The guards in the slum district were in charge of the gates we're having a break.
"Damn these demi-humans… having to find a way to bypass the tolls." One asked
"Yeah, they should be punished, they always climb out walls like stray cats… theyr should be ashamed of themselves, while Dominik worked us overtime." Another added.
The tolls in the slums district of Town Tata has been overpriced, it is forced to pay ten silver, in or out.
At a distance, the guards heard something was screaming beyond the gates, the guards decided to check it out and to their shock, they went pale.
"Sweet mother of gods."
The sound of a thousand boots trampling the mud was like a slow, rhythmic drumbeat of doom. The heavy iron-shod gates that separated the slums from the inner district.
"Push! For the children they took!" a blacksmith roared, his massive hammer ringing against the gate's lock.
"For every meal we missed!" a mother screamed, her pitchfork leveled like a spear.
On the other side, the guards panicked. We could hear the frantic clatter of armor and the shrill blasts of whistles.
"Reinforcements! To the South Gate! The rats are out of the sewers!" a captain yelled, his voice cracking with a fear he had never known before.
The guards formed a phalanx, their heavy steel shields overlapping and their batons raised. They expected the people to cower, as they always had. They expected the trash to scatter at the sight of authority.
They were wrong.
With a deafening crack of splintering wood and shearing metal, the gates buckled. The lock snapped, and the doors flew open, rebounding against the stone walls. For a heartbeat, there was a standoff, the gleaming silver of the guards against the rusted iron and raw rage of the poor.
"They think you are animals! Show them the bite of the beasts they created!" Mochi's voice soared over the crowd, his sword pointed straight at the phalanx.
With a primal scream, the tide of demi-humans and laborers broke over the guards. The shields didn't hold. The batons were useless against the sheer momentum of hundreds of bodies fueled by decades of starvation.
"This is for Clara!"
"Please! No! Have a heart"
"And we, are just following our hearts."
The air became thick with the scent of iron and smoke. The guards, who had spent years mocking the filth from the safety of their towers, were now being pulled down into the very dirt they despised. It was a reckoning.
I watched from the flank, my blood-mana humming in my veins. The desperation of the people was a physical force, more powerful than any spell I could weave.
"The way is open, Roxy. The guards are pinned down here. Dominik's manor is vulnerable. The beast is trapped in its den, and its own victims are the ones holding the door." Harold said via earpiece
He looked at the burning horizon, then back at me.
"Are you ready to finish this? No more hiding. No more Elodie. Just us, and the monster on the hill."
The air was thick with the scent of ozone and iron as the Wall of Silence became a slaughterhouse. I felt the stolen mana in my veins pulse, fueling the transformation of my weapon. The serrated blood-steel of my sword liquified and snapped into the elegant, lethal curve of my Blood Bow.
"Go, Mochi! I'll clear the path!"
I loosed a volley of arrows, each one a screaming streak of crimson. They didn't just hit; they sought out the weak points in the guards' armor, the gaps in the neck, the joints in the greaves. As the arrows found their marks, they siphoned the vitality of the dying, returning it to me in a dark, restorative surge.
Mochi became a blur of silver and gold in the center of the carnage. His Agile Eyes were glowing with an ethereal light, turning the chaotic battlefield into a slow-motion map of anatomy. He performed a gruesome dance. His longsword hummed as it carved through steel and bone alike. With every fluid rotation, he bypassed shields and parries, leaving the front line of the Bronze Coin collapsed in a heap of broken metal and ruined flesh.
"Is this the trash you feared? Look at your blood! It's the same color as ours!"
Mochi's voice was a terrifying, guttural roar as he stood atop a pile of fallen shields.
The reinforcements from the merchant district arrived only to find a nightmare. The demi-humans, fueled by decades of suppressed rage, didn't flinch at the sight of more swords. They surged forward like a tidal wave. Pitchforks met breastplates, and heavy hammers crushed helmets. The polished cobblestones of the district, once cleaned daily by servants like Clara, were now slick and stained a deep, crimson.
There was no mercy left in the slums. The guards who had spent years treating the poor as disposable were now being discarded themselves.
"The path is open! The Manor! To the monster's throat!"
The crowd poured through the breach, a relentless force of nature leaving the merchant district behind in ruins. Mochi turned back to me, his armor painted red, his eyes burning with a light that was no longer human.
"The distraction is complete, Roxy, Dominik's army is drowning in the streets. Now... let's go finish the man who thought he could own us."
The momentum of the revolution carried us like a flood toward the gilded heart of Tata. The royal gates of the Callus Manor loomed ahead, massive, reinforced iron structures adorned with the crest of the Bronze Coin. They represented centuries of oppression, but tonight, they were just another obstacle.
Mochi skidded to a halt, his eyes tracking the sentries on the battlements.
"Roxy, I'm going over. I'll disable the locking mechanism from the inside. Stay here and keep the heat off the people. If those towers start raining fire, we're finished!"
"Roger that! Don't take too long, or there won't be anyone left to let in!"
I shouted, dropping into a wide stance and drawing my blood bow to full tension.
With a burst of speed, Mochi leaped, his silver boots catching the stonework as he scaled the wall with predatory grace. Below, I became a turret of crimson light. Every time a guard appeared on the ramparts with a crossbow, a blood arrow found its mark, blossoming in their chests and keeping the revolutionaries' advance from stalling.
But the air suddenly turned cold. A sickening, rhythmic crack echoed over the screams of the riot.
From the shadows of the manor's secondary portcullis, a figure emerged. He wore tattered, ceremonial robes, and in his hand was a whip braided with black thorns that shimmered with a dark, oily poison. With a single, fluid lash, he tore through the front line of the defense, the thorns shredding armor and flesh as if they were paper.
I pivoted, loosing three arrows in rapid succession. Thrum-thrum-thrum!
The man didn't dodge. He simply reached out with a massive, pale hand and caught all three mid-air, the kinetic force barely ruffling his sleeve. My heart hammered against my ribs, another monster, just like Dominik.
He stepped into the torchlight, and the breath left my lungs. He didn't have one neck, he had two. Two heads sat atop a massive, distorted torso, their skin a sickly, translucent white.
"I am Cassi," the head on the left hissed, its voice like dry parchment.
"And I am Isaac," the head on the right growled, a jagged grin revealing rows of sharpened teeth.
They spoke in a haunting, discordant unison, their eyes locked on me with predatory hunger.
"And we were Lara's favorite apprentices. You've caused our mistress quite a bit of trouble, little flea."
They cracked the thorned whip again, the sound like a thunderbolt.
"Dominik is busy with your cat friend. But for you? We have something much more... painful... in mind."