on my body. I immediately fell backwards, struggling with the flesh and trying to pull it off of me. It pinned my entire body down while putting some tentacles of flesh down my throat. Where is Jason! I wondered, as the tentacles found my heart. I could feel the tendrils of flesh touching my heart, the amount of skin there gradually growing as the creature put more flesh in my mouth. The flesh gradually started shaping around my heart, when it finally covered up my entire heart. My heart stopped pumping blood into my veins, just as I felt a sharp pain coursing through the remaining functional nerves.
lolatooyoulChapter Three Demons Cave "So, looks like our Cave isn's "secret" anymore," a demon grunted at the other demons gathering inside the chamber around the huge circular table in the middle with a map of the world on it. "Saradthe was right you know, and Dragûli too. They both said we would need to make this place temporary. Good thing they lead this place, not the bungling old fool back a few centuries ago." muttered another demon. The demon called Saradthe nodded in slight response, his black and red claws glistening in the firelight. The demon called Dragûli stayed in the darkness for a few more seconds, still contemplating the speech that would soon commence. She stood up and lumbered over to the table and growled to everyone in the room, "We are no longer safe here. We need to either move to another place," this getting a few groans from other demons, "or take the fight to them, and attack the nearest city, Güllarg. The problem is, not one of us, besides for Saradthe and I, know how to fight," she said, and threw a knife at a demon. He barely had time to bat it away as it got lodged in his armor. "None of you even know how to use a weapon, and seldom few can activate the dark runes we have. I'm sorry to say this, but fists won't win a fight." he finished and stood back from the table, just as Saradthe motioned her over. "Quite a small speech. I could do better, though I just don't care that much. Follow me, I would like to show you something." Dragûli followed Saradthe into a chamber with dark skylights. The air filtering through was an orangish color, giving Saradthe's armor a red sheen to the already dark armor. "Down here, as we all know, we have the training grounds," sounds of metal against metal met Dragûli's ears, "though very few know of this place." He made a shard right, into a corridor filled with cobwebs that she had never noticed before. At the end of the room a rusted door lay, which Saradthe opened, and beckoned her to walk down. Dragûli took a sharp breath, then she walked down. Immediately, sounds of screaming flew up to meet her. Then the sound of a demons claws stabbing another demons also flew up, right after which the screaming ended. "Down here, I've been training a batch of "elite", so-to-speak, demons, that I will be using in actual fights. Let the demons upstairs believe they are actually achieving something. Let's look at this fight, it's about to start. We train mostly with Hand-to-hand combat, as you are about to see." A horn sounded somewhere, and the two demons below her charged at each other. The first knelt to down and waited for the other to come, and when it did, the first demon grabbed the legs of the other demon and flipped it over the shoulder. The first demon stood up, and waited for the second to come up. The second demon stood up, shook its head, and charged again, only to be stabbed in the stomach with a single claw, then slammed onto the ground twice, punched once, stabbed another three times, and choked until it stopped moving. Dragûli stepped back, "You actually kill down here?" "Best way to fight. How about you get down there?" Saradthe said as he grabbed Dragûli and threw him down into the arena with the same demon he had watched only a moment before. The arena demon looked up and smiled. "More company for me. The name's Indtania. I'm the last person you'll know, 'cause we fight to the death." He drew two three feet long blades with a forked top, runes running down the middle. He shook them for a few seconds, and they started glowing a dull dark red as he advanced toward Dragûli. She, in turn, curled her claws outwards, and a dark misty substance flowed between them: Dark Energy. The fight started immediately, Indtania jumped into the air and flipped two times, before crashing to the ground and slashing at Dragûli. She twisted forward and grabbed a sword, shattered it with the magic, and blasted the second with the energy. "Tough fighter, looks like you're worthy of my claws," Indtania growled as he unfurled his claws and lunged toward Dragûli. She jumped forward to meet Indtania, but twisted at the last second and grabbed him. They both rolled on the floor a few seconds, before a loud cracking sound resonated around the chamber. Dragûli stood up and stabbed Indtania two more times for good measure, then flapped his leathery wings and flew up to meet Saradthe. "Kindly don't do that again, I don't have time to kill all of your men." Saradthe looked up and nodded, then walked over to another hidden door and brought Dragûli into a small mirror room of the map room upstairs. Dragûli glanced around the room. She could barely see four black armor wielding demons standing in the corner. She stared for a second before looking back at the table. "What I really wanted to show you, is that," Saradthe drew in a deep breath, "you know the "war-machine" demon a few years back?" Dragûli nodded, "You mean Zeral'gurun, that demon obelisk that went rouge?" Saradthe replied, "Yes. And I've brought you here to tell you that we've found him."