'I can't die... Not yet.'
His senses cleared and the din of battle flooded back in full force.
Rainer took a deep breath and contracted all the muscles in his body. Suddenly, he took a powerful step forward, ducking. Teres' eyes widened in shock, suddenly finding himself being tugged along.
In a horrific instant, the soldier slashed across the chieftain's neck, opening a bloody gash.
Numbed with pain and fatigue, Rainer felt himself being showered in warm, blood. The hold on him loosened and he languidly gazed up at the rebel soldier. He stood petrified and horror-stricken.
Seeing this, Rainer sucked in a deep breath and stamped him heavily on the belly with his feet. Using the momentum, Rainer staggered away toward the door.
He needed to flee.
"Aaargh!"
The rebel soldier bellowed like a wounded beast and charged toward him. He barreled into Rainer and sat on him. Growling and half-drooling, there was rancor embedded deep in his enraged eyes, one that promised vengeance.
The soldier grabbed Rainer's neck in an exasperated bid to strangle him to death, and he wrestled back, but his weak attempts at escaping proved futile.
He had run out of energy, and pushing away the obscenely heavy, body mass that crushed at his torso seemed an impossibility.
His arms weakened, and his eyes were already rolling back.
He was dying...
'Dammit!'
Rainer cursed with resignation in his eyes, the final strings of thought going through his mind.
'T-there was nothing I could do for the Roman Empire anyway, Remus...'
His eyes closed slowly.
'No matter what life, what e-earth. The Roman empire was always destined...to fall. And so will I—'
*Crauck!*
Rainer heard a gruesome, sloppy crunch, and the hold on his neck immediately weakened.
He gasped, and like a drowning man fresh out of water, he desperately sucked in some much-needed oxygen.
Rainer wasn't sure what happened, but he was grateful.
He glanced up and saw that the soldier's eyes were wide open, stunned in disbelief.
He looked downward, and Rainer followed his gaze to his chest, where a dark-veined, bloody arm reached past the soldier's chest, through broken armor.
It was a ghastly wound, and to say Rainer was merely shocked would be an understatement.
For a moment, the arm moved and strained against the rebel soldier's flesh, then it effortlessly lifted him up. The soldier could only groan in agony.
Suddenly, a loud, booming voice, layered with malice, echoed as if spoken by multiple demons out of the abyss, behind the rebel soldier.
"I am your last omen! Send no more through Hell's gate! Return and absolve thine race from the evil to come, or all shall be slain, and your world made forfeit!! Abyssal Lord Shadarth has spoken!!!"
The hand drew back and the rebel soldier dropped down, slowly withering and releasing black fumes as dark veins crept up his face toward his eyes, turning them a glossy, viscous black.
"A-a daemon...help."
The rebel soldier muttered before deflating into a skinsack that pushed out a hot pool of dark, foul-smelling, organ goo from his offices.
Rainer looked like he was about to throw up from the smell. However, when he looked up he froze.
The dead Chieftain stood still, staring down at him with an empty pair of ink black eyes. A steaming dark fluid now bled out of his neck gash.
Rainer gulped.
'So this is the demon everyone has been chattering about!'
He inwardly exclaimed with a strained, uneasy expression.
'Well, I guess it's over for me. Goodbye world.'
He lamented, but couldn't help but notice something. Sometime within his throes of combat, the gates had been knocked open, and the din of battle once fever-pitched, had since died down into an eerie silence.
Rainer thought that, given how deafening the demon Chieftain's declaration was, someone would hear and quickly come up to assist him.
'Surely some brave, strong auxiliary would rush up here to claim its head, right?'
He hopefully wondered, frozen and holding his breath.
But then his mind flashed back to the terrified faces that stared up at him on the wooden cross yesterday, and his brows furrowed slightly.
'They...weren't actually scared of me. But this thing.'
The thought brought on an unforeseen envy. A bitingly hot feeling that came like hot coals kicked onto his chest; sizzling and setting his bones alight.
His face settled into a distasteful frown.
'I am more than this lowly being. I merely inhabit this shell for now... I do not feel fear, I invoke it!'
As Rainer psyched himself up for battle, the demon watched him oddly, like it could see into his soul, and then it moved, but slowly as it crouched, reaching for his heart.
It was patient and as steady as the evening sun, giving off an air of inevitability. It was as though what it sought to claim was as distant as an island in the ghastly storm, only its ship sailed away.
"I cans't believe it. A soul most magnificent! One which has wrought tides of mortal ruin!"
It gurgled out in what seemed like awe, even as more goo jutted out its neck.
Rainer's expression involuntarily pinched in disgust as the daemon went on.
"You are the fairest of them all in mine eyes. I implore you, noble one! Become mine deathly maiden!"
It fixatedly propositioned, breathing a nasty breath upon his face.
Rainer grimaced, seeing the request for what it was: A stolid decree couched in graceful speech. He was given no choice in the matter.
"Ugh! You and me? Sorry, but no. You haven't cooked nearly enough!"
However, it didn't stop. Though now it reached for his forehead.
"Then I shall mark you with mine conjugal curse, and one day we shall be united!"
Cornered and overwhelmed by the smell of decay. His heart palpitated like a wild horse's as the dark depths of its approaching, looming eyes threatened to swallow him.
But Rainer would not be found petrified before an opponent—or potential spouse?
No. Not him.
He glanced around for something, anything to wield, to die fighting with a weapon in hand.
'For how else shall I honor the body I have claimed, or glorify the blood that flows through these veins?'
Rainer's eyes stopped at a dead archer's belt and he saw it. A handaxe, within arm's reach!
At this moment, the demon's pale, dark-veined, and bloodied arm pressed against his helm like a hot hydraulic press: hard, searing and persistent.
The demon drew a symbol on his helm with his blood as a dark, caustic vapor blew out.
Rainer felt his skin scald and skull ache under the pressure. He was going dizzy and an intense sense of alarm soon overwhelmed him.
There was no time!
His arm shot out for the axe, and he grabbed it. Instantly, Rainer deftly swung it back with the desperation of a dying man.
The daemon's head was sent flying, having been lopped clean off.
The demon stopped and went still, and for a moment, Rainer had a creeping fear that beheading wouldn't be enough. But then it tilted to the side and fell like a sculpture made of clay: cold, hard, and hollow.
Rainer fell back, grabbed his hot helmet, then threw it away before letting out a breath of relief.
'Aye! I've had enough excitement to last me a week!'
He sighed.