The gnolls clawed their wave up the broken mountain. From his vantage point, Reaver thought they looked like a swarm of crawling bugs or perhaps a rising brown tide of sewage. The gnolls surged their way up, occasionally tumbling down from the uneven ice, hacking and chopping any survivors of the War Ravens they found.
Warlord Reaver shouted his commands to his surviving soldiers. He had roughly ten thousand men still under his command and he was fully prepared to sell each of their lives dearly to the gnolls. The fortifications his sappers and enginseers constructed weren't as strong as the ones they made in the plains, but they should be strong enough to give them some cover from the gnoll archers and flyers. Given that they also had the high ground Reaver guessed that if he needed he could hold out for maybe an hour tops. That is if the enemy didn't send a wave of demons to shatter their ranks.
"Get those crossbowman on the left flank," barked Reaver. A hundred crossbowman quickly filed into position and began pumping volley after volley of bolts into the approaching horde.
"Pull those paladins back. I don't want them in a skirmish with gnolls. Save them for the demons!"
"Sergeant, get some men and see if you can push those loose slabs of ice down on our friends!"
"I need some footmen in that crevasse. I need people to slow their advance from that path."
"Get a cleric down to those stragglers still making their way up the mountain. Patch them up, and send them back into the fray. Everyone fights, or everyone dies!" Reaver roared to his soldiers.
The War Ravens were beaten and still in shock from the avalanche, but they obeyed his commands without question. The mercenaries met the gnolls as they climbed upwards and plugged up every path of advance up the mountain. As the gnolls milled about, their crossbowmen and wizards poured missile and lightning down on their massed ranks. It was a bloody slaughter but that did not stop the horde.
Reaver saw that Nymk and her surviving archers were more conservative with their fire, picking obvious leaders and demons before regular gnolls. He knew however it didn't really matter. No matter how many gnolls they killed it was just a distraction. It would all be over soon.
"REAVER!" shouted a hoarse cackling voice. The sound shook the mountain and sounded like a thousand set of claws scraping its way across stone. The creature appeared to be at least twelve feet tall and almost skeletal in appearance with a a thin sheet of mangy fur coverings its frame. Every step forward it took it appeared to grow in height and power. The ranks of the gnolls parted as the mercenaries fled from a tall lanky gnoll swinging a three headed flail leaping its ways upwards.
Reaver looked at the gnolls' battle lines upon the broken mountain and then smashed his fist into a nearby pillar of ice.
"No…this is too soon," cursed Reaver. Several knights attempted to bar the demon lord's ascent. They struck a heroic pose and said some courageous words, but they did not last long. One was smashed by the creature's flail, while the other was crushed under the creature's clawed foot as it jumped atop them. The gnolls seemed to retreat slightly as their leader smashed through the War Raven's ranks.
Reaver knew he wouldn't have a better chance.
He glanced up and gave the signal.
.
.
Nothing happened.
Reaver gave the signal again, and then a third time.
"Am I missing something?" asked Nymk."Were reinforcements supposed to be summoned by that gesture?"
Reaver grimaced, this was his trump card and it wasn't working.
"Tyris?" He turned to look for her, only to find the bard a few feet from his side. It made him jump a little, but he knew it shouldn't. He knew she was nearby, probably standing at his side the whole time, but her knack for appearing and disappearing was still hard to get used to, even after all this time.
"I need you to get inside the inner chambers of the bunker and set fire to the crates and then get the hell out of there. Something went wrong…." He commanded but she was already gone.
"Crates?" asked Nymk as she drew a scimitar from her sheath.
Reaver ignored her comment and instead stood up , banging the squirrel bone hammer on his shield.
"Here I am, you shaggy piece of shit!" challenged Reaver.
"REAVER!" hissed the demon lord as it began taking great lanky strides upwards, swatting mercenary and gnolls aside.
Reaver didn't wait for the demon and jumped down from his perch. He would have made such a jump eighty years ago, or so he told himself, but he instead he landed clumsily on his side.
"Are you crazy? You abandoned our defenses. Why did you do that? He would have came to us! " shouted Nymk from above.
Reaver ignored her and picked himself up. His bones were sore but he ignored the pain and continued his charge towards the gnoll demon. He couldn't let the monster advance any further up the glacier.
Before he reached his goal however, a huge shadow covered him. Reaver instinctively turned and raised his shield, but a massive furred paw wrapped itself around his waist. Reaver stared eye to eye into his foe, and saw it was the ape demon from before. The beast flashed its rotted yellow teeth as it began to crush the life out of the old warrior. Reaver struggled but the monster's grip was too overwhelming. The beast extended its jaw to bite the old warrior, but loosened its grip when a black arrow slammed into the side of its head. With the monster distracted, it loosened its grip allowing Reaver a chance to swing his hammer into the monster's face.
The squirrel bone hammer struck the ape demon's face directly and its facial features turned to terror as the weapon began to literally chew its face off. The monster released its grip on the Warlord and attempted to swat the weapon away, but the hammer seemed to have a mind of its own as its gnashing teeth was attached to the demon's face like a ferret's death grip on its prey. The ape demon's struggles soon ceased though as the weapon chewed through its nose and proceeded to grind the monster's skull and then brains with its vicious relentless teeth.
Reaver was both horrified and relieved at his weapon's power. He didn't even seem to mind the bloody mess it had made to his own hand. He simply picked himself up and turned to face his final foe.
"You sure you want some of that?" he said smugly.
Yeenoghu did not verbally reply, instead it swung its triple flail at the old warrior's head. After over a century of warfare Reaver knew how tricky flails were to block. Often time the weapons chains would wrap around the shield and strike the defender regardless if he blocked the initial blow.
Reaver eyed the weapon and took a step back and extended his block, swinging at the weapon with his shield as if to strike it out of the air. Reaver's timing was perfect, but the force of the demon lord's swing sundered the shield and shattered the old warrior's arm.
The power of the weapon made Reaver spin around twice before collapsing him prone onto the ice. Pain shot through his body, but he knew he had to move. He planted his hammer into the ground and used it to raise himself off the ground, but was rewarded with a clawed foot into his midsection. The kick sent Reaver spiralling down the mountain and he fell a good thirty feet down.
The plummet should have broken Reaver's back, but fortunately he landed on snow this time. He rolled to his belly and tried to push himself up, only to find the demon lord standing next to him. Yeenoghu raised his foot and planted it atop Reaver's head and pressed his face into the snow. Reaver attempted to push himself off the ground, but the old warrior grew red in his futile struggles. He realized the demon lord was playing with him, he could have easily crushed his head at anytime.
"This is too easy….I was expecting more of a fight," laughed the demon lord.
Reaver didn't mind losing, but he hated being laughed at. Despite the pressure on his head, he swung his hammer wildly overhead.
He wasn't sure what happened next, but he found himself sprawled to the side with another bruise to the side and his hammer still in his hand. Reaver blinked through the pain and saw the a great jagged wound on Yeenoghu's calf. Instead of raging mindlessly, the demon lord simply stared with detached curiosity at his injury.
"My leg isn't healing,…it looks like you've came prepared but I'm afraid you will have to do better than that," gloated Yeenoghu.
Beaten, battered, and heavily wounded, Reaver was apt to agree. The warlord however couldn't accept that he had come all this way and sacrificed all his friends and followers just to be beaten at the end of the road. He struggled once more to rise on his feet but paused when he caught a glimpse of crimson hair nearby.
"I don't have to do anything more. I've already won," chuckled Reaver as he swayed on his feet.
Yeenoghu bared his teeth at the mocking old man. "I've already crushed half your soldiers when I brought down the mountain, and my horde will tear the other part soon enough."
Reaver stopped and then began to laugh out loud. So hard, that his bruised ribs flared in pain. "You call that bringing down the mountain? "
Reaver then saw the flash of red behind some ice once again, but this time accompanied by an open hand that flashed twice.
"My last blow must have addled your mind if you forget the devastation that I caused ," taunted Yeenoghu as he walked forward to finish the old warrior.
Reaver shook his head and wagged a finger. "Oh I remember your little avalanche trick clearly, but that's nothing compared to what I have in store, in five , four , three, two….."
Erland hewed his great axe in great swaths from his heavy warhorse. A dozen gnolls fell to the left of him, a dozen demons to the right. He thought it not too many.
His loose coalition had fought bravely killing tens of thousands of the enemy with their initial charge. The enemy quickly recovered though and they soon pressed with their superior numbers. Even with the Halfling dogoons supporting his own beast cavalry, the hyena riders and demons outflanked their forces easily.
"There's a small force to the south of us drawing the demons away, but its too little too late," said Aethulwulf as he loosed some arrows into a distant aerial demon.
"There's also that fire demon they have crashing through our ranks," noted a bloodied Hero.
"Fire Demon? Palrethee?" asked Erland.
Hero shook her head. "Balor…..Brita tried to fight it but was defeated soundly. I barely dragged her back here. She spent too much magic fighting that ….half elf," she replied with carefully chosen words. " Fortunately for us, the creature is concentrating its efforts mostly on the dwarven scouts."
Erland nodded and hefted his axe once again. He knew what had to be done.
"Hero, stay with Brita and take charge of the rest of the Host. Aethulwulf and I will head to the dwarves and fight the ba…."
Erland paused as he watched the glacier literally explode from the distance. While the previous avalanche was impressive, somehow the entire mountain seemed to leap from its foundations as the glacier erupted a second time. He was transfixed at the sight for a second, before the loudest sound he ever heard almost knocked him off his destrier.
Reaver's world was a dull buzzing. Did his plan work? If it did, why was he still alive?
His answer was soon made apparent however when he felt a comforting mass of red hair pressed against his chest, and the smoking ruins of the shattered glacier below him. The mountain was exposed after the explosion revealing large patches of frozen green plants that probably hadn't seen the light of day for millennium.
The old warrior guessed that Tyris must have ignited the dragon powder he had stashed, before making her way to him and 'escaping'.
She was looking at him with her amber eyes and saying something but he couldn't hear a thing. He guessed his ear drums were either damaged or completely blown out by the explosion. Not surprising since he buried all his army's remaining dragon powder into the top bunker.
Reaver returned her hug, and memories of the past they shared together almost a century ago flooded his memory. The old Warlord thought this would be a pleasant way to go, but he still had a battle to win.
He reached into his pack and dug out a large red vial and quaffed it hungrily. His arm was still fractured, but most of his wounds and even some of his hearing were healed . Partially revived, he then surveyed the battlefield. He saw that most of his men that retreated from the bunker and followed his set exit paths survived. Those that remained on the glacier probably were crushed under another avalanche, but those that stayed to the rocks looked in good health.
As for the gnolls, there was no sign of the once great horde that was scaling the mountain. There were a few stragglers and flying demons, but for the most part the hundreds of thousands scrambling up to butcher them were crushed under Reaver's fury. While all the loose snow and ice were set off by the gnolls first attack, the entire glacier swept downwards on their foes with Reaver's.
The old warlord would have been happy to die at that point. While there were still a great many gnolls fighting what appeared to be Erland's forces, nearly half of them were wiped out by the explosion. Even if the gnolls were victorious that day, with that many dead and their demon god destroyed, Erland knew their power in the north would be broken forever.
"You…you did it! I don't believe it, but you've done it! " declared Nymk as she staggered out of the snow. The barbarian bowman's jaw dropped as she began to comprehend what had just happened.
"I'm proud of you. You fought well," said Tyris in a low voice. Despite his reduced hearing, her words rang true with him. Reaver looked at his cheering troops, and then at the woman at his side, and for the first time in a long time, he felt content.
The War Raven's celebrations were short lived though. The ground shook once again as suddenly a tall ominous figure burst through from the rubble and landed in front of the Warlord. With a speed that defied its huge frame, it kicked Nymk and swung its flail at Tyris. Both barbarian and bard were fast, but even their speed was no match for the supernatural alacrity of the demon lord. Nymk spat out blood as the force of the kick buried her in the snow, while Tyris was sent head over heels into the exposed section of the mountain.
Reaver took a few step backs, and drew his sword to face the monster. Even though his shield was shattered and he had no idea where he dropped the squirrel bone hammer, he was out of tricks. Out of options.
"I will reserve special place of torment for you when I drag your soul screaming out of your body," swore Yeenoghu, gasping in ragged breaths.
Reaver considered his statement and then lowered his blade. "Do your worse. I don't care what happens now. I've already won. I Warlord Reaver shall be forever known as the vanquisher of Yeenoghu," he said as he spread his one good arm and readied for the final blow.
Yeenoghu scowled, and then cackled. "A thousand gnolls, a hundred thousand gnolls, a million gnolls. I care not how many you killed. As long as I still live, I will raise another horde and torch this world till it's a barren wasteland." The demon lord then outstretched its mouth and approached Reaver with slavering jaws.
Reaver closed his eyes, hoping that Tyris would have enough sense to escape after he died. He braced for the fatal bite but none came.
Reaver opened his eyes and saw that the demon lord was being swarmed. A woman in crimson plate, a griffon rider, a half demon, and unbelievably enough what appeared to be Halvor, Frank's fiendish body guard.
"Frank?" he asked as he staggered forwards towards the melee.
As on cue, an old knight charged the demon lord as it was busy with the other attackers. The warrior took a swing at it with a hammer, striking the demon at the hip. Shrieks of pain bellowed from Yeenoghu as the demon was forced back for the first time. Instead of pressing his advantage though, the knight paused and twirled his hammer in front of Reaver.
"I think this is the part where you tag me," smirked Frank.
Reaver nodded and then mimicked the motion.
"Hey Reaver, you'll never guess what I found just lying around on the mountain. You should take better care of your stuff, " Frank said with a wink, before turning his attention back towards the demon.