"AAAAAAAAA"

A soldier got his stomach open

People were dying all around. The battle had descended into a struggle. The soldier fell to the ground, shocked. He had seen people getting killed, but never on this scale. This was his first war, and his first lost battle. This was an environment where people could not even show their skills. If you tried to parry one, two would stab you from behind. Not even the basic casting for body reinforcement skills he learned at bootcamp.

He should never have come to Carmesi. No king is worth this.

A head dropped on the bloody mud while he crawled back. The soldier didn't even flinch. He could not think of anything besides his own life.

The man got to the castle walls he was trying to defend and tried to make himself as small as possible among the bodies. The trembling made it difficult to pretend he was not alive.

Suddenly there was a change on the floor. The blood of the dead bodies started crawling among the floor like roots. As soon as one of those snakes of blood connected to a felled blood, more snakes were sprouted from the wounds of those dead.

When one of those tendrils crawled up to the soldier's own wounds he felt some of his blood mixing with the net and leaving his body, along with his energy.

He tried to get up and disconnect himself from the net, but the blood was persistent. His energy got so empty that he could no longer walk and fell to the ground again.

"So this is how I die, huh. I should've listened to my mother..."

After what felt like an hour, the only thing he could do was look up, at the sky. Up the wall he saw a single channel of blood, connecting the net to an elderly woman, with a child beside her, both wearing scarlet cloaks.

The woman had a calm expression, with light brown skin, pitch black hair and eyes. Her mouth was of the same color as her hair. The child looked much like her, without the angry expression. They were of a race he had never seen before, but that wasn't that uncommon in this cursed land.

They were also both heavily guarded, with a unit of shieldmen and knight-casters protecting them from arrows and projectiles desperately coming their way. The arrows bounced off their shields and fell close to where he was lying down.

The soldier, now ironically looking more dead than ever on the battlefield's floor, felt an increasing cold. It reminded him of his home up north. He never thought he would've missed it so much. Even after he bragged about how he was going to become a war-caster on the newly formed army.

Now, the screams of the battlefield grew ever distant.

Suddenly, the cold stopped increasing. He was too weak to check what was going on around him, but he could still look up at the wall. The woman muttered something to the silent child, looking satisfied.

Suddenly, she raised her hand, and the sky turned red. The net on the ground flew up and curled into a ball.

--

"This is the power of the Syngenia, Wic. Power from blood and blood from power. Engrave it into your heart and be proud to be part of it. "

The ball of blood floating in the sky contained the élan of a thousand dead and alive soldiers had a radius of three tall soldiers standing on top of each other. There was a limit to what a caster alone could do, but that limit was bent when you could wield the energy of a thousand people. Commanding this amount of power was not a simple thing, though.

"Hear me, élan. You are now mine, part of me. Pierce the heart of my enemies, and only my enemies!

Hardened spikes came out of the globe and pierced through the heart of the enemy soldiers, leaving only a fist-sized hole in the chest of a hundred soldiers at a time.

"Hear me again, my blood. Kralamor, rise out of the tides of blood and punish the invaders!"

The remaining blood unfolded into gigantic tentacles and started moving slowly through the air. A nightmarish creature with no torso or head, only limbs, was born and was moving in the direction of the other side's commander.

Suddenly, from the other side of the battlefield, an energy surge that felt like it would suck them in was felt. The armor of the dead soldiers got up and left their bodies, fusing together and forming steel monsters that looked like child toys. Even though they looked like that, the monsters were biting soldiers in half left and right.

The sound of clanking metal was heard as of the biggest one of them, what looked like a child dragon, head to the blood formation on the sky

"The House of Iron is at it again, Wic. This time it looks like it's the third daughter. That's so sad. I thought she liked you, hehe. This month's gathering of families will be awkward..."

She said with a quick laugh, while Wic frowned.

"My blood, fall like rain and snake to the neck of the Iron"

The woman was now tired. Her voice wasn't so dramatic anymore, but she looked satisfied. The monster exploded and the blood fell like rain. On the floor, the rain morphed into small snakes and became a stampede snaking in the direction of the enemy caster.

"Why do you have to talk like casting? And what the hell is Kralamor? The guards are looking at us..."

"Shhh. Imagination is the biggest weapon of a good caster, and talking helps me to picture it. Plus I look cool"

"Do you really think she likes me...?"

"Haha! You still have a lot to learn my boy! But don't worry, I'm not gonna kill her. The mercenary-mages families of Carmesi don't kill each other that easily."

The enemy commander sounded the horn and started retreating while the steel monsters fused again into a wall. Half of the soldiers were left behind the wall but lost the will to fight, either surrendering or dying. The battle was turned by the hand of a single person. That was the power of Lady Enor of the Syngenia family.