Hey look! An upload!
This may end up being the first chapter of Sentinel in its rewritten/organised form. It occurs three weeks before the events in the current chapter one I have uploaded.
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Alternative Chapter one - Sacrifice
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You could always identify a demon by their mark.
They wore their entire history on their brows, the runemark etched into their skin said to reveal the most minute of details to the elves who could read them.
Skye, however, wasn’t one of those elves. Her understanding was basic and completely instinctual, but no one in her group could do any better so she was left with the distasteful task.
She sheathed her sword and knelt down in the foliage, taking what would have been the demon’s head in her hands, ignoring the urge to shudder at the rough, grainy surface of its armour plates under her fingers. The demon’s body was already starting to disintegrate, quickly enough to suggest the presence of a portal nearby.
Lyria gestured with her bow at the body. “Crev or Verc?” she asked.
Skye took one look at the harsh lines on the demon’s brow and had her answer. “Crevton. It’s only an imp, barely made. Hasn’t been moulded yet.”
Lyria swore under her breath. “More fallen to the corruption. May the deities rest their souls.”
Skye and the rest of the group echoed the sentiment. They didn’t know the person before they’d been claimed, but it didn’t matter. It was a fate you didn’t wish upon anyone, no matter how they’d wronged you. She replaced the demon where Lyria’s arrow had felled it against the trunk of a tree and stood, refusing to give it a second look.
“We gotta keep moving if we’re going to find these Eaikai before the corruption does,” said Bostra. “Let’s go. Warriors with me, form a line. Archers,” he said, eyes resting on Skye for a moment, “you girls spread out with Lyria. Cover us.”
Skye rolled her eyes and fell into Bostra’s line, returning her sword to its rightful place in her hand. Even on a mission that meant everything to their village, he was still trying to get rid of her. Still insisting that they call the melee guardians ‘warriors’. Insults rose on her lips until she caught Lyria’s stare.
She repositioned her gaze forward like she was supposed to. Keep it to yourself. Trying to ignore the snide remarks passing between Bostra and the rest of the men. Not worth it. She accentuated each word with a step. Not. Worth. It.
Instead, Skye pricked her ears, their pointed shape blocking out the voices and tuning in to the sound of the forest around her.
Or rather, the lack of it.
She wracked her brains trying to figure out what seemed different before she realised the birds had stopped calling to each other in the treetops and from there, the silence started flooding in. She couldn’t hear small animals skittering around in the leaf litter searching for their next meal, nor the cries of the swans as they danced with their mates.
Other than the wind through the leaves and the footfalls of her scouting group, there was silence and the growing sense that something was very, very wrong.
Skye raised her sword and drew her dagger, pulling it quickly, quietly from its scabbard. Her body prickled with the same instinct that let her read the demons, the same instinct that kept her alive over her years as a hunter. She knew not to ignore it.
Her movements earned her a glare from Bostra. “What are you doing? You don’t need the dagger. Put it away,” he said. When she didn’t comply, he stopped and pointed his own blade at her. “I said, put them away.”
A tingle ran down Skye’s neck, stroking the hairs on the back of her neck to attention. “We’re not alone,” she said. The answer wouldn’t satisfy him, but it might make the others listen. “Something’s wrong.”
“The only thing wrong is that you have a man’s weapons in your hands,” said Derpy. Bostra snickered at the comment, but before Skye could reply with a challenge of her own she heard movement behind her.
Lyria’s bow was already nocked with an arrow, something that the rest of the archers in the group were swiftly copying. “This is no time for arguing.” Bostra looked like he wanted to but as his counterpart in the group, Lyria’s words kept him silent. “Something is indeed wrong. I have not--“
The snap of a twig somewhere in the forest cut off her sentence. Lyria raised her hand at the same time as Bostra to take command, but neither was fast enough to stop the imp that leapt from the branches of a nearby tree and on to the face of a red-streaked archer.
The archer screamed and dropped her weapon as the imp tore into her skin, grabbing and clawing at whatever sockets in her face it could grasp. As the rest of the group lunged for it trying to save her, the imp turned its black eyes on them and detached itself, sprinting for safety.
“Ambush!”
Someone ran towards their fallen member even as the forest exploded to life around them. Every few seconds, a new group of imps were falling from the sky, bombarding the elves with claws, horns, and whatever else their rituals had left them with.
“Where in the nether are they coming from?” yelled Lyria. She fired, her arrow catching one and sending its body limp through the air. "Archers, bring them down!"
Skye was left with no time to search for an answer to Lyria’s question as a smaller demon launched its own assault on her. Dancing back to evade its swipe rather than block it, Skye followed the limb with her dagger and caught it on the rebound, slicing through the tendons of the demon’s would-be wrist and bringing her sword around to finish it off.
The demons pressed in on them. The song of arrows arcing from bows filled Skye's ears to the beat of claw on steel. She brought her sword down on a larger demon, narrowly dodging a swipe from another that thought to attack her left side. She recovered quickly, driving it back with her dagger before finishing it off.
Over the feral squeals and cries of pain, Skye tried to keep track of the orders Lyria was firing off as she moved from one demon to the next but it was slowly becoming impossible to hear as they were swarmed. More than one elf in their already small group lay still on the ground. Even in the corner of her vision, they were easy to spot through the ash-like substance the slain demons had dissolved into. Bostra’s voice was nowhere to be heard.
Realising she’d been pushed from them, Skye backed up to the group, trying to give the archers as much distance from the crowding demons as she could manage without becoming corralled by twisted bodies herself. She steadied herself, bouncing on the balls of her feet as the next wave of demons approached.
The next few minutes earned her only a few scratches and a larger gash to her side. Others weren't so lucky. In addition to the elves from before, two more of the men lay still with their weapons scattered beside them.
This isn’t good. Skye backed up a few steps to catch her breath as someone moved beside her.
"Lyria? Shouldn't you--"
Lyria grimaced. "I'm out of arrows."
Skye shook her head."This is why I prefer blades. No limit on the demons I can kill," she said.
"We train with a dagger for a reason." Lyria paused, eyes widening before her hand shot out. "They're herding him!"
Skye followed her gaze to see a group of imps working to separate Bostra from the rest of the group. The other ‘warriors’ around him were dead or dying, and he was too caught up in his own survival to realise what was happening.
Skye was already running as words left her mouth. "Stay here."
A pair of imps saw her coming and moved into her path. Skye jumped over them. Upon landing, she lashed out with her leg, sweeping them both off balance before sending them back to the nether with one slash from her sword. Clever things, but fragile.
She pulled her attention from their fading bodies. Halfway there.
Skye drew breath, hoping to alert the idiot elf. "Bostra!"
If he heard her, he gave no sign of it. With a curse, Skye gripped her weapons tighter and slashed her way through the crowd of various sized demons. With their backs turned to her, avoiding the lashing tails was the hardest part as she cut them down quickly.
As she came up behind him, Bostra lunged forward. The sudden movement alerted her more than it should have. She waited for him to recover, but the moment never came. His sword was stuck inside the body of the four legged demon which refused to die, snarling at him.
Skye leapt forward, grabbing Bostra by a shoulder and shoving him towards the ground as she moved past him. Her sword caught the demon's torso, and with a swift strike from her armoured knee it collapsed upon itself, allowing her to drive her dagger into the base of what she assumed was its head.
"What in the nether are you doing here? You're on the other--" Bostra's words died in his throat as he turned and realised just how far from the group he'd become and the smirk Skye was allowing to creep on to her face.
"You're welcome," she said.
Skye pulled him to his feet and hand him his retrieved blade, noting the wound on his leg. It wouldn't kill him, but it needed treatment. "We need to get back and run if we're going to live through this."
She didn't wait to see if he was following her before she started moving. Somehow, the rest of their group was still alive and the demons were thinning. Lyria needed help, as did the rest of the archers. She saw her leaders gaze fall over to her then shift to something behind her as the word Skye had been dreading to hear tore from her lips.
"Tainted!"
“Get down!”
Skye didn’t question Bostra’s order. She dropped to the floor as a large woomph of air rushed over her head and immediately rolled to the side to avoid any follow up strike. Trying to remain unpredictable, she scrambled to her feet and leapt off to the side, desperately turning around to gain vision of her enemy.
The tainted wasn’t looking at her as she spun around to face it. Instead, the set of eyes located under a heavy, horned brow that her sword couldn’t pierce were locked on to Lyria , who already had another rock in her hand to join the first. Skye pressed herself up against a tree and used the moment to glance at its runemark - this particular hulking, humanoid demon that stood at twice her height was a Crevton.
They still had a chance to escape. All they had to do was outsmart it.
“You, tainted!” Lyria threw another rock that hit the tainted square in the chest and backed up a few steps, spreading her arms wide. “What, can’t get me?”
Lyria was taking a huge risk, distracting the tainted. Unable to see where Bostra had ended up, Skye crouched down and slipped in between the giant roots of the tree as Lyria continued to taunt the tainted.
Skye didn’t miss the dagger still clutched in Lyria’s hand, the silver edge stained with blood. It was too small to damage the tainted, but it had a use. She knew what Lyria would do if she were injured beyond escape. The same thing they’d do for each other if there was no other option. The promise they all made before each mission.
The tainted roared in a way only a Crevton could. The sound of pure anger and hatred for the world rumbled in its chest and churned up through its throat as it charged Lyria, talons bared.
Skye changed cover, moving her way back to the group. They couldn’t fight the tainted. Only pray to the deities that they could escape it. Lyria ran for her life away from the group, trying to confuse the tainted as she ducked into the roots of another tree. It worked. The tainted stopped, confused, before beginning to bash away at the trunk of the tree.
It was the one saving grace they had - Crevtons were brutal and deadly, but they were stupid.
At least it wasn’t a Vercton. Skye slipped under another root. We’d have no chance of escape if it were.
Lyria scrambled out from under the tree roots and bolted for the last few elves that remained in the clearing. Skye watched as she tried to support one of the archers with a bleeding thigh, placing their arm around her neck and taking a few steps before the archer collapsed to the ground, shaking their head. They grabbed Lyria’s wrist and pointed at the tainted behind her who was slowly realising it had been duped.
Skye’s throat closed as Lyria knelt down beside the injured elf and pressed her brow to theirs. Her lips moved in a silent prayer to the deities before the dagger in her left hand ran deep across the archer’s throat, spilling crimson blood across their skin as she gently lowered their head to the ground. Without a glance back at the still archer, she ran and followed the path where the others had fled.
Skye found herself echoing the prayer. “Deities protect your soul, may it remain untouched by corruption.”
She took a deep breath and emerged from the roots, intending to run after Lyria before the tainted stopped furiously slashing the tree and turned around. Something snagged on the tree, holding her there. Skye turned around to free herself, only to have her eyes drawn to Bostra fending off a pack of smaller demons with a stick.
There was only one choice to make.
Skye ran from Lyria’s calls, and with both dagger and sword in hand, charged the demons.
“Bostra, catch!”
Skye flung her sword hilt-first at Bostra. She didn’t wait to see if he’d caught it before she started slashing away at the demons with her dagger. Somehow, she got through to him.
“What in the nether are you doing?” Skye stabbed a demon in the shoulder region. “Why didn’t you run when we had the chance!”
“I didn’t have the...” Bostra’s voice trailed off. A shadow fell over them.
The deep rumbling of the tainted’s growl prickled Skye’s skin. Bostra was frozen, incapable of moving as the tainted loomed over them, seemingly deciding what to do, tail thrashing on the ground behind it with impatience.
So Skye did the only thing she could to get one of them out alive.
“Run!”
The sudden noise jerked the tainted and Bostra into action. The huge demon lunged at Bostra, missing him. Skye slipped between the tainted’s legs and with as much force as she could muster, rammed her dagger into the back of its knee.
The tainted roared in pain and lashed out. Skye dove to the side but she wasn’t quick enough. The tainted’s talon caught her arm and sent her body crashing into a nearby tree, leaving her sprawled over the roots as she tried to clear her blurring vision long enough to see. Another blast of pain hit her side. Skye blinked to find herself on the ground, staring at a large, scale-plated leg.
My dagger, she thought with desperation. The corruption couldn’t take her soul. It couldn’t. A fate worse than death to become one of the things she both despised and pitied. Deities be damned where is my dagger!
The tainted rolled her over. Light seared her eyes through involuntary tears of pain. Skye could barely contain her relief.
It’s going to kill me here. My soul... they can’t have my soul if it ends like this.
She waited for the final blow to bring her into the nether.
Only, it never came.
Instead, a humanoid figure too small to be a tainted crouched over her, hands hovering just above her face.
“Awh, that’s no good. She’s not even that injured yet. I don’t suppose...” The light female voice trailed off, head cocked to the side, listening. “One alive. I understand, Master.”
Skye’s blood went cold. She reached out with her arm, searching for something, anything she could use but her fingers found nothing but leaves and dirt. Everything was a puddle of colour as her eyes refused to focus.
Another figure stepped into view. The only thing she could make out about it was a dark cape hanging from their shoulders, badly tucked away in several places.
“Caught one,” said the figure. His voice was deep, rough. Nothing like the first. “Took us long enough.”
The female laughed. “Well my little tainted, this one is certainly alive. Too weak for me to step with, probably going to be unconscious soon, but alive. We’ll just have to provide an escort for her, won’t we?” The figure clapped her hands. “Oh, I do love playing guard!”
Skye started to push herself up but was shoved down again by the girl. Her head knocked the ground, setting everything spinning once more.
“Now, now, no. None of that. Sleep time for you.” She tapped Skye on the head, forcing her eyes closed. “As for the rest of you demons, your leader is named Hunter for a reason. Hup two!”
Skye felt her body being lifted by massive hands as blackness claimed her vision. Thoughts of escape slipped from her mind as the steady thump-thump-thump of the tainted’s gait began. Only one remained.
I should have saved the dagger.
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I'd love some feedback. Criticisms, anything, opinions are welcomed ^^ Subway cookies at the ready!
If this were to become chapter 1, the current (improved) version of chapter 1 would remain but it'd be chapter 2 or 3. So, yea. I swear that improved version is still coming, by the way. It's the following chapters that are giving me some grief. /endramble
OPINIONS! KGO!
Also my shirt has elephants on it and it's cute and okay I'm going to bed now good night <3