Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

---Tree Station 10---

TS10 was a little smaller, a sapling grown in one of the abandoned satellite cities of Ypselon District. When it was grown, its canopy just about covered the area of the small city that had once held a population of up to 50 000 people.

It was hard to make out what had led to the abandoning of the city from just the ruins, but it seemed like a variety of factors, as the remnants of the city showed signs of fights among people as well as of monster attacks. The fact that Y-city had still been managing dungeons in the area up until Minas Mar's arrival led them to believe that the population had mostly fallen victim to The Scene.

Currently, the city ruins were covered in a thick fog and the chanting of eerie yet beautiful voices filled the dim cityscape. The barriers of TS10 had been broken through and the tree was quickly wilting under an unnatural force.

Bloody Skeleton and obese demons were fighting and destroying the roots that had shot from the ground. What was the strongest line of defense was slowly growing limp, wilting at the same time as the tree. The otherworldly magic was sapping the life out of their instance of the guardian tree.

"Tsk, " Uno clicked her tongue in disgust. "So those guys still exist after all this time." The couple was standing atop one of the tree buildings, watching the scene in the city below.

"I think they even grew stronger. At least they are much bolder," Tearlach added. His wife nodded.

"Probably because the world is so weakened. There is little that can really stand against them now. The only thing holding them back are the restriction of their own realm itself."

"Hmm, I wonder if our knowledge isn't outdated at this point..." Tearlach mumbled as he concentrated on the changes in the atmosphere. As life left the great tree and the barriers crumbled the fogs surrounding their base darkened.

Although they were divine beings of nature, nothing they did was able to reverse the situation of the tree. Maybe things would have been different if the dryad of the guardian tree was here, but the two were unable to save the tree at this point.

The enemy that had kept hiding in the otherworld finally made their appearance. From the fog, they appeared on broken streets and between buildings in disrepair. A large group of mindless humans dressed in fine fabrics and more hordes of bloody skeletons and obesities appeared. Following behind them was an army clad in golden bronze armors of exquisite and exotic craftsmanship, riding high on pale, hairless horses.

Their mount's pale, leathery skin was covered in blue tattoos forming complicated spells. The main force of the Tuatha De, which had not been seen in Urth for millennia had suddenly appeared in front of TS10. The question was, why?

Tree Station 10 was not much more than a small city where the refugees from Y-City could have rested on their way to Agra or further to other places in Minas Mar. At some point even back to Beta. But currently, there were only a few Oathguard and Faer holding the fort. And of course-

"Uno and Tearlach! The Horned Children! The Blasphemers! The Oathbreakers! The Lecherous Sibling Couple! Hereby our Queen, Aislinn Uí Foghladha, has sentenced you to death for your transgression against the divine and basic propriety!"

They actually came for them!? The two looked at each other in shock. It had been such a long time and they had finally escaped their punishment, and now there were actually people that not only remembered them but were still offended enough to come for their lives!

They swallowed hard. The two were confident in their power, otherwise, they wouldn't have accepted the offer to stay here as guardians, in exchange for technically owning the place and building a home for their child. But looking at the force that had come for their heads...

"Maybe we should run..." Uno blurted out. They finally managed to have a child and there were next to no people in this place. Was it really out of the question to simply flee?

"Ah, I don't think we would get through this crowd and the fog. Especially not of we have to protect our son;" Tearlach said with a sigh. Uno clicked her tongue. She had to agree, they wouldn't make it like this.

"Maybe we could-"

"Don't even think of using that man's people as bait." "Tsk. I guess we will have to fight them then?"

"Did you finally decide to fight, too?" a gaudy-looking man asked the two. He was the leader of the Faer, stationed here, the sentient creations the Master of Minas Mar had created from the souls of the dead. For the two horned ones, interacting with them was a special kind of uncomfortable to the two being born from divine power.

The Faer did not seem uncomfortable with their existence, but the two could how broken their existence was, from the perspective of someone with a close connection to the laws of nature that was.

"Yes, we will fight alongside you," Uno agreed with a sigh.

As if it was a cue, the couple jumped down to the street. As they fell, their bodies transformed. Bristle-like hair sprouted from all across their bodies, as they grew in size and transformed in shape. By the time they reached the ground, they had turned into something akin to a centaur.

While their lower body resembled the body of a moose with six legs and a shoulder height of over three meters, their upper bodies were still roughly humanoid with long muscular arms. They had manes like lions and their horns had grown to big branched weapons of death, that glowed in a deadly gray light.

Their facial features looked closer to a mix of dear and lion, as the now almost 6-meter-tall couple turned toward the hordes of enemies. Where their hooves hit the ground, anything died and patches turned into lifeless stone and dust.

"You guys stay inside the inner barrier. There is nothing you can do, Seth will only get angry if some of you die," the Faer told the small teams of Oathguard that had been dispatched here. The fair were hard to kill unless something purged their souls from their metal frames.

"Kill the sinners!" the cry came from the other side, as the monsters and mindless charged at Uno and Tearlach. The horned ones held out their hands and black polished spears, glinting like obsidian, shot up from the ground. They grabbed their weapons as they charged into the enemy.

Slashing and piercing anything in their vicinity, they were surrounded by dust and debris as their victim turned to stone and powder. Neither immortal nor monster could stand in the way of the charging couple. Their plan was simple, charge through the sea of trash and slay their actual opponents as quickly as possible.

Comparatively, the entrance of the roughly 50 Faer was unspectacular, as they murdered their way through the monster to keep up with the horned ones, in an attempt to at least hold up the illusion of competition with the incredible momentum Uno and Tearlach had shown.

However, running down weaklings was easy, but the Tuatha De soon proved that they had actually come with the couple as their aim. A visible aura of burden and curses surrounded the two as they gradually slowed down.

The crowd of glow people in the back were constantly chanting and casting devastating magic and curses to raze the battlefield and try to kill the couple. The two were far ahead, out of the Faer, but they had barely crossed half the crowd of monsters when their movements slowed and they looked tired. Monster wave tactics coupled with strong ranged support had quickly whittled away their strength and stopped their momentum.

"Come back to us!" one of the Faer shouted. Although they had no great momentum, they had unending stamina like an undead. As long as Uno and Tearlach came back, they could buy them time to recover.

Of course, things couldn't be this easy. As the couple realized that they had underestimated their opponents and wanted to turn around, they were surrounded by eight knights that had hidden themselves among the crowd of monsters. They had just waited for them to get tired, before delivering the final strike.

Their helmet revealed their beautiful faces, distorted in anger and bloodlust and they charged forward, their weapons ready to end the lives of the sinners, as their queen had ordered.

"Boom Boom Boom Boom~" a warm voice echoes through the ruined city and across the battlefield. The heads of four of the eight knights suddenly exploded.

"Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang~" another sentence followed, turning the four heads left into fountains of blood.

A darkness approached from the fog. A heavy and sticky aura of death and decay crawled across the floor and spread everywhere, even feeding off the very fog hanging in the air. The hollow laughter heralding death, but filled with glee, echoed in the silence that ensued and a figure danced into their view.

"I love the way to walk~" "Really?" the lady wearing a black dress with a pure aura of death asked, with a voice that could melt eardrums.

"I love the way you talk~" a male voice sang amused. Following the dancing lady of death followed a man in a half-decayed state, singing and playing music on a half-broken lute.

"Charmer~" "Haw haw haw haw~"

They were in their own little world as he sang for her and they danced around each other. The effect of their actions, however, was very real. Heads kept exploding with every word he sang and anything that was touched by her aura of decay quickly melted into a black sludge. Not even the "immortals" could withstand the aura of death she was spreading with her mere presence as she was gleefully dancing and laughing with her lover.

"...Are we saved?" Uno asked unsure, as the attention of their enemy turned to the couple who had appeared from behind their lines.