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Dark Age Britain: Seven miles from Stonehenge

"It matters not, for I am legend! ...Remember, knights, we stay the course, we keep in the fight!"

"S-h-h-h-w-w-w-o-o-o-o-p!"

A long downward stroke of Perceval’s battle-axe pierced through the head of a tooth-chattering ghoul like a dagger slicing through butter. Despite the snow-covered floor and the icy breaches abroad, in the backdrop of the forest, several large campfires grew out of control. Passing by the orange vapor of sweltering smoke, a band of Camelot knights and Kamakura samurai swept through the chaotic forest of blood-soaked conifers and deadened brush. Huge, metal pikes with ends adorned in wicked blades and spears drove from side to side, either impaling, or severing heads and limbs off the undead hordes that besieged them.

"Use your heavy pikes, they pierce the faster ones with greater ease!" Advised Lancelot.

As the skilled knight shoved a javelin down the wide mouth of a flesh-eater, he saw it penetrate through to the back of its head. Impossibly, the rabid beast still reached for him.

"By God in heaven, these creatures know no form of surrender, even when impaled!"

Perceval and Arthur rode their horses past all manner of putrid butchery. The snow was soaked with green pus and gory blood spray. At one point, Arthur stopped his horse and peered to the icy floor below him. He saw a decapitated head of a maimed ghoul that was still chattering its teeth and spiting out a grueling mass of goo and rot from its reeking jaws. Perceval watched him withdraw a long pike from his shoulder pack and stick it into the beast’s forehead. In another second, the head quit gnashing its teeth and finally lay still. Arthur then lifted the long lance with the zombie’s head still attached to it and placed it back on his horse’s saddle mount. There, it stood with seventeen other severed heads, which all adorned the high tops of King Arthur’s long pikes like bloody pork hinds on a pitchfork.

Riding his tall, black steed with brutal confidence, Arthur appeared from the smoky haze like some demon warrior bearing malicious gifts¼the rancid skulls the wicked.

During the battle, the Shogun turned to Arthur and saw the mad king rampaging through the horde of ghouls with a bright sword swinging. He also noticed the many severed heads of the Dragon Spawn decorating Arthur’s mount as the oriental warrior looked away in disgust.

"Must you keep such squalid trophies, bear king? The corrupted will find it insulting and aggravating. Do you wish this war to grow more brutal?" Replied the Shogun.

"Brutal? I see your men are no more courteous in slaying Dragon Spawn than mine. Look there, is not your soldier bearing the fruits of brutality even as we speak?"

"You’re insane, Arthur...only a mad king would find himself in a cursed war such as this!"

"Ah, but only a man madder than I would cross the seas of the orient to join me!" Shot back Arthur.

The Shogun just waved off Arthur’s comment and sped to aid the samurai warrior that the king had just spoken of. He quickly warned that an obese ghoul with half his guts falling out, was moving onward. A samurai with black, leather armor, reached down from his white horse and swung his opal Katana sword with such force that the ghoul’s head and shoulders were cleaved clean in half.

"Yes, that’s it, my friend. -- Bodily dismemberment, or possibly the head¼yes – the head. Smite these spawn of Satan through the head. They seem to go down afterward!" Shouted Perceval, while kicking a rot-infested, female ghoul from his leg.

Now riding their horses around the small encampment, the last of the remaining ghouls came forward with mouths agape in savage bloodlust. In this case, many were women and children, most likely the resurrected dead from the small village in the valley below. But children or not, they kept coming for the warriors with a maddening ferocity that even the most hard-boiled combatant learned to respect.

"By the sons of Mars, even the little ones possess teeth of the dragon," spat Sir Gawain. "Keep your wits about you, these lads are all hell and brimstone!"

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