The creature's massive jaws gaped wide around the soldier's face. With a savage bite, it severed his head and gulped it down whole. The limp, bloodied body crumpled to the mud-churned ground.
The beast stood on its hind legs, towering over the chaos. One arm, twisted with three unnatural joints, bent at impossible angles. Its head lolled to the right, matted with black wool that clung to its hide, the cursed remnant of it as a farmyard sheep. Blood oozed from its fanged mouth, splattering onto the fresh corpse as it lumbered forward.
A sharp voice sliced through the din, halting soldiers and twisted horrors alike. "Forward! You're not here to die, are you?"
It was Commander Rhyne. She swung her sword in a blur, carving through the throat of a lunging beast. Dark ichor sprayed the air. "Arcanes! Raise the barrier! Warriors! The moment I give the word, we drop it and charge!"
She planted herself at the barrier's edge, shoulder to shoulder with her fiercest fighters, her stance unyielding. "Now!"
The shimmering veil of magic flickered and fell. In an instant, the line shattered. Humans and monsters crashed together in a storm of steel and snarls—a bloodbath under the storm-gray sky.
Warriors hacked with their blades, desperate to cleave flesh from bone. A few landed killing blows, but many more fell screaming, dragged into gaping maws before their comrades' eyes. From the rear, the arcanes hurled fireballs skyward. The orbs arced like falling stars, exploding rear of the enemy ranks in bursts of flame and shrieks.
Rhyne danced through the fray like dawn breaking the night. Her slender build might fool a stranger into seeing a fragile village girl, but her sword flashed like lightning, swift and merciless. Each strike delivered judgment—a throat slit, a limb hewn clean. Her armor clanged with every step as the twisted beasts lunged at her, only to meet their end in a spray of black blood.