The sky was bleeding fire. Red clouds churned over a dead land. Ash fell like snow upon the wasted plain, and the wind that blew across the cracked plateau carried the scent of rust, smoke, and rot. Bones jutted from the earth like broken spears. Once, this might have been a fertile valley—green with wheat, bright with riverlight. Now it was nothing but a war grave, and the ground itself was cracked from the sheer weight of war.
At the heart of this barren Plain, the man stood alone in a wasteland of broken stone and dried rivers, his breath ragged, steam rising from his body in the cold heat of doom.
Another one. Just another one, Ethan thought, his mind a burning ember in a dying hearth.
And before him, across the cracked field of bones, a sea of flesh moved. A tide of monsters, each a colossus a hundred feet tall, and each one was a grotesque abomination of nature—a fusion of predators from every corner of a long-dead world. Their bodies were a mix of fur, scales, fangs, and metal. Their skin was scaled or armoured with bone, their teeth like jagged scimitars. A thousand of them, blotting the horizon. Their steps were tectonic. Their roars were like a cataclysm. Their eyes gleamed with dim, unnatural light, like coals in a drowned forge. Each one of the monsters was able to create an unimaginable disaster.
And behind them all, five even greater shadows, stood in their place and were only watching. All five of them are two hundred feet tall, standing in silence. they look like monsters among monsters. they are the Commanders of this demonic region.
They just watch, Ethan's internal voice rasped, like this is a performance. I'll give them a show they'll never forget.
His body was already ruined. Blood soaked his robes, dried in thick black flakes across his arms and chest. One eye was swollen shut. Gashes split his shoulders. The armor he wore—stitched leather, hardened with resin, and plated with bone—was half-burned. His sword, the once-beautiful
Shivra, now a half-broken sword, hung in his grip, blade chipped, blackened, and jagged like a lightning bolt. Across his back, two ruined axes quivered with each breath, both nicked and dull, hafts dark with gore. And before him, his Poleaxe half buried in dirt, the shattered poleaxe, its shaft was split near the base, and waited like an old hound – loyal and dying.
The monsters marched, all thousand of them at the same time, and the world was shaking because of their marching. This wasn't a charge; it was a living wall of death, a tide that would simply wash over him.
The first monsters come at him like a landslide, each footfall kicking up boulders. The first one was maw opened wide, revealing a nest of spiralling teeth. It roared, spraying hot saliva in gouts that sizzled on the ground—shrieked a challenge that cracked the sky.
This man's breath came slowly. Shallow. He felt every broken rib inside him. His vision swam. But his heartbeat was steady.
Not done yet, he thought, a grim smile on his ruined lips. Not by a long shot.
He ran toward it. He surged forward in a low sprint, swinging his broken sword, a silver arc through the air, into the monster's ankle joints, slicing across the exposed tendons. He climbed on the monster, ducking under the creature's lunging maw. Its breath smelled of fungus and bile. With a shout, he leapt, twisted in the air, and cut both of his eyes in a single strike. The creature shrieked in pain, its momentum toppling it forward. The man dove, rolled under its falling bulk, and came up on the other side, grabbing his poleaxe from the dirt as the corpse slammed into the earth behind him.
The second and third on him as he picks his poleaxe. These two were quicker, flanking him immediately. The second beast—a lizard-hound with the tail of a whip-scorpion and ribs that opened like grasping fingers—lunged downward. It moved with an unnatural, jerky speed, its multi-jointed legs scuttling over the uneven ground.
He sprinted beneath the second one's belly and tossed one of the two axes straight up. The spinning blade sang through the air and embedded itself deep into the soft underbelly between chitin plates. And with his poleaxe, biting into the kneecap, the bent blade peeling muscle like bark from a tree.
A whip of a tail struck him in return—ribs crunched, blood sprayed from his mouth as he was hurled fifty feet across the field, skidding through gravel. One of his legs was screaming, and one shoulder hung loose, torn at the joint, but he rose because he was still breathing.
This is nothing, he forced the thought, ignoring the jolt of pain that threatened to black him out.
As the monster reappeared in pain, he picked up his sword from the ground, leapt, and drove it into the wound, using the axe as a step to launch himself to the top. He reached its back and started hacking—savagely, desperately—at the nape of the beast's neck. The axe pulsed red and cracked the skull-plate with a concussive blast. The creature shuddered and dropped like a collapsing tower, spine severed. He fell to the ground along with the monster, and the dust exploded in all directions.
He landed hard on land, skidding through rubble and gore. He was limping, having cracked a bone in his leg, but he ignored the pain. Because...
The third—a brute with three heads, each snarling with different voices, one barking like a jackal, one whispering in a human tongue, one wailing like a baby —was already closing in. It lumbered, but its multiple heads allowed it to track him from different angles, making a direct dodge impossible.
He grabbed his poleaxe from the dirt—heavy, split, ruined —but he spun it anyway. The monster charged head-on with him, with a low spin with high power. the poleaxe made a black arc of death and smashed into the front leg of the monster and cracking it sideways. then he cut across the monster's thick-scaled thigh. Then buried in his gut with a poleaxe, he drove the broken weapon upward, spilling entrails that splashed across him in steaming torrents.
A claw like a siege weapon tore across his back, peeling armour and flesh alike. He fell, but grabbed onto one of its tusks as the creature thrashed, climbed up its neck with fists, and drove the spike into the third head's skull until he heard the crunch of brain. The monster collapsed on its side. And he landed in Gore.
Three monsters are down, at least a thousand more to go.
This is just the beginning, he thought, the taste of blood in his mouth. Let them come.
His chest felt heavy, and he spat blood. Around him, the ground was now slick with ichor, monster fluids that sizzled on contact with stone. Steam rose. Flies spawned from nowhere. The air reeked of acid and meat.
Monsters are paused for a second to see this horrifying scene, but they instantly surge. They come in a pack this time, a coordinated wave. Two in front, one on each flank, and a larger, spiny beast moving to cut off retreat.
He hurled both axes. The first axe caught one through its nasal cavity and into its skull, and the other one hit directly in its eye. The things crashed sideways, convulsing.
He jumped and dodged a claw swipe from another monster that looked like a giant bison with arms made of swords and a face like a stretched wolf's mask. It tried to impale him with its sword-like forearms. Then he ducked under its leg, picked up a jagged femur from a dead beast, and rammed it between two ribs like a liver. He twisted the rib and opened it like a trapdoor. The monster shrieked as its chest imploded, heart bursting in a wet crunch.
His hand feels different; some fingers are bent wrong. But he ignored it.
Just a little more. And pull out his axe from the eye of the beast.
He turned to the next—a Hybrid with six arms, three jaws, and skin like obsidian glass. It moved like a crab, fast and jerking, its multiple arms a blur of slashing blades. Ethan was slow on his legs, so he was sent flying by the backhand strike from the monster and hit a boulder, bounced off it, and then rolled into a trench of slime.
For a moment, everything was blurred for him. "
Am I done?" A question came into his mind, but in the next moments, he stood again and pulled out his half-broken sword, holding it backward like a dagger.
Never!
The beast charged at him, and Ethan drove the broken sword under its jaw, up through its head. The creature spasmed and slammed him into the ground before it collapsed. His ribs were crushed, one arm was limp, and his jaw hung crooked. But he still stood.
Still here, you bastards!
Behind him, a pile of corpses the size of mountains was beginning to form. The monster howled now, but in confusion, because they had never seen anyone who could kill with this kind of brutality. They hesitated, a ripple of fear going through the front ranks.
Ethan took a long breath and ran beneath them, leaping over pools of dark blood, grabbing one of the broken handaxes from his back as another giant stomped toward him. This one was a lumbering brute, its steps shaking the ground, relying on its immense size and crushing power.
He jumped and hit the monster's foot with his feet as he landed, springboarding himself upward. He ran up its shin—howling—and drove the axe into its thigh. Then again. Again. Climbing with steel. The creature swiped at him, missed, and screamed. Then, Ethan reached his waist. Plunged the axe into its side, and with one last pull, flung himself to its shoulder. The wind howled. The world swayed. He jammed the axe into the side of its skull. Once. Twice. Three times. Bone cracked. The giant teetered—then fell. And he with it.
They crashed into the plane like a meteor crashing into the land. Ethan rolled free, coughing blood, his limbs were twisted, and he screamed with torn muscles, his left arm hung limp, and he was spitting red blood. But he still got up.
Just a little more…
Another one reached near him, this one a low, serpentine beast that coiled and struck like a cobra. Ethan ducked under its swipe, rammed the axe into its toe , and when it lifted the foot, he threw himself under its next step and drove the blade into the other foot's arch. The creature screamed and dropped low—he sprang onto its lowered back and ran up its spine. With his other axe, he started cutting the creature's neck with his full strength till the monster's head separated from its body and fell on the ground. He leapt, seized a tusk of bone jutting from its collar, and tore it free with a roar, the jagged length shearing sinew and muscle. Blood sprayed across the field like rain.
Ethan landed on the ground, his arms shaking, his mouth filled with blood, but his eyes had a new flame to kill every monster here.
Every last one.
Ten. Twenty. Thirty monsters were down. However, the others were not stopping, as they had at the start. Now they also raged and came to fight like the one to kill this human is king and above everyone. They formed a furious, unthinking wave, desperation driving their charge.
Monsters roared in mourning. The plain thundered with their charge. Ethan, he screamed in his defiance, a sound half-man, half-wraith, and hurled himself into the storm. He split the monster's jaws with his poleaxe, burring his axes in their kneecaps. He got lashed by tails of some thrown by the strike of their big hands, breaking some bones in . he stabbed some with their body parts, those he cut out from their body.
Ethan started painting the land with their blood -- and his.
Good. Let them see what it costs to stand against me.