[color=steelblue] "Hold your ground!!" [/color] Dalious shouted.  

The few men left standing with Dalious had been killing the same assassins over and again, slowly losing their numbers in the process.  More of the shadowed immortals had come to join in, causing the fight to last longer than any would have expected.  They were trapped in a medium sized room of the castle, boarding up the windows and door as best they could with what little they had.  With each successful hole in the wall covered, another was almost immediately being torn down yet again.  

"There's no end to them!" one Barcean said in a panicked tone.

"How do we fight what can not be killed?" another asked.

The pirate had no answers for them.  He was to busy hacking off their limbs to even think of an end to all of this.  All he knew was that they had to keep fighting, until the end.  He was no leader of men, but the scared few left in his company still looked to him for a solution.  The table that was set upright against the door was starting to falter, with the assassin's blades rapidly piercing through and splintering the wood.  One of the company was grabbed by the hair at a window, the top of his head being scalped by the assassin on the other side.  The shrill scream from the poor man even gave the self proclaimed fearless pirate a shiver up his spine, leaving him with a nauseating feeling in the pit of his stomach.   The assassin let loose the man, who staggered for a bit with no top to his head, then he fell facefirst onto the floor like a dropping rock.  Dalious rushed over and drove his katana into the assassin's throat as the shadowed figure tried to enter, then shoved it back out for the moment.

"What do we do?" 

[color=steelblue] "We have to fight through them," [/color] Dalious said.  [color=steelblue] "We have to get to the others, to the prince." [/color]

"The prince is likely dead already!"

[color=steelblue] "Nevertheless, what choice do we have?" [/color] Dalious said.  The pirate stood to the center of the room, the three others remaining with him joining at his sides.  They waited with weapons drawn and positions held as the wood from the barricade continuously cracked.  [color=steelblue] "Ready yourselves!" [/color]

The doors burst open and in came a horde of the shadowed assassins.  Dalious struck the first at the shins, then he rolled by the next and brought his blade in an upstroke, spliting one of them in clear halves.  His companions held well for the moment, hacking down the first onslought with relative ease.  They kept coming, though, from as far into the dark hallway as could be seen.  One of the companions was overwhelmed by three assassins, as they all rushed him and stuck him simultaneously at his gut.  The next companion fell seconds later as he was struck at the back, a long blade piercing through his heart and out of his chest.  

It was now only Dalious and one other, who both fought back to back and slew a great number of the attackers.  One by one the assassins dropped at their hands, only to slowly rise again as more poured into the room.  Dalious' companion's hand was cut off by a swift strike, though the momentum of the moment pushed him on.  He screamed aloud and rushed the brunt of the foes, tackling those at the door to the ground.  

"GO!" he screamed, soon after being cut deeply all across his sprawled out body.

Dalious tossed a knife into one of the assassin's eyes, then dove over the bodies huddled by the door.  He quickly rushed to his feet and ran down the hallway toward the outside, only to be halted in his steps.  More approached at the end of the hall and those behind him began to rise.

[color=steelblue] "Should've stayed at sea..." [/color] he muttered.

Dalious used his shoulder to bash into one of the side rooms.  He ran through it and into the next, finding a staircase that led to more rooms at the upper level.  He had never had the chance of wandering the castle prior to this moment, so each room he entered was a gamble.  The castle became a dark labrynth from here on, as almost every corner seemed to have more of those things coming from it.  

He turned a corner and came face to face with three more attackers.  His lungs burnt and his breath was heavy, though he pushed forward.  He blocked the first few attacks and then shifted his body to the side, then hacked off one of their heads.  He grabbed the headless body before it fell and turned it so it was facing the other two.  He drove his katana deep through the corpse and held it up, using it as a shield against the other attacks.  With his free hand he let out his hidden gauntlet blade for offense.  Dalious managed to pass the other two to the other side, blocking every attack with the flesh from his shishkabob assassin shield.  The shield itself reanimated, but all it could do was wave its arms around aimlessly as Dalious carefully backed down the corridor. 

More assassins came from the staircase that he had just come from, quickly clogging the dark hallway as they slowly creeped toward the pirate.  He stuck one in the throat with his blade, then shoved the flesh shield at the others, toppling them over one another.  Dalious moved further down the hall until he tripped over another corpse, though this one was one of the prince's people.  From the floor, he looked over to see many of them, all severed and mutilated as far as his eyes could see.  He crawled amongst them, trying desperately to get by as the horde slowly approached yet again.  He gave one last glance back at the assassins, then grabbed something upright.  A leg, he turned back to look up at what appeared to be Drosil, though from his bottom view the mage looked slightly different.  There was a purplish glow about him and his eyes looked to be nonhuman from his perspective.  Normally the pirate would be joyed to see the man, but something was off.

[color=steelblue] "Dros..?" [/color] he said, suddenly feeling the nauseating feeling in the pit of his stomach come back to him.