[h2]The Enemy of My Enemy...[/h2]

The Eternal Hunger giggled, as Grey spoke. “Aww, is the big bad baby guardsman unable to take a little suffering of his friends?” She bared her teeth in a mockery of a grin, as Grey rushed her. She nimbly sprang away out of the kneeing. However, she misjudged the length of his axe. The axe blade caught her shoulder, neatly separating it from her body. “Tis but a scratch!” She declared, gesturing for Grey to come at her again with her remaining arm. Not a single drop of blood leaked from her wound.

“Enough!“ Farian spoke from behind her, practically spitting the word out. “Lets finish them already. Toying with them is unnecessarily cruel.” The pyromancer lifted a hand blood red flames gathering in his palm again. He looked at Grey, some form of sympathy on his face before speaking. “For what it’s worth. I’m so-“ With a dull crunch and a sputter of flame, a the jagged remains of a farming hoe erupted out of through his chest. The end sticking out of his chest was blackened and burning. Farian let out a scream, collapsing to the ground and writhing in pain as he tried to remove the hoe from his body. 

“[I]MURDERERS!!![/i]” A familiar voice filled with rage and hate howled. From the burning pile, corpses began to rise again grasping whatever weapons happened to be at hand, and began shambling towards the Pyromancer, the Vitamancer, and the man sitting on the rock.

The boy had awoken.  

With a flick of his wrist, the hoe ripped out of Farian’s chest, drawing another scream from the Pyromancer.  He walked towards them, spittle flying from his lips as he screamed at the sources of his hatred. “You thought they would kill me!! You thought I would forget, forgive!! You were wrong! For the deaths of my family and my subjects, YOU WILL DIE!!” Farian stumbled to his feet, flames gushing from the wound in his chest like blood. The flames in what served as his eyes and his mouth were fluttering erratically, growing steadily dimmer. A brief glance at the approaching horde was all he needed. In a heartbeat he was off in a stumbling run through the woods. “After him!!” The boy screeched, running into the woods with his flaming zombie horde following at a fast shamble.  The forest was already beginning to burn. 

After cutting down the first few corpses that came at him with a lazy ease, the man leapt off the rock and jogged towards Althalus.  “You leave me again,” The Eternal Hunger hissed at Grey, “and I’ll eat the human and the half snake alive.” She leapt at him, moving with unnatural speed and tried to shove her, now clawed, fingers into his face. 

The man roughly flipped Althalus over and grabbed his stump of a hand, which was oozing blood at an alarming rate and showed no sign of stopping, drawing another scream from the assassin. “Shut up. I’m going to help you.” The man snapped at his ‘patient’, his voice rough and gravelly. A ball of flame appeared in his open hand, and without hesitation or warning he shoved it straight down onto the wound. The sizzle of blood and flesh being burned and the smell of cooked flesh filled the air.  Althalus passed out. After briefly inspecting the freshly cauterized wound, the man dropped him. 

“Oh no. You can’t go to sleep just yet. Wakey wakey.” Leaning down he placed a finger on Althalus’ forehead, his eyes turning from red to purple. “Awaken. I command it.” The man’s voice was now deep and smooth, almost soothing. Althalus’s eyes fluttered open and a low groan escaped him. “Fuuuck. Everything hurts. I feel like my hand is…” He raises his now amputated right hand. “Missing.” He paused for a moment, staring at it in shock. Then he started, remembering where he was.  “That ugly bitch! And flame face! Where are they? What’s going on? Who are-“ “Silence.” The man cut him off. “’Flame face’ as you so eloquently put it, is running through the woods. ‘Ugly bitch’ is attacking your guardsman. Your Naga lover is wounded, but I’ll fix that soon. The plant woman is in the bushes, protected by something. The other human is as okay as one can be with bite marks on their neck.” With that the man turned and walked away, heading towards the fight between Grey and Eternal hunger.

Drawing his sword once more, the man lifted his right hand and cut it off in one fell stroke. Blood gushed outwards, collecting disturbingly in one puddle, before he just stopped bleeding. As Althalus looked on in horror, the man’s hand began to reform while he spoke to the blood. “Arise, slave. We are Legion, and we have long ago conquered you. Obey our commands and enter the mortal realm through our sacrifice.” The blood boiled and hissed, gradually forming shape into a [url=http://i.imgur.com/jkIm1IL.jpg]demon[/url].  “Heal the Naga. You know what to do.” As the beast nodded it’s obedience, Legion spoke once more. “Do [i]not[/i] eat her. If she has any bite marks from you on her, we will ensure you suffer.” With another, far more shaky, nod the demon sprang off, moving as quickly as a deer through the rough ground.  Reaching Mar within a few moments, it oozed a crystal clear slime from its tentacles onto her body. Actively seeking the burns, the slime gathered atop them and numbed the pain the Naga was feeling.  As it sat upon the burn marks, it slowly began to turn a red color, as if it was absorbing the burns.