The Harrowing
++The enemy is right before me... in their thousands. The warriors of the Shields of Grace had tried their best redirecting and reducing the enemy's numbers to the plains of Tophet. Even given their mastery of defense, they couldn't stem the dark tide that intends to drown us all in our blood. But they did well… they died well… the lot of them. The Shields led the enemy to this plain; here they'll be halted once and for all. Here I rally with the rest of the pious, lay and clergy alike. We stand in defiance against them.
The damned bastards… they come.
The enemy is thirty paces from me… the clergy are silent, for in this moment will our actions speak louder than their words. Fifteen paces… I behold the first foe I shall slay; an acolyte dressed in the red of Ihojoo's wrath-vice circle. The fool grins as he makes eye contact with me, behind him are a horde of human-hounds. We are legion as they are, that was the subtle message.
We will stop them.
Five paces… out of instinct I scream a war cry laden with my courage, zeal and defiance.
"For the Blessed Scion of the One in the Highest… For the Glory of the Creator…"
A thunderous reply stuns the first line of the enemy for a few moments. I cannot tell whether it's their disbelief or the shock of our unity and voice… or some other thing… but as the response came, so did the culling of the malign human-cancer begin. My maul bashed open the skull of the Ihojoo acolyte, staining my chest plate with his vile blood.
"For the greatness of Mankind," my battle-brothers bellow in return.
I waded into the enemy, my maul a blur. Dealing blunt death to the damned with the passion of a hammer kissing the head of a nail. Both armies crashed into each other with the force of a thunderclap. The bloodcurdling melody of clashing metal, parting flesh, cries of pain and twisted joy… the wails and throes of death.
War.
It began to rain dirt, blood and body parts.++
Pahdraig waded into the enemy like a crazed caveman with his maul. He could hear enemies bellow blasphemies, and battle-brothers offer benedictions as the two armies came together in a cacophonous orchestra of metal, flesh and shrieks. A minute had gone when both armies had collided but the ground was already stained with dark crimson; the warzone littered with body parts and the life-fluid of foe and friend alike.
Pahdraig and his battle-brothers moved in tune as their strategies and tactics of war dictated. There were different units for these crusaders; the Heralds of Light, the Scions of the Hallowed Ghost, the Paladins and so on. Onyisinwe Pahdraig, with his contingent of five hundred men were frontline shock and awe troops. They were the Knights of Azrael, warriors who revered the infamous Angel of Death; they were the ruthlessly keen spear that pierced the impure heart of the sacrilegious. Harbingers of judgement and damnation upon the weak and cowardly, the despicable and the fallen.
While the Blood of the Blessed Lamb cast a holy veil upon the chosen children, the angel Azrael and his human acolyte-soldiers were free to pay unrepentant sinners their due wage.
Death.