Chereads / The Plague Father / Chapter 13 - The Battle

Chapter 13 - The Battle

Greek Soldiers POV——

It seemed as if it was profane-black, our future. Our cold hands gripped our cold, steel swords. The wind whipped at our faces. The feeling of despair had wormed its way into our hearts, as if an ocean we were forced to drown in. We had suddenly felt no hope, as if a pit of emptiness of the future had settled in out bodies.

With the possibility of death shaking our knees. Some have succumbed to fatigue and are collapsing left and right, while others can only think of home and what they left behind.

At first we smelt it, truly awful smell. Then we heard it and felt it. The ground shook, as if scared of what to come, it shivered in fright. Then….we saw them.

An army of…o-of..how could I explain it? Living plague infested monstrosities. Bulbous and sickly green, all of them different sizes and shapes. The biggest, the most terrifying. Some had their innards hanging out of their fly infested bodies.

They charged as soon as they seen us. "THE TIME FOR VIRULENT REBIRTH IS UPON YOU! REJOICE IN PROLIFERATION SHARE YOUR GIFTS OF MAEGOR!" The huge ones voice reaches our ears, his voice filled with insanity.

The starless sky was casket-black and brooding. Even the clouds seemed morose. Gelid hands clasped algid steel as we gazed upon our foe. The cold, north wind keened and mewled through both the valley and the souls of our men.

The clouds cleared. Their grimy teeth glimmered cruelly under the eerie moon. Its phantom flame sent ribbons of chrysalis-silver light spilling onto the upraised shields of our men. The monsters swarmed and swayed like corn in a field, yet it seemed there were more of them than a thousand bushels could hold. Our commander raised our proud pennant aloft in defiance. It represented our dreams, our lives and our salvation. If it was taken, it would mean we were dead.

Their feet thundered on the valley's cold floor as they bellowed up at us. The monsters swarmed forward like a plague of ravenous locusts.

They crashed upon the shield walls. Our bones were cracking and crunching, breaking and popping, snapping and shattering, fracturing and rupturing, splitting and splintering as a horde of beasts smashed into us. Our commander screamed; "Fire!" in desperation.

Their filth covered feet clapped off the ground like the rumbling of thunder. A tempest of wicked, barbed fire arrows soared into the sombre sky. They sizzed and sizzled before hitting their targets. Fountains of magma-red blood sprayed into the air. It was butchery, but not upon them, on us instead.

They all had saurian eyes and they were festering with hatred for us. Our hearts pounded against our rib cages and our neck hairs felt like pins with the terror of it all. The slithering sounds of thousands of swords being unsheathed did not help the more frightened at all.

It was carnage. The septic smell of death hung over the battlefield. It was a battle of head-clasping horror. The acrid taste of blood rose up in our mouths. Oh god…the smell, ungodly of all the words, as if words to describe it were impossible.

The effluvium of death was all around us. The battlefield had been baptised in blood and the bitter, mordant perfume of corpses emanated from it.

Our harnesses were chinking and dinging as swords were clinking and clashing. Our chain armour was jingling and tinkling as axes were clattering and clanking into wooden and metal shields. We fought clanging and clangourous under the seething, spite-filled sky.

The theatre of death filled up with keening and caterwauling sounds as the sodden earth became slick with innards. Men were groaning and yowling as they became oily with copious amounts of blood.

Screaming, screeching, snarling, squealing, blubbering and choking. Titian-red blood spurted from our wounds as men wailed and screamed. The ground became greasy, slippery, and slick with gore, namely intestines and bloody sludge.

Even worse had yet to come, the men we had rode with had started to become increasingly sick. They suffered from multiple different diseases at once. Literally throwing up their bowels onto their brothers in arms.

3rd POV——

Some had even begun to eat and feast on fellow soldiers.

The field is littered with weapons, gore and destruction. Red, black and brown are the new colors of what was once a delicate, lush field, which has now become the stage of a terrible battle. The air which would normally carry the delicate scents of flowers and fruits is now heavy with the screams of dying fighters and the scent of their blood, enough to destroy whatever courage is left in the survivors.

The air was so putrid and plague infested that even the smallest amounts of being here guaranteed a painful death of illness. The screams of men mixed with the joyous laughter of the demons was bowel-loosening to those with ears.

"T-This…..In Zeus's n-name, W-wha?" Faced with such brutal carnage, even goddess of violent death trembled in wondrous yet stomach sickening carnage.

"….." Hermes himself was speechless. His mouth gaping, inadvertently tasting the air caused him to throw up golden ichor through his divine nose and mouth.

Thanatos himself could only watch in morbid fascination, "groovy" he mumbled to himself.