“Now, could you tell me where Aporia happens to be”, Kenos asked.

  Axios looked at him for a moment.

  “Water”, Axios said

  “Huh?”, Kenos replied.

  “Need water-huff- can talk afterwards-huff”.

  Kenos made a strange face at the reply.

  “Fine”, the jade eyed boy said as he grabbed Axios’ arm and pulled him to his feet.

  “Just make it quick”, Axios heard from behind him as he stumbled a few steps to reach the small fountain.

  Before taking a gulp however, he looked at Alex’s body and muttered an apology under his breath.

  He drank deep of the fountain. One large gulp after another, gulped in between his gloved hands. He could feel the cold liquid sliding down his throat, easing his pain. Just as any drop of water in Limani did, it calmed down the body and cleared the mind. He could feel his vitality returning, his curse subsiding and his ability to breath and of his blood to flow with vigour being rapidly returned to him.

  He washed his face as well. He washed his eyes as well. He twisted his body around until his eyes were aimed towards the night sky and put his face below the tap, plugging his nose and letting the water wash over his entire skull and he drank even more still.

  “You done?”, Kenos asked.

  Axios got out from underneath the tap, slicked his hair back and stood on his two feet, his stamina and breath now almost fully returned to him.

  “That was more than enough, thanks. And thanks for saving me back there. Thought that it was the end of the line for me”

  Kenos shrugged.

  “I guess that puts you in my debt. Now, answer my question. You have known Aporia the longest, I know that much. Where is she right now?”

  “I…am not sure”, Axios replied, uncertain.

  In but a couple of seconds, Axios saw the jade eyed youth’s expression run though a veritable gauntlet of emotions

  Shock

  Anger

  Disgust.

  Disgust was the one that felt particularly judgemental.

  “Tch!”, Kenos exhaled and clicked his tongue, not looking Axios in the eyes and grinding his teeth in frustration and annoyance.

  “I thought too highly of you”, said the jade eyed boy as he turned on his heel.

  Axios felt like he should have gotten annoyed at the remark, but he couldn’t lie to himself and say that Kenos didn’t have a point. He could have not answered the call and focused on going towards Aporia. He could have been stronger and done all the battles up to now and still have stamina and strength left to spare and he would already be at the temple.

  But life was not made of “I could have”′s, only “I must”’s.

  He grabbed Kenos’s shoulder as he was about to break into a run.

  The jade-eyed youth looked over his shoulder and stared Axios in the eyes.

  The younger man’s glare seemed to pierce through his flesh and bones and peer inside of his mind and spirit. It was an uncomfortable, no, a revolting feeling.

  One might even call it intimidating.

  “I was just about to go look for her at the temple. I heard from someone that she might still be there. That is where you were about to run off to, wasn’t it?”, Axios questioned.

  “We are of the same mind on that then”, Kenos replied.

  “Kenos-“, Axios started to say.

  “Don’t!”, Kenos cut him off, his tone dancing on the edge of annoyance and outright anger.

  Axios suddenly remembered something that Georgios had once told him, that this jade eyed youth wasn’t fond of people calling him by his first name. nor his last name for that matter. He didn’t seem to like anyone using his name at all.

  Honestly, it felt like an annoying and, at this time, detrimental gimmick for his saviour and possible future companion to have, but he swallowed his annoyance out of respect and gratitude.

  “Teo then”.

  “Huh?”, Kenos said, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

  “It is a shortened version of your last name. You are ok with that, right?”, Axios inquired.

  “It is passable…thanks for the sentiment”, Kenos thanked.

  If one were to ask the jade eyed youth, he did not expect Axios to know such a specific detail about himself, nor that level of patience towards his proclivities.

  The two of them were close to the temple now. From where they were, Axios estimated that under normal circumstances, that a they could reach their destination in three fourths of an hour, at a normal walking pace.

  Kenos had told him to walk while hugging the wall. There were monsters on the rooftops and walking in the middle of the street would only make it easy for them to be spotted and for them to me mindful of whenever they turned a corner.

  Axios wasn’t one for making idle talk on the regular, but he was truly puzzled as to why Kenos had taken an interest in Aporia. From the last few times that he had had the chance to have a proper talk with her, she never brought him up and neither him nor anyone else had ever seemingly seen the two hang out together. There would at least have been rumours about the issue if that was the case.

  When Kenos gave him the signal that the coast was clear when they turned yet another corner, Axios allowed his curiosity to slip through his lips.

  “Why are you after Aporia?”, he asked.

  “I owe her”

  “Enough to scour the town for her during a deadly invasion?”

  “I owe her and she did something that she probably shouldn’t have, so I need her alive now. Happy?”

  Axios hardened his tone. “That doesn’t make it sound like you have the best of intentions for her”.

  Kenos looked at him with a certain level of annoyance, but also perplexion.

  “Seriously? Look, if that girl just lives out the rest of her life happy in some town or some other temple somewhere and prays like a good little devotee of our faith until the end of her days, it would be the best possible outcome that I would want. So keep that damn snarling to yourself.”

  Snarling? Had he just called him a dog?!

  Axios fought down the urge to retort and the blood inside of him that was intending to start boiling. This wasn’t the time for it. The more allies he had right now, the better, but he didn’t think that they would be getting along perfectly anytime soon. Not with that sharp tongue of his.

  They reached an alleyway that led to what seemed to be the main street that was closest to the temple. From here, they could either follow the road upwards and then turn left or they could attempt to cross the street altogether and try to go in via a side route in between the buildings.

  Going by the sounds up ahead, Axios could guess that there was at least some fighting still going on in the main street. Unless there was some of gap through the fighting that they could run through, which was unlikely, then their path forward had already been decided for them.

  Kenos peered through the corner of the alleyway to see how bad things were. He took a few moments to assess the situation, almost as if lost in through, before turning back to Axios.

  “Seems like some soldiers on our side are wrapping up the remainder of some enemy forces. There are probably some twenty-five of our guys, six of them having those strange form-fitting armours and the enemy seemed to number about fifteen before I stopped looking. The question is, do we wait until their fight is finished and just walk through them? Do we wait until they leave? Or do we simply run through the side streets?”, Kenos asked.

  “Depends. Do you think that going towards Aporia is an issue where time is of the essence? We could just run through the side streets, but the detour that it would take time as well. I also don’t think that they would just let either of us pass after the fight ended. Too much of a security risk.”, Axios mused

  “Hmmm… hey, wait! You are in the town guard. You have the uniform on you and everything. Couldn’t you just say that you were going to look for survivors or refugees and bring me along as a civilian volunteer?”, Kenos proposed.

  Axios shook his head. “Doubtful. At this stage in the battle, they are more likely than not to have every civilian and guard of lower skill to have made their way to either the walls or to the outside. Any guards that manage to be available to continue fighting against the invasion would have already been drafted to go help out the Limani army. That is what I was on my way to do before my unit got wiped out in a squirmish. If we run into them, I will be forced to join them or be killed on the spot for desertion if I don’t comply. That means that I can’t help you in any fights going forward. You are a civilian, so it can go anywhere from them ignoring you and letting you pass, to you getting conscripted or executed on the spot”.

  “That is a long way of saying “No”…”, Kenos took an additional assessment of the current situation in the main street, “Running to the side streets it is. Start sprinting towards that alleyway as soon as I give the signal”, Kenos pointed at a large alley in front and slightly to the right of their current position. The entry to that passageway was lined with two large stone vases that almost seemed fused to the pavement.

  Axios waited a few seconds, time seemingly stretching as he waited for Kenos’ order.

  “Run!”, Kenos yelled.

  The two of them took off sprinting. Reaching the other side of the main street could be achieved in about eight seconds at his current speed. He took three seconds to turn his head to understand what the situation of the battle was.

  Guards and soldiers were fighting against knights. The screams of war and pain filled the air and the crimson on the ground drew the eyes in. The ground and the outer walls of the buildings around the fighting were filled with what seemed to be claw marks made by large creatures and there were even corpses of monsters of varying shapes littered around the edges of the battlefield, as if they had been challenged in an outer perimeter so as to not interfere with the rest of the fighting.

  A dozen or so meters before of the melee there was a large steaming dark red blood splatter on the pavement and said blood left an unmistakeable trail as it stretched into the side streets.

  That foreboding liquid gave Axios pause for but a moment, bringing back memories of the hard fought battle that laid in his recent past, yet he couldn’t let it distract or dissuade him now. The streets were the only path he could take if he wanted to get to Aporia and have any willing allies when he did.

  Kenos let himself slow down in order for Axios to catch up.

  “Do we just go up?”, Axios asked.

  “Before that, did anyone chase after us?”, Kenos retorted.

  “Didn’t look like it. So, what is the path that you want to take?”

  “The small bridge that goes over the plaza. If that is free, then we can go over anyone that might be fighting in the open space below. If it is the opposite, we can just find some way to drop down. The knights will probably not want to do free-running in those armours for just some random kids”, Kenos explained.

  A bit further ahead, they came upon an intersection where their street met some of the sidestreets. Even Kenos had to pause for a moment to take in what they were seeing.

  There were bodies strew around everywhere in this intersection, as if it had been a splinter group of the larger fight that they had just ducked earlier. When they looked to see the whole length of the alleyway that had just crossed the one that they had been on, the whole breath and length of it was filled with the remains of soldiers and monsters. The majority were from the invaders, but some guards and allied soldiers could be spotted among their number. There was however something strange about them. It didn’t look like a fight where one side had simply fought and pushed the other side back as they advanced. Instead, it looked as if the two sides had been mixed and intertwined in a melee, with some of the most violent clashes happening in the central portion of the conflict, but said fighting had then evolved to combat being separated into an inner and an outer corridor, as there didn’t seem to be many bodies lying near the middle part of the street.

  It did seem however that their side had won. Close to where the two paths met, there was the head of a three-horned knight on the floor, with their respective large body lying slightly to the right of the middle of the street, with their sword arm detached and still holding its respective blade. There were also the bodies of two creatures, one which looked like some sort of fish with legs and a large head and one which looked like a bipedal lizard with a strange multi-forked tail with bone protrusion. The fish-like creature had had its head split right down the middle, its brains clearly visible even from the pair of youths’ angle and the lizard-like beast had had its forked tail cut off and had been nailed to the wall by two swords, one piercing through its chest and the other through its neck, even through they blade wasn’t wide enough to achieve a proper decapitation.

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  “Let’s not run into whoever walked out of this fight”, Kenos cursed under his breath.

  Axios could only nod in agreement as they made sure to avoid taking the most direct path to the plaza and the aforementioned bridge. It wasn’t to their liking having to go through yet another detour, but the roads led so directly down that path that following would incur great risk of running into the survivors of that battle.

  Axios figured that someone that had just gone through that probably would be especially unwilling to listen to their reasons and arguments for being this deep into the town still. Their death would be almost a guarantee if they did. Getting the bloodlust, the stress, the sadness and trauma of losing one′s comrades wasn’t something so easily achieved while still inside the confines of an active warzone. There was a reason why soldiers were prone to taking out their turmoil on civilians after a hard fought victory in a campaign.

  They kept making sure that they hugged the walls. As they moved northward through the town, they had exchanged a small amount of relevant information, chief among those the deduction that it appeared that the creatures that they had been seeing during the attack had come from the north and it was not unlikely that some had stuck around as they gradually made their way south. A beast was a beast. The people running around would undoubtedly have been too much of a treat for them to resist.

  As they made their way towards the bridge, they turned a corner and chanced upon one of the living. It was a knight of Sodom. They were sitting against a wall, their legs outstretched and a massive gash could be seen on their right leg. It was obvious for all to see that the man in question could no longer move and was mostly likely just waiting for death to reach him. The man seemed to lock eyes with Kenos and immediately took aim with that strange staff-like weapon. they both ducked behind the corner and no shots were fired.

  “Let’s go around”, Kenos said.

  “No! we can ask him questions. At least see if he knows where there is still some fighting going on. The bridge where we are headed may not be safe. And we need to check on the woman.”, Axios argued back.

  “What woman?”, Kenos retorted.

  “The one with the golden hair next to him. Don’t tell me that you didn’t see her”

  “Must have been all the “I don’t want to die, that stick is dangerous” going through my head that didn’t let me see the oh so valuable random person. Apologies”, Kenos responded, his voice the very picture of derision.

  “Are you going to help me with that or not?”, Axios barked back.

  “It wasn’t in the plan, so no. I am not sticking my neck out.”

  “But she needs help!”

  “And she may as well be dead already! You want to get killed over that?”

  “What about getting some information out of him?!”

  “As if we can’t figure out if there is danger ahead by just picking up our ears. And battlefronts change so quickly here that details from a few minutes ago are already outdated and worthless. Get a damn grip!”

  Axios grabbed Kenos by the shoulders “Listen here, you ass-“

  “No, you listen. I don’t have to help you and I just saved you because Aporia will be more relaxed with you around. If you want to lose your head over a fleeting bout of anger or some personal sense of duty, that has nothing to do with me. I am going to do exactly what I said I was going to do and that is head for that bridge.”

  Grrrr…

  Axios was positively growling with anger. He ground his teeth in frustration and righteous indignation, as he applied even more force to his grip.

  How could anyone have such callous disregard towards the lives of his own neighbours and countrymen?

  Axios could not understand the person in front of him. He would not even try to understand them. There were basic values that if one rejected them, then they couldn’t even call themselves human anymore.

  Was Kenos going to shove him? Punch him? A headbutt or a bite perhaps? Axios was prepared for whatever would come.

  Yet the jade eyed youth did nothing. Not only did he not make any attempt to hurt Axios, his face also did not betray any hint of anger in him. Axios wasn’t used to this sort of interaction. Pretty much everyone, without exception, had a tendency to resort to either violence or overt animosity once Axios started to showcase the same emotions himself.

  Yet Kenos did not of that. He could see it in the younger man’s eyes. Kenos was simply not paying Axios any heed. His stare was one that was peering into the infinite, not concerned with whatever might be happening in front of him.

  Axios didn’t know what got under his skin the most. The younger man’s disregard of human life or his uncaring attitude towards Axios’ aggression itself.

  He shook Kenos in an attempt to snap his mind back to reality.

  “Hey! Are you listening to me?!”, Axios insisted.

  “You keep yelling, so it is hard not to. Have you decided to things my way yet?”

  At that, Axios heard the woman scream.

  “Oh no”, he thought.

  Axios let go of Kenos and turned the corner on impulse, but he ended up staring right down the barrel of the enemy’s weapon. the man was red in the face and was positively barking words out in a fit of rage as he fired.

  It was simply gut instinct.

  Axios had looked at the man’s expression and the tempo of his shifts in facial features and body language and instinctively guess the moment that the shot would fly through the air. There was no time to turn back and retreat behind the corner because he had walked too much out in the open.

  Axios kicked his legs backwards as a horse would and let gravity handle his motion. He even swung his head downwards to provide extra force to shorten the brief moment where his body still felt untamed by gravity.

  In essence, Axios had thrown himself face first into the ground from a standing position.

  As he heard the shot ring out and the projectile hit the walls behind him, he caught his fall with his hands and pushed himself off the ground and jumped back into a standing position, immediately charging the enemy soldier. Despite the tunnel vision afflicting him right now, he could see the woman bleeding from her face and head off of the corner of his eye.

  The enemy made a stabbing motion at Axios as he was rushed, but Axios managed to jump to the left, killing almost all of the forward momentum and as he landed he used his right forearm and elbow in a short but powerful strike to clash with the body of the long shaft being swung sideways at him, avoiding contact with the blade at the tip. As soon as the impact connected, Axios grabbed unto the wall in front of him with his left hand, digging his fingers in the space between the bricks to pull himself sideways with explosive force and kicked the side of the enemy’s head with his left leg, before the injured man could finish drawing his dagger.

  “Bastard!”, Axios cried out, as he grabbed the enemy’s staff-like weapon and impaled his neck with it, just as Alex had been.

  The woman was crying. Once more he observed the flood pouring from her nose and her head.

  He hadn’t seen these injuries when he first looked at her. They might have been there already and the angle just didn’t allow for a good viewing, but the alternative explanation left Axios feeling angry and remorseful.

  He wanted to lose his cool and butcher the remains of the bastard right there and then, but there was no point. There were no enemies around for him to take his frustrations out on. It wouldn’t have been a good idea even if there were. He should focus on conserving energy.

  He grabbed hold of the woman and helped her to get up.

  He looked at her attentively now. On top of her golden hair, she had deep blue eyes and a face that seemed hardened by a strong will. Disfigured from the abuse as she might be, Axios could still grasp that she was quite a beautiful woman.

  Childish as it might be, he could guess why he had reacted so strongly to her peril, even if it was just from a quick glance.

  He sighed in relief.

  “Ma’am, I am a member of the town guard. Can you understand what I am telling you? How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Just one, sir”, she answered.

  “Ok, good. I want you to go down the street there and keep going up until the sidestreets meet the main street. There were some of our guys there and they were wrapping up a fight when we passed them. The area should be fully under their control by now. Ask them for help. Try talking to any town guard first, I don’t know much about the other soldiers that seem to be from the Limani army, but it would be best to stick with the guard.”

  She thanked him and he let her run off, yet Kenos stopped her by grabbing him by the shoulder and placing his whole arm in front of her.

  “Don’t tell them about us helping you. Just say that you escaped by yourself, if you could”, Axios heard him say before he finally let her go.

  “Didn’t take that long, did it?”, Axios said.

  “You mean the part where you could have died and made enough noise to tell anyone around where we are? Yes, it didn’t take that long.”

  “As if this level of noise would have been enough to alert anyone about anything in a warzone”, Axios remarked with annoyance.

  He couldn’t tell what irritated him the most, the fact that he was speaking obvious nonsense to get under his skin or the fact that Kenos might be right.

  “Well, if you got it out of your system, I suggest that we get going”, Kenos said, scratching the back of his head.

  “Haha! Now that you do mention it, I do have to get it out of me, don’t I? just a moment.”, Axios said, as he moved to stand above the fresh corpse of the invading soldier and stomped on his skull for a good minute.

  When he looked up from the results of his outburst, Axios was surprised to see Kenos glaring at him with eyes that seemed almost bloodshot, his right indicator between his unusually sharp teeth and his left hand seemingly having a spasm.

  “Are you…”, Kenos said, in a muffled tone, “…just about done with these irrational outbursts?!”, he begun to replicate Axios’s stomping from a moment ago, “I am this close to losing any shred of patience with you. You want to pay me back? Then don’t go around deviating from our objective and don’t go starting fights that you can’t win!”

  “But I won the fight didn’t I?”, Axios responded, a smug smile on his face.

  “Oh…you…!”, Kenos looked like he was about to lose it for a few moments following the reply, but he turned his eyes towards the sky, said a few words that Axios couldn’t hear and opened his mouth wide and closed it a few times, before seemingly calming down and looking at Axios once more.

  “I shouldn’t be the one saying this, but apologies for that tirade just now”, he exhaled and took a deep breath, “Can we agree to just focus on rescuing that poor girl already?”

  Axios was taken aback by that whole scene and equally as much by the sheer sincerity in Kenos’ eyes as he asked for help in saving Axios’ long time friend.

  “As long as we share that goal, I will stand by you…I…I will try to respect your wishes from now on”, Axios apologised.

  Following that, they moved towards the bridge at a brisk pace without deviating from their intended goal.

  They kept sticking close to the walls and eyeing the rooftops for monsters and keeping an ear out for any sign of incoming enemies. Thus far, they couldn’t hear anything of particular note, but they understood that given the town’s situation, some sounds might escape them.

  They eventually reached their destination. It was a decently sized stone bridge with stone railings on the sides, connecting an elevated set of houses with a similar neighbourhood in front of it, as they both went over the regular streets. They knew that while this area wasn’t exactly home to the most affluent individuals in town, it was considered a crop of houses reserved for those in this area that had means beyond their neighbours’. Yet, it couldn’t call itself an exclusive or walled off neighbourhood like the ones on the hillside on the northern half of town.

  Below they saw the aforementioned common streets. There were definitely bodies there, guards and civilians and even a foreign knight here and there, but it was actually relatively corpse-free compared to what they had each grown to expect from the various areas that each of them had walked through this evening.

  “Emptier than expected”, Axios remarked.

  “A good sign. Not much fighting here means that there are probably not even all those many soldiers between here and the temple”, Kenos voiced his hopeful thoughts.

  “Coast seems to still be clear”, said Axios as he took a quick glace around to look out for monsters, since there were no easily available walls to cover them as they crossed

  “We are going to the next small intersection up ahead and then going straight up through the side streets”, Kenos decided.

  “Aaaahhhh!”, the two of them heard in the distance.

  Kenos was the first to glance to the side and immediately shouted

  “Duck!”

  Axos reacted immediately, but he had ignored the scream for but a moment because he figured that it would be far away, so something still collided against the very top of his head as he crouched and so he tumbled to the side and his brain was rattled by the glancing blow.

  What had been that just now?

  When he looked at where Kenos was, a soldier of Sodom, dressed differently from all of the others that he had fought before was struggling to get to his feet and Kenos had already thrown himself at him, his sickle flashing, aiming for some unexpected crevice in the enemy’s defenses.

  Axios heard a strange sound behind him and jumped to his feet to meet whatever that might be and a chill went down his spine.

  Grabbing a hold of the bridge’s railing from the outside and then heaving itself unto the bridge itself was a large, muscular, bipedal, wolf-looking creature.

  Axios glanced at its claws as he drew his blade and understood that he would most likely perish here.

  With but a single weapon, not even being afforded a shield and a sword arm that wasn’t even in its normal condition, the golden haired youth knew full well that fighting a beast armed with two sets of sharp claws and muscles that would make most elite soldiers jealous was simply put, a nightmare scenario.

  “Rhhhhaaaaaa!!!”

  Axios bellowed a battle cry, igniting the blood inside of him, as he charged.

  The creature seemed surprised by the display and since the charge coincided with it fully heaving itself unto the bridge, its reaction was sluggish for a split second.

  Axios closed the distance with quick and determined strikes and swung his blade down with both hands.

  Yet, he was too far away for the edge to meet the beast’s flesh.

  As he swung the sword, he let it go so that it spun in the air once before it collided with the monster’s pectoral.

  He would never win a swordfight against it. He neither had the skill, the stamina nor the tools required engage it in a proper melee and he wasn’t strong enough or the blade’s edge sharp enough to cut through its claws.

  He couldn’t rely on skill, but there was nothing unusual about that. Like every enemy before it, he would engage it with nothing but wanton carelessness and ferocity.

  The sword’s edge drew both blood and the creature’s attention before gravity caught up to it, but that had been enough.

  Axios had finished closing the distance, with his head directly beneath the creature’s and stomped with his right foot and twisted his whole torso leftwards.

  His right arm might have been below its optimal state, but he could still do this.

  “Hmpf!”, he exhaled.

  Axios had grabbed his right fist with his left hand as he twisted leftwards and made full use of the momentum of his charge alongside the torque to slam his right elbow into the creature’s shoulder plexus as hard as he could.

  He knew for a fact that with the amount of force that he had put into it, that most adult men would faint from their body going into shock from such a blow, but this creature was merely thrown backwards a couple of steps and doubled over a bit.

  Still, he needed to pile on.

  Almost as if with a half-bow, Axios immediately bent downward enough for his fingers to close upon the sword’s handle and he grabbed a hold of it with nary a pause in his forward momentum.

  He would drive this blade into the creature’s heart, throat or head. This was a chance that he couldn’t afford to miss and neither could he win the fight without a weapon.

  Unfortunately, things wouldn’t go so smoothly.

  The creature had gotten back its bearings before Axios could swing at it and it lashed out with both of its claws at the same time.

  Because he had barely finished grabbing the sword, its tip was still closer to him than to the creature, so he managed to grab the sword by the blade just in time and blocked both simultaneous blows as one would with a staff.

  Both pushed forward as much as they could and for a moment there was an equilibrium of force from both sides that possessed abnormal physical strength.

  In that short opening, Axios delivered a strong kick to the creature’s leg from the right side, causing its posture to collapsed to that side.

  With a punching motion, almost as if delivering a hook, Axios pushed the sword’s edge against the monster’s neck. It was already leaning in that direction to begin with. He would sever the arteries in its neck in the same way as a guillotine.

  And yet again, the strange creature countered, lashing out with the claw from the opposite side.

  Axios managed to block it because of having already been holding the sword in a defensive position, but the impact actually knocked him through the air and he hung in the air for what felt like several moments before landing on his back .

  “Hnng!”, he groaned.

  The creature threw itself on him and yet again Axios held him sword out horizontally to block its deadly claws and keep its jaws at bay.

  “Grrraaaahhhh!”, it snarled.

  Its breath smelt like spittle and iron. It was nauseating.

  His back on the ground, the creature standing over him and having already seen that his strength wasn’t enough to put much of a dent in it, Axios was out of options. Even turning the tip of the blade towards the creature to hope to impale it seemed impossible. Kicking it in the hopes of getting it off of him also seemed futile.

  Death was inevitable.

  But so what?

  With one hand he grabbed the fur behind the creature’s neck.

  With the other he grabbed the upper part of its snout.

  With one arm he pulled himself upwards.

  With the other he pulled the creature down.

  The hot-blooded golden youth clamped tooth down on bone.

  “Grrraaaahhhh!!!”, the beast yelled out in pain.

  It was more unpleasant than he imagined.

  He had eaten a fish’s before, so he thought that he could have guessed and endured the taste, but this thing tasted absolutely vile.

  No one ever told Axios that eyes tasted so awful.

  That thing’s orbital bone had also probably cracked a couple of teeth.

  Still, it was something for the monster to remember him by.

  After all, had he not decided long ago to face death with all his strength down to his last breath and not cower when demise’s jaws came for him?

  He held on to it even as he could feel its claws try and pierce through his guardsman armour and chainmail. The pressure was honestly hurting him a lot more than the sharpness of the claws. The creature’s vice grip would start to damage his organs soon enough.

  Yet he was as close to the creature as anyone could hope if they didn’t plan on making it out of such a fight alive, so he bit its ear off as well.

  Suddenly he was dropped unto the ground and he hit it hard enough that his vision went blurry for few moments. He could see Kenos next to him, having probably just landed a blow on the creature from the side, but now he would be its immediate target.

  Thump!

  His vision hadn’t fully cleared up yet, but he clearly understood that something had just hit the monster’s head from the side with a noticeable amount of force.

  “Hugh!”

  Axios groaned as the creature suddenly dropped on top of him, all of that muscle crashing down on his chest was definitely not fun.

  “Is it dead?”, Axios asked?

  “It has a blade through its skull. It better be dead. Stay down.”, Kenos said, crouching next to Axios.

  “Hey, you guys still alive and well?”, he heard a man’s voice from the end of the bridge.

  With his vision fully recovered, Axios looked at whoever was calling out to them. It was one of those strange knights that had been fighting alongside the town guard all over the place.

  His uniform was form fitting, yet lined with metal chains on the outside, allowing for both defense and flexibility. On his left shoulder he wore something like a dark blue cape embroided with the coat of arms of Limani, a large and round looking sea creature with three sharp horns, as well as another coat of arms, that of a silver shield made up of scales. His helmet was adorned with wings, yet they were closer to resembling the webbed feet of aquatic creatures than the wings of actual birds. On his chest, he had yet another insignia, a silver broche of a skull over a two pronged lance.

  He kept walking closer.

  “Do you think that we are in trouble?”, Axios asked Kenos.

  However, as the man walked forward, he could now clearly see the expression on Kenos’s face, who had now stood up and seemed to have completely dropped all guards in front of this man. If one were to put it into words, the jade eyed boy exuded pure delight. His smile was wide and genuine, his eyes sparkled with glee. He looked like a child that had just met face to face with their idol.

  Seemingly being ignored, Axios dragged himself from below the creature’s carcass and managed to get himself to his knees by the time the man had stopped walking.

  His helmet now under his arms, they could see that he had a youthful, clean shaved face with a strong jawline, yet his voice, built and gait denoted a sizeable amount of age and experience. His eyes were a deep blue like a river at the break of dusk and his hair was jet black and cut short, yet it seemed to naturally spring up into various short quills, like some sea urchin, if anything brushed against his hair. As for his physique and height, he was built similarly to Axios and seemed to be about the same height, if not slightly taller.

  What concerned Axios was the two swords at his hip, one on each side. Axios himself had no weapon on hand, so unless Kenos gave him something to work with, any hostilities between him and them wouldn’t paint a good picture for the two youths.

  “Huh…is this all of you? I don’t see a body. Shouldn’t there be at least a third guy with you two?”, the soldier asked, both absentmindedly and with curiosity, as he looked around.

  “There was no one here with us, I am afraid, sir”, Kenos replied, the very picture of dutiful politeness.

  “Wait, really?”, the man looked befuddled, yet retained a sense of composure, “But I saw that demon jump straight unto the bridge and into someone walking alongside you. Surely there should have been at least one victim.”

  “Ah, I get it. You saw Axios here get targeted and assumed that his head was taken clean off or something. No, I warned him in time. There was no one else here with us, so we just fought it and that other soldier that got dragged around by it until you came in to help”

  “So that is what happened. My head took a beating. The creature must have barely grazed me, but I ain’t bleeding from my head, so it is fine”, Axios remarked.

  “Wait, you two kids fought it? I could understand the soldier, you seem to be armed and he was probably injured from the landing, but you fought that thing for this long?”

  “I did, if you want to be specific. By myself, mind you.”, Axios threw Kenos a hard glance, who seemed to be too enthralled in the conversation with the soldier to even notice.

  “Yes, I saw them coming. The demon, as you call it, was dragging the soldier by a red chain. After it failed to tackle Axios, the chain broke and the soldier was thrown through the air. It wasn’t particularly difficult to deal with a dazed and injured foe.”, Kenos explained, “But I saw you coming after them and recognized your uniform. I knew that you could help us with the demon if we held on long enough”

  “Wait, you could see me from here at night?”, the man asked, surprised.

  “You had an easy job and didn’t come and help sooner?”, Axios said, outraged.

  “Yes, I have good eyes. And hey, I had to deal with the enemy so that he wouldn’t stab us in the back and it ain’t my fault if you get into a mess and don’t make room for me to step in sooner”, Kenos shrugged.

  “I am probably never going to get along with you”, Axios remarked, under his breath.

  “I am so sorry, children. The very fact that those two even came your way is completely my fault. I had been just about to end them after I tracked down their unit that escaped from a nearby battle. All of a sudden, the demon that the tamer was bound to just decided to sprint away against his master’s orders. You don’t see that on most battlefields. I should have cornered them in a better chokepoint.”

  “Whatever happened to the unit that the demon came from?”, Axios inquired as he rotated his shoulders to get the pressure off.

  “They are all dead. I made sure of that”, the man remarked.

  “I take it that you need to return to your unit then, sir”, Kenos suggested, “if you just took off running and broke away from them, you should correct that”

  “Ah, that? No, don’t worry. There was no unit that came with me. The closest detachment of our forces already knew that I was going to break away to deal with that escaping enemy unit. They know that I don’t plan to regroup with them this quickly.

  “You make it sound as if you fought an enemy unit by yourself”, Axios pointed out.

  “I did”, the man said, matter-of-factly.

  “What?”, Axios said, befuddled.

  “I am pretty strong. You kids got nothing to fear with me around”, the youthful, blue eyed man proclaimed, flashing his teeth and pointing at himself with his thumb.

  “Sir…who are you exactly?”, Kenos cautiously inquired.

  “My name is Jonah Drakos. I am the vice-admiral of the Independent Military Detachment known as the Iron Scales”, the man answered.