The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 568: Deadly Adversary (Part One)

The sounds of battle echoed through the cypress grove, muffled by the thick fog and seeming to come from every direction at once as Ollie crept through the forest in search of his next target. His midnight blue armored gambeson bore several dark crimson stains and drying blood clung to the blades he carried as he moved from tree to tree in search of the remaining Inquisitors.

Seven of the ten had already fallen to his darksteel cleaver, though one had escaped after losing his arm beneath the elbow. Whether the man would survive the injury depended entirely on the strength of the Church’s healing magic but either way, Ollie was certain the man wouldn’t be returning to the battlefield any time soon.

"For the Vale and Sir..."

A fierce battle cry split the air, chilling Ollie’s heart when it cut off abruptly with a wet, choking sound that had become all too familiar over the course of the past hour. Even more chilling was how familiar the voice sounded, even through the distortion of the heavy fog.

"Harrod!" Ollie shouted, momentarily forgetting to conceal his presence as he charged through the fog in the direction of the strangled cry.

Bodies littered the cypress grove as he ran, many of them wearing the distinctive and colorful tabbards belonging to human noble families. Some had fallen to deviously placed traps while others resembled pincushions, filled with arrows fired by Eldritch hunters. Still others were missing limbs or bore the marks of being hacked to death by the powerful blows of woodsmen from the Clan of the Great Claw.

But too many of the bodies Ollie leaped over as he ran wore the familiar midnight blue gambesons of the Vale of Mists, their horned figures looking almost child-like as they lay on the blood soaked ground next to the larger, more imposing figures of the homan soldiers. Still others wore the dark green or brown cloaks favored by the Heartwood Clan’s archers and a few towering figures with powerful claws lay next to their great axes, resembling mighty trees that had fallen to the ground.

Ollie refused to look at the faces of the fallen, too afraid he would recognize someone he’d once helped to build a home or plant a garden to spare even the briefest of glances as he rushed toward the sound of Harrod’s strangled cry. If he saw more friends among the fallen, he was afraid that something deep inside him would crack and he couldn’t allow himself even a moment of vulnerability if he wanted to rescue the first friend he’d ever made among the Eldritch.

Moments later, Ollie emerged from the fog into a clearing that had been pulled from his worst nightmares. Around the clearing lay more than a dozen bodies, each one bearing more gruesome wounds than the last until they were barely recognizeable. A few features, however, were impossible to miss, like the protective amulet hanging from the broken neck of a Heartwood archer that Ollie had spent hours toiling over in the hopes that it would provide Milo with a bit of extra protection.

The empty quiver at his friend’s side and his blood stained claws made it clear that he had given everything he had and more to the fight... but Milo’s everything hadn’t been enough to preserve his life.

Another familiar figure lay at the center of the clearing, his dark eyes growing cloudy as they struggled to focus on the human boy who had once followed Lady Ashlynn like a lost puppy fleeing Lothian hunting dogs.

Harrod’s shield hung in broken fragments, held together only by the straps of leather that bound it to his arm. His mace likewise dangled useless, secured to his wrist by a thin loop of cord intended to prevent him from dropping the weapon. Blood flowed from a vicious wound to his head and one of his horns had cracked and broken, loosing more than half its length to a blow that would otherwise have split the horned soldier’s head in two.

"Ollie," Harrod whispered as pink, frothy blood spilled from his lips. "Run..."

Standing over the fallen soldier, an armored knight stood tall and proud, his chest heaving in exertion as he rested a polished longsword across his shoulders. Though his face was obscured by his helm, it was impossible for Ollie to fail to recognize the man in blood stained armor crafted with such exquisite care and so precisely fitted that he moved without any of the stiffness that was common in such heavily armored men.

As a young boy, when Ollie thought of the power and grandeur of a knight, he had envisioned the man before him, wearing this very suit of armor and riding astride a towering warhorse. He had seen him riding at the head of countless parades, watched him cut a dashing figure at numerous banquets and festivals, he’d even toiled in the kitchens to prepare dishes to be served at the man’s feasts.

But not once in all those years had he imagined that the day would come when he stood before the man with eyes clouded by the red haze of bloodlust and a bone deep desire to destroy the person he once thought represented everything it meant to be a knight.

"Lord Owain Lothian," Ollie spat as he surveyed the carnage of the battlefield. Behind Owain, a nameless knight lay fallen, his visor pierced with arrows that bore Milo’s distinctive fletching. Along with the knight, one member of the Inquisition knelt over another, his crimson and gold robes wet with the other man’s blood as he desperately tried to heal the deep wounds caused by simple woodsman’s axes.

"You know me?" Owain said, raising the visor of his helm to inspect the strange human wearing the same armor as the horned demon soldier he’d just killed. In this battle he’d encountered more varieties of demon than he’d ever seen in one place before, but this was the first time he’d ever encountered a human, dressed like a demon and staring at him with eyes that burned with malice.

"Name yourself, heretic," he demanded, pointing his sword at the flame-haired youth wearing demon armor and wielding what appeared to be demonic kitchen knives. "Tell me whose family I should destroy for your treachery," he sneered.