Onslaught

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Braids grinned avidly and fell in step. "That was the quick bit. Here's the magic."

Her face blanched. She gripped her stomach and wretched. Her mouth stretched violently wide, and from between ragged teeth, she spat a huge creature. The thing was all sliding triangles of black carapace and claws. It squeezed past distended jaws and thumped down on the ground.

As it rose, the hulking beast dripped saliva. A pair of bug eyes lolled in its bristly forehead. Teeth splayed in a false smile, and it galloped out across the sand.

"A brotal," explained Braid. "Saw it in dementia space and swallowed it to bring it here."

"Very nice," Phage said quietly as the monster tore into the front ranks of the slaves. Its claws were the length of sling blades, and they cut apart the dwarf vanguard. It seemed to be hungry for goblin.

Still more slaves came on, their weapons clutched tightly.

Impassive, Phage raised her hand and signaled her forces to launch their ranged attacks.

Grinning eagerly, the taskmasters complied. They brought their scourges hissing and snapping before them. From each metal-tipped thong spun vicious magic, the sorceries they had used on the slaves all along.

A torrent of spells whipped the dwarfish vanguard. The blackest bolts killed outright. Husks of skin and bone tumbled to the ground. Other strands, laced with blue radiance, were even more pernicious. They lashed the arms and legs of the slaves and attached themselves like the strings of a marionette. Dwarves and goblins turned, screaming resistance even as their limbs attacked their comrades.

A hundred slaves had fallen in those first moments. Nine hundred more remained. Each taskmaster would have to kill ten even to survive.

"Attack!" shouted Phage, hand held high.

They did. Taskmasters with whips and swords laid into slaves. Slaves with mauls and spikes fought back.

Braids ran atop them all, belching beasts into the fray.

Phage meanwhile strode in the midst of the fight. No one wished to attack her, whether because of her brutal reputation or because she was in some ways the great ruler they all revered. Slave and taskmaster both recoiled. They would rather ram into each other than confront their mistress. Phage walked, queerly calm in the midst of the horrors. Wherever she stepped, bodies rotted rapidly to nothing. Most had not been dead but only maimed, writhing until she touched them.

The crowd chanted something. Over the wild roar of the melee, it sounded merely like a great heartbeat-lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. Phage lifted herself on tiptoes to listen. At last, the sound came clear:

"Death-touch. Death-touch. Death-touch…"

That's what she would do. Her taskmasters were only butchers. She was the one who brought quietus. These had been good workers, and they deserved a rapid death. The crowd deserved it too.

After all, the world was watching, and so was the First.

Phage began the dance of death. Her hands floated out in gentle, flashing flourishes. She grazed the neck of a goblin… A step, a leap, and she caressed the cheek of a bloodied dwarf… She pirouetted, brushing a gigantipithicus…

"DEATH-TOUCH! DEATH TOUCH! DEATH-TOUCH!"-a staccato accompaniment to staccato death.

Phage swept forward, trailing her hands along the flanks of folk who parted before her… On she danced, death untouched in the midst of battle.