Grass crunched under Charon's boots as he charged, hundreds of soldiers flanking him to either side.
The first thing he saw was the massive stone wall of the fortress. Blood red banners hung from the ramparts, framing a large wooden door. A couple dozen soldiers armed with bows and crossbows stood at the top, raining their arrows upon the mass of Death worshippers.
Trails of blood ran down the wall, dripping into the soil beneath.
Charon quickly realized that there were also no soldiers outside the fortress walls.
'They must be really low on manpower. This should be easy! The bulk of the trial must've been the initial battle.'
He crossed the field between the army group and the fortress in seconds, slamming his body into the blood-slicked stone wall to make it impossible for the defenders to shoot him, causing his tunic to become soaked. Looking back where he had come from, he grimaced when he saw dozens of men had died in the hail of arrows, their bodies lying still.
'Poor bastards. I hope I didn't know any of them.'
Still, relatively few had fallen, and now the main defense was rendered useless as more and more reached the walls.
'What kind of defensive strategy is this?'
Glancing at the hulking knight that was their sergeant, he saw that the man kept looking around, as if expecting something else. His black helmet shielded his face, but Charon felt dread emanate from him.
His head tingled as he sensed multiple balls of energy approach the opposite side of the wall.
'What are they doing? They can't hurt us from that side!'
His forehead crinkled as he tried to discern their goal, looking up and down the smooth surface, the disgusting waterfall of blood slowly moving towards the dirt beneath them.
'Why would they dump blood over the side like this?'
His eyes went wide as he remembered who they were fighting; servants of the God of Blood.
"Move away from the walls!"
His shout came a second too late as the bloody trails of the wall began to bulge outward. Humanoid figures pushed clawed hands through the viscous liquid, their bodies red and slick.
The moment their torsos left the wall, they pounced on the nearest soldier, serrated claws cutting through armor and flesh like butter.
Charon deflected a blow as one emerged from the wall and swiped at him. The impact rattled his teeth and sent him reeling back. Correcting his balance, he returned a strike of his own, only for it to hit nothing but air, his foe far faster than a normal human.
'Gods above, what the hell are these things!'
Finally, he was able to study his opponent, and he saw that it was shorter than a man should be, but its arms were far longer. It was deathly thin, but no bones poked through its blood-red skin. Its face had no mouth, eyes, nose, or any other human features. Just a blank orb of scarlet horror.
The rest of the army group was fighting identical creatures, but more kept spilling from the walls, their eerie heads silent in their onslaught.
One of the officers managed to call out a new order:
"Move away from the wall and gather in your formations!"
Soldiers scrambled to comply, the dumbest of them being cut down as they turned their backs to their opponents.
Charon managed to keep his own enemy at bay while he backed away from the stone. It was fast, but he held a strange advantage; he always knew where it was.
Every time it tried to dash to his side, he felt that unusual energy move with it before his eyes registered the change, allowing him to parry and sidestep.
Their dance continued as more and more soldiers replaced their surprise with fury, retaliating against the creatures for their fallen brothers.
Volrir stepped up beside Charon, joining his battle, and finally giving him the space needed to properly think through the fight.
A crossbow bolt landing next to his feet revealed their plan to him.
'They want us away from the walls so they can hit us with their ranged weapons!'
His fears were realized as he looked back up at the ramparts, counting at least double the soldiers.
'They must've been luring us into a trap!'
His eyes burned with rage as he saw the genius in it, made all the worse by the bloody beast directing its attention back at him.
Although Charon was not trained with a sword, he had fought for many hours now, and knew enough to not only defend himself, but to wound his enemies, especially a creature with minimal intelligence.
'I'm going to kill them all! I'm going to butcher these fiends and storm this fortress! This trial will end and I'll kill whoever sent me here!'
With rage fueling his blows, he knocked the claws away from him and stepped forward rather than back, moving closer to the beast and shoulder-checking it.
Its light body was sent stumbling with the impact, allowing Volrir to decapitate it cleanly.
No blood came from its neck as it fell to the ground.
Panting from the effort, Charon lifted his sword and turned to find the next one, adrenaline fueling his movements.
'Come at me, you dogs!'
From somewhere among their ranks, a soldier screamed out a strange phrase.
"For Death and the Dark King!"
Dozens of others repeated the saying, turning it from a shout into a battle cry.
Charon found himself compelled by some otherworldly force to take it up as well, screaming out with all his being, echoing the statement.
As if empowered by the statement, his muscles grew tighter and his reaction speed increased.
Even caught up in the heat of battle, he saw that strange black strings had extended from Volrir's back, attaching themselves to over a hundred different soldiers.
'It must be an aura ability!'
They were rare and highly sought after, especially because they usually only manifested in people who already had one or two abilities.
Unlike most powers, they affected everyone in a certain area around the user, allowing them to benefit the whole team rather than just themselves.
With the added strength, a line was quickly created, stemming the tide of enemies attempting to flank the army group.
Their line held, soldiers routinely pushing forward to exploit an opening or finish off one of their enemies.
As the minutes went past, however, more and more men died to the arrows raining upon them. With every dead soldier, a gap would appear, allowing a few lucky beasts to push through and wreak havoc on their unsuspecting neighbors.
With the chaos of battle, Charon lost track of who was where, trusting that the men around him would support him.
His lack of experience or training grew more apparent with time, his strikes sloppy and his knowledge of proper stances nonexistent. Still, with his ability to sense enemies, he managed to land the occasional blow.
Charon even faced off with some of the slower creatures on his own, holding them off until more soldiers could assist him.
Each time more than one enemy tried to approach him, he would step back into the line, denying them the ability to outnumber him.
Despite the simplicity of his foes, he found more wounds appearing on his limbs with every clash, and knew he couldn't keep it up forever.
'We have to be pushing back against them! We can't just sit here!'
Sparing a few precious seconds to look over the battlefield, he noticed that their ranks were growing increasingly thin, meanwhile, the number of bloody creatures looked no less than when they first appeared.
'This isn't working!'
Scanning his surroundings for a solution, the answer came in the form of their sergeants.
While the rank and file soldiers had been trying to hold a formation, the massive knights had pushed to the gate and were hacking it to pieces, creating gashes just large enough for a man to push through.
'That's it! We need to get to the gate!'
Charon fell behind the main line, allowing another to take his place before trying desperately to find Volrir.
The task was easier said than done in the mass of bodies, each covered in blood and sweat. He only managed to accomplish it by following the dark cord of the aura back to its source, finding Volrir just in time to watch him step forward to engage one of their enemies.
As Charon moved to alert him, a crossbow bolt found its way into the neck of the man guarding Volrir's flank, killing him on the spot.
Before anyone else could fill the gap, one of the fiends charged in with its claws raised, poised to sink them into the back of their commander.
The man wasn't paying attention, focused on another foe as the talons pierced armor and flesh alike, sinking deep into the mans heart.
Charon could only watch in horror as Volrir died.