NOVEL NEXT Chapter Seventy-Eight – Armies Advance
Nightmare changes its dream...
The fights to get to the battles were still intense for some time, as if laying out hope that by sheer repetition the Curse might get lucky and kill me again.
Instead, the days went by as I hacked my way through the small fry, looking to get to the group fights.
Instead of waking up from death, I went into quiet meditation as Renewal came, and now I tested myself by getting further and further each day, as my level 5 Masteries kicked in one by one, more damage going on the stack, lasting longer between needing to heal, having more burst healing resources, and naturally grabbing the last of all the Stat Masteries for another +1 to all Stats.
For a while, the Fey were the favored invading forces, and then abruptly, they stopped coming, or at least being led by powerful Fey warlords. I think the score-plus of erlkings dying at my hands might have scared them off.
Or maybe I just worked my way through the whimsical dipshits who liked to bum around in Dream and live out their reaver fantasies.
There were plenty of other forces to deal with.
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Their almost apish war cries were constant, seeking to pump themselves up for the slaughter here. But these weren’t Warhammer orcs, who existed only to fight. No, these were just hyperterritorial savage bastards who delighted in the slaughter.
A disembowelment ended with a heartpoke, and a chain of over a dozen orcs fell away behind me, spraying yellow blood and dark gore in all directions as they did. Tremble had made sure to note all the tribal symbols as I acquired the language via Polyglot, and was ripping out some doom-laden tunes that had all the yellow-skinned brutes trembling to see me come, even the berserker chieftains.
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Six pikes exploded into flinders, and I smashed into the middle of the pike square. Their kukris out, my infighters followed me into the center of the hobgoblin press, hacking in tight quarters on the dark purple-skinned creatures. The mangy, yellow-furred urgobs, seven feet tall and wielding massive axes, rose in front of me, and I cut down the first one as its blow came down behind me, moving on to the second target. The puke-green little goblin, all ready to shiv me with his short sword, lost his head, and I Finished and Hewed him. The hobgoblin captain and his plumed helm were not happy to be the recipients of that Hew, and green blood and pale green brains sprayed out…
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Stand cracked a cartilaginous skull, and the sahaug went down, the undersea dweller learning the power and glory of brute blunt force, not something you saw in anything but idle blows by massive undersea dwellers.
They were calling out in Diabolic, with that guttural accent all the deepsea dwellers seemed to have, nipping out with shark maws, thrusting with the spears in hand that were the primary weapons of sea dwellers, ‘cause slashing and hacking and hammering work not too well underwater.
Exploiting that total reliance on thrusting, and their lack of familiarity with pure above-water combat, I hacked my way through the press in an explosion of coral spear hafts and shredded scales, ignoring the cuts, scrapes, and bites aimed my way. One of the four-armed champions of the bastards croaked out a challenge, waving his four spears, but it somehow didn’t seem to have all that much force behind it as a line of shark-men fell in multiple pieces behind me, and my infighters drove in to test shark-guy claws against shields and kukri.
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“Sabers and kukris, hack them tentacles! If it sticks your shield, let it go!”
The colossal bulk of a really big octopus oozed forward on its tentacles, and if it not so accidentally squashed a Deep One or four, it totally wasn’t because of the hasty maneuverings of the spear line opposing the fish-faced ichthyoids marching up to make trouble for us. Sabers hacked into the tentacles it was lashing out to pluck up prey, cutting and severing, while I danced around with a monstrous lobster and the crossbowmen riding it, trying to hide my drool as I thought of hot butter and dodged the urchin-spine bolts and their deadly poison…
Well, no, not really. Stand intercepted most of them, and I pulled them out and sucked on the tips as the goggle-eyed Deep Ones stared, enjoying the poison as only a Poison Healer can, dark veins surging out like a drug addict gone hyper-powered.
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Rats, rats, rats…
Transformed men and women swarmed me with short blades dripping snacks, er, poison, hundreds or thousands of rats piling around their feet to add to the chaos.
Vials of alchemical fire came shattering down, crashing on the barrel of oil that I’d hurled out earlier, and which the damn pests had all run through. The stinking, squealing inferno that raced from clawed feet up to shredded clothing and fur didn’t much care about their DR/silver…
Next to me, a sewer lid was thrown open, and the swarm that preceded a two-headed rat below came boiling out. I slammed another barrel down and trotted on as Private Gomer dropped a torch down into the mass, and flames exploded in squeaking shrieks of death…
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So… death knights, doom knights, grave knights, bone knights, skull knights, skeletal warriors…
The physical troops were mostly skeletal, with animated versions of various undead monsters added to the mix for fun. Bone hydras with eight serpentine necks, three-headed chimeras, wyverns flapping in the sky…
Tremble slid through the insubstantial mass of a dire wraith, hewing through all resistance and setting it ablaze. I kicked off and descended on a clutch of them swarming my spear line as they used their weapons like staves, crushing the skulls and ribs of the skeletons attacking them, or simply picked up their shields and bashed away.
I raised my eyes and found the lich in the distance, commanding this attacking legion of undeath, with the floating figure of a wraith king by his side. Tremble flicked right and left, two more wraiths went burning in vivus, and as his cutting edge became a hammering pole, bones went flying as I began to Cleave me a path towards the two commanders.
The first lightning bolt came out, ripping towards the line of my men, and a Banestar slashed out to deflect it sideways, where it tore a gaping hole in the lines of advancing skeletons…
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Stand smashed the vampire in the mouth, teeth flew, and then I gutted it and sent the dry remnants of its blood to burning. The pale corpse collapsed with a hiss and shriek, while Stand came over to take the advance of the Wight Baron leading the reinforcements to the failed initial advance. Spitted vampires were heaved into piles of vivus, catching fire before they could go to mist, and as the desiccated corpses of hundreds of wights reached out, fires ignited and burning arrows reached out to use their necroic energy as fuel for a new bonfire.
I met the blood-red eyes of the Vampire Count in his fluted, spiked armor, laughed at his attempt to charm me, and wights began to explode in unwhite glory as I cut myself a path towards him and his guard of thralls. A swarm of bats descended on me, and as Swarmbane activated, the sky exploded in burning Chiroptera…
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Arrows out of the shadows, oaths and cries as they found their targets before shields could properly cover them. Snickers of laughter ended in sudden screams, and the obsidian-skinned elves with pale hair were removed of their heads as I came up behind them and cut them down.
Torches flew, and buildings were set alight, flushing the snipers this way and that, while my killings in the shadows sent them on ascribed paths. While the main battle line took up positions here and there and began to slowly close in, the dark elves, not seeing the bigger picture, were being corralled, herded together, and left with nowhere to go…
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Just a slugfest.
The goblin slaves were just driven in to keep us in place while they got into position. Now, a solid line of dwarves with lifeless grey skin, shields, and oversized hammers was pacing towards our position, ready to march right over us. They looked almost as wide as they were tall, weapons heavier than all but the brawniest of men could easily wield.
They were grim and strong and skilled, in heavy armor, and certain they would win.
Why they weren’t using spears I didn’t know, but they were about to learn the power of braced spears and how it could break a shield line advancing… and then that hammers weren’t the best weapons against creatures whose legs you couldn’t reach, and whose skulls were hard to get to.
I watched the rear ranks get ready to run over the heads of their kin and leap into our midst with flying hammers. My whistle went out, and spears poised all around me, ready to lift and stick these grey dwarves like shrike-prey on a thorn bush…
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And back to old home week.
Ogres raged. Giants pounded. Greatclubs, spiked tetsubos, crude flails, and the occasional very rough axe, interspersed with hurled rocks, bricks, human skulls, and pieces of furniture flying our way rounding things out.
A stone giant, looking like a rough statue carved from limestone, crushed his way through a tenement, and grabbed at me as I zipped past across his chest, ending up with Tremble in the temple of the first of the hairy, pot-bellied hill giants rumbling up the street there. It wasn’t until the stone giant took a deep breath and inhaled a huge lungful of his own blood that he realized his throat had been cut.
I rode the hill giant down, rolled away from two clubs, one of them carelessly crushing the skull of my ride, slashed right and left, and two bowed legs gave way, pitching them onto the waiting spears of the men coming up behind me. Braced spears drove deep into their throats as they fell, spraying the men before them red, and the giants behind waded forwards, trying to bat aside the spears, only to find more behind for them to run into and impale themselves upon…
The next street over, Fido and Shirley drove into the pack of wargs invited along for the fun, and One-Two raised howls of panic from the malevolent carnivores…