The Dead of Night

Not All Hope

Chapter Thirty Seven: Not All Hope

I had never seen so much blood. 

Truly, never in my short years of life had I seen anything so horrifyingly gorish. I'd ripped some man's face off and thrown him through a window, strangled a Lycan with a water bottle and belt (and skinned her hand), crushed the skull of a shape-shifter by repeatedly beating its head with a rock twice the size of both of my hands, and watched my late Emperor being burnt alive at the stake. 

But nothing could ever compare with the wash of red ooze which laid in a thick, fermenting layer about the Mountain. 

In the beginning, the assigned armed detail attempted to rush me to a room, to keep me out of harm's way; they formed a tightly packed group around me, lifting shields which I guessed to weigh about twenty five-to-fifty pounds each, to the sky. This created a make-shift roof so that the 'flying demons' as the public took to calling them, couldn't get to me. Though, this only worked for a sparse amount of time; the flying demons (for lack of a better name) quickly adapted to the new environment of the scrambling inhabitants, as well as the brisk-to-arms draftees and fought against them with an almost unimaginable ferocity, which could have only been concocted by way of chemical evolution. 

The flying demons, which, from a distance, actually looked like monkeys with wings, began picking up the detail by way of their shields, and throwing them with all of their might against the wall of the Mountain, crushing their skulls upon impact. 

So, we come to the conclusion that these things are most certainly not monkeys with wings!  

The men and women protecting me, witnessing this feat of strength and terror, let their shields free when they found their feet hovering above ground. But hitting the ground running is nearly impossible in clunky armor as we wore, so they would stumble, or, even fall to the ground and find themselves backed into a corner. Often, as I saw when we ran, they would dispatch the demons with the swipe of a sword and anxiously sprint to rejoin the group. 

I ran as fast as my feet could take me as sweat poured off of my forehead, we weren't ready for this! The demons were everywhere, and poured in from all angles! Soon, my little group was surrounded from every turn, except downwards (but that wasn't an option, so we were stuck). Shakily, I drew my sword, which felt as if it was half my weight, and held it out before me, careful not to nick any of those protecting me. Screams and shrieks of delight from the demons filled the air where their bodies did not; their wings looked to be those of a oversized bat, the skin looked to be over stretched and tight like a drum, but if one was to touch it, it appeared to be silky and almost opaque. Their wings came in all colors and sizes, most usually their wings sprouted from their backs, blood dried about where the skin was broken. 

Most flying demons were only two or three inches above my height, their bodies were those of the prisoners the shape-shifters captured, that being so and said, most were stocky men who, in all honesty, were those I didn't want to deal with. Their bodies were dirtied and covered in some type of brown muck that smelled of putrid fecal material, rancid food, and festering infections within decaying corpses. The mere emanation of the stench was enough to cause some of my weaker soldiers to double over and vomit onto their own armor--that, unfortunately, is how they died; the flying demons would decapitate my soldiers with their fingernails. 

Their fingernails! 

The flying demons' eyes could not be seen in most cases, because the surrounding bit of the outward eye was so pitch, and their eyes were even darker than that, that it appeared that they did not have eyes at all! Only devoid sockets of unfeeling conscience. Their teeth had been sharpened into points, so it was easier for them to rip and tear at their victims. Their feet were those of a hawk's, their talons long and sharp as a knife's.