Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Love at First Fight

He was calling his challenge, and she would not disappoint him.

Kazna raised her spear and let off another call. Her companions formed up around her, some of her oldest and most bloodthirsty friends pulling up to her sides humming with anticipation as she raised her spear and called for the charge. The sound of her voice was loud, echoing across the remaining mossland to the approaching mob of Drev, the golden one's dwindling army.

She sent her voice as a message, but to his credit he did not falter. She could see now there wasn't much left, Perhaps a hundred or so of his own soldiers against several hundred of hers.

She would enjoy crushing him.

Kazna let out a cry of whild glee as their charge slowly began to accelerate, starting slow at first and then driving upwards in pace until they were sprinting across the open mossland. Ahead of her the distant army was doing the same growing closer and closer with every moment until she could see the yellow and orange of their eyes staring back at her.

She did not see fear.

But the fierce glee of battle.

This was a fight she would enjoy.

They charged, and at the last moment Kazna raised her spear and hurled it forward. The move was entirely unexpected, and so shocking that the front line Drev had no way to react before the spear buried itself through her throat. Orange blood gushed from the open wound as Kazna came level with the front line, ripping her spear from flesh just in time to bat away a strike from her right with contemptuous ease. The short spear in her off hand snapped upward, skewering this one through the gut before she kicked him to the ground and stepped over his body.

All around them the army clashed in a sharp kaleidoscope of bodies and colors rolling around each other in a wave. Cries of pain and triumph rent the sky as the first blood was spilled.

Overhead corpse fowl began to gather in rolling spirals.

Kazna rammed an armored shoulder into another Drev's chestplate, ducked under a swing from her left and brought back the shafter of her spear in a sharp arc that collide high and hard with the Drev's cheekbone. She staggered back and fell into the fray as Kazna spun, catching another spear on the haft of her own weapon as it descended in a powerful, but slow overhand arc.

The other drev seemed almost surprised as Kazna spun to the side, causing the two bits of metal to skid apart. The Drev stumbled past her, and with a sharp backhand thrust she severed his spinal cord dropping him to the ground like a wet sack of moss to expire under the sun.

Finding herself in a momentary bubble of open ground, Kazna turned her head to scan the crowd. One of her own soldiers was skewered twice by two seperate spears and driven into they round by a battlepair. Off to their side her own soldiers dueled a hulking grey behemoth of a drev, who despite his ugly carapace was so strong, he flung bodies off him left and right, armor spattered with gore.

Kazna readied her spear, branching herself against the ground as she began her charge. The big gray one was distracted.

Kazna ran and leaped into the air readying her spear to come down through the metal joint between his neck and shoulder armor. But it was not to be, at the very height of her arc, something hard and cold slammed into her middle, knocking the wind from her and halting her forward momentum, throwing her backward to land painfully against the ground, but she did not let her momentum go to waste, rolling backwards to land in a sharp crouch through her stomach and chest still smarted.

And there he stood, nonchalantly holding his spear at his side, chest open. A spiked visor was drawn down over his head, but his eyes were still visible glittering with some humor from behind his armor. He was perhaps the most beautiful Drev Kazna had ever seen. The stories had certainly been exaggeration, but in some ways they had not done him justice. The golden one was well over nine feet tall, with carapace the color of molten gold. Sunlight shattered off his body into sparks that quivered over the moss and spattered his surroundings in bright pinpricks of light.