NOVEL NEXT BECMI Chapter 227 – Distant Interests
I noted that the Shade had looked like a converted faceless mujina, and these Shadows looked like an ogre, a minotaur, a troll, and a large man in robes wielding a scimitar for the last one. In the unnatural light coming off Dread, their features were actually startlingly clear, shades of Banefire roiling across forms of ink, flaring momentarily to stark form when Disruption flashed through them and these reflections of their spirits.
I took note of the clothing styles as I knocked away their quick yet predictable blows with swirling parries, and then they exploded, one after another, as Disruption blew their undead forms out of existence.
Their shrieks and the popping strobe-light brilliance as they flashed away were like an announcement.
Thoroughly irked, I Said, "Daylighting the outside!" and promptly Upcast the spell at VI over the center of the area currently bound by Briggs' Interdiction.
It wasn't sunlight, but it was nigh as bright as day as the point of radiance ignited two hundred feet in the sky and lit up the area brighter than a signal flare.
The fact it was black and putting out harsh silver Light while tinged in red, with little crimson wisps swirling across the ground, was just for show. It wouldn't last long, but then, it didn't have to, as all those ethereal things and shadows concealed in the darkness suddenly weren't.
Shouts and cries and screams erupted here and there. I vaulted up to the top of the forge's awning with Dread, scampered up to the roof top, and looked down into the training yard behind.
I was just in time to see Pontius Treadtoes jump off one of the walls in the training run, turn around in midair, and release three shots from his short bow before he hit the ground. The phantom lunging for the hyn, all outlined in crimson, took three burning shots to the chest in an area smaller than my palm, which promptly spread out and devoured the thing, which had incidentally missed its lunge at him completely.
He saw me standing up there and waved once with an arrow already on his Bow as he came up from his roll, already drawing down and releasing shots into the backside of a shadow-wolfman who was trying to get around the glowing Hammer of the dwarven smith working for Briggs, who kept it at bay without much effort.
Pokpokpok. Glowing arrows hung there in less-than-substantial flesh, and then the dwarf bounced forward, Hammer coming up and over with the speed of a million blows on tempered steel, and blew its head into dark pieces.
The vivus on the arrows swiftly devoured the remnants of the thing as it fell apart.
The dwarf didn't waste a second, coming down, spinning, and his Hammer ROARED as he hurled it hard and fast.
It smacked the head of a lizard-looking shadow like hitting a gong made of ether, bounced off that to smack into the side of another humanoid shadow in umbral armor, then came spinning back to the smith's hand. The human smith he was helping took the moment to step between both shadows, whistwhist, clear swaths of vivic whiteness bisected both of their heads, and came sweeping back to cut completely through both of their torsos with some very smooth swordwork.
Both shadows dropped, Burning and gone before they could dissipate and fall.
One of the other smiths was on the defensive with some swirling axe-work over there, putting up a wall of steel using a variant of Ghost Sword and Wall of Blades to deny the shadows an opening and shifting around with steady Crystal Heavyfoot to not allow them to flank him.
Three Darts slammed into the trio of Shadows menacing him, one blowing out of existence instantly, the other two staggering as great holes were punched into them and Holy Vivus started eating away at them hungrily.
The last of the smiths I remembered was driving back a duo of actual fleshy warriors in light armor all painted black, his swordwork stitchwork-fast and elegant, his shield taking the shadowy short blades they were trying to use against them and punishing them for each lunge. The gray-haired man laughed and fought with the ease and smoothness of a man twenty years his junior as he harried them back.
"Zenakwol!"
Ding! Ting! Two notes I knew very well rang out.
The two startled creatures looked around as the keys were punctuated by a crunch of meat and bone being cut, right through the protesting squeal of steel. A gangly form in decaying steel armor that had once looked ferocious, and now looked half-shattered and ready to fall apart, came up from behind the side of one of the equipment sheds and described a nice arc in the air as it flew a good sixty feet, right into the middle of one of the sparring areas.
To its credit, it was undead, and the hits and bad landing and mangled armor didn't seem to cause it any actual pain.
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The Hammer that roared in to nearly take off his head like a burning meteor didn't help matters much, however.
Sama stepped into view, Tremble in her hand, which meant something was going to die. Judging by the burns writhing over the revenant's chest, she'd nearly eviscerated him, and a Tidal Palm had blown him back and away before those spiked cesti and clawed gauntlets could be put into play.
The nastily perfect length of Tremble flickered through three cutting arcs like she was twitching a willow wand around.
The first Sharding flashed out in a killing arc, and the vampire it was heading for could only cross his two short blades on instinct and try to parry the cutting crescent. Steel squealed and splintered and the stroke blasted right through the blades and him, cutting his head in two and half his chest, along with both his bonecraft Weapons.
The second vampire only had time to glance over and see the fate of his fighting companion when the swordsman there smoothly capitalized on the opening and slid in, executing a kata with all the power and fury of a Lightning Striker. Four strokes flashed through, and the vampire's arms, head, and waist all separated from the main body in under a second of movement, just a swirl of vivus trails and the man was past, striding towards the circle.
The second chopped right through one of the two Shadows staggering from my Darts, and the axeman leapt right through the last one with a diagonal cutting stroke as both flared and went away, also heading for the middle ground.
The last zipped right over Pontius' head and chopped through a lean shadow lunging in at the hyn's backside, splitting it in two. The hyn didn't even look back as it screamed and Burned away, contenting himself with driving arrows into the sides of the reeling Revenant there in the middle of the training area.
"Always wondered what hole you crawled off and died in, Zenakwol," Sama mused, stalking forwards, the only other sound being the roar of the Hammer spinning back to its master's hand. "Got yourself turned into a walking abomination, did you now?"
"BLOODY HAG!" the dead man screeched, and leapt back at her with startling power and speed, the blades of his cesti sprouting three feet of inky death as he did so.
Sama appeared to fall down as he came closer. Her back leg came up comically high… and just kept coming as her head came down and around and the heel came down perfectly in a combined vertical roundhouse Tiger-Tail Kick, right between the claws aiming for her, and drove the undead thing into the ground like a giant's fist to the head.
The crunch of impact and sands flying up around the site were pretty emphatic, and I winced despite myself, considering how much Soak that would cost to neutralize… and undead didn't have Soak.
Sama was still doing her somersault, somehow, her other leg whipping around and down, and I could just see the ki-shadow of the axe around her heel as it landed on the revenant's left arm, and promptly chopped right through it.
Tremble's casual follow-through to remove its right arm was almost anti-climactic.
I considered that Sama must have been quite fun to watch in the arena when she performed there. I couldn't picture her bringing Tremble out for bloody spectacle, so she probably used mostly fists and feet… and her opponent's weapons.
Axeman and swordsman reached the undead gladiator at the same moment, Weapons sliced down, and off came the legs. Writhing and twisting, the revenant found itself pinned to the ground under Sama's heel, which wasn't shifting in the slightest atop its head, despite it trying to shift and move.
"You're still mad because I beat you six times, you twat? And you thought becoming an undead thing might even those odds, or did one of the patrons you screwed finally get even with you?" Sama asked coldly. "Don't bother answering, I'm past caring at this point. We'll get the answers from your skull."
Tremble flicked, and the writhings stopped as the head was chopped free. She rolled it away under her foot, toed it up to her hand as easily as a soccer ball, and palmed it by planting her nails into the steel-hard blackened bone.
"Any more in the area, Edge?" she asked casually as I strolled down the far side of the roof, three Darts of black skulls dripping red flames spinning around my hand.
"The Forbiddance is still up," I said, coming to the edge of the roof and looking around, seeing nothing moving. "Until you can remove the source of it or it dissipates…"
With a flash and delayed bang, a building about a quarter of a mile away suddenly had its roof rise into the air on a rather big fireball of puke-green and rot-black flames. A second later, the combination of a loud boom and the shriek of something very big and very loud dying abruptly rolled past us.
"That's the embassy from Sind, such as it was," Sama noted in a tone that indicated she wasn't surprised at all. "Recognize those flames, Edge?" she asked me.
"I do." One doesn't forget demonflame's particular nuances. "I also noticed four of the shadows seemed to be humans in armor of the desert warrior style." The vampires that had burst into gaseous form, only to be consumed by vivus that thought turning into aerosol fuel was quite the accelerant, were different. "The vampires looked to be more local?"
"Aendicus and Maddatius," the sword-smith with the gray hair spoke up calmly. "You might recall them from the arena about five years back, Sama. They never managed to make much of a name for themselves, except as extra meat to pad out the group combats. They were in Krillomar's stable, for the most part."
"Think you can get some answers out of this twat?" Sama asked me, holding up the skull to me, whose eyes were still twitching somewhat around the crushed and rotting ruins of its face.
Blooding wasn't friendly to Fast Healing, either. "It depends on how stupid the Patron is, and if they took precautions." I looked up at the sky as abruptly the spell about us faded away, the source energizing it gone. "Forbiddance is gone. Detects up…" I pivoted once.
"Rear shed there. One inside the smithy here. I'm reading two below the training grounds there and there, tunnels or something? And there are two inside the manse. Everyone inside the manse, it is still not safe. Coming in to clear it," I said to them in Magevoice, starting for the doors.
"Merty, Pontius, Grimbol, Gensu. Korak, out front for the curious." Sama's commands were clipped, fingers pointed, and none of the men hesitated a moment, heading for their targets with speed.
That she was leaving me to clear the house was, well, to be expected. They were all Marked and knew how strong I was.