Written By: Epicstu Wyyvernwriter

“Find him and kill him! Bring me my Wyyvern Shieldwall of Deceit!” Searl’s words echoed through the shaken streets of the vast stone walled city. 

Frightened citizens ran back toward the inner confines for shelter deeper into the Mountain’s side which the hold had been carved into. “By The Fennec’s snow.” “The Blizzard protect us.” “Edward save us!” they shuttered and cried out in dismay.

“You heard Lord Searl! Get down there and fetch him his prize, you dogs!” commanded one of Searl’s generals. Without delay men clad in armor slid down into the great crater, caused by their God’s Inter-dimensional Battle Cruiser, where Edward had fallen. The Archers still aimed into the thick dissipating debris at where he had been standing before they took Heaven away from him.

“Hahaha! We got him, Sir,” proclaimed one of the knights. “Fell right into our trap, he did.”

This puzzled the general, “what trap?”

“The capture net he’s caught in,” the knight replied referring to the hand knotted rope net wrapped around Edward Michael Dimir.

“We never set any traps,” the general scratched his head and then, “Kill him! Kill him now!” he realized too late. Without delay a knight swung down hard his longsword only to have his moment of glory, sure to have granted him a promotion, stolen as Edward was yanked away. Archers’ arrows struck just shy of him as he was pulled up out into the streets, through the city, and up a tower built along the walls of an inner gate. “Kill him damn you! Kill him!” the general shouted angrily as he backhanded one of his own knights who was standing next to him before stabbing that knight through with his longsword. “Somebody kill him!”

“You’re heavier than you look,” a woman wearing leather armor with many pouches and pockets under a collared long coat also with many pouches and pockets grunted. Dragging the unconscious Edward over to a pre set net held vertically by a pair of pylons, she strapped him in. “Love your soft fluffy fur though,” she drew a pair of small crossbows from under her coat and pulled their triggers launching bolts attached to wires that anchored themselves into the next inner wall as they impacted it. Then she slipped and locked her crossbows one on each pylon before holding each crossbow’s button. This released the crossbows from the pylons while still keeping the wires locked in place. Walking a few steps away from the sling shot she had made as she spread her coat to put away her grapple bolts and load in her normal bolts with one swift motion, “beautiful coat,” she fired a bolt at each pylon releasing the tensed wires which slingshotted Edward toward the next inner Wall’s tower. Putting a finger to her long and sharpened Elven ear she waited until he had landed atop the tower, “Go ahead and drop, Ranger.”

“My life is in your hands, Nid,” a bearded man replied from high up the mountain with a finger under his hood as he observed the situation. Then he turned around and let himself drop.

Arachnid inhaled and exhaled as she shot a knight reaching the top of the tower she stood upon before running and leaping off of it. As she dropped she unloaded her normal bolts and reloaded her grapple bolts firing just in time to save herself from hitting the ground and launching herself high into the air. Then firing one grapple bolt at the top of the tower she had leaped from and another at the bottom of the tower she had launched Edward to she slid and locked her crossbows together before releasing them and firing again to swing off to her next checkpoint with acrobatic ease. The two, now locked, grapple bolts pulled their wires tight as a steel ax landed upon them hooking on to the line as a pair of enchanted steel-toed leather boots silently landed on the ax’s shaft. Balancing on his ax as it slid him toward his checkpoint Ranger pulled his bow and drew an arrow.

“There he is,” a knight shouted to his comrades as he hoisted himself up onto the top of the tower where Edward was. With a wet thud the knight fell back down, an arrow in his face. Swarming up the tower more knights came each falling to a single arrow skillfully placed through the slit in their otherwise impervious helmets. One knight got close enough to make a killing blow against the unconscious Edward and reared his longsword back to strike, “Ah! My knee!” he dropped his weapon to attend to the arrow freshly pierced through his knee cap. Without a sound Ranger landed between Edward and the knight putting his ax through the top of his helmed skull, “consider that mercy.” Drawing his off-hand sword into a second knight’s neck before dislodging his ax from the first knight’s skull and decapitating the second with it. He blocked a shield bash with his ax pulling the shield down so he could stab that knight in the throat with his sword. He swung the shield with his ax into the longsword of a fourth knight and used the momentum to roll over that knight stabbing him in the back with his sword before sheathing it. Throwing his ax into a fifth he lifted the still unconscious Edward over his shoulder, ran toward his next checkpoint, and pulled his ax from the knight sheathing it so he could jump to the streets below assassinating a sixth knight with it. “You’re up, Gentlemen.”

Catching the unconscious Edward tossed to him by Ranger, “bully, let’s move along then shall we,” a built male Canine wearing a button down shirt with rolled up sleeves, trousers held up with suspenders, and a bowler hat said before kicking down the wooden door of a home built into the next inner wall. “After you, Scoundrel.”

“Oh, you’re too kind and gentle, man,” a slender male Feline wearing a wide-brimmed hat, leather clothing, and a long coat replied in a rough rugged voice, his six shot revolver in hand. He struck its hammer back three times with his off-hand killing three knights just inside the door. Edward over his shoulders, Gentleman moved the cigar in his mouth from one side to the other, hands free, as he twirled each end of his mustache with the tips of his index fingers and thumbs. “Righto then, shall we?”

“Just stay close, mutt,” Scoundrel replied.

Gentleman scoffed, “I am a pure-bred…”

“Yeah yeah, whatever,” Scoundrel interrupted before shooting the lock off a door and leading Gentleman toward their next checkpoint effortlessly dispatching knight after knight with impossible skill shots. He reloading faster than the last shells could hit the ground every time his gun’s six-shot chamber ran out of ammo.

Despite being skillfully taken down by Arachnid, Ranger, and Scoundrel the seemingly endless swarm of knights closed in around Gentleman who had to snap a few necks himself just to keep them all at bay. Looking through his monocle at his pocket watch, “Where is he?” Gentleman asked.

Suddenly brick and mortar shifted as the city folded in upon and away from itself under dark whisperings. “Speak of the devil,” Scoundrel replied as a pathway revealed itself behind a figure covered in thick and tattered hooded robes hiding all but a grin.

“And I shall appear,” the figure said in two voices one male one female both sinister in their tone. The grinning mouth did not move with the words that escaped it.

“About time, Wizard,” Arachnid said as the five assassins disappeared behind the closing portal with the still unconscious Edward Michael Dimir.

Striking his longsword against the wall just as it finished shifting to its normal setting, “damn!” the general shouted angrily. 

“Searl’s not going to be hap…” the knight was interrupted by his general’s longsword thrust through his chest.

“Burn this city to the ground. Leave none alive,” the general ordered as he pulled his longsword from the knight’s chest and walked off.

*          *

In the throne room of his massive Inter-dimensional Battle Cruiser Searl had Zesrial in chains she could not break on a chair to his right with an empty seat on his left. “I trusted you, general, and yet you come before me empty handed,” he said.

“My lord, he was taken from our grasp by five of his wretched believers,” the general explained. “He will not escape us next time…” a grapple hook burst out his chest interrupting him.

“There won’t be a next time for you,” Searl said as the fallen general was pulled into the sharpened shieldblade of an Elven man clad in steel plated armor almost fully covered in a large tattered cape. The twin shieldblades folded and slid in on themselves until fully hidden in the Elve’s armor. “Leon Aventis,” Searl addressed him.

“My lord,” Leon Aventis knelt before his God his right fist to his own chest and his head low.

“Find and kill Edward Michael Dimr,” searl ordered. “Bring me my Wyyvern Shieldwall of Deceit.”

“And the Leon Aventis’s who protect him?” Leon Aventis replied.

“Wipe them out,” Searl ordered.

“It will be done, my lord,” Leon Aventis replied before immediately heading out.

“He will defeat you,” Zesrial said with full belief in her God. “You cannot win.”

“We shall see,” Searl replied.