The moon hung beyond the midway point in the sky, a couple hours from daylight. That was my deadline for stopping and ending this attack and hopefully anymore attacks against the trio and the other monsters, the creatures of the night. After hearing the witch refer to them as such it started to feel wrong to refer to them as monsters. With any luck they wouldn’t have to deal with such a thing after this night.

Trees burned left and right. Soldiers were fighting the creatures, both sides dodging the fires aflame everywhere. Com and I leapt into a battle taking place in a place now devoid of a thick tree count and the soldiers never saw us coming. I rammed my shoulder into one of them, knocking him into another, sending them to the ground and I took their swords, putting them in my inventory rather than just wielding them. Com came behind me and took out his own sword, standing over the two we had downed. When they looked up I was staring them in the face, they tried getting up and almost ran into the sharp point of Com’s sword.

Hesitantly the one on the right spoke up, an adult by the sound of his voice, “What do you want with us?”

I stared them each in the eyes a moment and spoke calmly, “Where is your leader?”

They looked at one another and the left one spoke up, his voice barely that of an adolescent, “Why do you-“

I interrupted him, “Where is he?” My voice carried a tone of ‘tell me or else’ and they could probably guess the ‘or else’ part seeing as how I knocked them down and grabbed their weapons. The fire behind me probably helped with my intimidation.

The one on the right punched the younger soldier, “We won’t tell you, monster.” His voice was firm, he was a true soldier. His younger companion was likely forced to do this. It seemed like something the prince would do.

“I am not a monster!” I shouted at him, the younger one flinching at my sudden rise in volume. “I am not the one who came to an alien world and killed the ones who lived here peacefully!”

“I will not be swayed by your lies, Craft the changeling. The prince told us who you were, how you slew our scout soon after you came here. You are no better than what you think we are.”

I mulled over his words, tensing at the thought of how every moment I wasted with them another creature of the night would be slain and the trio would likely be that much more in danger. I heard the sound of someone behind me, rushing in for an attack.

At the last moment I turned around and tripped my failed assassin and watched his blade slip out of his hand, the elder soldier seizing this distraction as an opportunity to gain a new blade, his previous one iron and this one stone.

I growled loudly and pulled his blade from my inventory while Com stood over the younger soldier again with renewed vigilance. “Sorry Craft, I got distracted.”

“It’s ok Com, let’s end this quickly,” I replied, looking at the elder soldier while holding my blade at the downed assassin’s body. “This can end in one of two ways; either we fight and you all lose, sending you all back to your village without anything, or I can let you go here and now and we won’t make you respawn.”

The elder soldier laughed, “You have guts for a monster. You forgot the third option we have; I slay you and kill your friend.”

I sighed internally, option one it was.

He rushed me without hesitation, forcing me to dodge and leave the downed assassin where he laid.

“I’m sorry it came to this then.” I steeled myself, “Com, take him down.” He took action, and I knew it was as hard on him as it was for me seeing as these were his people. That said, he took his blade and struck the younger soldier until he poofed. Afterwards he joined the fight of me and the elder soldier.

The standing soldier grunted and spoke in a low tone, “Like I said, you’re no better than the monsters you make us out to be.” He ran at me and our blades clashed loudly, louder than even the fires that still burned around us, turning the beautiful night this could’ve been into a hellish red and yellow flickering tint, shining on all of our armors.

“I gave you a chance to run! I gave you a chance to choose something that wasn’t this!” I said, pushing him back slightly, the strain of his blade against mine causing my wound to be felt once again.

“Retreating is never an option! If you were a real soldier you would know that,” he pushed his blade back at me, halting my own efforts to pin him down. Never an option, those were familiar words. Her words.

I growled and continued to strain myself against his blade while Com circled around us, waiting for his own opportunity to strike the enemy soldier, “This is a waste of time! I need to get to the trio!”

I flicked my blade down and removed his from my own. Com took this chance to attack and managed to nick the soldier’s shoulder, the soldier noticing the attack at the last moment and failing to completely dodge the incoming strike.

“Not bad kid, too bad I’m still in my prime,” he said, rotating his shoulder to get used to the pain. It looked a little odd since he, like everything else, was block shaped but I’d seen it enough times in combat practice that I knew the movement.

He renewed his rush against us and I thought he was coming at me but it was a feint. Catching Com by surprise, he managed to disarm him but retreated when I came in for my own attack that would have likely killed him.

My temper was running shorter than a newborn’s attention span and I knew it was affecting my swordplay, but I couldn’t drop this feeling no matter how hard I tried.

I took a split moment to try and calmly think about the situation before I realized that almost directly behind the enemy was the downed assassin from earlier, his still knocked out body was exactly what we needed. I quickly came up with a plan and, without telling Com, I acted upon it.

I rushed him and swung wildly: left, right, left, and finally I arched overhead and struck down. The movement was unexpected by him and he backed up to regain his stance, then I repeated it again and again until he fell over the body.

I put my sword over him and yelled, “This is exactly what I said would happen! Why wouldn’t you just run?”

“Because a true soldier never backs down, even to the end,” the last point he emphasized by readying another strike. The attack never came, however, as an arrow flew between his eyes and he was poofed away. Then another came and the assassin poofed away too, their stuff being catalogued in my inventory as it came to me following their deaths. I turned around to see whoever it was that struck them down and I was rewarded with the sight of a skeleton.

“Craft, thank goodness you’re here,” the leader of the skeletons, Skeleton, said to me. Right behind him were four other skeleton archers, ready to attack whatever they had to.

I looked at him, a wave of relief rushing over me knowing that there was a chance that they were all alright, “Where are the others?”

Com spoke up, “And how did you know where we were?”

“I didn’t, but these archers did and I followed them to here. As for the others, they are in the cave,” Skeleton spoke, in a frantic voice, “Craft, he intends to finally kill us. We have to run.”

With that he turned around and we ran toward the cave. As we did I couldn’t help but watch soldiers and nightlings, as I now decided to call them, each falling to one another and thought to myself how this could be over if the prince were gone. And what about the rebels the prince spoke of? They obviously didn’t need the prince to run their lives so why hadn’t the people of New Hope done the same?

A few times we had to stop and end a skirmish we came across, thankfully a few were willing to accept my offer of running to live another day. They said the prince was heading the way we were, which solidified our belief that he was after the trio’s lives tonight.

I couldn’t help but wonder though, “Why hasn’t the prince tried this before?” I asked Com.

“I’m not really sure to be honest. I thought we had killed them all and he was just looking for more stuff to stockpile. All I know is that if he wanted that portal before now he should’ve been able to find this obsidian stuff long ago. We’ve been here for years and he’s never made any effort to create this portal before.”

“I suspect it’s because it never did occur to him before Craft showed up, Com,” Skeleton piped in, confusing us both.

“What do you mean about me showing up?” I asked, appropriately confused.

“Have you ever heard a voice since you showed up here Craft?” he asked.

“Yeah, but after I met this witch right after and she said she fixed me up I assumed it was hers.”

“You say you met a witch? Did she live near a desert?”

“Yeah, why?”

He paused before answering, “It’s nothing, forget I mentioned it. Anyway, I doubt it was hers. The inhabitants of this world have been known to hear a voice, almost like a suggestion, before and it seems like you might’ve heard it.”

“What’s the voice?” If it wasn’t for the terror of the current situation I would’ve probably gotten an answer, but our luck ran out as we neared the cave they hid in.

We stopped running, my injury had finally stopped hurting at this point, and I noticed ten wolves sitting at the foot of the cave’s mouth. My blood turned to ice in contradiction to my rage burning anew with ferocity I had never felt before. At the mouth of the cave was the prince, in his diamond armor and wielding a diamond sword, holding the limp body of the simple spoken member of the trio, Zombie.

Author's Note

That thing I did with Zombie, that hurt to write. It's my least favorite thing to do but some times it has to be done and I hate every moment of it. Anyway, I recently went to a convention for the first time and had my eyes exposed to some very awesome cosplay, and some not so awesome and mind shuddering cosplay. For example: I found a guy running around as a bug catcher from Pokemon, he even had the little ! bubble from the original games. This was an awesome one. One of the mind shuddering ones was a R63 RD no shirt and way way waaaaay too short shorts. I shuddered at that and kept going, since I have admittingly seen way worse on the internet. Needless to say I wanna go to more conventions, it was great. I got me a few Zelda things and even an FMA necklace with Ed's symbol from the back of his cloak. For those who don't know, FMA is Full Metal Alchemist, one of my fav anime/manga series and I suggest reading/watching it because it's worth it.