NOVEL NEXT Chapter 49: Scouring
The crimson glow from the closest moon’s cracked surface filtered down onto the planet. Where water pooled red was reflected like glistening blood.
As season’s devastated side slowly rotated more and more into view over several days the weather began to shift. The winds would pick up, or become perfectly still. Rain or snow would fall in an endless wave only for the sun’s rays to warm the world the very next day.
During these early days of turbulence a group of goblins ran through the wilderness. They numbered around twenty, and as they ran they trampled undergrowth and disturbed wildlife. They ran because they were being hunted.
They all were.
A shock-wave of power bloomed from behind the slowest goblins, it came from a hundred metres back, the force sending dirt spraying and wood splintering.
The detonation of power had come from where several of their group had tried to hide. Sweat ran in sheets down their small green bodies of those still fleeing, their breath coming in fearful rasps.
Many of the panicking monsters dropped their makeshift weapons and shrugged off scrappy armour. They fled in any way they could, sometimes on all fours, desperately shoving each other aside to get even a few steps further from their pursuer.
The evening flashed a dull blue as a lance of power shredded the land fifty metres to their left. The goblins knew their time would soon be up.
For a brief, beautiful moment the air went quiet. For a blissful instant everything seemed peaceful. Then she fell upon them.
The five fastest goblins, each over level ten, died instantly as a crushing weight plastered them into paste against the soil. Wings thrummed on their attackers back, each insectile protrusion moving faster than they could see.
It blurred forward, bones broke and skulls shattered. In an instant over half of their troupe was dead.
The slowest goblin, an unevolved creature with no name, fell back in terror. Warmth stained its ragged loincloth as it froze in fear.
One of its brothers tried to flee, but it was pulled back as if by invisible strings. It screamed and wailed as it flew into the pursuer's iron grip.
Words were spoken but the unnamed goblin couldn’t hear what was said, nor could it truly see through its tear stained vision.
One by one its clan died as the hunter reeled them in. Finally its turn came. A vice grip latched onto his shoulder and yanked him upwards. The goblin shivered in terror and rapidly blinked the tears from its eyes.
The being before it looked almost human, pale skin and long jet black hair. It stared down at the goblin with cold, lifeless eyes, its feminine face portraying no emotion.
“Where is he? Where is the one you call king?” She asked.
“P-please!” The goblin howled. “P-please! I’m just a goblin! I’m only level three. I don’t give any experience! Please!”
“Where?” She said, her voice somehow even colder. “Is. Your. King?”
“I don’t know! P-please I’m-” The goblin’s pleading was cut off as his head impacted a hardwood tree and shattered.
===
X hovered over the land. Her wings and gravity attuned powers keeping her at a consistent elevation. She scanned what was once the eastern fringe of a human kingdom called Pherin. A kingdom she had been responsible for destroying.
It was the will of her hive, she had no regrets.
No, that wasn’t true. She regretted that they had eventually lost. When their numbers were depleted and their supplies ran low. The humans had rallied near a coastal city and driven her kind back. Forcing them to retreat.
X had duelled the humans above their harbour, the complex wooden structures home to strange ships. The strongest of their city had worked together and drove her away, she had known it would happen.
What the awakened formian didn’t know was that her family would be butchered in a pitched battle. She hadn’t been there, she hadn’t been able to help.
After she had recovered from her near life threatening wounds she had gone looking for them. Their trail had led underground, into the geometric caverns below the world. But there the trail had ended.
For years X had wandered, lost and confused. Without her hive what was she? How could she live?
But then she had detected something, the faint scent of family. Even now, hovering above Pherin and scanning its landscape, she could sense it. Something calling her home.
“Down.” It whispered. “Come down.”
“No.” She hissed, teeth gritted. With every day the call grew louder, harder to resist. “You’re not her, you’re not my family.”
“Down.”
X unleashed a [Ray of Annihilation], it sliced down through trees and a hillside.
“Down.”
The formian flinched. She needed something to focus on, something to hunt. The one who called himself king. Yes, he is another enemy. Hunt him.
And so she did. With sheer force of will honed from a lifetime of combat and survival she ripped herself from the pull.
Goblins continued to die, killed by an entity far beyond their ability to comprehend, let alone fight. But as X left a trail of death in her wake, darkness crept up from below, adding the dead to their numbers.
===
The expedition headed south, Hera pushed them to move faster and faster. During the day she would stand above them, floating on a shimmering platform of light.
She seemed focused on the far distance. And the faint flashes of blue light that could occasionally be seen.
As they travelled Leif noticed the land becoming less and less hospitable. Birds no longer sang in the branches of trees, insects had gone to ground and small mammals hid at the slightest sounds.
He could feel something change, deep beneath his feet. A creeping foulness following behind them.
Even his animals could feel the change, the myriad creatures all sticking closer to him with every passing hour.
After a day of moving at a near constant jog the expedition seemed to finally slip away from the malevolent force that had been on their heels. It was as if the world had taken a deep sigh of relief.
The landscape changed. No longer were they marching through dense clusters of trees and jagged cliffs. Instead the land became flat, rocks piled up at the base of large sweeping hills as if they had been collected by a force capable of moving the world itself. In the distance, and the direction they were travelling, were large swaths of swampland.
The inconsistent weather of early turbulence followed, each hour potentially bringing something new. On the fourth day of being on the move Hera called the expedition to a halt. In a valley a mile or so away was a trail of lights and a line of slow moving caravans.
The vehicles were being pulled along by large woolly beasts with upward facing horns. Surprisingly, some of the creatures seemed to tower above the very carts they were pulling.
“What is it?” Leif asked to the empty air. At a cursory glance he seemed to be alone, but over the last few days he had gotten more and more skilled at sensing a hint of the veiled, misty presence lingering nearby.
Darius shrugged, the man materialising from mist a few metres away. “Dunno, it isn’t the basecamp though, we’re still a week or two off still. Maybe nomads?”
“Nomads? I didn’t think anyone lived here?”
The man squinted into the distance and nodded, seemingly to himself. “Yeah, it’s definitely nomads. A Demikin clan most likely, they’re a pretty common sight on the border of the human territories.
Demikin?