The Umiran Amulet

Chapter One: The Hospital and The Mage

When he woke up, it was to find himself in the recovery ward of a hospital. It took him a while to remember how they had gotten there in the first place, but it slowly came back in bits and pieces, brief flashes of memory. Each one was a punch in the gut.

The war with Undar should have been nearly over. The desert-like region shouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in Hell against Octan's military might. Though they suffered their losses, each battle had ended with Octan's victory.

The battle at Southlake Point had gone wrong quicker than Cary could follow. It had been well on its way to another victory for Octan, for him, when...

When the demon showed up.

He hadn't been able to see who had summoned it, but one moment it wasn't there, and then the next moment it was. And it had started plowing through his men with ease, rending them apart with claws, tearing them apart with teeth, crushing the life right out of them with tentacles. It had taken him a while to figure out why his men weren't even trying to avoid it, or take it down.

They could not see it.

Cary could though, somehow, and he had shouted like never before, bellowing out directions at a volume he had never before achieved to try to steer them clear of the beast. It worked, but only for a brief while. He could only do so much to protect his men from a foe only he could see. They all inevitably fell to the creature.

And then the demon was upon him, and he was fighting for their life. And then everything went black. And the next thing he knew, he had woken up here, covered in stitches, his left leg in a cast, and with his right arm in a sling.

"You were found by a courier," a doctor informed him when the older man discovered him finally conscious. "You were barely still alive. How you managed not to bleed out, I can't even imagine." He handed Cary a cup of water. "Drink that slowly. We've been trying to keep fluids in you so you don't die of dehydration, but it's not so easy a thing to do for an unconscious man." Cary obediently took a sip from the cup. The water felt so good going down, and he took another sip. Once his throat no longer felt like it had been thoroughly abused by sandpaper, he tried to ask a question. The doctor seemed to be expecting it.

"And what of my men? How many... how many of them survived?"

"Just you," the doctor told him. Cary's shock must have shown on his face. "The courier ran to fetch help as soon as he found at least one person still breathing, but there was no helping anyone else. Every other soldier had already long been dead by the time he arrived. It was a miracle we were even able to save you."

Cary only nodded in response, the shock too overwhelming to find words. Every single soldier in his regiment. Dead. He knew he really ought not to be so surprised by that, given the situation they had found themselves in.

He had only one question ringing in circles around his head. How in the world had they survived? The doctor gave his good shoulder a gentle pat before leaving the room to let him process the bomb he had just dropped on the colonel's head.

Alastar was slow to wake. Cary was in no rush for his twin to regain consciousness, not when he had such devastating news waiting to be told. But wake Alastar eventually did, and he wasted no time in trying to comfort his brother as soon as Cary had relayed everything that had happened. It is not your fault, he said. You did everything you could to save them. Fighting an invisible foe tends to leave everyone at a disadvantage.

"More than a mere 'disadvantage' though," Cary muttered in response. And with no one left alive to back up his claims of a demon being at the battlefield, he knew they were in for a hell of a rough time once they recovered. His reputation was sure to be dragged through the mud, then tarred and feathered for good measure. Hell, he would probably be tarred and feathered, not just his reputation. How the hell does one get his entire regiment killed?