"I've never seen you like this," Jack the Warden muttered, as he watched the columns of armoured satyrs pull their siege towers slowly through the ashen waste of the once prosperous town.
"Oh, this old thing? It's brand new," Kenji smirked in his base form, and thoroughly enjoying how tall he was. "It's for premium members of my species only you know, can't pay-to-win this bad boy," Kenji continued nervously. In his scrappy pockets, he turned the flowery key incessantly in one hand, itching for this war to end and his adventurers to continue.
But there was at least one more obstacle in his way.
The Final Boss.
In front of his dark satyr magicians strode the enemy general, now armoured in black steel filled with burning demonic runes. Black spikes thrust from his back like a porcupine, each ending in a human skull. The intense aura of power made both the general and the few remaining hellfire wielding elites around him seem like an army by themselves and depending on power scaling, Kenji was well aware that the Boss room was often indeed as powerful as the event.
Their hooves crushed the blackened skulls of dead satyr and human alike as they marched, their magicians already raising strange demons using the bodies of the dead. Blood and flesh capped with a pristine white skull, the 'Bloodfiends' as Kenji decided to call them arose by the dozen to reinforce the faltering enemy numbers.
Yet packed tight as sardines and exhausted, Kenji couldn't say his allies were in a position to fight off the enemy attack. Not fresh troops of a superior callibre at least, not without one last trick.
Turning to Violet who hid at their back, he nodded. Defended by several Silver Swan Knights and the best of the adventurers, she nodded in turn.
The attack was swift, as disciplined teams of satyrs alongside their remaining monsters pushed the siege engines over ruined buildings and towards the walls. Magicians let loose with their last spells, while archers let their arrows sing.
By the time the enemy made it to the walls their numbers had thinned, and yet when the wooden doors of the siege towers opened, fresh troops swarmed the cramped walls all the same and battle was rejoined. Butchery to the extreme, each moment led to a score of fresh bodies and a rising tide of blood that quickly wet the ashen stones.
Waiting for the right moment, Kenji watched from a distance as his allies were slaughtered by the enemy elites, until finally the enemy general himself arrived. Strong as a troll, fast as an elf, and with an astounding talent for murder, the Far King's champion drove a bloody path right through their defensive line.
Turning into the Sun Elf Queen, Kenji danced forward with his Fae blades in hand. Sending blasts of wind at the enemy, he battered the Satyr General's guard before engaging in wicked Fast combat.
Covered in enchanted and runed gear, the Satyr could fight toe to toe with Kenji despite his all powerful body.
Lord Swarn, Jack the Warden, The Flower Knight, Almanac and every other warrior of renown focused their attentions utterly on supporting Kenji. The plan called for a huge sacrifice amongst the common man, but only with such focused attention could the massive number of enemy elites be prevented from getting on Kenji's way.
Kenji and the Black General flashed blades along the walls, Kenji quickly forced to activate his illusions to get in a pair of strikes across the Satyr General's torso. Fast as a viper, the general blasted away the illusions, lances of hellflame sent shrieking through them and towards Kenji. Blasting up on a wall of wind, Kenji flew through the sky to turn on a dime and slash the general across the shoulder. It's armour held firm, and it's curved blade scored a hit across Kenji's leg.
Activating his healing ring, Kenji closed in and drove his blade beneath the General's ribs, and scored another hit on his arm before a fiery sword plunged into his shoulder. Screaming he staggered, yet managed to dodge the following strike that would have sent his head rolling.
Bursting forward, Kenji used his wind magic to pivot through the air and launch a blade right up through the general's neck to slice through his brain. In return for the daring shot, Kenji's entrails were pulled out by an armoured hand, his heart ceasing to beat just as he drove his second dagger through the General's eye.
Collapsing beside him, the General made the mistake of thinking Kenji already dead. Activating his invisibility ring even as his blood ran cold, Kenji withdrew his last blade, waited for the General to raise his head, then stabbed him through the other eye right before the Elf Queen body died.
Shifting to the Boy Knight, Kenji backed away as the ruined head of the Satyr general gasped and blood cascaded down his front. Across the walls the fighting became only fiercer, Kenji and the dying General a bastion of the defenders while all along the walls they instead died in droves.
As expected, the enemy General did not die immediately and instead his flesh started to pull itself back together. Kenji knew not what sick enchantments or dark bargains were necessary to produce such a potent healing ability, but given a few moments the enemy General would be raised back to his full potential. A potential enhanced to the point even Lord Swan would be in dire danger, and certainly, no other fighter could hope to match so magically enhanced ability.
Fiery purple crystals sprung up around the General, who started to scream manically. Glittering enchantments burst in quick succession, the rush of magic bringing the creature undone.
Similarly purple fire crystals errupted along the enemy lines, their elites letting go of their hellfire weapons with horror or froze only to be cut down. The humans attempted to pull back as confusion reigned, the chaos only broken as Kenji claimed the General's corpse and became him.
Still wounded, Kenji could at least force the body to function long enough for Silver Swan priests to heal him. Then he turned, and ran.
Seeing their general flee, like a herd of common goats, the remaining saytr soon followed.
"All forces retreat!" Kenji bleated in the satyr language, "do not attack the humans, and regroup all our forces outside this town's walls!"
With him came Violet guarded by the remainder of her elites, Kenji staying close to ensure none of the Far King's army harmed them. But they weren't the Far King's army any more, they were Kenji's.
"Line up now. Line up and be set free!" Kenji roared, the still substantial size of his forces having gathered in front of Violet. "Your liberation has come at last, no longer will you need to serve the Far King against your will! And soon we will march on his lands, to liberate our brothers and sisters still kept in pens like animals and used only for the Fae's wars! Just like me, YOU. ARE. FREE!"
The saytr cheered, and when Violet unbound their minds of the Fae's magic, they roared. Tears streaked down bloody faces, and the call to liberate the rest of their kind flooded their ranks with riteous fervour.
"They forced us to provide our souls to demons in return for their disgusting favours!" Kenji roared, appalled to discover these hellfire weapons were the result of forced demonic deals, "well we shall see how they like the taste of hellflame. We know where the Fae live, we know where their hidden mansions are, and we can set the whole damned realm on fire if our demands are not immediately met!"
Raising his curved blade drenched in black hellfire high, Kenji was met by an ocean of bloodlust as a lifetime of bitter resentment suddenly turned into realisable revenge. They would die happy if only their people were freed from the iron fist of the Fae, or if at least they could hang some of the Fae master's heads from their horns like trophies. If nothing else the cruel treatment of their pale masters had bred the satyr into a savage people, who now felt no issue with burning the very gardens that they had cultivated for decades. For some enchanted to slow down age, centuries.
It was at this point a forest child with the golden clothes of a servant to the Far King arrived, Kenji ordering him to be allowed through unharmed.
"General Ebonyhorn, can I not convince you to return to his majesties service?" the boy said carefully, Kenji leading him away from the riled up satyr army.
"No, no you cannot. All that you can do now is make a deal with me, or see your precious realm burned to cinders."
"You cannot win, the Far King only sent a single Knight here and some expendable creatures. You cannot face his giants, Forest Titans and Fae soldiers while still thinking victory is anything more than a sweet dream."
"The thing is," Kenji said, turning to stare the messenger right in his leafy eyes, "we don't need to win. Just cause enough damage to show the Far King is weak, and that with some help from the Fae aristocracy a new Fae King might be elected. What might...Greenbeard, for instance, think of that?"
Still as a statue the forest boy paused.
"What is your proposed deal?"
Kenji grinned.