Rise of the Forbidden Luna

Chapter 39: The Retreat

I was walking towards Ethan my Sword in hand, when suddenly a violent earthquake convulsed through the bedrock of the mountains, a massive rumble that made the entire foundation violently shake beneath our boots. The sheer force of the quaking earth instantly shattered my locked gaze with Ethan, forcing me to stumble backward as massive, deep fissures ripped open across the snow-covered stone.

All around us, the ground was violently breaking apart, vomiting thick clouds of blinding green smoke and black ash into the howling blizzard. And then, the true nightmare crawled out of the deep crust.

There was no warning. It was a massive, infinite swarm of pure abomination. Tens of thousands of skeletal, rotted zombies clad in rusted iron armor clawed their way out of the freezing mud. Right behind them, decaying undead horsemen mounted on terrifying, skeletal horses burst from the smoke, their hollow eye sockets burning with blue ethereal flames as they raised jagged broadswords into the fractured sky. Within seconds, the entire plateau was completely surrounded by a swarm of undead warriors from the Land of the Dead.

The battlefield instantly turned into a chaotic, blood-soaked slaughterhouse.

Ethan’s grief instantly burned away, replaced by the raw, lethal instincts of a supreme Lycan warlord. He didn't hesitate for a single second. With a deafening, thunderous roar that cut straight through the howling wind, Ethan transfomed to his giant wolf form, his massive, heavily muscled frame expanding as he swung his claws directly into the skull of a charging undead horseman. The impact violently shattered the bone into shards, but the skeletal horse kept moving, its riderless sword swinging blindly through the snow.

"Form a defensive perimeter ring!" Beta Thomas shouted, his sword slicing clean through a rotted zombie's neck.

The royal soldiers violently clashed with the endless tide of undead warriors, the sounds of snapping metal and fracturing bone echoing across the ridges. Our soldiers were ruthlessly cutting their own palms to coat their swords in blood, but the sheer, overwhelming volume of the undead warriors was rendering our physical strength useless. For every twenty we killed forty more dragged themselves out of the widening sulfur cracks.

A rotted horseman lunged towards me his jagged blade whistling through the freezing air. I ducked low, sweeping his skeletal horse's front legs, sending the beast crashing into the mud before driving my blood-coated blade directly into the rider's chest. He vaporized into ash, but the explosive blast of dark threw me on the ground.

"We are completely outnumbered!" Thomas shouted, parrying two broadswords simultaneously as the defensive line began to crack under the crushing weight of the undead. "If we don't retreat now, we'll all be killed."

Ethan slammed a massive zombie into the stone floor, "Fall back" Ethan roared, his command booming across the valley like a wave of heat. "Retreat down the lower ridge!"

The surviving soldiers moved with practiced military precision, firing guns and throwing flares into the advancing horde of undead soldiers to blind their lines as we scrambled into the vehicles.

High above us on the cliff, a loud, mocking laugh cut through the blizzard. Alpha Richard stood arrogantly beside my treacherous sister, Sienna, watching our retreating trucks with pure, villainous glee.

“Behold the supreme Lycan King!" Richard mocked, his voice amplified by the mountain echo. "The terrifying Vanguard is running like a whipped dog! Run back to your palace, cowards! By midnight, we'll march straight through your gates, and and burn your kingdom down to ashes."

The brutal, humiliating taunts sliced through the air as our heavy steel doors slammed shut with a metallic thud. The engine violently roared to life, tires spinning madly against the blood-slicked mud as the vehicle jetted down the narrow mountain pass in a frantic, chaotic escape.