Chapter 21: The Wall's Maw (PT5)
Noah braced himself against the onslaught of three charging creatures. He didn't want this fight – not really – but wanting didn't seem to matter much these days. Luck was a fickle mistress, and Noah was long overdue for a favour.
His exhausted gaze flickered to the side of the wall, a weathered wooden beam cantilevered over the raging waters below, supporting a flickering fire. With an amusing smile, Noah climbed onto the beam, trying to not look under him.
The Moblin and its two Lizalfos allies were closing in. Noah took a deep breath, the acrid smoke stinging his eyes. Aiming the Sheikah Slate, he activated Bright Step.
In a flash of blue light, Noah vanished. Behind the Lizalfos, his form shimmered back into existence. He hadn't quite gotten his bearings, but the fading shriek of the Moblin brought a grim smile. The Moblin was teleported over the slim beam Noah was previously standing which evidently given way under the creature's massive weight.
"I hope you bastards can swim." he mouthed silently, a flicker of his old humour returning despite the situation.
His senses snapped back to the present as his vision swam back into focus. The Lizalfos had wheeled around, their reptilian eyes burning with fury. A surge of anger washed over Noah, hot and unwelcome.
Noah gritted his teeth. Not now. The consequence of Bright Step was making itself apparent and Noah couldn't let the weight of the Moblin's apparent anger slow him down. These reptilian bastards wouldn't wait politely. They hissed, forked tongues tasting the air, and lunged.
With a burst of speed fuelled by animalistic thought, Noah dodged the first Lizalfos, its razor-sharp claws barely missing his shoulder. The second was faster, swiping a tail tipped with wicked spikes. He rolled away, a searing pain blooming across his side.
The Moblin's memories flooded back, a torrent of hunger, rage, and a brutal simplicity that clashed with his own thoughts. It roared in his head, a bestial cry for destruction. Noah squeezed his eyes shut, desperately trying to maintain his focus.
The Lizalfos pressed their attack, their movements mirroring the savage impulses pounding at the back of his mind. He parried a claw with his battered sword, the impact jarring him to the bone. Another swipe was too close, forcing him to jump back.
For a terrifying moment, he teetered on the edge of the wall, the raging waters beckoning from below. The Moblin within him screamed in savage delight at the prospect of oblivion. Noah staggered, nausea rising in his throat.
He couldn't let it win. Noah forced his eyes open, fixing his gaze on the Lizalfos. They may have their agility, but he had the cunning.
With a battle cry that was half his own and half the monster's, Noah pushed forward...
He feinted left, then lunged right, catching the nearest Lizalfos off guard. Its hiss of surprise cut short as Noah's blade bit into scaled flesh. Yet, a strange satisfaction – the Moblin's bloodlust – twisted through him, almost sweet alongside the rush of adrenaline.
The wounded Lizalfos roared, pain mixing with the rage that burned in Noah's veins. The second charged forward, a whirlwind of teeth and claws. Noah barely parried the onslaught, his arms growing heavy with a weariness that wasn't just his own. The Moblin wanted this fight, wanted the brutal simplicity of tearing and ripping.
Noah did not.
With a desperate twist of his body, he kicked out, aiming for the injured Lizalfos' wounded leg. It stumbled back, a growl of pain joining the Moblin's roar in his head. Seizing the moment, Noah pressed forward, his strikes fuelled by a frantic need to silence the creature within.
The Moblin urged him on as his sword drew blood, its savage joy a grotesque counterpoint to his revulsion. Yet, in that twisted fight of violence, he found a sliver of clarity as he saw the remaining Lizalfo. Its movements were still predictable, driven by the monster's crude instincts. He capitalized on this having been aware of their attacks in BOTW, reading it's lunges and dodges with increasing focus.
The fight raged on, every strike, each narrow parry, was a battle for both his life and his sanity. And then came an opening – a lunge too wide and a clumsy recovery.
Seizing the opportunity, Noah struck. His blade cut a gleaming arc, silencing the hiss of the Lizalfo and the roar within him all at once.
Silence crashed down, broken only by the rush of the river below and his own ragged breathing. Noah swayed, vision blurring, the Moblin's presence fading like a departing storm. He leaned heavily on his sword, the wave of nausea receding.
"Scream in hell for all I care, just get out of my head," Noah rasped, sucking in a lungful of crisp air.
Regaining his bearings, he stumbled towards the main watch tower, his sword dripping crimson. Noah became irritated at like because unlike King Rhoam's sword, his current one was of a different size and thus didn't properly fit in his scabbard, an inconvenience.
Upon reaching tower, Noah attempted to open the door, but it resisted his push. "Locked, of course. So, a multi-hour key-fetching side quest?" Noah's sarcasm dripped.
"Ohhh looook, found oneeeeee." Noah smiled as he hefted his sword. With a few sharp strikes against one of the long panes of glass it quickly shattered. The noise was quite loud echoing throughout the wall, but it cleared his entry.
Noah's smirk died however, as seconds after clearing his entry, alarms from inside started to whirl, the shattering of the glass pane was loud, but nothing compared to this. He had misjudged the Hylians technology, but the noise didn't sound electronical, rather it sounded like it came from an instrument.
Entering the Tower, Noah saw motes of dust dance in the thin beams of sunlight filtering through the broken window. The floor was littered with debris – chipped stone, fragments of what might have been simple furniture. Claw marks mar the heavy stone walls, with discarded, broken weaponry that laid half-hidden beneath the rubble.
The watchtower was otherwise spartan: a circular stone room, a spiralling staircase the only way up, and a central console dominated by an inactive Sheikah terminal. The Sheikah terminal glowed with an eerie blue light. Hastily scrawled notes and crude diagrams was sitting scattered nearby, Noah suspected not even its operators understood much about the technology.
As Noah reached for it, tremors rattled the tower. He stumbled, the world around him tilted in nauseating waves, was it an earthquake? Noah significantly doubted it.
What has the world come to, that an earthquake was the best case scenario?
The terminal flickered to life, as if laughing at his stumbling.
"Would you like to unlock the Poor Unfortunate Residents Are Housed Units?" The disembodied voice echoed eerily, although it was noticeably more jumbled than the usual terminals.
Noah also blinked at the bizarre acronym. Well no time for that now. He activated his Sheikah Slate, slamming it onto the terminal. "Just unlock it, dammit!"
"Unlocking…"
The ground continued to rumble ominously as the roof begun to moan, and as the dust motes begun to fall to the ground Noah figure out it wasn't an earthquake, rather the watchtower was struggling to support something on the roof.
Noah lunged for the exit, but the roof, unable to bear the weight caved in before he reached the door. He braced for impact, a futile gesture against tons of stone but instead of being assaulted by stone, an uncanny force lifted him. The world spun. It was only as Noah watched aimlessly as the watchtower shrank below, that he got a jolt of realization:
He was airborne.
Noah flailed, finding only empty space save for the pressure against his side and the feathers brushing his cheek – impossibly soft, a vibrant yellow…
His stomach plummeted as he looked up. And froze.
The air whistled past Noah's ears. He glimpsed the monster's massive wings, each feather tipped with a razor-sharp edge. Its body was a mosaic of fur and scales, the dappled brown of a lion fading into the sleek, iridescent green of some reptilian beast. Its cry echoed harshly, a grating mix of eagle's shriek and guttural roar. The creature resembled a Griffin yet was infinitely more ugly.
"This is… something new!" Fear twisted Noah's shout into a strangled shriek. The monster's talons dug into his side like searing brands, he flailed uselessly, ragged breaths tearing at his throat as his brain had begun to shut down in fear. One terror had been replaced with another.
He was no longer plunging into watery depths, but soaring towards a boundless, unforgiving sky. Noah couldn't move neither fight in his position, he was gripped too tightly. Each passing second was another nail in his coffin as he watched the ground get further away. Despair seeped into him, cold and paralysing, and hot tears stung his eyes.
He was going to die, helpless and alone. He acknowledged the risks of potentially facing unknown monsters when he got to the Wall, yet it had still caught him by surprise, one mistake was all it had taken.
And one mistake was enough to lose his life.
"Damn it!" Noah's scream was raw, fuelled by a surge of desperation. He wrenched his free hand to flip his traveller's sword in his hand, slicing his own palm in a clumsy, pain-fuelled manoeuvre.
The pain ripped him out of his shock as his brain begun to move itself "Sheikah… the Slate!" He fumbled, his Sheikah Slate barely held in his trembling grip, his vision blurring.
"I just need to Bright Step… with someone on the ground… anyone!" But when he aimed the Slate towards the ground, his blood ran cold.
Clicking the Slate yielded nothing but a dead hum. Was he out of range? Forty meters was the distance of Magnesis, did Bright Step work differently?
"You fucking bastard!" Noah's fury ignited fighting with his despair, a brief flare against the encroaching darkness. He lunged at the griffin-like creature with his sword, a futile stab. The blade barely grazed its feathered hide, yet the monster screeched, its grip tightening painfully.
Then, without warning, those talons released him. Noah's eyes flew open. He tumbled, the wind roaring in his ears, before slamming hard against an unfamiliar surface.
However, his journey had hardened him to an extent, immediately Noah recovered to assess his new environment.
His hastily planted feet sank into the ground, not the solid ground he'd expected, rather Noah quickly figured out the ground was debris. Broken tiles and splintered wood shifted beneath him, he recognised the debris as remnants of the watchtower roofs he saw earlier, it was all piled into a crude, bowl-like structure that Noah was in the middle of it. A choking wave of dust and ash made Noah cough.
"This is… a nest?" The realization dawned with a cold certainty.
The griffin landed with a ground-shaking thud, its powerful wings whipping up a gale that nearly sent Noah tumbling over the edge. He clung to unstable wreckage, peering down into the heart of the nest. Below, a strange sight: a fire flickered within a battered metal casing, the source of the stinging smoke. High-pitched screeches filled the air – Keeze, circling the nest in a frenzy of excitement.
Noah couldn't puzzle out the bizarre symbiosis. The griffin, however, wasted no time on contemplation. It lunged, its hooked beak gleaming like a polished dagger. Noah's parry was a desperate instinct, the impact reverberating through his arm as the impact momentarily made it numb
He staggered, the edge of the nest crumbling beneath his boots. For a heart-stopping moment, he teetered precariously, then locked eyes with the creature. There was a chilling calculation in its amber gaze – no mere animal instinct, but the cold appraisal of a predator gauging its prey.
A razor-sharp talon raked across his chest, a burst of fiery pain. Spotting the creature following up on its attack, Noah successfully rolled and dodged it but at the consequence of dropping his sword as it flew out of reach. Noah scrambled, hands and knees sinking into shifting debris, the fire growing alarmingly closer.
Panic clawed at him. This wasn't a clumsy Bokoblin or a predictable Moblin. He couldn't outsmart this creature, couldn't anticipate its strikes. Perhaps he risk leaping off the side of the nest and rely on Bright Step to teleport at the last moment before hitting the ground?
No, too risky he didn't know how Bright Step worked with its abilities, he could teleport with a creature but maintain his velocity when he materialised causing him to splatter all the same.
What Noah needed right now was his sword. The griffin's hide might be impenetrable, but Noah had never heard of a creature with its eyes not being a vulnerable target
The creature cocked its head, a flicker of cruel amusement dancing in its gaze. Was it toying with him? Had it not even recognized him as a genuine threat?
Noah lunged for his sword, but the griffin, with a piercing screech, swooped down. Its razor-sharp talons sank into Noah's leg, pain searing through him like molten iron. He screamed, a primal sound ripped from his throat as the Griffin picked him up and jerked back and forth, the world a blur of feathers and pain.
"Let go!" Noah roared, his fingers clawing desperately at the griffin's face. His nails found the creature's eye, which was softer than he expected. He plunged his thumb in, and the griffin shrieked, a guttural sound filled with agony and surprise. Its grip loosened, and Noah tumbled to the rough, uneven floor of the nest.
His leg throbbed in relentless waves, but he forced himself to crawl. His sword, just a few agonizing feet away, beckoned. However above the nest, Noah's eyes caught a flicker of movement – the small, winged creatures, Keeze, circling amongst thick hanging vines that clung to the cliff.
An unexpected voice whispered in Noah's head as his memory surfaced: "…corridors twisted into death traps. Units vanished….it was already inside." Without a second thought, driven by instinct and educated guessing, Noah abandoned his sword and staggered towards the edge of the nest.
The griffin, recovering from the eye injury, rose, its shriek echoing through the chasm. It saw its prey seemingly attempting suicide and hurtled towards Noah.
Noah rolled, barely evading the deadly talons. The griffin, overshooting its target, circled back. In that heart-stopping moment, Noah was already leaping, pushing off the edge of the nest.
He hurtled through the air, wind whipping against his face, and grasped a dangling vine. Keeze buzzed around him, their high-pitched chitters like angry wasps, but he ignored them. His body ached, his fear a pounding drum in his head.
The griffin screeched in fury, swooping to snatch him from his precarious perch. Just as its beak snapped at his heels, Noah felt an upward jerk. The vine lifted him out of reach, saving him by a hair's breadth.
"So, you've finally decided to show yourself, you slimy bastard," Noah gritted out, his relief tinged with anger. He glanced down to see new vines snaking out of the cliffside, weaving around him like protective tendrils.
The griffin, meanwhile, was angered that its prey was being stolen and attempted to free Noah from the vines, however the vines were more formidable than the Griffin expected as it quickly begun to struggle against the vines that were now ensnaring it. Its screeches grew more frantic with each passing moment as the vines tightened their grip. Noah waited, holding his breath, until the opportunity arose.
Finally, the griffin's struggles weakened, and the vines wrapped tightly around the Griffin limbs. As Noah hadn't moved, the vines seemingly focused their attention on the Griffin considering it was the bigger prey and as a result, the vines around Noah became noticeably loose.
Noah seized his chance, disentangling himself and swinging back toward the nest like a desperate acrobat. He landed, rolling to absorb the impact, and spun to face the griffin. One of its talons was pinned beneath a thick tangle of vines. It thrashed, feathers flying, rage twisting its beak.
"Oi, you overgrown chicken!" Noah yelled, a grin spreading across his face. "My friend here isn't too fond of uninvited guests."
Noah knew the griffin couldn't understand his words. But the creature from the lake would, and that was all that mattered. As more vines sprouted, wrapping the griffin in a living prison, Noah felt a rush of triumph mixed with the lingering echo of fear. Soon, the griffin was completely bound in vines, its struggles weakening until, finally, it fell still in its new catacomb.
Noah wasn't done. He snatched up his Sheikah Slate, fury twisting his features, and aimed it at the ground. His right eye blazed with unnatural blue light.
"Think I forgot what you did to me in the lake?" he snarled, voice ragged. "Well, guess what? I'm a petty bastard!" With a guttural scream, he activated Magnesis, locking onto the metal beneath the nest. The fire pit, controlled by the Sheikah Slate, strained against his control.
The Sheikah Slate throbbed with unbearable weight. Noah gritted his teeth, sweat slicking his forehead as the fire pit twitched, then slowly began to rise. Each inch felt like a mile, a testament to the devices raw power. But his rage outweighed everything. With a final, shuddering heave, the fire wrenched free of its chains. It hung suspended in the air, a grotesque parody of a star.
"Merry Christmas!" Noah's deranged laughter echoed through the chamber. He flung the fiery caldron at the writhing vines.
It struck with an explosion of sparks. The vines recoiled with a hiss that sounded almost like a scream of pain. The griffin, which Noah had assumed dead, shrieked alongside it, the flames licking at its singed body. The monstrous plant thrashed, desperate to retreat, but fire spread with terrifying speed. Whole sections ignited, shrivelling and crumbling in a shower of embers.
For a few glorious minutes, Noah simply watched. This incandescent revenge, this symphony of his enemies' destruction, was sweeter than any good grade he'd ever received. He hadn't realized the lake monster would be so vulnerable to fire, but judging by the way it writhed, it hurt. A lot.
Just when victory seemed complete, the griffin twitched. Noah's triumph curdled into horror. The fire had weakened its bonds, and in its frenzy, it tore itself free. Feathers were blackened cinders, skin a patchwork of weeping burns. But instead of collapsing, it turned its rheumy eyes on Noah. It looked like a flightless, roasted chicken nightmare. And it was charging.
"Crap!" Noah lunged for his Traveller's Sword, scrambling to evade the enraged beast yet it snatched him up with terrifying ease.
Weightlessness consumed him as he was lifted higher. One wrong move, one act of spite from the griffin, and he'd plummet forty meters down. He couldn't die like this. A flicker of movement caught his eye. The Keeze, once his tormentors, now wheeled through the air like vengeful harpies, a black cloud around the weakened griffin.
A flicker of hope ignited in Noah's chest. He fumbled for his Sheikah Slate, his eye flashing brown. Maybe... just maybe...
The tantalizing touch of sleep, sweet and elusive, slipped through his fingers like sand. A moment of respite, stolen from the cruel reality of their captivity, was brutally shattered.
"And the Goddess Hylia, in her boundless wisdom, imbued a mortal form with her sacred light…"
The priest's droning voice, filled with fanatical fervor, clawed at his sanity. Sleep, a precious commodity now, evaporated, replaced by a white-hot rage.
"Agh! Shut up, dammit!" The words exploded from his throat. He surged to his feet, muscles taut, the phantom promise of oblivion torn from his grasp. He wanted nothing more than to silence the zealous madman.
"Stand down, Eliah." The commander's voice cut through the air, cold and sharp as a honed blade.
Eliah's fist, raised to silence the priest, halted mid-swing. A snarl twisted his lips, but he obeyed. "Yes, Commander."
Commander Boulk stood sentinel; his gaze fixed on the monstrous feast unfolding in the courtyard below. His soldiers, his men, were devoured with sickening relish. With every agonizing scream, every life snuffed out, Boulk offered silent prayers. Their names, seared into his memory, became a mournful litany on his lips.
During the initial siege, most of the commanders and existing chain of command disappeared abruptly, the leadership command ruthlessly culled. Boulk survived only because he was smart and after noticing something was amiss adorned the armor of a common soldier. A desperate gamble, and one that had bought him precious time.
As he watched, the horrific tableau etched itself upon his soul. This was no battlefield; it was a slaughterhouse. His men, soldiers sworn to defend, reduced to mere sustenance for their monstrous captors. Fury simmered beneath his icy exterior, yet he remained an unmoving pillar of defiance.
For every fallen soldier, there was a prayer. An acknowledgment. A sliver of humanity in this hellscape. He only hoped, when his own end came, someone would offer the same small mercy.
A knot formed in his gut as he tracked the losses. His once-proud battalion, a hundred and fifty strong, was decimated. He could confirm eighty-five deaths, the rest were lost in the hallways but Boulk had little reason to assume their fate was any different.
The Sheikah cage that held them was an unforgiving tomb. Designed to restrain the monsters that had imprisoned them, as a result it was built to withstand the strength many times of which humans could produce. In the early days of their imprisonment, they had tried to break free. A futile, hopeless struggle, proving only that escape was a cruel illusion.
"Hey, boss…" Eliah's voice held a desperate edge.
"…Commander," Boulk corrected flatly. Though exhaustion gnawed at him, discipline held firm.
"Where do you think they took the women?" Eliah asked, the question hanging heavy in the stale air. It was a recurring nightmare, chipping away at the young soldier's sanity.
"I don't know," Boulk replied, his voice devoid of inflection. Did it matter? To these beasts, flesh was flesh, Boulk didn't think gender mattered to them.
Silence, oppressive and suffocating, hung in the air – a fragile thing, broken only by the horrifying sounds of the monstrous feast outside their cage. Then, a new noise cut through the grim atmosphere: the metallic whine of ancient gears, cogs groaning back to life within the Sheikah cage.
Instinct kicked in Boulk, Eliah, even the priest, their gazes darted to the source, suspicion painting their faces.
"It's too early…" Boulk muttered, his mind racing. Any survivor with a shred of sanity used it wisely, afterall information was key. For the past few days Boulk and his cellmates had been observing the patterns of their captors, analysing every detail in a desperate bid for anything which could be useful, information which was showing its results.
Eliah rose, placing a hand on Boulk's shoulder. "Boss, they don't grab more of us to feed on again for hours. Why are the cages opening now?"
"It's not them," Boulk replied, his eyes widening. His focus shifted to the monsters. The Bokoblin's and Lizalfos, gorging themselves on the macabre feast in the courtyard, paused mid-bite. Their beady eyes flickered towards the cages, confusion rippling through their ranks.
"It's not just ours..." Eliah breathed, his voice laced with a desperate edge. "The other cages...they're all..."
Boulk couldn't finish his sentence. His attention was seized by a new, impossible sight.
"Is that...fire?" He extended a hand beyond the bars. Flaming debris rained from the sky, and he caught a single, charred fragment. Crushing it revealed a twisted, blackened husk – the remains of a plant, a weed perhaps.
"Eliah, we need to be ready–" Boulk started, urgency in his voice, but his words were cut short.
A piercing screech, otherworldly and terrifying, rent the air. Boulk and Eliah clapped their hands over their ears in agony. Strangely, the monsters mirrored their actions, their feasting forgotten in the face of this bone-chilling sound.
This wasn't a feeding. Something else was coming.
'The Galemaw is coming back?'
The shriek ripped through the air again, a jagged knife of sound that scraped against their sanity. Boulk's blood ran cold. Galemaw? The creature was relentless, and with the cages opening and monsters just outside… a massacre was inevitable.
"Boss!" Eliah's face was pale as he searched the sky, panic prickling on his skin. "What the hell do we–"
He was cut short by a monstrous bellow, the sound rolling over the courtyard like a rockslide. The monsters below scattered, whimpering, leaving their grisly feast abandoned.
Boulk looked up at the skies, only to spot the monstrous shape falling, no it wasn't just falling – it was tumbling, a great charred mass of scales and withered feathers. Then came the crash, a thunderclap that drowned out the screams of dying monsters
Dust swirled, obscuring the scene. But as it settled, a grotesque shape took form: Galemaw, its broken wings splayed, its once-fiery eyes dull… was dead.
The surviving monsters, a pitiful few, had fled into the Wall.
Boulk blinked, and blinked again, standing on top of the fallen monster stood a lone man standing not triumphantly, but simply drained. In one hand he clutched a blue device which slipped from his fingers, as the unusual blue light in his eye fading. He coughed, waving a hand to clear the ash-choked air.
"Eliah," Boulk breathed, a mix of disbelief and elation coiling in his chest. "He killed it. He killed the damn thing!"
"Commander," Eliah breathed, a mix of disbelief and elation coiling in his chest. "Who is that?" Fear prickled, a counterpoint to his relief. "Should we get down there, close to him. Maybe we'll be protected too!" he suggested
Boulk hesitated. This boy had saved them. That couldn't be ignored. But he had killed a Galemaw, in the sky, its own damn territory. To reliability take down a Moblin required a team of four to six soldiers, but a Galemaw was something on an entirely different scale.
They were monstrous wyverns, their razor-sharp talons and teeth capable of ripping through a knight's armour with ease. Their leathery wings whipped up gales that could send men flying. Taking down one Galemaw required a well-trained team of at least ten or fifteen soldiers, working in perfect unison. To think this boy, this stranger cloaked in mystery, had slain one single-handedly...Boulk couldn't help but stare, a mixture of awe and suspicion warring within him.
Then, the Sheikah cages, cursed prisons of their waking nightmare, had finished unlocking. The Sheikah cages chimed in dissonant harmony as their doors swung which was met with mixed reactions. The broken shells of men remained motionless, numb to any change. The cowardly cringed back into the depths of the cages, seeking the illusion of safety. Only those with a flicker of reason cautiously approached, assessing this sudden, unexpected shift.
But Boulk, Eliah, and the enigmatic stranger had no eyes for the unfolding chaos. Their focus was locked on the courtyard doors. Cowering Bokoblin's scurried back outside to the courtyard, followed by reinforcements – Moblins, hulking bipedal monstrosities wielding massive wooden clubs, and lithe Lizalfos, reptilian warriors wielding serrated blades. A grotesque army flooded into the blood-soaked arena. And above, the Keeze, winged harbingers of doom, began their slow, menacing descent.
This infernal courtyard was a battlefield reborn, its ownership to be decided.
"Please!" The priest, Boulk and Eliah's cagemate, shattered the tense silence. He flung himself to his knees, gazing up at the stranger with desperate hope. "Your blessed ears! Your power...you are the Hero of Legend! Chosen by the Goddess to vanquish Calamity Ganon! Save us! Deliver us, oh brave Hero!"
Silence was the stranger's only answer. His gaze, previously on the gathering monsters, snapped to the priest. Then, with chilling deliberateness, he wrenched the Traveller's Sword free from the Galemaw's skull. The tip, still dripping with gore, pointed directly at the priest.
"Fuck the goddess!" He shouted, surprising all present.
The boy's words hung in the air like a curse. The priest gaped, horror replacing the reverence in his eyes. Boulk, however, felt a flicker of something akin to grim approval.
"Damn right," Eliah muttered under his breath, a savage frown splitting his face. "The goddess ain't done squat for us lately."
The man turned, surveying the courtyard with a sweep of his gaze. The monsters, sensing weakness from the prisoners were emboldened, their snarls and clicks echoing eerily. The Keeze hovered lower, their beady eyes gleaming with predatory intent. And from every open cage, eyes filled with a mix of terror and desperate hope watched his every move.
"You think the goddess is gonna swoop down and save your sorry asses?" his voice rose, harsh and ragged. "Wake up! We're on our own out here, same as it's always been!"
A rumble went through the assembled humans, a mix of anger and bitter agreement. Boulk knew the truth in his words. There would be no divine intervention
"The goddess didn't save you people in this fort," He pressed on, his voice rising above the growls of the encroaching monsters. "She didn't save me or my friend in the lake. She didn't save the ones that his oversized chicken probably hunted from the sky!" His gaze swept over the remains of the deceased, partly eaten humans as he kicked the griffin's corpse.
"But I did," He continued, calmer, yet the intensity in his voice crackled like lightning. "I killed this thing, and I can kill more of them. But not if you all sit here waiting to die!"
A wave of unease swept through the captives. But the monsters were closing in, the Keeze circling like vultures. And Noah's words, however blunt, struck a chord.
Boulk stepped forward, the pain in his ankle a dull throb. "In that case" he growled, his commander's voice finally returning. "What do we need to do?" His eyes met Noah's, a silent question in his gaze.
Noah's jaw clenched. He was no leader, that was clear. But he had power, a raw edge honed by whatever had brought him to this hellish place.
There was a flicker of uncertainty in the boy's eyes, but it was quickly masked. "Reinforcements are coming," he began "in the meantime, we can take back this fort, drive those bastards out," Noah said, and the conviction in his voice was surprising.
Yet, in the face of certain death, it offered a desperate, intoxicating hope. "But we need to work together. Those who can fight, grab anything you can use as a weapon! Those who can't, keep back, stay out of the way!"
It was a simple plan, almost foolish in the face of their enemies. But Boulk's blood stirred, something long-dormant igniting within him. He gestured to Eliah, the unspoken order clear. Eliah sprinted across the courtyard; his own fear tempered with a fierce grin.
"You heard the man!" Eliah barked, and Boulk was surprised at the authority in his voice. "Time to show these monsters they picked the wrong fight!"
The reaction was a chaotic symphony. Some captives wept, but more scrambled to obey, their terror turning into a desperate, primal urge for survival. Boulk himself hobbled toward the discarded weapons the monsters had left behind, his old bones aching, but his spirit unyielding. Fear and desperation warred in the eyes of the captives, but Boulk saw a growing resolve. Tears turned to defiant snarls. They scavenged for weapons, their bodies trembling, but their spirits blazing with a primal will to survive.
As upwards of a hundred soldiers ran around the courtyard in a desperate panic, the ones with their sanity intact had clear purpose in their eyes. Survival be damned, this was about proving to themselves, and to the monsters who so casually devoured them, that they would not go down without a fight.