NOVEL NEXT 63 - Life Pro Tip: Avoid Getting Shot By Getting Into Punching Range!
An arrow flew towards Archmund's face, and he deflected it with a metallic twang with his Gemstone Rapier. Though night had fallen and the moon had yet to rise, the camp near the Dungeon glittered with faint light, emanating from the scattered Gemgear, and his Ruby Tetrahedron, floating just above his right shoulder.
The Centaur reached back in a sinuous motion and drew a shaft of darkness from its flesh. It had no quiver. It pressed the tip of the shaft to the fading red heat of its bow, shaping it until it had a glowing red arrowhead. It drew its bowstring back a full meter and took careful aim.
One step, then another. Another arrow. Another Deflection. A small explosion of dust, as all the force of the arrow went into the compacted earth instead.
Rory charging by his right side. Xander far behind, rummaging through the bodies of the fallen. Perhaps they still lived. Perhaps they did not.
Another arrow. Another Deflection, the red-tipped arrow slung into the ground.
And now they were beneath the Centaur, almost in the shadow of its trunk-like torso and its cloven hooves, unlike those of a horse. It smelled like dung and musk and sulfur.
Archmund ran forward, aiming his Rapier for its heart.
It had let them approach, and now they were too close for it to pepper them with arrows. Instead, it drew its arms back, muscles rippling, and swung the bow like an axe.
Archmund's Rapier twitched upwards, urged by his magic to intercept the blow, and Rory's quarterstaff likewise raised — but the blow sent them both staggering back, arms winding like pinwheels. Helpless for but a second — but in that second, the Centaur drew its arms back yet again, winding up for a second swing, and he could feel the diffusion of the magic of his blades, how they were as unbalanced as he was —
He projected his magic wildly, every which way, for any target, any form that would accept it —
If only Mary was here, so she could blow the beast away with her winds —
Or Raehel —
Or —
His Ruby Tetrahedron burst into light, a candle expanding to day. Like a flashbang.
That had been its basest purpose. To be a light.
The Centaur closed its eyes, and its next swing passed over their heads, the wind gusting through their hair. Almost harmlessly. But Archmund spared a glance back; the camp's ruined canvas tents were blown back by the shockwave, meager as it was.
"That won't work twice," Rory said. Even his eyes were squinted. Archmund drew his magic back, dimming the light. Not by much — maybe to a football stadium floodlight. It was easier to fight when they could actually see.
In the light, the Centaur was more ugly than ominous. A bizarre combination — a bulky man wrapped in black leathers, pleated and falling over each other, fused with a black and gruesome horse. Its bow was repurposed metal at the ends, and black material in the center that twinkled with the light of Gem. The grudges of the dead combined with the tensile properties of metal — though even that metal was Grudge manifest.
"Legs?" Archmund said.
"Let's."
Archmund ran left; Rory ran right. Magic pulsed lightly through his Rapier in a purely defensive posture; there was little point in jabbing at the Centaur's armor. He let magic surge through his Gemstone Sword, just enough so he could feel the start of the mindless killer rage come upon him.
Rory had switched his stance, holding his quarterstaff much like a blade.
In unison, they swung, Archmund with his sword, Rory with his staff, for the trunklike legs of the Centaur.
His blade stuck into the flesh with a solid clunk, sinking maybe an inch in. He pulled it out; black blood spurted from the wound. But the Centaur didn't flinch. The wound knit together before his eyes, and a shadow fell over him; the Centaur swung its bow downwards, right at their heads.
No choice but to raise the Rapier. No choice but to block the blow instead of taking the full force to his head.
But before the blow hit Rory was before him, quarterstaff in both hands, braced for impact. The falling club of the Centaur smashed into Rory's braced arms, pushing him back in the dirt, but he stood strong.
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Rory was a "secular cleric" but also a "tank". He'd taken that blow far better than Archmund had, and taking it from above instead of the side had let him leverage his strength and direct the power of the strike into the ground below.
"Cutting at it? Too slow," Rory shouted to him.
Archmund nodded.
The creature had too high a pain tolerance for his Microwave to be effective.
Its leather armor and horseflesh were less conductive to heat than a metal carapace.
But it had the shape of man.
Mannish hands. Mannish arms. Mannish shoulders. Mannish neck. Mannish head. Mannish eyes.
He'd done this trick before.
His Ruby Tetrahedron jittered with his magic, and he shot an Infrared Lance straight into the Centaur's eyes.
As Archmund fought, Xander searched.
There were fewer bodies than Xander feared.
But the Gemstone gear was ruined, horrible gashes and bites taken out of it, regardless of the limbs it was worn on. They were stained with blood. He spotted a severed finger and fought the urge to vomit, to soil his shirt as surely as he'd soiled his pants.
He'd feared the worst when he'd seen the glinting Gem armor from above. His brother had been so proud to receive his Gemstone Gauntlet, boasting about it when he'd visited home for dinner. He hadn't been allowed to take it with him, since it was still Granavale property, but he said it'd made him feel like he could lift the weight of ten men, and steadied his hand. He'd boasted that he could easily hammer a nail with a single stroke.
But now gauntlets just like his were scattered across the pit, beyond which loomed a dreadful cave that plunged deep into the ground. Gauntlets, just like his brothers, with horrid gashes and tooth marks torn out of them. He shuddered to think how strong the creatures must be, if they could gnaw their way through that unexplainable mysterious mystical crystal.
They hadn't been sent here as beastslayers or heroes, he reminded himself. He, at least, had come to save his brother, or to recover his corpse. Let the nobles handle the gross work of taking down the Monster — they had trained to. He would just get in the way.
Even still he was glad things were less hectic than he'd feared. When he'd heard the original mission, he'd expected to fight a stream of Monsters bursting out of the Dungeon and having to pull his own weight standing next to two trained nobles. But this? They were just fighting one big guy.
And now that he had a chance to look, to truly look, there were no bodies. Only husks and severed limbs.
There was a chance.
There were myths about dead Centaurs, Archmund was sure. Hercules, that hero of the Romans and Greeks, had killed one. That Centaur's toxic blood had killed Hercules in turn.
That meant it probably wasn't the best model to draw on. At any rate, this beast had no blood — just the same dark miasma of all Monsters, that sealed as soon as it touched the air.
The Centaur clutched at its eyes, which sizzled from Archmund's Infrared Lance. Yet as Archmund had seen a hundred times before, darkness bubbled and boiled across the Centaur's form, and it sprouted many more half-eyes, sensors that could see and yet not be so blinded, all across its body, like Hera's watchman Argus, also from Greek myth. It gave itself 360 degree vision through this crude instrument — a Hundred-Eyed Centaur, if Archmund was being poetic.
A lesser man would've despaired at losing any possibility of sneak attack. But Archmund saw an opportunity.
As the beast clutched at its eyes, its grip on its bow was weak. He ran in, even as its eyes grew, and Disarmed it with his rapier. Its bow dropped to the ground, embedding itself an inch into the dirt. He tentatively pulled at it, but it was far too heavy for him to pick up on his own, and so he retreated.
He could spend his power burning out each eye one by one, but it would do little; the others would still be able to see, and the Monster could draw from its power to regenerate. Instinctively he knew his Skill: Heat Wave was less powerful than the laserburst of the Infrared Lance; it could heat but would not blind. At most, it would dry those eyes, not burn them out.
Yet wasn't the solution obvious?
He let his magic flow through his Ruby Tetrahedron, and again it glowed bright as a miniature sun. He shielded his eye with his hand; he peeked through his finger and, saw the Hundred-Eyed Centaur close every eye speckling its body at once.
It was eerie. As if a cheetah could turn off its spots. It was a rippling far more suitable for a poisonous blue-ringed octopus than a rugged horse-man-beast.
But that was a hint in itself, wasn't it?
The Hundred-Eyed Centaur was strong and dangerous. But it wasn't much stronger than the Ghost of All Granavale. The Ghost of All Granavale had been a caster, capable of controlling the terrain around it, but this was a brute. That didn't mean it was weak in the slightest — it was more than capable of hurting them very, very badly if it hit, but it couldn't bend the very fibers of reality, warp the fabric of spacetime, pull fire and lightning from the formless void.
It was bound to the physical, and that made it weak.
Unless there was something he wasn't accounting for.
His Gem glowed brightly, illuminating the whole battlefield, though not bright enough to blind. He noticed he saw no corpses — not of man, nor of Monster.
But on the other side of the Centaur, the Dungeon's door way remained shrouded in darkness, deep and foreboding. Darkness that was deep, that his light could not pierce. Darkness that grew deeper even as the Centaur reeled back in pain, as Archmund intermittently shot Infrared Lances at it to keep it at bay.
Rory followed his gaze in the reprieve. He clenched his jaw as his eyes landed upon the darkness.
"Got a bad feeling about that," he muttered.
Archmund agreed.
They hadn't been sent here for extermination alone. They'd been sent to hold the line — against the endless stream of Monsters pouring out of the Dungeon mouth, now that it had awakened. Now that it had been provoked.
And it had been far too quiet so far.
As the Hundred-Eyed Centaur bellowed unmoving in blind rage at the sky, three black horses spawned from the inky black of the Dungeon's gaping mouth, galloping forth to join the fight.