I'm really sorry about the delay. The admins are dragging their feet.
Chains and Swords
"Noah!" Noah was shaken awake and instinctively pulled out his dagger to attack the unknown foe. Instead, he felt Valia grab his wrist. "It's me, come on," she said in the pitch blackness.
"What's going on?" he asked, trying to shake off the lingering grip of slumber. Nearby, Panma and Shannon were awoken by the commotion and asked the same question.
"I think something is going on outside."
Screams and snarls then echoed across the village, and the light of several flames entered the tent. Noah and Valia rushed outside to find the villagers in a sea of burning yurts, screaming and panicking as their camp was raided. Several dozen fiends had surrounded the village, armed and armored like the slavers they encountered earlier. Their hulking bodies, wrapped in steel plates and behind broad shields, were all but immune to the centaur's arrows, and every warrior that charged them simply ended up as another layer of blood on their weapons.
Nord galloped over, clutching his bloody arm. "Chief Panma, they've erected some kind of wall of spikes around the village! We can't get out!"
"Gather the women and children in the center of the village and keep them safe, then rally the men. Tonight, we are at war," the chief replied.
"Chief Panma, with respect, a counterattack right now will just cost you more men," said Noah. "Focus on organizing your people, get them grouped together and ready to run. Valia, if you can create an opening in that fence, then all the villagers can escape from this enclosure and leave the fiends behind."
"I'm on it. I take it you're going after the leader?"
"You know me well. Chief Panma, are you with us?"
"You've helped us once. I trust you to help us again."
Noah and Valia split up, Valia heading to the fence to bring it down and Noah searching for the mysterious leader. As Nord described, the barrier was made of spikes growing from the ground like bamboo shoots. However, each point was formed from solid bone rather than wood.
"What in the world?" she hissed.
"You! Get away from there!" A fiend came charging towards her, unhindered by his thick armor.
Valia raised her sword. "Zodiac: Baol! Teez!" Wielding enhanced strength and her mana-sharpened blade, Valia lunged for the behemoth and sliced him in half down the middle. "Don't interfere." She then went to work hacking away at the fence, but even with all her power, it proved far more difficult than cutting down the armored fiend.
Meanwhile, Panma and the other men of the village ushered the confused and frightened villagers together and formed a protective wall of spears and bows around them. Everyone was in their centaur form, ready to run at the chief's orders. In the group's center were the women and elders, carrying small children on their backs and trying to comfort them in the presence of the monstrous fiends. They roared and snarled, banging their weapons against their shields and rattling chains to terrify their prey, and then all fell silent as two men stepped forward, both garbed in black cloaks.
One of them, carrying a sword, pulled back his hood to reveal pale skin, pointed ears, and wicked eyes. "Men and women of the horse tribe, I am Deacon, and I come to you tonight with an offer. Join us, or die. The mighty beings around you were given the same choice, given the chance to shed their weakness and experience true power, and look at them now. Aren't they beautiful? Accept the blessing of the Profane, and a new life awaits you, a life of conquest and victory. Those who refuse will be butchered where they stand and fed to the survivors. So, what say you?"
Nord answered Deacon with an arrow, though he dodged it by tilting his head. "You say you offer us power, but you carry chains! The only life you can give us is one of anguish and horror!"
Deacon cracked a deranged grin. "Anguish? Horror? Let me teach you what those words mean." He raised his sword above his head, and several centaurs shuddered in sight as the sleeve of his cloak dropped. Rather than holding a sword, Deacon's arm had become a sword, a blade made of solid bone growing from his wrist. Attached to his forearm was his parasite, almost completely fused with the tissue. The second cloaked man half-heartedly motioned to stop him, but Deacon stabbed the ground with a squeal of delight.
A magic circle appeared around his arm, written with black runes, and flashed as bone spikes burst from the ground under Nord, piercing his limbs and body a dozen times. He howled in agony as he was hoisted into the air above the heads of his kin, then was silenced as a spike drove up through his chin and skewered his eye, narrowly missing his brain. All the wounds were nonfatal, leaving him unable to move and gripped by indescribable pain. Women and children screamed at the sight, watching his blood run down the spikes.
"That is the fate of those who refuse the Profane. If you'd like to avoid getting impaled on the stick, I have someone who will convince you of the value of the carrot." He turned to the man behind him. "Go on, then, tell them the good news."
The man began to transform beneath his cloak, with his two human legs changing into a horse's body. He removed his cover to show the parasite latched onto his chest. He appeared gaunt, and his eyes were dark and sunken, but he had a smile on his face. In the center of the crowd, Shannon covered her mouth in shock while tears streamed down her eyes.
"Father," she gasped.
"Friends, family, it is I, Korbin. I've come back to you, to deliver our clan to salvation."
"Korbin died, you are a deceiver!" Panma shouted, but deep down, he could never forget the face of his daughter's husband and granddaughter's father.
"It really is me, Chief. I am Korbin, the same Korbin that hunted with you in the eastern hills, who fished with you in the Ysanan River, who pulled out that arrow that hit your shoulder all those years ago, who married Lenore and raised Shannon under your proud gaze."
"Don't you dare say her name, not while standing beside that monster!"
"Father!" Shannon cried out as she tried to break free of the group, but Panma stopped her.
"That isn't your father!"
"But I am, and I'm here to fulfill a father's duty, to give my child what she needs to live and be happy. When I was taken, I was full of fear and doubt, just as you are now, but that's because I didn't understand what awaited me." He started petting the parasite on his chest. "That all changed when I received this wonderful gift. Words can't describe it, the power it gives you, power that erases all fear and pain, the power to take whatever you want and destroy whatever gets in your way! With this, we can purge the land of the humans and rule over all the tribes as kings, as gods!"
