Excerpt 2 of chapter 1

Yadada, still iterating and revising etc

Things never went to plan, not when plans were so daring as to tempt fate at every turn… 

Fenryr's guts burst with a sharp, fiery pain, the world momentarily flashing white. His coat of mail caught the worst of it, the links groaning under the force, but the jagged black blade still tore into his flesh whilst his arms reverberated with the shockwave of his own weapon cleaving into, and through, the demonic fiend before him. The blunt clunk of his sword smashing through its spine presaged the weapon's sudden descent to the ground, thumping against the blood and ichor soaked grass. The second thud, of the green scaly body falling limp against the earth barely registered in his thoughts. 

 ‘Damn!’

 The thought flashed through his mind even as he staggered back a step, his left hand instinctively leaving his sword hilt, jolting to the wound, warm liquid trailing his wrist, oozing through between his fingers. The beheaded corpse before him twitched about like a needle-impaled insect, its poison-green scaly arms thrashing about in the grass, right hand still clasping the black, curved sword. 

 The crimson light in the eye holes of the severed head faded just as Fenryr, gritting his teeth against the pain, contemplated smashing the long, pointy-eared thing to mush under his boot.

  The air hung thick with the metallic tang of blood and the acrid stench of demon ichor and sweat.  He could hear the screams of his comrades nearby, the clash of steel, the guttural roars of the demonic creatures and the pain filled cries. 

*

His injury seemed light by comparison to what he expected. With no enemies nearby, Fenryr closed his eyes a moment, releasing his weapon, bringing both hands above the cut, one hand atop the other, palms open, he whispered the first three words of a healing spell, the only three he remembered from his first battle, when a medical officer treated the critically injured. 

‘It should stop the bleeding at least..’

Fenryr's energy reserves, almost depleted, protested against his attempt. In place of the usually warm, pleasant sensation, a cold electric rush sparked through his core, into his limbs and out through his palms, forming a deep dark blue glow. 

“Damn it all!” he hissed through his clenched down teeth as his flesh mended itself under the ice cold blue radiance.

Dizzy and exhausted, Fenryr's will was the only thread tying him to consciousness as he glanced down. The wound closed two thirds of the way and the bleeding halted but the persistent throbbing ache only grew more pronounced, drumming against his skull from the inside. 

Senses heightened by the rush, Fenryr jolted back just in the nick of time, avoiding the next demon lunging for him with its black, curved claws from the front. 

The scaly monster tripped over its beheaded comrade, crashing into the ground just inches from Fenryr's panting form and then it stilled immediately.  The leather stripped hilt of a dagger stuck out of its back, as Fenryr glanced down again, he saw the creature's left shoulder had been missing, the gaping wound squirted thick black ichor one last time before the menace exhaled the last of its life and its red orbs dimmed. 

Eyes widened, armor pieces dented, helmet missing, the officer stumbled closer from behind the slain demons, 

“Careful,” he grunted, left hand clasping his left thigh, a chunk of the armor had been broken off and lodged into the flesh beneath, the officer had sealed the wound shut without removing the piece of metal, 

“there could be more of them around..” he finished between a painful grunt and a deep breath. 

‘Tell me something I don't know..’

Fenryr took a few moments before reaching down for his weapon, he thought better of straight up lifting it, another deep breath later, he grasped the weapon in both hands and raised it to his shoulder, resting the blade on its flat. 

His injury sprayed a few drops of crimson as he straightened out and stumbled a step back. The relative silence of the blazing hot afternoon only now registering in his mind, underscored by distant cries and whimpers of pain. 

‘Now comes the hardest part.. Putting them out of their misery..’ his azure eyes closed a moment, there was a time he believed that everyone who survived the melee could be saved, but several hundred battles later, Fenryr understood the impossibility of that assumption. With everyone depleted, little to no supplies, those crippled had to be dealt with instead of given false hopes. 

Glancing about, through blurry vision and squinted eyes, Fenryr counted eleven soldiers still standing and estimated about fifty slain creatures between the first gray boulders lining the road and the woodlands some two hundred strides to the northeast. 

*

“So what now?” Fenryr's voice interrupted the daze of the gathering, only twelve troops left, standing and sitting in the shade of the boulders at the end of the field littered with corpses and pools of life fluids. He remained sitting against the man-sized gray-white boulder as the captain, with the lieutenant in tow, returned from the nearest pile of dead. Having found a suitable short sword, the officer sheathed the weapon as they paced back to the group. The captain appeared as shocked as a new recruit, barely hanging onto his composure, evident from his jolting away as the lieutenant offered him a plump waterskin. 

“Now,” an older soldier responded from Fenryr's right, 

“We wait for the captain's orders and we hope he had found his better judgement by now.”

“True that.” another younger trooper interjected, 

“If that was just the scouting party, I shudder to think what their main forces are like.”

Fenryr simply nodded in agreement, observing the captain and lieutenant stopping some five paces from him. 

*

Reviews

[AYVID]

Quite a lot going on here. Tremendous sensory inputs in this chapter, especially olfactory. Demon ichor, I could smell it. I could feel the crimson lights fading in demon eyes. A true test of grit here. Fenryr has a lot waiting for him ahead. Will he survive ?
Great work Dennis!

[Dennis Wolf]

Yea, he'll survive, I need him in the rest of the book to counter Vyr's little scheming 🤔 and then in book two as the 'mentor figure' for Ash