Ugly Bastard

Bright light beams filled the night sky illuminating the swarm of bats that circled around the city walls.

“Fire!” Screamed a muffled voice from a figure clad in bulky metallic armor unproportionatlly large for a human body. Hundreds other similar armors that stood with their arms raised on the stone wall surrounding the part of the city that protruded from the mountain, let out a valley of magic into the sky filling the dark space with fire and explosions. 

One after another charred bodies of the bats plummeted down from the sky, smacking against the ground and splattering on the rocks below the wall. But this was barely a speck of all the bats that filled the sky.

“Fire!” Screamed the man again followed by another volley of magic. However this time the bats were ready and swiftly dispersed avoiding most of the magical projectiles, minimizing the losses so much that barely any bats fell down to earth this time.

While bats in front of the armored figure were evading, bats from another side screamed and pierced through the sky toward the attackers while evading the magic projectiles that flew their way. As they neared the walls at a breakneck speed they were met by an invisible wall and smacked against it with bone breaking sounds leaving bloody splatter stains in the middle of the sky. Bats could sense blocks on their path through sound, but sound passed through barriers which made it unseen for their sound sight as well.

Other bats following the first group, noticing the peril of their comrades, swiftly changed course circling around the invisible barrier. Now thanks to bloody rivulets that streamed through the invisible wall they could see the shape of the wall and precisely measure distance toward it. Once they figured the border of the entire barrier they retreated and started pummeling it with all kinds of magic. Lightnings, giant icicles and black smoke-like arrows exploded all around the invisible wall.

While bats were stopping to shoot their magic, armored figures sent volley after volley of magic projectiles in their direction, trying to drop as many bats from the sky as they could.

The Leader of the armored men stood silently watching the scene from his spot on the wall studying the behavior of the bats.

“The wall is holding. They won’t be able to pierce it.” Said another figure at his side.

“Not today.” Said the man calmly.

“My Lord?”

“This is not a full on attack. They are studying our defense, sending only the small fry forward. The ones we managed to knock down so far are mostly drones. Mindless slaves made just to be cannon fodder. Look over there.” He said pointing with his head to the side. “The leaders and main force are staying back. Studying. By the end of the day they will have figured out defenses then return again another night, only that time ready to pierce through.”

“Pierce the barrier? Impossible!” Said the second man in disbelief.

“No. They already figured out how. Look.” He said pointing to another spot. “The drones attacked sporadically at first, but with those attacks they learned the locations of the concentration point of the barrier and started to attack more uniformly. It won’t take them long to figure out the shape and size of each cell of the barrier. Then they’ll just concentrate on one cell and smash it to pierce a hole big enough to send attacker squads into the barrier. The more holes they make in the barrier the more we would have to concentrate on the ones that penetrated it and the less we would be able to defend the sky. So the barrier would be pierced even faster and faster. The barrier was never meant to work against a smart enemy, it was made to stop the mindless rush of a monster horde, not the prolonged strategic attack of a sentient enemy army.”

“What do we do then?”

“Fight. Fight as fiercely as we can and hope our GolemArmors force is up to this challenge.” Said the Lord.

“The GolemArmors are our top notch magic-tech. They are capable of fighting A-class monsters. These bats are a match for them.” Said the second man proudly.

“Anyone can be toppled if there's enough enemy to overpower them. And they overpower us thousand to one. How many a single Knight in Golem Armor can kill before they are overpowered. Hundreds of drones, maybe a thousand if it's an elite knight with years upon years of experience. Soon the magic battery crystal will get exhausted while they try to fend off these great numbers and armor will turn into a metal coffin. And even that estimate is applicable only if they attack exclusively with that meat press of drones. If they add their own elites to the attacking force, the number will drop drastically. No this is not a situation where we can rely only on the GolemArmors alone. We need to gather an army.”

“Besides, we have a limited amount of these suits and production of each takes time and an entire fortune of resources. While all they need is to attack another undefended village of ours and turn the people into new slaves of theirs while we hide here behind the walls. In fact if you noticed, their swarm is bigger now than it was reported in the first reports. That’s because they did not just slaughter the people in villages they already captured. They turned them. The ones you see here are most likely our citizens. Vamps are hierarchical, the newly arrived ones are the lower cast. So they are the first to attack.”

“You mean….” Said the man with a shaky voice.

“Yeah. We haven’t even put a dent into their initial army. All we killed so far were our previous villagers. Our relatives. Mothers, fathers and brothers to many of those who now hide behind the walls of this city.”

“Fucking bastards!” 

“That they are indeed. But this is how they always were, these Vamps.” Said The Lord. “But how the hell could we miss the fact that there were so many of them hiding out there? They were supposed to be almost extinct and without humans to parasitize from they had no way of multiplying. Where did all these vamps come from….Could they have been keeping human villages somewhere out there in the wilds as pigsty.”

“That is a scary thought, My Lord.” 

“It may be so. But that is the only answer I could come up with up till now.” Said the Lord.

“My Lord, maybe…maybe we should make Battle Golems? They would be easier to produce than the armors.” Said the man knowing full well that it was a forbidden topic.

“You know what happened to the last civilization that tried to use them against the Demon army.” Said The Lord.

“But…these are not demons.” Said the man.

“Or they simply hide. The heroes have been born. The Saintess has given her Oracle. The Demons are coming. We don’t know whether this attack is connected to the demon's forces or not. They may not be part of the demon army. But even if so, once the Demons come, Battle Golems may be easily turned against us. Then an army that protected us from one disaster will become an even worse disaster at the turn of a hat. Building the Battle Golem army is a suicide move. The armors are bulky, not as versatile, less efficient and harder to make, but at least they won’t turn on us.” Said the Lord.

Loud scream unlike any before pierced the sky and as if on command all bats turned around and retreated from the city. 

“They are retreating, My Lord!” Said the second man.

The armored figure turned to look at the sky and nodded as he saw it become brighter. The night was ending.

“Send the squad out! Kill all the fallen bats! Don’t let the bastards recover and retreat! Move people!” Ordered the man and in a few seconds a few teams of armored figures jumped off the wall, landing on the rocky ground below with loud thumps, and cracking rocks under their feet. As if the fall from such a high did not bother them at all, they started to walk toward the fallen bodies of the bats in strange gaits as if their bodies were too big for them, producing loud stomps with every step.

As they neared the rocky ground where most of the bats had fallen, they could see that the bodies of most of them changed their shape turning into human-like beings with pale snow skin, but now had charred and bloody spots all over their bodies that seemed to be rapidly healing.

“Shoot those who already changed first! They are the ones who recovered the most!” Shouted one of the armored men.

All armored men pointed their hands that had strange metallic rods attached to them toward the wounded vampires who were still recovering and could not move properly yet. In a second, magic concentrated on the tips of those rods, flew toward their targets, tearing whole chunks of flesh from the downed vampires, blowing off heads, necks and limbs. 

Those that could not put up any fight at all, the armored men simply stomped with their huge feet, several times wider than human head, turning the skulls of those vampires into bloody paste.

An hour later a first sun ray pierced the horizon filling the sky with dim natural light. 

As the day began the defenders on the wall breathed out in relief.

Once sun rays reached the ground and bodies littering it, the remnants of the vampires quickly ignited and turned to ashes, scattering in the wind as dust.

*****

“Fucking bastards. Fuck! Fuck!” Swore Cassandra sitting on the couch of Theressa’s office room.

“Well the Kingdoms actions are unreasonable, we should compose an official complaint to the…”

“The fuck it’s not. The Kingdom is not stupid, Tess. They understand it well. There’s no Goddamn chance the North Night families did not know about the hidden dwelling of such proportion deep in the monster territory. Not only did they not report it, but I am quite sure that they even had deals with those wild bastards behind the Kingdoms back. It's clear as day even to us here. If even I have no doubt of it, why would the Kingdom not think it. If I was them I would not restrict Night families activity, I’d fucking burn the ground they dwell on. I am not angry at the Kingdom. I am furious at those fuckers setting us all up like that. Bastards, if I was not restricted to my mansion I’d go there and kill every bastard Night family of the North Kingdom myself. We had everything here! Everything to live a good life. But no! These fuckers needed to fuck it all up for all of us!” Exclaimed Cassandra raising her hands up in exasperation.

“Still to hold suspicion toward all of the Night families at once is like calling you all guilty for the crimes of some. We should make a complaint.” Said Theressa.

“The most Night community of the North Kingdom turned out to be traitors or associates of traitors. Even if we here had no idea about it and all innocent to the one, which I highly doubt myself, how can they be sure we would not turn sides once the black bat swarm reaches here? If it was me I’d massacre us all as a fucking preventive measure.”

“You think they are capable? ” Asked Theressa.

“Killing us as a preventive measure? Not sure.” Said Cassandra shaking her head.

“No, I mean reach here.” Said Theressa. “You think they are strong enough to conquer the North country?” 

“From what I heard, there is at least enough force to ruin the North Kingdom. They may not cross the North border mountains between our and the North kingdom, but they sure as hell can wreck the frontier or even reach down to the central part of the North kingdom with that force if the Central Cathedral army does not interfere, throwing it a century back in territory development.” Said Cassandra.

“That is indeed a disaster.” Said Theressa. “It’ll decrease humanity's fighting power by one fifth and expose that side of every country that neighbors them, including this one.

“Yeah that’s bad but not even the worst shit. For me at least. There are talks of them sending teams into the depth of human domain, starting guerilla wars, terrorizing villages and towns deep in the safe zones even, where humans have already started to forget what it is like to live under constant pressure of being attacked by monsters. The panic is settling in the safe zone and it’s slowly spreading through human territory up to here. If this continues, soon mobs with pitchforks and torches would stand at the gates of every Night family in our country too, and I have great doubts, Kingdom would dissuade them from burning us all at stake.” Said Cassandra.

“Alright, don’t panic. From what I read from your reports it’s not as severe as that yet. But those guerilla teams are indeed a growing problem. However their actions are a bit strange. They seem to be moving deeper and deeper into the human lands, although they are a lot easier targets there than in the danger zones. In the meantime Vampire main army seems to be not doing any all out attacks, although they have the force to challenge big cities. As if they are distracting the main army from going after those guerilla teams.” Said Theressa.

“Yeah. I also noticed. It’s indeed strange. Their actions are too strange for such a big move. As if they are buying some time. But why?” Asked Cassandra.

“Maybe they just wait for the main demon army.” Said Theressa thoughtfully.

“Night clans never joined Demon armies. That is counterproductive for them. Vampires live off of parasitizing humans. They literally can’t exist without humanity. However, to capture this world, Dark God needs to destroy all humans or any other race entirely, leaving no creations of other Gods alive, whether plants or living beings. In this regard we, Vampires, were Dark Gods biggest failure, because we were the only monsters that never joined the Demon army in any previous wars, because we realized that once humanity perish, we would follow them to the oblivion.” Said Cassandra.

“So if they aren’t waiting for the demon back up, what the hell could they achieve? If they weaken humans enough for demons to win, the result would be exactly that, you all go to the grave with humans.” Said Theressa. “So there must be a reason? Wait… What if they are searching for something?” Said Tessa thoughtfully said as an idea came to her mind. “The main force could be just a distraction.”

“Searching? For what?” Asked Cassandra.

“I don’t know. You tell me. They are your kin.” Said Theressa spreading her arms.

“There’s fucking nothing they could want from humans beside blood and bodies to multiply. I don’t get it.” Said Cassandra.

“Then that’s what you need to do if you want to prevent mobs with pitchforks from coming to your gates. Talk with other Night families, and see if they heard something. If we find out what they really are after, we may be able to stop this madness quicker.”

“Yeah. Easy to say. I have tens of observers now. If my actions attract attention there won’t even be a chance to explain myself. They’ll just bomb the whole damn mountain and be done with it.”

“Hmm. Maybe Noah can help. He has just the skills you need to sneak away.” Said Tessa smiling at Cassandra’s uncomfortable expression. Ever since the ball incident, Cassandra avoided him like fire. And Theressa knew exactly why.

“No one pulled your tongue to give that ancient Gorean oath.” Said Tessa smiling.

“He caught me unprepared, ok? That was a foul play!” Said Cassandra blushing.

“Foul or not. You know what that means better than any.”

“Yeah.” Muttered Cassandra. “Can I at least hold it a secret from my family? I am the head of the family, you know?” Said Cassandra meekly.

“Sure.” Said Tessa, who smiled at her like a Cheshire cat.