Hi all. This is a re-write of one of my older stories. The origional was only a few thousand words long (split into three parts), while its sequal was much longer (and not even finished!), so I'm fleshing it out a little bit.

Hope you enjoy!

A Slayers Doom

Part One

The howl pierced the silent night, sinking daggers of fear into anyone who heard it. It was the sound of millennia of beasts of prey, all condensed into one, terrible, mind-shattering sound, and it was more than thatit had the harmonics of something other, something unearthly, somethingChaotic.

Sounds like our friends have found us again, Kai said, his deep, gruff voice emotionless as he stood and stared out into the deep, dark, endless expanse of trees that pressed in on them as if they had malicious life.

Korin shuddered. The memories of their trip through Athel Loren were still too fresh for that comparison to leave him unaffected.

There was another howl, closer this time, from another throat. Then a third, and a fourth. Soon it seemed every beast in this damned wood was joining in.

Kai spun his axe around. The runes on the blade shone fiercely, lit by a source far uncannier than the moonlight or the fire.

Were waiting! he bellowed, a challenge to all that waited in the circle of trees.

Korin was besides him. He could feel the heat of the fire on his back, but chilling fear pulsed through his veins. It felt that it was all he could do to stand there besides his blood brother, but he knew when the time came, he would fight.

The fear was strong, but he was a match for it.

He tightened his grip on his spear. The blue-green markings on its blade shone as brightly as the runes on Kais axe.

His heart began to pound as the sounds of snapping branches and the repetitive drumbeat of footfalls became audible. Kai roared out wordlessly and beat his chest with one hand, driving himself into a frenzy. If the grizzled, scarred slayer felt any fear he hid it well.

Korin waited. Time seemed to stretch on. Though he knew only minutes were passing, with the sounds of the hunt growing nearer and nearer, it seemed like an eternity. His heart slowed to a steady pulse. Everything was calm, everything was still.

And then all hell broke loose.

A beastman leapt out of the trees, massive, slobbering jaws gaped wide and filled with hundreds of needle-sharp teeth. It roared horrifically, a sound to break minds, and raised a crude cleaver high above its head. The smell of death and decay that hung about it was overpowering.

It met Kais axe coming the other way. As quick as it was, the dwarf was quicker. Black blood sprayed and bones were torn apart by the might blow. Kai bellowed a cry of victory and then the world was full of beasts.

Korin swung his spear around his body and advanced. All fear was gone now. All he prayed for was an honourable death.

A beast died with the tip of his spear in its throat. Its mad animal eyes stared at him with blank puzzlement as it tried to draw a breath that wouldnt come. He withdrew his spear and blocked an incoming blow from behind. The shaft, grown in the heartwood of Athel Lorens oldest trees, would not fail him now by splintering or snapping.

He spun the butt of his spear into a beasts face, cracking the jaw. The beast ignored the wound and darted forward with no other weapons than the claws that sprung from its human hands. Korin dodged backwards as they swiped past his stomach and then came in closer again. He twirled around the beasts outstretched aims and shoved his spear up into its spine. The beast shrieked and fell.

They were everywhere. He couldnt even count them. He drove them away with slashes with his spear, constantly looking out for any surprise attack from behind. One leapt at him and he ducked low, holding the spear angled towards his attacker. It barely had time for it to realise its mistake as it drove itself down onto the blade. As it writhed, Korin rose and slammed his forehead into the beasts face. He pulled his spear out and brought the blade down on its forehead. It slashed down and rent a might scar between its eyes and down to its chin.

They werent eager to attack now. They hadnt thought the two dwarfs they had been hunting for the better part of the day would be able to stand before them. Korin smiled grimly and drove into them, his elf-spear slashing left and right, always quick to parry and counter-attack.

How many died, he didnt know. He just drove onwards, towards the flickering fire, keeping ahead of the blows by only a few moments.

Kai was at the other side now, his axe leaving a bloody trail of ruin as he walked. He shouted out warcries as he struck, again and again and again.

Korin had been a slayer for five long years, and he had not yet been graced with death and redemption. Kai, he knew, was far older than he. His fearsome skills were the result of decades of battle against the enemies of the dwarf race.

Fists of iron! Hearts of stone! he yelled, cleaving a beastman down the middle.

Korin yelled out jubilantly, simply to scare the beasts, and tried vainly to match the other slayers achievements. He fought with his back to the fire, feeling it scorch his skin, and struck down any who came against him.

There seemed no end to the monstrosities. He fought humans with animal heads, insect heads, daemonic features; and he fought things infinitely stranger, aberrations of the laws of nature, things shaped by the cruel whims of the Dark Four.

His spear spun faster than lightning, blocking blows with superhuman speed. He knew that wasnt him. The enchantments cast on the weapon still were true, despite the many miles between this gods-forsaken clearing and its homelands.

He had wondered many times about the weapon. It had belonged to an elf prince, once, struck down by a treeman maddened by the warping touch of Chaos.

Why did it still serve him, the oldest enemy of its people?

It mattered not. He killed and killed and killed again, fire to his back, blood and death to his front, the names of the family he had left behind him always on his mind, if never on his lips.

He struck down a woman with snakes writhing from her scalp who had came at him with a piercingly human cry and a dagger shining with dark light. He fought a monster with blades of razor-sharp bone emerging from his flesh. As a giant with a wolfs head leapt at him, he dodged aside and drove it into the fire with jabs and stabs of his spear until flame consumed it and it begged for death in an unfamiliar tongue.

Korin took no joy in the killing. It was merely necessary, to drive the darkness from this world with fire and steel.

Blood ran thick and the night wore on. This was no mere hunting party; this was a full warband. He bled from small cuts and scrapes but the pain only urged him on.

More and more beasts came loping out from between the trees, called by the scent of blood on the wind.

Korin disembowelled a beast with a backwards slash of his spear and reversed the blow in time to stab another through the eye before he was struck down himself. Even as he fought to defend himself, he prayed to Grimnir for death.

It would not come, at least not this night.

Dawn found them, at last, filling the dark forest with weak sunlight. The beasts were more wary now. Korin and Kai fought back-to-back besides the fire.

Then there was a roar that shook the world, sent trees shaking as if blown by the mightiest gale, made Korins blood freeze. It was a roar that, to his dying day, he never forgot; it was the roar that haunted his dreams and made him scream out in the night.

The beasts looked up, and howled back. Then, as the sunlight got gradually stronger, they turned and fled, not looking back.

The adrenaline faded slowly, leaving Korin pale and shaking. He was covered in wounds, all of them dripping blood. The markings on his spear slowly faded into nothingness, as if they never existed.

He looked around at the carnage as if for the first time. Black birds were circling high above, waiting for their chance to feast.

Korin felt sick and weak with fear. Perhaps at nightfall they would return, and perhaps that fight would be his last. He shook at the thought.

And that roar.

He moaned a prayer to Valaya and fell to the floor, utterly exhausted. He felt like he hadnt slept in weeks. His every movement was feeble; he could barely even lift his head.

Come on, get up, Kai growled.

Korin ignored him, just for a moment. Kai stomped around the camp, making sure that they were all dead. Then he turned back to Korin. It looks like we werent the only ones attacked in the night, he said.

Korin looked up. A great billowing pillar of black smoke was rising over the trees to the north. The dawn sky was blood-red but to the west great storm clouds were brewing, twisting and writhing in themselves as if formed by some malicious god.