For four(five, if you count the preview) chapters straight, I have treated you fellow readers and fans to nothing but boring politics and dialogue. No more! Now, in this flashback chapter, we return to the brutal war, combat, and that bloodshed which made IOTS famous in the first place(at least, that's what I think...)! Many might be thinking to themselves:just how did Maniac Cop, Marty, The Captain, and the Night School killer come to Alagaësia? Was it just a deus ex machina introduced by The Lobster's Claw? I say:NO! There is a legitimate way they arrived. What is it? Why don't you quit being lazy and actually read on, for a change?!
FLASHBACK
Matt Cordell yawned as he drove forward in the police cruiser, after having to wake up at 2:30 exactly, and now driving around, talking to the forensics experts, and talking to countless suspects for the last seven hours. He didn't get it; just because he was in a bunch of movies about a murderous police officer, that did not have to mean he really had to be an officer for his "day job" when he wasn't in another movie(which had been for quite a while now). And yet, that was that, and he was stuck in his position.
My life is one giant shitload, he depressingly thought to himself as his partner, Officer Joe Vickers, turned towards him.
"If it'll comfort you, we're less than a mile away from the forest where we have to meet," Joe grumbled, his stone like eyes tiredly piercing into Cordell.
"You seem to stretch the word "comfort" greatly," Cordell groaned.
"Yeah, until it snaps," Vickers sarcastically yawned in reply, before turning back to the dashboard. Cordell simply groaned again, watching the nineteen posters of the missing slashers taped everywhere.
-POV change-
King Orrin mounted atop his gray steed, as he asked or his pouch. Receiving it, he took out his pocket telescope and lengthened it, before he put it to right eye and adjusted the lens slightly. There were no spies for this battle. They couldn't afford the risk.
Scanning the stables from two miles away, he spotted several hundred archers, ranging up to seven hundred of them, posted atop the roofs of the stables. Below, in front were at least six thousand swordsmen, all flanked by four spear-carriers each, and in front of them were at least twenty eight thousand cavalry soldiers all mounted, nearly twice their entire force. To top it off, he even spotted four soldiers carrying flails, and there was no telling how many more soldiers were inside the stables, ready to charge out should the defenders somehow fail.
Orrin sighed as he returned his telescope. "How many are there, sir?" his personal assistant and messenger Graytooth asked.
"At least six thousand swordsmen, with around twenty four thousand spear-carriers flanking them total, at least seven hundred archers atop the stables, and at least four men with flails. Who knows how many more could be waiting within the stables?" Orrin worriedly replied, his uncertain gaze returning to the meager total amount of men with him. It was just fifteen thousand, seven hundred ninety six all together. A mere militia compared to the hulking army they would have to face today.
He sighed again, placing his helmet on. "We ride!" he cried, and with that, the cavalry and infantry of the Varden and mostly Surda followed behind him as he charged forward.
-POV change-
"We're here," Cordell said, as he grabbed Vickers' shoulder and shook him out of his slumber.
Waking startled, Vickers grumbled in annoyance as he unbuckled his seat belt and stepped out of the car. He took a few seconds to pop the bones in his back, a result from two straight hours of sitting in a car, waiting to get somewhere. He followed Cordell through the shrubbery and broken up tree stumps into the heart of the huge forest, and both of the slasher policeman nearly fell and broke something due to the uneven dirt ground, which twisted and winded in zig-zagging patterns.
Cordell coughed and uneasily looked around him. It was way too quiet here for a forest. There were no birds chirping or cawing, no frogs croaking, and not even any mosquitoes or bees buzzing and zipping around. There was something going on here-something unnatural, that was not of this world, stalking around them.
"It feels weird here," he said. "Like a pressure cooker-calm for now, yet more than ready to burst if we aren't careful."
"Calm before the storm," Vickers sneered as he pushed through a wall of fallen and broken branches and sticks.
"Well, aren't you funny," he sarcastically growled, taking the blunt sheath off the blade attached to his police baton, slicing through the overgrown bushes. "Now, if you'll be kind enough, you can start helping me cut all this huge shit down."
Vickers snorted in response before pulling out his rather large kitchen knife and started cutting the debris in front of him down.
-POV change-
Orrin roared loudly as he struck his sword forward, him and his soldiers only a few feet from the first line of men in front of them guarding the stables.
Without warning, though, several black robed magicians slithered forward like hideous eels and, in unison, cried, "Frethya, letta!" In a near instant, sixteen men carrying black tube like objects in their hands, with one magician behind them, appeared in front of the first line of men.
Blast it, they used magic to make them invisible!, Orrin angrily though to himself. He hated ambushes like this-they were cowardly, and it made any good tactics he had thought of obsolete before the battle even began.
"Fall back, fall back!" he shouted loudly, but his repeated cries of those two words were drowned out while his men retreated as the magicians put their hands to the back of the tubes and suddenly, different colored flames of magic roared forward from the front holes on the tubes. One of his soldiers and his horse were unlucky enough to be swallowed by the tongues of fire, and quickly burned to death.
"By Angvard," he gasped as he saw the results. "They're using portable flames! They're using walking flames, dammit!" he cried, forcing his men to retreat further. He realized they couldn't just rush the men-it would take too many lives, and there were no possible methods of infiltration, as the informant would die before he could cause any casualties to the center of the soldiers.
The horrible truth dawned upon him-he and his army would have to retreat in full, and wait until the enemy was starved out or Eragon and Saphira could come.
It was the first time he truly began to feel doubt, and that there was no way to win.
No way.
-POV change-
Cutting their way out, Cordell and Vickers finally saw the three witnesses set to meet them standing directly in front of them, all three being slashers.
"You better have some good and new evidence with you to make our trip to and through this living hell of a forest worthwhile, Rantzen," Cordell snarled as he walked up to the jester mask wearing, jacket wearing slasher named Marty Rantzen. Rantzen laughed in response as he stepped up to the officer.
"Yeah, we found something. Pretty sure your boys at the forensics were too nit-picky with their nonexistent fingerprints and fake hair to see it though ," Marty rasped.
"Now listen, Rantzen, I dragged my ass here to see what you found that you didn't want revealed publicly, not hear my department get shitted on by some half burnt, grade-A nerd like you. If I could, I'd wipe that retarded grin from your stupid mask-" Cordell began to growl, but was stopped by Joe, who placed his hand on his shoulder.
"We're not here to start another war," he whispered in a hissing tone, before turning to look at Marty. "Alright, Rantzen, what do you have that can help us find out what happened to these nineteen of our kind?"
Marty turned to the killer at the Night School. "If you will take it out..." he said in an asking manner, as the killer nodded and pulled out a Ziploc bag from his left pocket, and gave it over to Marty. The bag contained something which looked like large, solid chunks of cocaine, expect, it looked more crystalline and was bright yellow.
"Well just what the hell is that?!" Cordell demanded, his temper rising.
"It's pure sulfur," Marty answered. "It looks like this in it's native form, yellow and crystalline."
"And this is supposed to be helpful how?" Vickers asked derisively.
"You know what kind of creature leaves behind sulfur after such an ordeal? Let me give you a hint:it's not any slasher, or a demon," The Captain said in reply.
Cordell's mind flashed back to fifteen years ago. The war had started, and he was reading some newspaper in his office, sitting in his black leather chair. He had heard the screams of several other officers, before seeing the blood splatter onto the tinted window on his door. He heard and saw the bangs and bursts of heavy gunfire and the clatter of dropping rounds. Suddenly, the gunfire stopped, an officer's head hit his window and a bright flash preceded an explosion, which rocked the entire station and caused the lamp on his desk to drop and break.
Taking out his Calico M950 and Smith & Wesson Model 15, Cordell opened his door and walked out into the hall, and was instantly hit in the face with the stench of rotting eggs. He looked down at the bodies, and saw the yellow substance on their corpses.
Sulfur.
"Oh, shit..." Cordell gasped.
"What is it?" The Captain asked.
The memory kept going, and as he walked further down the hall, he heard a hideous, snickering laughter behind him. Turning around, he saw the Djinn before him, his face spread in a hideous grin, displaying his gray teeth and his dark brown lips.
Not even giving the sadistic bastard a chance to speak, he unloaded both his guns into the Djinn's chest, knocking him back and throwing him off his feet. His grin fading, the Djinn snarled as the bullets fell out and his wounds healed and closed themselves shut.
"You cannot kill that which is eternal, Cordell," the Djiin hissed as he walked forward. However, his grin returned, and he laughed once more. "However, you are the only one here to put up a good fight, and so I shall spare your life, Maniac Cop-for now, that is." And with that, the Djinn vanished in a flash of white light and a burst of black smoke, his maniacal, blood-curdling laughter echoing through the station, leaving only Cordell and the sulfur covered bodies.
"Cordell?" Vickers asked uncertainly.
"It's the damn Djinn!" Cordell cried as he whipped out his Model 15.
-POV change-
Orrin focused on the men carrying the tubes and the magicians behind them, realizing that a direct physical assault would be useless. Seeing as how they were protected only in front, he gave the order to the Surdan and few Varden archers with them to fire their arrows on the sixteen men and the magicians behind them.
It was in vain, though, as all of the arrows either bounced off the wards, or were repelled in mid-air by the magicians and thrown away. However, it was a mixed blessing, as despite the arrows missing their targets, many of them wounded and killed scores of soldiers behind the sixteen men and magicians.
He then thought of something new-they would incapacitate and slay the soldiers behind the men and magicians, so as to both lessen the amount of men they would have to face in battle and leave possibly only the sixteen, so it could be a bit less costly, and lower their courage.
"Light the arrows on fire! Then, focus on the men and fire!" he cried, and the archers did just that, setting ablaze the tar tipped arrows and focusing only on the men behind the magicians. Three of the four men carrying flails were quickly blown to pieces by the explosions after being directly hit, while several of the archers on the roofs were also killed, causing huge portions of the roofs to cave in and crush both the men and horses within. Several magicians were even caught in the twisting flames, though the others quickly put them out, but their wounds were serious:one man was completely burnt to a crisp on the entire left half of his body, while another mage's head was ignited.
"Go on, keep firing at them!" Orrin shouted as the flames died out, resulting in a bloody stalemate:while the Empire certainly had more and much worse casualties, the Empire still had superior numbers and weapons, and neither side dared to make a move towards each other.
Orrin took his telescope back out and looked through it again-he counted the Imperial troops once more, and saw that, of the swordsmen and spear-carriers guarding their flanks, only around twenty thousand total remained, and of the cavalry, twenty four thousand had survived. They were still outnumbered, and there was no way to stop the men with tubes.
Little did Orrin know, help was about to come, but it wasn't going to be anything of this world.
-POV change-
"Ah, yes, I hear someone has called me from my slumber," a sickly voice called out, as both Cordell and Vickers spun around to face the sadistic monstrosity known as the Djinn.
"Stop right there!" Vickers growled through clenched teeth. "Don't do a thing, or else I'll blow your brains everywhere, Djinn!"
The Djinn simply smirked as he pointed at the muzzle of Vickers' handgun and made it split in half, reducing it to a mere piece of scrap metal. "I don't see that happening, Joe. You cannot kill that which is eternal."
"Oh, shove it!" Cordell cried as he fired a round into the Djinn's head, causing him to shriek in pain, only for his wound to heal within the span of a second.
"You," the Djinn hissed. "I remember you, Cordell-I hope you remember as well. I said I would spare your life that one time, and sadly enough for you, it was only that one time."
"Spare me the revenge bullshit. What are you doing here, and what did you do to those nineteen slashers?" Cordell demanded.
The Djinn laughed, a sickly and terrible sound that racked everyone's nerves. "I had found another land, far from our own. In that realm, there was the prison my fellow race of djinn were held in, and I constructed my plan to destroy that prison and free my people, and so we could take over not only this realm, but that realm as well, along with possibly others."
"Bullshit," Marty said. "You can only free your djinn if you grant three wishes to the person who released you, and you can't use any powers at all unless somebody wishes for something from you."
"No longer! I came across three particularly malevolent and ruthless members of a supernatural race known only as Spirits. They taught me dark secrets of magical power and capacity, and once they outlived their usefulness, they tried to possess me and make me become some creature called a Shade, but I was too quick. I feasted on them, and I finally reached my full potential as a djinn, no longer bound by such proposed limits as you speak." He then laughed. "As for those slashers-I tried to open a portal to the realm so I could go in and free my kind, yet those pathetic slashers came in both times and were taken in instead."
"Ah, but now, you shall not hinder me, and you slashers shall meet the same fate as all else-the djinn shall replace you. So go, bide what precious little time you have left, and simply pray that the other djinn will leave your body behind when they kill you."
"Not happening," Cordell spat, before he fired two more bullets into the Djinn's head. "Now, Joe! Stun him!"
Vickers nodded as he pulled out his close-contact stun gun, before charging forward while the Djinn began to heal. He was too slow, though, and the Djinn forced his stun gun to turn and made Vickers shock himself. Despite being a slasher, Vickers still felt it all, and he fell to the ground as he twitched and moaned.
"I will have all of your blood for that, slashers! Especially yours, Maniac Cop!" the Djinn roared.
Then, an idea came to The Captain-the Djinn was still a djinn, and so he would still have to follow wishes.
"I wish that you were imprisoned inside a jewel, and the only way to get out would be for somebody to rub that jewel!" The Captain cried, as everything went quiet, and the Djinn's face turned to a pale expression of horror and rage combined.
"No," he breathed, shaking his head. "NO! No, you son of a b-"
Vickers had already gotten back to his senses, and he pulled out his stun gun from himself as he backed away from the Djinn, who was starting to shine a bright white light.
"I curse you! I curse you to Hell!" the Djinn screamed, even as his flesh began to burn away.
"Matt, let's get out of here! This place is about to blow!" Vickers yelled.
"Joe, come on, get to the car! I need to get these witnesses out of h-!" Cordell said in reply, but was drowned out by the disgusting shriek of the Djiin, as he was reduced to a mere skeletal outline in the growing light. The sign that he was going back to the jewel.
And with that, the light exploded outward, Vickers being knocked to the ground and falling unconscious instantly as the entire forest was quickly being incinerated.
Cordell felt as if though his skin was turning inside-out, and he uttered one final cry before he and the three witnesses were vanished from that realm.
-POV change-
The Imperial soldiers were packed inside the horse stable, which was meant for at least six chargers. It was not necessarily meant for the thirty four of the men, who had complained of the cramped conditions and all of the uncleaned horse crap on the floor.
One of them sniffed, and he cringed. "Do any of the rest of you smell that?" he asked.
"It's just the turds beneath us, don't let it get to you," one of his comrades suggested in an attempt to comfort him.
"No, no, it smells like charred oak, and burning hair!" the soldier said, as he covered his nose with his sleeve.
"Yes, I smell it as well," another man hissed as he spat in disgust.
Suddenly, the air began to hum and buzz, and the soldier who had first pointed out the smell stared down at the blue light beneath him, which was rising to his knees. He tried to scream as he felt his legs burning to ash, but was put out of his misery as the blue light expanded and burst forth, disintegrating him and twelve other soldiers. Another soldier was not actually caught in the blast, but was so close the heat melted all his flesh, hair, armor, and clothing off. He fell screaming to the ground, and within just seconds, was already dead.
The twenty surviving soldiers looked at the center of the blast, and glared at the four men who had just suddenly appeared, and presumed they were the ones who had killed their friends. They rushed forward, swords brandished, their spears barbed and sharpened enough to puncture flesh and muscle.
Five men fell to the ground, clawing at their faces, as Marty's nitric acid was thrown onto them. It was in vain, however, as the acid quickly began eating at their fingers as well, and soon they were bleeding to death as the flesh on their heads and fingers was burnt and melted.
One man tried to sneak up on Marty and attempted to cleave him from head to groin, but the slasher was too quick and promptly smashed him in the face with his baseball bat, caving in the front of his skull.
Three men managed to gang up on Matt and succeeded so far as to push him to the ground. That was as far as they got, though, as Matt Cordell shoved them away and unsheathed his blade-police baton and stabbed it into one of soldier's groin, before leaping back up and slitting one of their stomachs open, reaching in and literally tearing the guts out. In rapid succession, he grabbed one of the fallen soldiers' spears and slammed it into the third soldier's right foot, impaling him into the ground. He screamed as he clutched at his leg, tying to tear the spear out, but only increased the pain as he realized it was barbed. He screamed again, before Cordell's blade-baton dived into his throat, ending his misery. Whipping out his Model 15, he riddled two other soldiers with bullets at point-blank range, cutting them to pieces.
The soldiers simply looked at The Captain and saw that, while he was completely invisible, his weapon was not at all, defying every rule of magic in the world they knew. Their courage finally broken, they tried to pry open the stable doors and escape, but The Captain would have none of it. Taking his axe, he grabbed a man by the shoulder and swung his axe between his head and axe, the flesh and muscle being pushed out as the man's head began to roll ten feet from his body, before his blood gushed from the stump and onto his comrades.
Switching to a relatively small butcher's axe, he swung it deep into a nearby stomach and began to twist it around, carving out large chunks of muscle and flesh. He then kicked the man down and let him bleed to death, before finally taking to his regular knife. He impaled one soldier on it before tearing it out and slitting the chest of another.
Walking over, the killer from the Night School swung his curved machete, which was more like an oversized gurkha knife, and instantly decapitated four soldiers. The only remaining Imperial dropped his sword and flung off his shield. He fell to his knees.
"I surrender!" he cried pathetically. "Please, spare me! I harmed you not! Don't kill me!"
The killer's response was to grab the soldier's helmet and lift him off his feet, allowing him to look into the visor of his motorcycle helmet. All he could see was his reflection.
"He will kill you," Marty assured. "He always does. He especially will not let you live."
The soldier's face increased with terror as he looked into the killer's helmet. There was nothing human about it-no face, no emotion, no mercy, just sleek blackness.
"He won't strangle you. He wants to hear your final screams. He won't gouge out your eyes. He wants you to see your reflection one final time."
The soldier saw the killer raise his machete, and, not heeding Marty, simply screamed in horror as his head was hacked off. His body fell while his head remained grasped by the helmet in the killer's hand, which he threw against the wall.
"Where do you think we are?" Cordell asked as he cleaned off his blade-baton.
"By the looks of it all, I'd say in a land that looks early Middle Ages. The primitive weapons, armor-and the horse shit I just stepped in," Marty answered, adding a sneer to the last part as he walked on a pile of turds.
They all heard the cries and muttering of multiple people outside, followed by what sounded like the stomping of boots.
"There must be more of them, and they heard. If anything we gotta kill our way out of here," The Captain snarled as he took out his scythe and axe, wielding both at once.
"The Djinn cursed us to Hell," Cordell muttered. "This doesn't look like Hell, though-more like practice."
Backing up against the portions of the walls closest to the doors, they waited to ambush their attackers as they heard heavy shouting before the men slammed against the doors. A spear even sliced through, but it did little damage, save for making a sizable slit.
"Get ready," The Captain grumbled.
As if on cue, the doors were flung open, and the large board of wood holding it shut was torn in two. A good deal of the soldiers blanched and vomited at the sight of their thirty four fallen comrades and just how disgustingly they were slaughtered. The Sergeant who had been leading even stopped and held back the urge to lose his meager breakfast.
Around two dozen men cautiously walked in, leaving seven behind just in case. As soon as they were far in, the four slashers slammed the doors shut quickly. Cordell fired off rounds from both his Model 15 and M950, cutting down ten men and, of those ten, blew four of their heads up, splattering their pink and red brain matter over their comrades.
Marty tore out his javelin and hurled it, impaling a man onto a wall with a deadly velocity. One of his friends tried to pull it out, only to feel the skin on the back of his head and neck began to burn and melt, and he collapsed screaming and and scratching as the nitric acid made him begin to bleed to death. Marty swung out his bat and smashed it into one soldier's groin repeatedly, until he was quickly sure the man would soon die from the pain.
The Sergeant saw the floating weapons and thrust his sword forward, being dumbstruck as the scythe came down and separated the blade from the hilt. It then swung with precision and tore his lower torso open. The Captain put back his axe as he picked up the blade and swung it in a circle, cutting three men vertically in half before he threw it into a man's face, pinning his corpse to the wall.
The killer took his machete and went straight and simple:he hacked the heads of the six remaining clean off. There wasn't much spectacle to it, but then again, the killer wasn't known for his brutality and theatrics.
Tearing the doors clean off their hinges, Cordell aimed his M950 and Model 15, and before he could pull the triggers, the seven remaining soldiers fled.
"Let's get the hell out of here!" Cordell growled as he kicked the locked door in front of him away, making it send sparks as it flew through and sliced a man in half just before it crushed another.
Running through the hall, the four slashers turned and went up the rotting stairs. A guard was waiting, but he was way too slow as the killer hacked his head off.
Hearing the chatter of three men, the four took quick cover behind a gray wall.
"The Surdans will have to retreat soon if they don't take out those men and their magicians," one of them laughed, clattering his sword against his shield.
"Nay, they'll probably still win, no matter what Galbatorix sends," another sighed.
"What, you want to get executed by the king himself?!" a third man, this one with a remarkably more hoarse voice, spat. "You're a rebel sympathizer and therefore scum, you are!"
Making sure to time it just right, Cordell leaped out and fired his M950 at the chain holding the chandelier in place, which the men were standing underneath. He fired, and watched in satisfaction as it came crashing down. Two of the men were crushed to death instantly, while the third was immolated by the huge amount of candles on the chandelier, and he couldn't even run as he screamed in pain, his back having been broken completely.
"Chandeliers in a farm house-these bastards have a flare for style, I must say," Marty laughed.
"Let's keep moving," Cordell said as they headed for the next door to their left several feet away.
Checking to see if anybody was guarding at the door, Cordell knocked. It was flung open.
"What, who is-?" the guard angrily asked, only to get ran through with the blade-baton. He clutched at his openly bleeding wound and gurgled before crumpling. Cordell kicked the body away.
The sheer size of the army before them was almost too much to take in. Thousands of men mounted on their horses, almost as many spear-carriers, and hundreds upon hundreds of swordsmen. One man was even carrying a three foot long flail. An army unconquerable.
The slashers' response was to go right ahead into the mass of hapless victims.
Marty tossed three quarts of acid into the crowd, showering their eyes, faces, chests, and throats. He spun his javelin in the air, slicing and dicing the faces of several men, before triply impaling three more.
Cordell slashed, stabbed, and skewered a few soldiers in quick succession before taking out his Calico M950. The man with the flail roared, swinging his spiked chain weapon in a circular motion. Unfortunately for him, he never fought against semi-automatic guns, and fell dead in a second with a well placed shot between his eyes.
He spotted two men mounted atop a mound of hay, one pointing a large, log shaped black object. The other man took a spherical black object with a small rope pinned to the top. He shoved it into the back of the log shaped object while the man carrying it pulled what looked like an obvious trigger, and after a few seconds, the ball came zooming back out, the rope now getting smaller as a spark moved down it.
A grenade launcher.
"Shit," Cordell gasped before he sprinted away, leaving the bomb to explode and instead take several more Imperials. Another two men fired another bomb, but luckily enough, the killer kicked it back, letting it explode in the Imperial's faces.
Twangs were heard as the remaining archers atop the stables fired, but all missed, instead wounding and killing their own comrades, or just not getting their four quick moving targets or their own men.
A spear-carrier thrust his spear desperately at Cordell's stomach, only for him to dodge to the right and grab the spear between his fingers. He pulled it out of the soldier's hand before snapping it in two and delivered a punch to his face, sending the man flying.
A black robed man with a yellow twisting flame stitched into his tunic came forward then and flung a green ball of flame right at him. Cordell ducked, but the heat scorched the top of his police hat and left him briefly dazed.
How the hell did he do that?!, he angrily thought to himself, while the man opened his hand and showed his palm before he fired what looked like miniature lightning. Cordell dodged and watched as an Imperial was fried to a mere charred black mummy of his former self by the bolt.
"You are quite amazing," the man hissed with a smile. "I shall take you, and you will make a most invaluable asset to my king. He will reward me to no end for it."
Deciding to go silent and deadly rather than make some crass comeback, Cordell fired exactly four rounds into the disgusting slob. One of them stopped in mid-air and dropped as the man shouted, "Letta!" The other three, however, found their mark and tore the man's head to shreds.
-POV change-
Orrin watched in confusion as he heard what seemed like fiery bangs erupt in the Empire's own ranks, and the screams of men dying. He sent no espionage units, that was for sure, and the number of Imperials dropping like flies all around was almost too quick and too good to be true. Taking out his telescope again, he looked through the lens and was both amazed and horrified by what he saw.
Three oddly dressed men, the fourth simply being a floating weapon, cut their way through the Empire's soldiers without care or hesitation, while not getting harmed in the slightest. Every time they struck, it was a perfect instant kill that destroyed flesh and shattered armor. There were no wounded.
Putting away his telescope, he saw several of the men and their magicians with the flame spewing tubes turn and move through the crowd, obviously to deal with this new threat, while those who remained behind watched their comrades leave. That was as much as Orrin needed.
"CHARGE!" he screamed, and he spurred forward his charger as he thrust out his sword, his cavalry and infantry realizing and following behind as the men turned around to see the commotion. It was not quick enough, as the Surdans and Varden stampeded through the Imperials and cut down the tube carrying men and pushed viciously against the soldiers who had not turned tail and tried in vain to confront the four men.
"Off with their heads! Let us make corpses of these bloody cowards!" he shouted both to his men and at the Imperials.
-POV change-
Cordell fired the M950 into the right of the man's chest, tearing a three inch hole and destroying most of the arteries in the area. To his surprise and anger, the man simply groaned and stumbled before regaining his composure and continued to shuffle towards him, ignoring the blood gushing from his obviously fatal wound. He pulled the trigger again, but nothing came out.
He was out of ammo.
Cursing, he reached for the cartridge of ammo tucked into his belt, but was distracted by a second soldier leaping towards him, who screamed his hate at him for apparently killing his brother a few feet away.
Putting away the gun, he took out and unsheathed his blade-baton and dashed forward, cutting the screaming soldier's stomach open in a single diving stroke before streaking to the man he had shot, who had not yet died. Capping his blade-baton, he grabbed the man by his throat and raised him off his feet, pressing hard on the back of his neck before he heard that satisfying snap. He tossed the man away.
He turned to the horde of red-clad soldiers before him. "Alright, who wants it next?" he growled, lowering his voice to a gravelly tone. The men grew pale and parted, leaving only a man carrying a rusty black tube with a black robed man behind him.
Cordell aimed his Model 15 directly at the open hole in the tube, thinking it was a very primitive cannon and that by shooting the gunpowder, he would ignite two men before they even knew what had just happened.
The black robed man opened his mouth and mumbled something incomprehensible, the purpose of which Cordell learned to his horror when he heard his gun click, signifying that it was jammed.
Cursing his luck, Cordell shoved away his gun and opted instead for his baton, and ran forward. Without further warning, a cry erupted just before another one of those soldiers intercepted him, spear at ready. Annoyed, Cordell should have been thankful because of what happened next.
A stream of orange flames sprang from the front opening in the tube, licking the air as it grew wider and closer. Stunned, Cordell grabbed the soldier by his shoulder before flipping him around, and he sprinted off. It was quick thinking, as just a second after Cordell had left the radius, the flames rolled over the soldier. He screamed for just two seconds before Cordell saw his flaming corpse hit the ground, all features near instantly being incinerated from existence.
He unsheathed his blade-baton and charged forward, gutting the man carrying the tube and the man with his hand to it like fish, the bone crunching and flesh and muscle ripping open.
He took out his Model 15 and aimed at two more of the same tube carriers, blowing their heads clean off with a single shot each. He would have done the same for the next pair, but Marty's acid hit them in time.
He saw, from the corner of his left eye, several men trampling through a thick puddle. He knew his Model 15 would run out of ammo soon and he wouldn't have enough time to reload, and there were too many men. Furthermore, he could probably kill a few men with his blade-baton, but with the sheer number of opponents, just one would be enough to stab him in the back.
He had only one option left.
Whipping out his taser, he aimed the red dot at the puddle, and pulled the trigger.
When a taser fired, it shot a thin string tipped with with four metallic prongs capable of penetrating flesh and clothing, allowing it to conduct large, yet nonlethal, volts of electricity. But electricity combined with metal and water was more than deadly.
The eighteen men in the puddle learned that the hard and extremely painful way. They saw the red dot reflected in the water, and thought it was a sign of some kind of magic. They believed it was explosive, and began to retreat, thinking they would survive so long as they were not in the explosion. What they found instead was their nerves feeling overloaded as the rest of their body became racked with unimaginable, thought destroying pain, their flesh getting charred as the hum of electricity grew to the point it filled their ears, making it the last thing they all heard.
Cordell outdid himself there and then as he smirked, seeing the electricity grow so powerful that the eyes of the eighteen men shriveled up and fell out. The grilled bodies fell as smoke arose, the water in the puddle literally boiling.
The army of red robed men dispersed after the sight of such a deadly and unfathomable weapon in use, the men shouting words and thoughts of retreat. Within the next three minutes, all of the men had dropped their weapons and shields and the army was in full retreat.
-POV change-
"They're retreating! By Angvard, they are all retreating!" Orrin cried, the cheers of the Surdans and Varden nearly blocking out his voice.
He tried to express his joy of victory further, but this time, he was truly interrupted by the flashes and bangs of something, for lack of a better word, otherworldly. It was like a small explosion of fire, yet there were no flames, nothing to follow except another scream and another collapsing body.
The Surdan joy was short lived, quite literally in one case. Another bang erupted, and this time, it was a Surdan archer who fell, clutching the smoking hole torn into his chest. His lips and closed eyes twitched for several more short seconds before he grew still, and his flesh turned pale. Blood pooled from both his mouth and, to an even greater extent, the wound in his chest. Combined with it was the glint of a partially scorched metal.
"Who-?" Orrin began to ask, his head quickly turning from left to right in desperation for an answer, when another bang came, and something struck his left hand. Hard.
He fell from his horse, clutching at the smoldering hole, and he screamed. He had been stabbed, shot with arrows, and broken his fair share of bones, but that was all child's play compared to this. It was as if though solid fire had ripped into him, incinerating every muscle, nerve, and even bone it touched. His pulse shot up at an alarming rate, feeling as if though it had just tore through a physical barrier. His breathing increased tenfold, and not even the clutching of the wound stopped the bleeding.
"Don't just stand there, go fetch a healer this instant!" Graytooth yelled, and Orrin heard the stamping of several sprinting feet on the ground. He opened his eyes and saw Garytooth and several other soldiers standing over him.
"How does it feel, my King?" Graytooth worriedly asked.
"Like fire-ripping through..." he moaned.
"Do not worry, we are getting a healer right now. We will find the men who did this, and we shall subdue them," the messenger replied.
"Please, hurry," Orrin whimpered.
"Where is that healer?! Get him over here RIGHT NOW!"
-POV change-
Cordell reloaded. He wasn't sure if these brown robed and armored men would be just as hostile to them, but he certainly wasn't a man to take any chances. The targets in front of him were all running and shouting about frantically. Well, that wouldn't do them any good. Cordell never missed his target.
"Slytha."
All it took was that one strange word, and Cordell instantly hit the ground. His eyes reopened as soon as he hit, and his pupils shifted frantically as his vision blurred. His muscles went slack as his vision faded with the closing of his eyes, and with that, Matt Cordell was pushed into a deep, unnatural sleep.
END OF FLASHBACK
The memory ended as Eragon withdrew slowly from both Orrin and Cordell's minds. The sheer amount of information was overwhelming to him.
"So, what happened after the four of you woke up from the spell?" he asked Cordell.
"Well, what usually happens. Name, Rank, and Serial Number."
"Excuse me?" Eragon asked, raising an eyebrow.
"When you get interrogated, you just say your name, what rank you have, and what your given serial number is, that is, if you have one. I just had the name and rank, Police Officer, and the other three-well, they just names, except for the Nigh School killer. He always keeps himself shut up," Cordell explained.
"We tried using magic, but they were all too strong willed, and after that, all they said was that they were not of this land, and they thought we were with the Imperials. We explained our strive to end Galbatorix's reign, but they revealed no information of themselves until now," Orrin said.
Eragon then suddenly realized something from Cordell's memories-if the Djinn were imprisoned in their realm, possibly even within Alagaësia itself, then Galbatorix was the least of their problems.
"Officer Cordell-how powerful was this lone Djinn when he could only use it to grant wishes?" he asked.
"When somebody wished for something, he could basically match a god when it came to using his power-stronger than Freddy, and perhaps even Pinhead himself. Now that he doesn't even need a wish to use his power, well..."
"Well, what?" Orrin asked uneasily.
"Well, he could tear the earth in half and snuff out the stars out of existence just with a few hand motions."
"What?! We must tell Nasuada and Arya and everyone else about these evil creatures-" Eragon began to exclaim. However, Cordell quickly cut him off.
"No! There could easily be an Imperial spy amongst your ranks, and if word gets out to this Galbatorix, then he might just want to find the prison and exploit it for his own greedy needs. It remains a secret until we defeat Galbatorix and his Empire. Understood?"
Begrudgingly, both Orrin and Eragon agreed, swearing in the Ancient Language, saying they would not tell anyone until they had defeated Galbatorix.
"Good. Now, let's get the hell out of this little cot, and get our asses to sleep. I personally need some rest after getting my mind torn into by a teenager," Cordell grumbled.
And that is all. Phew! Sorry this one took so long, but school has really taken a toll on me. That, and I am also struggling with another one of my stories. Hopefully, the next chapter will be out much sooner. And please, all of you reading this, R&R! I don't want to sound forceful, but when people read and favorite and follow and don't even bother to give me their thoughts, well, I personally find it a bit insulting. Oh, and I need a good cover for this story! Until next time, see you for now.
