Sheut, on the other hand, was far less graceful. He wielded his double-bladed scimitar like a whirlwind of destruction, a brutal and beautiful display of raw power. His technique was lacking, replaced instead by a savage, brutish effectiveness. Every now and then, sharp blades of pure shadow would escape his weapon, scything through the air and mowing down undead thralls within their area of effect. The way he swung and twirled the scimitar, despite its lack of finesse, was a mesmerizing and deadly dance.
To the guards protecting the carts, Sheut was like a natural disaster on the battlefield, a force of nature unleashed. But they welcomed it. They fought with renewed vigor, grateful for the assistance. The mysterious angel in the sky had restored their bodies to peak physical condition, but she could do nothing for their mental fatigue. Sheut's arrival, however, was a mental boon, a promise that they were not alone in this desperate fight.
One of the guards, a young warrior with a scar across his face, pointed out that the horde of the dead was thinning. A flicker of hope, something they hadn't felt since the ambush began, ignited within them. They thought to themselves, "Maybe we can make it out of this nightmare. Did a devil and an angel both come to our prayers?" The morale of the guards, which had been flagging under the relentless assault, skyrocketed.
Observing this shift, the merchant woman, her face pale with exhaustion, decided to go all out. She began to cast a rapid succession of buffs onto the guards protecting the carts. A wave of light emanated from her hands, casting Higher Blessing, a spell that increased their natural healing rate, and Fortified, which temporarily strengthened their defenses. This was followed by Protection Against Undead, Strength of Ogun, which amplified their physical might, and Hallow, a spell that imbued their weapons with a holy aura. The last spell she cast was Spirit Guard, which summoned ethereal, spectral warriors to defend the carts.
Tired, she then assured the guards that the carts and the civilians inside would be fine. With the last of her strength, she commanded them to go forth and eradicate the remaining undead. A roar of defiance from the head guard was quickly followed by the others, who charged forward with renewed purpose. They stayed in groups, a tight formation of steel and resolve, to avoid being caught lacking or surrounded by the remaining thralls.
After eliminating three-fourths of the undead and noticing that the guards could handle the rest, Sheut darted to join up with Adah and Big John. Arriving within moments, he witnessed Adah dancing through the enemies. She was a symbol of destruction and beauty, a lethal ballerina of light and shadow, and he couldn't help but feel a swell of pride.
Turning his head to Big John, he watched as the warrior finished off the last remaining mid-rank B-class death knights. Big John was truly a master of space, blinking around the Dread Knight with an impossible grace that belied his large muscular frame. He effortlessly avoided lethal blows from the undead knight's great sword, a bone-white weapon that appeared to weigh nothing in its hands as it was swung with a bone-jarring force.
Fighting a Dread Lord was a tedious task. They had uncanny regeneration, strength, and necromantic abilities. Watching Big John skillfully dodging the Dread Lord's necrotic greatsword with a series of blinks, Sheut could tell that Big John wasn't moving around aimlessly. The shadow around them rippled due to the unstable dimensional space. Big John was going to collapse the space around the pair, whipping the Dread Lord out in one go, thus ending the fight.
Big John's movements, a series of precise, micro-blinks, were not random. Sheut's enhanced senses, finely tuned to the subtleties of spatial manipulation, picked up on the faint, rhythmic rippling in the shadows around the two combatants. It was a tell-tale sign of a master of space at work, creating pockets of unstable reality. Big John was skillfully building a spatial cage around himself and the Dread Lord, a collapsing dimensional prison from which there would be no escape.
As the Dread Lord swung its massive, necrotic greatsword, a blow that would have atomized a lesser foe, Big John vanished and reappeared in an instant, not just dodging, but placing himself in a new, calculated position. Each blink was a nail being hammered into the coffin of the space they occupied.
Finally, with a grunt of immense effort, Big John stopped blinking and raised his hand. A small, invisible sphere of energy formed between his palms, and the rippling shadows around them intensified, twisting and contorting into a violent vortex. The Dread Lord, sensing the trap, let out a bone-chilling shriek of protest and tried to break free, its form flickering as the dimensional walls began to close in.
"Time to go," Big John's voice rumbled, his expression one of grim determination. The spatial vortex, with the Dread Lord still trapped inside, imploded with a silent, blinding flash of light, and the space they had occupied was erased, leaving nothing but a lingering scent of ozone and nothingness.
With the death of the Dread Lord, the undead army either fell into a pile of bones, disintegrated, or exploded, spreading flesh and innards all over the battlefield. The caravan guards burst out in triumph, seeing the undead army defeated. The non-professional members of the caravan cheered amongst each other, laughter and tears of joy spread through them all.
A handful of non-professional healers began to set up a temporary medical bay and started to attend to the guards who had fought so bravely to protect everyone, and not just the noble merchant woman and her family. Their faces were pale with shock, but their hands moved with a newfound purpose, a desperate need to help born from the horror they had just survived. A few others, with more opportunistic natures, began to scour the battlefield, collecting intact weapons and armor from the fallen undead. They saw it not as a scene of tragedy, but as a windfall, a chance to improve their own meager lives.
Among the survivors, a different kind of scavenging was taking place. People were taking souvenirs such as shards of bone from a shattered skeleton knight, or a piece of fabric from a demonic thrall. A few lucky ones managed to find twisted chunks of metal infused with bone from the Dread Lord's greatsword. These pieces somehow survived the collapsing of space, being flung from the force of the explosion. These weren't just trophies. They were relics, tangible proof of an impossible day. Fear, a potent and creative force, had already begun to do wild things to their imaginations. In their minds, the dark, powerful warrior who had wielded shadows and destroyed the undead was not a demon, but a creature of darkness who had crawled out from the pits of hell to save them. And the ethereal, brilliant woman who had descended from the sky in armor of light was not just a mage, but an angel who had come to protect them. This was exactly how legends started. Ther were born from a terrifying reality, shaped by fear and hope, and immortalized by the desperate need to believe in a world where such impossible beings existed, and could be on their side.
The seeds of a new myth, a new pantheon of heroes and villains, were being planted in the minds of the survivors. The merchant woman, now standing with the others, listened and watched them with a knowing gaze. She understood the power of stories, and she knew that the tale of the angel and the devil who saved them would be told and retold for generations to come, growing grander and more fantastical with each retelling.