There wasn’t time to process anything. I found enough time for one quick backward glance, showing me a crowd of countless demons in proper armor and fielding proper weapons.
Then a wave of rage, obsession, and anguish rolled over me.
I wanted to double over, or maybe puke outright. Instead, my new instincts pushed me to draw my weapons. Pulling my shoddy sword and half-way decent dagger from their sheaths, I gripped them with desperate strength.
It was immediately obvious that my fellow armed humans on either side had it much worse than I did. As the demonic command swept over them, they all stumbled forward. Apparently, though, we weren’t the command’s real target. That honor belonged to the larger mass of mindless, collared humans milling around the portal in front of us.
I fought a full-body shiver as the spikes of the collars all lit up, and then stabbed down into the humans’ necks. The zombie-like humans roared in agony and clawed at their throats.
Then the demons’ rage-scream hit them. Abandoning all thoughts of pain or any sense of self, they charged the portal.
As they passed through into the other world, a transformation swept over them. Their skin blackened and grew as rough as concrete. Glowing red veins popped out all over their bodies. Horns jutted out from their heads. And each and every one grew to at least four times their previous size.
They almost put one of those collars on me. I barely woke up, and that asshole already had one in his hands. A moment later, and...
I shuddered, stopping my train of thought there.
"Perfect," the demon commander declared. He hadn’t moved from his stage. All the demons seemed content to wait as their mindless mutated war machines streamed through the portal. "Now... probationary troops, charge!"
The words had an immediate effect, especially when echoed by the screams of the demonic troops behind me. Instead of keeping hold of my sanity, the unrestrained emotions and urges took over my actions.
Along with the other human troops, I broke into an all-out sprint. The demonic command surged through me, pushing me onward, requiring everything my body had to offer. The only acceptable thought in my head was getting to that fortress city and killing every last creature inside, sentient or not.
There were just a few issues with that.
For one thing, the city was surrounded by massive walls, taller than any sword-wielding civilization should have been capable of constructing. Another important point was that the human defenders were doing an incredible job thinning out the numbers of mindless brutes rushing to attack those walls.
As streaks of wildly vibrant colors shot down from the walls, hammering the mutated humans and obliterating my new comrades-in-arms, I didn’t feel pride. I didn’t feel calm and collected. I felt only mind-numbing fear.
And enthusiastic bloodlust, of course. The demonic command wouldn’t let me forget that.
Unfortunately, that command didn’t include any hint of interest in our survival. No matter how hard I tried, I could not stop the rage-wave from dragging my body ever onwards. My crazed autopilot was determined to drive both blades into the first living enemy combatant within reach. Getting to said combatants was my only purpose.
Gigantic rocks were launched from within the city. Unlike the spell barrage, these weren’t aimed at the front-line monsters. The missiles soared over the mutants’ heads to land directly amidst the approaching group of much squishier humans.
My group.
Even then, I could not stop. Huge boulders crashed down mere meters away, pelting me with clumps of dirt and stones, or on multiple memorable occasions, blood and viscera. Still, the wave of obsession drove me forward. Seeing my comrades slaughtered, anger began to ignite in my chest.
My instinct urged me to ride the wave instead of trying to fight it. Save your energy, the voice said. Focus on what lies ahead. We’ll make them pay.
The voice was right. That first line of mutated humans would be a deciding factor in my group’s survival. Still running flat-out, I tried to see what was happening at the wall.
To my relief, I saw signs of success. In favor of the demons. The spell barrage managed to cut down every four out of five mutants. But there were just too many attackers. Even taking out most of the mutants left hundreds who finished the charge and crashed straight into the walls.
Crashed into them, and immediately exploded. Literally.
Of course. Of course, these mutants were cannon fodder, figuratively and literally. I was reminded of which side I was on. The demon side had no concept of the ’sanctity of life.’
While I ran, my eyes feverishly scanned the ground ahead of me, struggling to see past the ever-present stampede. When I spotted what I was looking for, I could have sobbed. With another smart use of will, I slammed my dagger back into its sheath. Then I bent down and used my newly free hand to scoop up a shield that had failed to protect its previous owner.
A rough glance ahead showed the number of mutants had been cut by more than half. What they’d accomplished, however, spoke for itself.
With a final loud groan, a whole section of the wall simply collapsed. Gravity grasped the screaming defenders and sent them careening down to their deaths.
It still wasn’t enough to prevent another round of arrow fire.
Looking around, I cursed. There wasn’t a single nearby corpse I could easily hide behind. But I did have a decently sized shield that could cover more of my upper body. In that moment of dire need, I could have taken my chances.
Instead, with the feeling of something snapping inside my chest, I pushed myself just a little more — just far enough to reach out and grip the shirt of the man running right ahead of me.
His wheeze of surprise wasn’t something I would ever forget. But when I collapsed to my knees, between him and my shield, I was fully covered.
My meat shield, of course, was not quite as lucky. The thunk of arrows hitting flesh was nauseating even without feeling the impacts. Still, once the volley was over, it was surprisingly easy for me to push the man aside and keep running.
When I gave myself to the demonic will, I felt empowered. My body never felt so light as I sprinted forward in search of my first victim. All concerns of morality fled my mind because of it.
Or so I tried to convince myself, even as I felt a gaze burn itself into my back as the last sparks of life left my human meat shield.
Crossing the last stretch of land to the fortress city was trivial. The mutants had already spread well beyond the breach they made, and I could hear the screams of the defenders’ pain well before I could see their slaughter.
Getting through the breach itself was another matter.
Invaders like me were scrambling over the collapsed section of the wall, struggling against both the treacherous footing and the haste born out of bloodlust. More than a few times, a careless swing of a weapon at the hand of an ally brought an end to another life.
As I scrambled over the last section of this collapsed wall and dropped down beyond it, I spotted my first local.
A group of knights were trying to maintain a somewhat orderly retreat. They held shields large enough to cover their whole bodies. Pressing the shields together and jabbing between them with lightning-quick ripostes, they were able to hold back a significantly larger group of enemies.
The weight of the demonic command swelled in my chest, but I kept moving at an angle. Somehow, it was getting easier to think, to subvert my orders to an interpretation that suited me.
The city behind the fortress walls wasn’t messy. If anything, it was the peak of efficiency, with streets laid out in an orderly grid. I took advantage of that to slip right past the group of knights, running down a road parallel to their retreat.
Frankly, it was easy.
All my nominal allies seemed incapable of higher thought. They just kept throwing their bodies at the defenders, burning up in the face of their orders. The knights, though pressured, were fully up to the task of cutting down this mob of mindless attackers.
So when I snuck up from behind the knights and went for the kill, I had a completely clear shot.
It was halfway through the motion that disbelief struck me. On instinct, I had ’bound’ the sword that had been handed to me. On instinct, I had decided to keep the sword drawn, rather than my dagger.
With widening eyes, I looked down the cracked blade’s dull, unappealing edge right as I thrust it into a knight’s back.
I expected everything to go wrong in spectacular fashion. Perhaps my blade would just shatter, leaving me to face the rage of a whole group of knights. Perhaps my cunning ambush and lethal strike would turn into more of an ineffectual clubbing.
Despite the weapon’s faults and my own panic, the sword easily found purchase. Even with though it looked like it would shatter with the slightest contact, it bit deep. Blood fled the knight’s body and immediately filled the blade’s many grooves. With a rush of something passing through me, I felt the bag at my hip grow marginally heavier.
Of course, that was when several angry knights spun around and spotted the intruder in their midst, their eyes alight with vengeance for the loss of their friend.