City Hall

Riley's sweat was freezing as it fell from his face. It was a strange feeling. His hair was soaked with perspiration at the roots and frozen at the ends that peeked out from his helmet. He ducked a blade and thrust his own forward. 

Steam rose off him as he battled, though he was thoroughly covered in clothing and armor. Originally he had been bundled against the cold, but now, even as he sweated, he dared not remove a single layer. 

It had become obvious that the goblins' blades were poisoned; any soldier who got so much as a minor scratch would slow in his movements, then collapse for several minutes before convulsing and dying. The battlefield medics could do nothing to stop the process once it began. 

And so the goal was simple: Kill the goblins without being cut at all. 

The creatures' blades were sharp. Riley had lost a piece of his sleeve to one not long ago. 

As much as he hated to do it, he'd followed orders to fall back to City Hall. The gargoyles required hunting; Riley's troops had no female soldiers to bring the creatures close, and they seemed to be out purely for the sake of their own stomachs. 

Though the flying monsters moved in swarms or smaller groups, there was no obvious grand design behind their movements. 

The goblins, on the other hand, were highly organized, with structure and design in their battles. Flanking, maneuvering, fierce swordsmanship. Though teamwork wasn't at their core, there was intelligence behind their decisions and movements. 

And poison on their blades. 

It made them by far the deadlier foe faced today, and Riley was determined to defend the city against the threat. 

They were converging on City Hall, the center of Klain. If the seat of government fell, and with it the General and his command center, the city would be far less capable of coordinated defense. 

Riley stepped quickly forward, delivering four strikes in succession to a goblin towering over a man who had slipped and fallen on the icy, snowy earth. 

The man pedaled backwards out of the reach of the goblin's falling blade as Riley dispatched the creature to whatever world dead beings inhabit. 

Was that a possibility? He hadn't given a lot of thought to what happens after death, despite the fact that he had come close to death himself several times. It wasn't something he liked to linger on. He refused to die, so there was no need to consider such things. 

But he'd heard childhood tales of another world where people went after death. Perhaps, now that many other worlds were being discovered, they might find such a one? It would be nice to see his father again. 

He thought, perhaps vainly, that the man would be proud of the warrior he'd become. The thought refocused him in battle, and he shifted to deliver a blow to an attacking goblin.

Riley had positioned himself between the bulk of the horde and the doors of the City Hall. The command center had been moved to the top of the steps. It gave the General a view of the converging forces, though men with shields stood around him to block the occasional poison-tipped arrows that flew towards him. 

The situation was not hopeless, but it was dire. 

The wind whipped around Riley's helmet, isolating him from the world. The snow was thick and gave the city lamps' glow an eerie quality. It was as if he were in the midst of fire, with smoke shrouding everything, choking out the life of the earth. 

He pushed the morbid thought to the side and ducked, springing up to gut another foul creature. The smell was unbearable.

"Don't you things ever bathe??" He said aloud to the next, cutting across the back of its leg to cripple it before plunging his blade through its neck. 

"Terrible job, this. Why did I think it was a good career?" He said as the light went out of its colorless eyes. Another soldier shot him an odd glance for chatting with the goblins, but Riley was so tired. 

Idle conversation helped to keep him focus. In his last great battle, he was trying his hardest to disable the Rhone without killing them or being killed by them. 

These vicious, foul-smelling, inhuman killing machines got no such mercy from him. 

With how one cut of their blades condemned a man to a painful death, not one could be left alive to cause so much as a papercut to anyone in the city. The intelligence gathered by Finn that had been disseminated to the troops said that they were bloodthirsty, murderous thieves. 

"My mother always told me not to judge anyone by how they look," He commented to the next goblin, "but I'm certain there's a limit to that," he knocked the creature off balance with a wide blow and then kicked him in the chest. 

"You're way past that limit." He plunged his sword into where its heart should be–probably was, for the goblin died almost immediately. 

The pile of corpses was slowly mounting around the building. Both goblins and his fallen comrades at arms lay on the ground, being covered in shrouds of snowdrifts.  It was as if the sky wanted to cover the carnage being done beneath its watchful gaze. 

He couldn't blame it. The whole affair was gruesome. The poisoned men spewed green before their death, and the goblins… he didn't want to examine their bodies too closely. Not that he had much of an opportunity, he thought as he sidestepped another vicious attack. 

Something changed on the wind. Was it the direction, or the strength of its swirls? He couldn't tell, but the goblins noticed it too. Their heads turned from Riley's attacks, momentarily distracted. 

He took full advantage of the diversion and cut two down before the others responded, fiercely beating him back. 

Riley dodged the blows carefully. He was always good at sparring and fighting, but avoiding being scratched whatsoever was a rather unique challenge. When he had to, he used his armor to deflect the unavoidable strikes. 

Suddenly, from behind the goblins' battle line came an absolutely horrifying sight. It was as if death itself was rushing towards Riley full tilt, and his heart failed for a moment. 

He held his ground, but barely. The men around him fell back, their courage weakened by what they saw. 

A cloud of gargoyles swirling on the wind like a great cyclone, black as pitch against the snow. The lights of the city seemed to shy from their furiously beating wings. At the point of their vortex, a terrifying rider wielding a spear, covered in blood, upon a fanged monster as black as the gargoyles. 

The monster leapt into the air, tearing apart one winged beast with its three rows of teeth, and batting another to the ground with its sharp claws. The rider's spear found a third mark, impaling a gargoyle through the throat. The gurgling screech of its death knell smote silence across the nearby battlefield as the wind briefly paused its furious rush. 

"Roland?" Riley's incredulous question spread rapidly through the troops. 

"The prince! It's the prince!" 

"Wasn't his cat white?" 

"Is that his blood?" 

The quiet questions dissolved as the Klain and Rhone troops sent up a rallying battlecry. Roland, for his part, had not stopped his furious attack on the swarm that seemed intent on snatching him from Judah's back. 

Riley surged forward, slicing down the goblins left between him and Roland. The otherworldly creatures had reformed their lines, part facing the newcomer who landed gracefully amongst them to tear apart the formation. 

Another gargoyle saw an opening and dove toward Roland's back. Riley instinctively swiped the throwing knife from his belt and sent it flying at the creature. His aim was slightly off, and he hit it in the shoulder instead of the neck, but that was enough to throw off its trajectory. 

Judah's spiked tail swept up to spell the flying monster's end. 

Riley was struck at the horrendous beauty of the fighting pair. The great cat was a killing machine, leaving destruction and gore in its wake. Roland, atop Judah's back and streaked with freezing blood, wielded his spear almost like a sickle, the picture of justice reaping the lives of thieves, murderers, and monsters. 

Riley wished for a moment he could capture the image in a painting, as his mother had done of a storm at sea. He would be jealous of Roland were he not so utterly in awe of the surprising sight. 

The Rhone prince was supposed to be tending to his freezing wife. 

Riley sliced the throat of a goblin screaming in rage at Roland's display. 

"Shut up. Thank you!" He said to the creature in passing.

Was Finn all right? Surely it wasn't her blood Roland was covered in. 

Then again, if she were dead, he couldn't imagine what Roland would do. Maybe rampage across the city, killing everything in his path. 

Riley's heart, which had been set afire at the prince's dramatic appearance, suddenly went cold at the thought.