d’tõì = 'DEH-TWAH' (õì is always 'WAH')
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On the seventh day of their journey, they arose in the dark once more, to make ready for Azrom to light the way. Thalamon gathered them together while they ate hard biscuits and laid out the rest of the trip: while they truthfully had no landmarks, they soon would from the southernmost encroachment of the northern mountain ranges known as Kelma’s Split. If all was well, they’d see it to the northeast in the distance at midday, then continue east and a quarter south to eventually reach Fallen Valley, where fresh water from all the storm runoff could be found for half a month or more. The path from there could lead directly to the river, but they’d probably cut across to save time. The vaeton also pointed out that, according to Aerion, the smell in the air was still lingering, and so to be on the lookout for ‘anything strange’.
After only a couple of hours into the day, the peaks of Kelma’s Split could be seen — soon thereafter Thalamon’s horn sounded a warning of an increased pace. Deros did not need to check in to know they’d ended up making better time than thought, and Thalamon was aiming to reach the watering hole by nightfall.
The land gradually took on more dimension, becoming hilly and having the occasional rocky outcrop or some sparse, tough shrubbery. Deros did not see the bird above them, though in truth he didn’t spare his energy much on it. There was once that he saw, far in the distance even with his sight extended, a flyer like a speck in the sky, off to the southeast and soon disappearing in the same direction.
The day wore on long and mostly silent, as everyone focused on the path in front of them. After they came upon one great, gradual inclination late in the day, the land began a downward tilt and soon yet another, steeper. From this point, the landscape spilled out in a wide valley of great rocky and irregular terrain, of contours stretching across most of the horizon, as seen from the highest vantages. The river was not quite visible, hidden by elevation, as was Many Sands itself, but from that high point the name of the land was made clear, as the hues all about were greatly varied. He had no names for the subtle shades, some darker, some whiter or redder, but the differences were evident nonetheless, mixed with the darker shades of jutting rock and sprinkled with the greens of life.
Descending from the rocky terrain and the highest points, the grand vista disappeared to be replaced by the somewhat familiar landscape of Fallen Valley, being vaguely like the canyon territories of home. It was far less steep and far sandier, however. They kept a steady pace, crossing around obstacles without perfect knowledge of what was ahead, and one of the advance scouts — Olarius — was continually coming back and forth to report.
Azrom was still over an hour above setting when they came to the watering hole: a great pond set into a sudden pit of the valley bottom, rocky and well-shaded from the daylight by a nearby high cliff face. The group was gathering near the water’s somewhat muddy edge, with Deros the last to arrive, as usual. The only member not present was Bariaki, still scouting further ahead. Aerion had his scarf heavy over his mouth and nose, with his hand over it. In truth, Deros could smell it as well — the same scent from the well was quite noticeable.
Deros felt a sudden strange pressure on his ears and the slightest hint of a low tone, as all of the aloga grew annoyed and agitated, tossing their heads and dancing. Deros formed makar’osa for hearing and caught the harmonics of a strange echoing sound like the remnants of an animal call, vaguely like some shadow of the lowest of aloga utterances — that of warning across long distances, which would sound deeper and more complex when he tuned up his ears.
As everyone began looking around in confusion while simultaneously trying to calm the animals, the matter was overshadowed to Deros by other echoes — that of movement. He turned his head all about, trying to locate it, and realized there were multiple sources. The nearest was from above, on the cliff, eluding real identification. When his head whipped around to look, he could not quickly absorb or believe what he was seeing, and soon instinctively pulled his goggles up on his forehead, to aid his sight. Barely visible was something like collapsing sand, in multiple rows, revealing rectangular openings, with the mix of sounds he’d identified coming from within. Small tubes looking as though made of dull metal came from out of them, poking out…
“Everyone! Look ou-,” he yelled but was soon interrupted by a terrible cacophony the likes of which he’d never heard, like a sharper crack of many thunders, erupting out from those suddenly materialized dark gaps — and from those strange tubes, preceded by quick, strange flashes at their ends that he might’ve imagined. The force and pain in his amplified ear — focused right at the source — caused him to cry out and clap his hand to it ineffectually, stunned and overwhelmed by the auditory dagger. His eyes squeezed shut briefly from the agony, makar’osa evaporating not-instantly-enough and even daug’makar wobbling. But he held onto it and peeled his eyes open, one ear deaf but for a dull ringing.
The aloga were in absolute bedlam, screeching in terror as they fled in the wake of the noise and the gut-wrenching cries of dying animals, as several were pitched into the mud and dirt, twisting and snarling and clawing at the air from the pain of grievous wounds dealt to them. Deros himself had to steer the spooked Enseres hard into a circle back around, yelling a command, to keep him from galloping away, even as his rider tried to take stock of the party and fight down his rising fear and dread.
Thalamon was pitched face-first into the mud, the mount he had held by the reins fallen and thrashing with a hole in its neck, jerking him down in the process… Daexo’s old mount Anvil was trying to get up with a wounded back leg — ineffectually — while Daexo somehow had stopped another fleeing aloga by grabbing a dragging lead and drawing it back to himself, as he grimaced and cast his eyes around in worry for another mysterious strike… Urchon had been thrown as well and was just getting up with a dagger in her hands, her mount upright but well away from her, the animal yelping in pain through a slowing hobble, its back torso just before the haunch of a leg apparently gravely wounded though Deros didn’t see the wound…
All damage directed at mounts, a strangely calm inner thought noted, amidst the shock and fear dominating him. If there were more than three injuries — dealt by the tubes, he had to assume — he couldn’t see them. Guns. He suddenly realized that they had to be. They were guns, as from the dictionary. The terrible weapons of a near-forgotten history.
Deros’s eyes anxiously sought for Palamera, and he saw her galloping away along with Eursett, back down the route they’d come from, a mass of the aloga behind them. Deros was closer to them than any other. Ryza was wheeling wide with her mount, circling around her husband and avoiding impacts with fleeing aloga, her bow already out and eyes cast toward the heights, assessing targets with a focused, steely poise. Aerion was riding up to Urchon, holding out his hand and yelling for her to ride with him. Olarius remained mounted as well — and miraculously leading another aloga — as he maneuvered over to help Thalamon.
From the shadowed ridge, through billowing dark smoke, the flashes and the sharp cracks of the guns came again. Daexo’s hoped-for second mount had its eye socket blown out by a projectile entering from the opposite side — he released it before it could drag him down as it staggered away, thrashing frantically and screaming. At almost the same instant rocks near Enseres’s feet exploded, causing the animal to rear up and threaten to buck its master off. But Deros leaned in and held on for dear life, calming the animal with whistles even as it twisted away and tried to flee again. Deros struggled to get him to wheel around.
Thalamon’s horn blew two notes and Deros could turn enough to see him managing it from one knee, half rising further to wave in furious insistence at Olarius, who had two spooked mounts dash his hopes of bringing rescue, carrying him away despite protest and strain.
“Go!” Thalamon shouted, face a fierce, muddy rictus of demand. “Warn the canyon! Everyone, go!” Indeed, his horn call had been the same command: retreat. Abandon the mission.
His heart pounding in his chest, feeling the pull and the panic to flee and wanting inwardly to resist it, to fight against it — to fight — Deros clenched his jaw and swept Enseres around, but not to Thalamon, nor to Daexo and his sister. Instead toward the streaming Hospitaller banners atop folded parasol poles, toward Eursett and Palamera, already close to covering terrain angles blocking the line of sight to those smoking heights. No one else was with them and he had his orders, even if they felt like cowardice. His training left no argument for what he should do: obey, at whatever pain, for the greater good of the community. It was well that it happened to include protecting Palamera.
His eyes couldn’t help passing over the scene, as he saw Aerion blessedly still mounted, with Urchon clinging behind him and them racing for rocky cover to the north. Ryza was slowing down near her husband, her bow loosing faster than the eye could fully track, up into the smoky divides, though it didn’t seem to be effective. On a third pull of the bowstring, she aimed for half a breath and loosed the shot of anyone else’s life, as the bodkin-pointed arrow appeared to fly right into one of the tubes down to the fletching, causing it and the vague shape behind it to recoil back and disappear.
But still more shots rang out in another volley and more aloga screams answered those violent cracks. The beast immediately behind Palamera fell, tripping up several more behind it — she looked back in fright, but her gallop didn’t slow and she appeared unharmed, for their unwitting sacrifice. Deros was already nearly on them, so he angled widely around the fallen beasts to avoid any tangles.
Glancing back, he grimaced as he saw Olarius down, rolling in the dirt holding onto the lead of the other he had as it dragged him away. Ryza and Daexo were blessedly speeding away under the unshakeable, aloof discipline of her mount Selephael, and there was no sign of Aerion, hidden by the terrain. Deros could only hope for the best for him. Meanwhile, Thalamon was running for cover with a bow in his hand, separated by a wide margin from any mount not suffering in the mud. Above, the guns had recoiled entirely, leaving nothing but smoky rectangles, indefinite shapes moving behind them.
Just as Deros was beginning to wonder what the point of it all was, he saw them: riders. Flaring from around either side of the cliff, coming from somewhere behind them by appearances, were demonic figures like out of a nightmare, riding creatures much in their likeness but even more terrifying.
In brown and gray-green hues, they were covered in an organic carapace like a beetle, segmented into multitudinous plates in the overall shape and mockery of a man. But their heads were larger and ended in four horns curving upward, almost like a claw clenching backward. On the sides of their heads where a man would have ears, long antennae stretched up and behind. Six eyes stared out, glinting iridescent — two larger at the top in long slanting ovals, with two smaller under each of them, more like stretched triangles. They had no mouths, only more of the slanting plates jutting out, with a central slight divide or meeting of slope that seemed to consistently stretch all the way down their body. They held guns in one hand, shorter seeming than the ones that had fired so recently, but perhaps wider.
The creatures they rode looked as if they could be their kin, all in the same colors and with the contours of a thick carapace, but they were four-legged and massive, with demonic heads possessed of the same six iridescent eyes. Their mouths seemed unopened, but something like tusks extended out from either side, more like curved, sharpened blades than anything natural, and they even shone like polished metal. Despite their size, they moved with great speed, kicking up clouds of dust in a bounding gait, long segmented tails almost reptilian-like whipping behind them.
It was only for a scant few moments that Deros saw them, terror and loathing rising in his gut like bile, before they were hidden by the terrain. He heard himself make some loud, indefinite exclamation, and he heard Palamera cry out as well, the full definitions of which were lost in the din and disorder of the madness that suddenly seemed to possess the world. He felt hot — hotter than he ever had before like a fever would boil him in his sweating skin, and a wildness was in his head where even the sand and rock in front of him was like an alien landscape ready to burst into some new insanity, to flood his senses with more. He did not know what reality he was living in, where such creatures existed and chased them, fired guns at them — they shouldn’t. They couldn’t. He was in a nightmare.
In such a stunned state, he barely noticed Eursett and Palamera veering off sharply right — barely heard their cries. His name — Deros — being screamed out from Palamera’s lips somewhat caught his attention, so his eyes rose, following her gaze. Rather numbly he saw the cause of their change of course: silhouetted by the falling daylight star were a clutch of the demonic figures on their dread mounts, paused on a slope above them, too close and three of them pointing their guns with two arms seemingly wrapped around them, as if intimately cradling a prize, vaguely glinting eyes staring from right above their steely jewels. Aiming.
This is it. Not her. Please.
The firing guns were different than before, just as loud but less sharp, and somehow he could see — just barely — the streak of the projectiles, was aware of some wider, trailing bit of it flaring and spinning. Two of the shots hit the ground in near-misses, in a strange burst or explosion, and the third struck a riderless aloga near Deros, which was brought down in a tumbling mess. From the impacts, a mass burst and sprouted out like constructed of some irregular net or twisted fiber attached to a central branch, and before Deros’s amazed eyes, it seemed to branch more and more, in lesser strands neverending. Around the beast’s entire front quarters, it wrapped and entangled, restricting it from any chance at rising.
“Hard north!” Deros found himself yelling as loud as he could, in a hollow voice he barely recognized as his own. “Hard north, get to sand — straights!”
Turning to look back as they galloped down the least rocky path they could find, he saw five of the riders in pursuit, charging down the incline with ease and ignoring the fallen aloga. Three seemed to lag behind slightly, working their guns and the strange mechanical works with both hands in some fashion Deros couldn’t track. The other two were holding their weapons up in one hand, not yet pointing them, heads low with the other hand on some bizarre extension of… contoured saddles, growing right out of the beast’s backs, as if a part of them.
They want to get closer, don’t want to miss again. Miss their prey. The thought was like needles in Deros’s chest: how outclassed he felt, how much he did not want to know what the creatures would do to them if they were captured. The beasts seemed of similar speed to aloga in the rocky terrain, their bulk made up for in powerful muscles twisting under the smooth curves of plates, as well as seemingly reckless abandon in their gait, like the rock meant nothing. Aloga were at their best sprinting in soft sand, and theirs were all fast runners. They had a chance, there. He was certain of it.
Deros realized one moment after he thought to use it that his bow was already in his hand. He pulled an arrow from the quiver at his side and twisted up and back in his saddle, breathing measured for calm as he pulled the string back between thumb and forefinger and aimed at the nearest bounding figure. Breathed, then loosed — into the center torso. It was too much for any further aiming, his own body rocking up and down with motion, shooting at a moving, equally gyrating target.
The broadhead tip struck the creature square in the chest… and snapped in two. There was not even a flinch. Like it knew the arrow would do nothing. Cursing inwardly, Deros pulled another, aimed for the head, and let loose, all by the instincts of tireless practice. It went wide, just slightly, but he saw the creature’s head flinch sideways in avoidance, though it might’ve been too late if he’d been on target. Involuntary reflexes?
A foe like any other. I don’t have to be afraid. He was though — horrified, ready to break, lost like he was falling down a cliff in pitch darkness. But the body could act, could go about its business saturated with adrenaline, grab for handholds beyond the mind’s capacity to keep up. And so he let it: let his body do what it needed to, to save them.
He went to pull another arrow, but Enseres trembled and shifted from some minor avoidance, and Deros flung himself back forward and gripped with a hand to aloga neck fur, his balance thrown. It was a simple adjustment, but as he looked ahead he could see he had fallen behind the others. Palamera flashed a terrified glance his way. It would be well enough if they got away, even if he didn’t. But five pursuers made the matter difficult.
When he looked back behind, they were closer, especially the one he’d fired at. The demon was aiming its weapon one-handed…
Deros turned around and steered Enseres hard left, gritting his teeth to resist looking back. He flinched as he heard the telltale crack, but he was still riding free as he also just barely heard the strange burst of impact behind and to his right, which was the side of his damaged ear. If one sound came before the first he couldn’t tell, as they seemed simultaneous.
Ahead, the land forced them at an incline despite the promise of softer footing — when Deros glanced back he saw the other lead rider had stuck well left and had gained on them all. It was pointing its firearm out with both arms to aim, but not at Deros. Beyond.
Before he could even call a warning the shot rang out, and Deros could see the streak once more, of a seemingly too-large projectile through the air, impossible to fully track — and then a burst of continuously branching and expanding fibrous strands, greenish-yellow with a vaguely wet sheen, all at the front shoulder of an aloga. Palamera’s. The mass stuck and wrapped around the legs in a grotesque splatter like some nightmare creature, immediately causing it to buckle and pitch forward hard into the ground, head and neck first.
His heart leapt into his chest as he watched — helpless — as Palamera went down with it, but she was no stranger to such falls and let herself be thrown clear, rolling in the sand.
Deros could do nothing but veer away from the tumbling aloga, passing by then slowing to wheel around, fighting the urge to just stop, knowing he’d need momentum to have any chance at outmaneuvering the demon riders. Just before he did, he saw Eursett still galloping away with two other aloga following, looking back with both alarm and cold assessment at once, somehow. She was not slowing, nor stopping.
Good. Go. Warn the others. If she escaped, he could feel better about going back. There was never any question or hesitation he would. He wouldn’t leave Palamera to save himself, nor to save any other — not for the world itself. He’d sooner die.
When he wheeled around to go back, he saw them all steer just as clear of him as he did of them — two of the riders soared past, after Eursett, while the other three slowed and lingered, manipulating their contraptions with an air of routine, seemingly gutting them from the middle, though he couldn’t spare deep attention. Two of them effectively blocked off the path of the slope, with the other covering routes more western. It left few good paths.
When he directed Enseres toward Palamera, she was not even looking his way, stumbling through the sand to flop down at her aloga’s great body, screaming its name. Graceful. Deros felt sick as he saw it — her — convulsing on the ground, body able to do little more for the dreadful injury it took in the fall. Deros had seen it once before and knew it had broken its neck. At best its life would be a lot of suffering on the way to a slow death.
As Palamera’s hands touched its head and makar’osa flared out from her to flow through the fallen mount, she only screamed more, shrill refusals contorted by sobs. The sound wracked Deros with sadness and loathing. He could feel it, and it hurt him too… her grief and agony to lose a companion precious back to childhood. Something magnificent made into ruin.
Her head dropped down, her abilities let go to unravel as her arms wrapped around its neck, crying. Confirmation, then — of Graceful’s doom.
Deros rode up close trying to keep moving despite slowing, calling out, “Palamera, come on! We can’t!” But it was no use. She was consumed by grief and didn’t even seem to hear him. “Palamera! Please!”
He was aware he’d stopped, holding his hand out to her, and finally she looked his way, face sandy, stricken and looking utterly lost. “Deros,” she said, hollow and in seeming amazement at his presence. Then her eyes flitted around.
They were quite surrounded by the three demon riders, all pointing their guns from close, right at him. Their mounts did not even seem to twitch, holding stiff and still. They had him, even if he wanted to take off on his own. He put his hands up, still with a bow in one, as if in surrender. They did not fire.
Not really thinking, he slowly and carefully dropped from atop his mount, eyeing them. He stood there in the sand as Enseres danced around nervously, pawing at the ground and grunting in warning.
Adrenaline still pumping through him, feeling the fear and desperation of what he was facing, Deros tried to figure out the best play. Nothing brilliant came to him. He tossed his bow to the ground and scowled at them, holding his hands out wide. Challengingly. “How about one of you face me like a man, demonspawn! Or will you just be cowards and hide behind your guns!”
He had no clue if they could even understand him, but if they did on some level and accepted, he could stall for time and come up with something. In the sheer madness of it all, a mad ploy was as reasonable as anything. He thought it was what Daexo would do.
But it seemed they did understand. They glanced at each other, briefly, then one dismounted. As if it were an answer, the others seemed to relax slightly. One of the still-mounted ones approached slowly and crossed between Deros and Palamera, toward Enseres. The loyal beast turned and its fur bristled up as it growled, posturing in threat and warning. But it started giving ground, bit by bit. Deros’s fur cloak slid more and more down the saddleback from the wild movements, until finally it slipped entirely free into the sand. Enseres’s eyes rolled his master’s way anxiously.
Deros whistled the command, ‘flee, run’ and waved his hand. Enseres still hesitated, tossing his head and backing away. “Go, Enseres! Run!” Deros shouted and whistled louder. Enseres whined but turned and darted away in the opening that was allowed him, ears flicking in uncertainty and worry, pausing to look back repeatedly.
Just then, several shots in succession could be heard in the distance. Deros didn’t even react, though Enseres flinched. He could only hope it wasn’t Eursett. He couldn’t determine direction, thanks to his half-muted hearing.
“Go,” Deros repeated, less loudly, and the animal finally dashed out of view. It twisted his gut, but at least the brave beast could get away. At least he’d not be demon dinner or the like. For their part, the riders didn’t seem to care either way about the aloga. Or, if they did, they’d permitted him to do what he’d done for other motives. Honor? A shred of sympathy?
Are these truly demons at all then? Or another… kind? Species.
He considered as he watched the massive creature approach, shoving its gun into a holster at its belt, where in actuality two guns were kept one atop the other, both about the same size from what he could tell. The monstrous figure was over half a meter taller than him and thicker than any man, with strong hints of powerful muscles under the carapace — on display with its sauntering approach. It had its own accouterments of travel and warfare wrapped around its person, including belts and several pouches of a heavy, dark material that might’ve been leather. What looked like a knife was strapped to the opposite side of the guns. On the top left breast, a single small red triangle seemed to be painted.
Deros reached over his shoulder to undo a restraining tie, then pulled free his spear, bringing it around to his front in a simple two-handed position. As his hands slid over the smoothed greatcane surface, he pulled its strap taut across its length. His foe slowed to a stop a couple of meters away and seemed to just be taking the measure of him. It did not pull out a weapon.
Palamera was standing and seemed to have gained enough of her composure to absorb what was happening and become concerned. Voice warbling, she said, “Deros, please! Don’t do this. I didn’t- I’m sorry, for… but you can’t win. Please stop. P-persons, gods — whatever you are — please stop. Don’t hurt him, I beg of you. We surrender.”
The one that had chased off Enseres had turned back around — it barked a laugh, in an eerie, tinny facsimile of a Hamaleen one. Then it made some adjustment to its protruding mouth-plates and spoke, in words Deros didn’t quite catch or understand, though he strained to hear whether it was his own language. Either words or syllables were close, but the accent was thick, quick, and bizarre. Moreover, it was as if from behind many layers, but also amplified, echoed. And fairly masculine.
The one closer to Palamera — still mounted — shook its head, adjusting its mouthpiece while it said a quick slurry of things. Deros thought he caught ‘if they’ but nothing more. Then it said, in slow deliberate enunciation, “Just stay out to it, girl.” The voice was once again eerily similar to any other, but like blown through a tin horn that was buried in straw, and with the strangest accent. “Move and you get splat d’tõì. Et? Like your pet.” It might’ve been somewhat feminine.
Palamera’s face contorted as she glared at the one that spoke. She took a shuddering breath, then spat, “She isn’t a pet.” Her voice was saturated with emotion. “She’s my friend, and her name is Graceful. And you didn’t spl-... you broke her neck.”
“Not our intention? Condolences.” It was stated flatly, without mockery or true sympathy.
“I broke its neck.” The one in front of Deros raised one hand up, without turning around. It was a deep, masculine voice, enunciated more clearly and with less accent, though still strange and metallic. “And I’ll put it out of its misery too — as soon as I’m done with your boytoy-here’s education.”
As the figure spoke, Deros pushed his farsense out as hard and as concentrated on it as he could, feeling every contour between them like he was embracing it, while with makar’osa he only minorly improved his vision, primarily for acuteness and to see clearly in the somewhat reduced light of the failing day. The use of focused farsense in close combat was a powerful edge if trained, and he’d been trained by the best in Daexo, who specialized in it. Especially against those without it, and all of his enemies indeed lacked it, by his reckoning.
The towering figure felt like nothing he’d ever farsensed before, muscles and indescribable substances in multiple layers he could not well sort. Something like a man was on the inside, heartbeat in the chest, but layered over was more alien matter, and a second heartbeat pulsed in rhythmic answer from the rather upraised, protruding back. Tiny, unseen hairs coated the outer carapace, and it certainly, oddly, produced sweat — he could even see the sheen of it. He became the most confused from focusing on the head… breath from inside, vibrations just like lips moving. A hidden mouth, behind the plates? They had all adjusted the plate and pulled it outward slightly, to speak. Sadly, though his farsense was acute, it couldn’t give him the details a Hospitaller’s makar’osa could.
Fighting his revulsion and dread for the monstrosity, Deros glared at it all the same and asked, “What are your intentions — what do you want with us? Where did you come from?”
It only shook its head and seemed to make a shrug. “That is not a part of the curriculum I have in mind for you, primitive. In fact, I think you ask too many questions when you should really be making statements. Submitting your report. With steel.”
It charged him suddenly, dancing briefly with a feint before going for an obvious grapple. Deros easily avoided it, back and away, while utilizing his still-superior reach for a quick jab with his spear into the creature’s abdomen. He made sure not to over-extend or commit himself with the strike, not wanting to present any opportunity to grab for his weapon.
The spear point chinked and slid off without effect like he’d hit a piece of polished bronze. He backed away, and his foe pursued more carefully. They circled one another, getting a feel for the approach. Deros held his spear in a defensive, staff-fighting posture and tried not to give away his relative ease at reading the other. He wanted another opening to present itself via baiting, but not too obviously.
I need to target a soft point. The inside of a joint. Under the arm. Deros could tell the chitin or whatever it was was not as heavy or hard in the places needing articulation. Sadly the neck was well-protected, except perhaps from downward angles.
The mounted male made a kind of ‘tsh’ sound. “I think he is a prime-user. Regressed tribals, sad ass pont’bâvâ.”
“They call these Blessed, here,” the maybe-feminine one replied.
“He’ll need to be extra blessed to hurt me with a pointy stick,” the one circling him growled, then dashed toward him again.
Deros knew right away his foe was trying to go for his weapon, in the tense hesitation with which he poised, despite his advance. So Deros presented a retreating feint as if striking for the head, which caused the great horned beast to raise its arms. The angle didn’t make an underarm strike safe or very viable, so Deros stabbed hard at the inside of an elbow, still retreating.
His enemy’s reflexes were sound, though, twitching enough to make the blow glance off uselessly. The momentum of that great body was significant and not perfectly easy to gauge, and this was well utilized in an attempt to barrel through and slam into Deros on the follow-through.
Just barely, Deros dodged and took a graze of an arm and shoulder, causing him to spin as he rolled with the glancing blow. He quite easily recovered in the controlled movement, and there was nothing more for his opponent to do but stumble past him.
There were a few chuckles from the mounted ones as the charging figure righted itself and turned around, seeming to take a deep, deep breath — all-in-all doing so with the airs of annoyance.
I need to take a gamble here. It — He — is not going to keep doing this forever. Eventually, he would just pull out the… splat-gun and be done with it. Nor could he be worn out, anyway. He was moving with greater ease than Deros, even with the bulk, and he was not pushing himself with heavy Blessed sensory use.
Deros took the initiative, advancing and utilizing his superior reach for a succession of low-risk jabs. His opponent took on a defensive stance, obviously trying to goad out a more significant strike, so Deros obliged, though not designed to succeed. They were feints that didn’t look it, all specifically to represent frenetic action without letting his spear get taken.
Then Deros deliberately tripped into the sand, and like clockwork his foe pressed the opportunity immediately, moving in close and trying as he endlessly did to finally take hold of the weapon. The Blessed hunter of Miracle Springs was ready, though — he ducked down and sideways and slipped under an arm to drive his spear up with all his might, right into the underarm’s cup of presumably-softer flesh.
It found purchase and pierced part-way — not as much as could be wished but the blow would normally be damning to any other, possibly fatal if it slipped the right way. But the creature only grunted instead of screaming, as if in no real pain. It closed its arm down over the spearpoint like a muscular vice, shortly before its free hand closed over the wooden shaft.
Deros knew immediately, hopelessly, that he had no chance against the superior strength of those hands. So he let go and shifted his attention to his only apparent salvation: the gun, unguarded and within reach.
Moving with as much speed as he could muster he wrapped his hand around a handle and pulled the gun free of its holster. Its owner was of course not happy with this, letting out a furious nonverbal cry while swinging the butt-end of the spear hard and directly at its former wielder. Deros barely ducked under it, more or less having to hit the ground and roll in a scrambling, inelegant dive to the sand.
Able to affect nothing more than a crouch before his enraged enemy bore down on him, Deros frantically tried to figure out how to operate the queer contraption in his hands. One hand fit naturally around the contoured handle, front fingers resting near a metal piece like a loop, with something like a small lever within it. That was it.
He anxiously pointed the weapon at its owner and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
In the span of a heartbeat, the creature’s free hand gripped the far end of the gun, while its great leg came up in a sweeping kick at Deros’s side. There was no real retreat from it, and all he could do was shift his head down and away and take the strike on a braced arm and shoulder, aiming to roll with it.
The blow was much stronger than he could’ve imagined, sending him slamming into the sand with force and knocking the wind out of him. His shoulder stung sharply with pain, as did the rest of him as he slapped the ground — his head hit too, though thankfully took the least of it. Nonetheless, makar’osa slipped from him and his vision blurred and flecked with color.
He was aware of Palamera crying out something his mind didn’t absorb in the haze — he thought to try and get up, but somehow he only writhed and half-arced up from being on his back, a position he didn’t remember being in. When his vision cleared he saw the great figure looming over him, pointing down the gun, his other hand pulling back what looked like a little hammer.
“Nice try, primitive…” the carapace-covered giant said. With that, he pulled the trigger and the little hammer fell, striking sparks and causing the gun to fire. Deros was trying to scramble away, roll to the side…
The crack was deafening up close, and initially, Deros thought he dodged it. But a burst of great force slammed into his back like it had erupted out of the sand, and foul-smelling green-yellow strands of sticky fiber coated him from the backside to the front, the tendrils blossoming and expanding and seeming to grow across him like lightning. He kept rolling, partly from the impact, but all he succeeded in doing was cocooning himself as the trailing end of the mass was pulled out of the sand to meet the other. It stretched back to itself and as it finally stopped expanding it seemed to shrink and tighten. His struggle did nothing more than tighten it more, and as his breath became more shallow he forced himself to stop, closing his eyes and fighting down his panic.
“... but you failed the test.”
d’tõì = 'DEH-TWAH' (õì is always 'WAH')
[collapse]
On the seventh day of their journey, they arose in the dark once more, to make ready for Azrom to light the way. Thalamon gathered them together while they ate hard biscuits and laid out the rest of the trip: while they truthfully had no landmarks, they soon would from the southernmost encroachment of the northern mountain ranges known as Kelma’s Split. If all was well, they’d see it to the northeast in the distance at midday, then continue east and a quarter south to eventually reach Fallen Valley, where fresh water from all the storm runoff could be found for half a month or more. The path from there could lead directly to the river, but they’d probably cut across to save time. The vaeton also pointed out that, according to Aerion, the smell in the air was still lingering, and so to be on the lookout for ‘anything strange’.
After only a couple of hours into the day, the peaks of Kelma’s Split could be seen — soon thereafter Thalamon’s horn sounded a warning of an increased pace. Deros did not need to check in to know they’d ended up making better time than thought, and Thalamon was aiming to reach the watering hole by nightfall.
The land gradually took on more dimension, becoming hilly and having the occasional rocky outcrop or some sparse, tough shrubbery. Deros did not see the bird above them, though in truth he didn’t spare his energy much on it. There was once that he saw, far in the distance even with his sight extended, a flyer like a speck in the sky, off to the southeast and soon disappearing in the same direction.
The day wore on long and mostly silent, as everyone focused on the path in front of them. After they came upon one great, gradual inclination late in the day, the land began a downward tilt and soon yet another, steeper. From this point, the landscape spilled out in a wide valley of great rocky and irregular terrain, of contours stretching across most of the horizon, as seen from the highest vantages. The river was not quite visible, hidden by elevation, as was Many Sands itself, but from that high point the name of the land was made clear, as the hues all about were greatly varied. He had no names for the subtle shades, some darker, some whiter or redder, but the differences were evident nonetheless, mixed with the darker shades of jutting rock and sprinkled with the greens of life.
Descending from the rocky terrain and the highest points, the grand vista disappeared to be replaced by the somewhat familiar landscape of Fallen Valley, being vaguely like the canyon territories of home. It was far less steep and far sandier, however. They kept a steady pace, crossing around obstacles without perfect knowledge of what was ahead, and one of the advance scouts — Olarius — was continually coming back and forth to report.
Azrom was still over an hour above setting when they came to the watering hole: a great pond set into a sudden pit of the valley bottom, rocky and well-shaded from the daylight by a nearby high cliff face. The group was gathering near the water’s somewhat muddy edge, with Deros the last to arrive, as usual. The only member not present was Bariaki, still scouting further ahead. Aerion had his scarf heavy over his mouth and nose, with his hand over it. In truth, Deros could smell it as well — the same scent from the well was quite noticeable.
Deros felt a sudden strange pressure on his ears and the slightest hint of a low tone, as all of the aloga grew annoyed and agitated, tossing their heads and dancing. Deros formed makar’osa for hearing and caught the harmonics of a strange echoing sound like the remnants of an animal call, vaguely like some shadow of the lowest of aloga utterances — that of warning across long distances, which would sound deeper and more complex when he tuned up his ears.
As everyone began looking around in confusion while simultaneously trying to calm the animals, the matter was overshadowed to Deros by other echoes — that of movement. He turned his head all about, trying to locate it, and realized there were multiple sources. The nearest was from above, on the cliff, eluding real identification. When his head whipped around to look, he could not quickly absorb or believe what he was seeing, and soon instinctively pulled his goggles up on his forehead, to aid his sight. Barely visible was something like collapsing sand, in multiple rows, revealing rectangular openings, with the mix of sounds he’d identified coming from within. Small tubes looking as though made of dull metal came from out of them, poking out…
“Everyone! Look ou-,” he yelled but was soon interrupted by a terrible cacophony the likes of which he’d never heard, like a sharper crack of many thunders, erupting out from those suddenly materialized dark gaps — and from those strange tubes, preceded by quick, strange flashes at their ends that he might’ve imagined. The force and pain in his amplified ear — focused right at the source — caused him to cry out and clap his hand to it ineffectually, stunned and overwhelmed by the auditory dagger. His eyes squeezed shut briefly from the agony, makar’osa evaporating not-instantly-enough and even daug’makar wobbling. But he held onto it and peeled his eyes open, one ear deaf but for a dull ringing.
The aloga were in absolute bedlam, screeching in terror as they fled in the wake of the noise and the gut-wrenching cries of dying animals, as several were pitched into the mud and dirt, twisting and snarling and clawing at the air from the pain of grievous wounds dealt to them. Deros himself had to steer the spooked Enseres hard into a circle back around, yelling a command, to keep him from galloping away, even as his rider tried to take stock of the party and fight down his rising fear and dread.
Thalamon was pitched face-first into the mud, the mount he had held by the reins fallen and thrashing with a hole in its neck, jerking him down in the process… Daexo’s old mount Anvil was trying to get up with a wounded back leg — ineffectually — while Daexo somehow had stopped another fleeing aloga by grabbing a dragging lead and drawing it back to himself, as he grimaced and cast his eyes around in worry for another mysterious strike… Urchon had been thrown as well and was just getting up with a dagger in her hands, her mount upright but well away from her, the animal yelping in pain through a slowing hobble, its back torso just before the haunch of a leg apparently gravely wounded though Deros didn’t see the wound…
All damage directed at mounts, a strangely calm inner thought noted, amidst the shock and fear dominating him. If there were more than three injuries — dealt by the tubes, he had to assume — he couldn’t see them. Guns. He suddenly realized that they had to be. They were guns, as from the dictionary. The terrible weapons of a near-forgotten history.
Deros’s eyes anxiously sought for Palamera, and he saw her galloping away along with Eursett, back down the route they’d come from, a mass of the aloga behind them. Deros was closer to them than any other. Ryza was wheeling wide with her mount, circling around her husband and avoiding impacts with fleeing aloga, her bow already out and eyes cast toward the heights, assessing targets with a focused, steely poise. Aerion was riding up to Urchon, holding out his hand and yelling for her to ride with him. Olarius remained mounted as well — and miraculously leading another aloga — as he maneuvered over to help Thalamon.
From the shadowed ridge, through billowing dark smoke, the flashes and the sharp cracks of the guns came again. Daexo’s hoped-for second mount had its eye socket blown out by a projectile entering from the opposite side — he released it before it could drag him down as it staggered away, thrashing frantically and screaming. At almost the same instant rocks near Enseres’s feet exploded, causing the animal to rear up and threaten to buck its master off. But Deros leaned in and held on for dear life, calming the animal with whistles even as it twisted away and tried to flee again. Deros struggled to get him to wheel around.
Thalamon’s horn blew two notes and Deros could turn enough to see him managing it from one knee, half rising further to wave in furious insistence at Olarius, who had two spooked mounts dash his hopes of bringing rescue, carrying him away despite protest and strain.
“Go!” Thalamon shouted, face a fierce, muddy rictus of demand. “Warn the canyon! Everyone, go!” Indeed, his horn call had been the same command: retreat. Abandon the mission.
His heart pounding in his chest, feeling the pull and the panic to flee and wanting inwardly to resist it, to fight against it — to fight — Deros clenched his jaw and swept Enseres around, but not to Thalamon, nor to Daexo and his sister. Instead toward the streaming Hospitaller banners atop folded parasol poles, toward Eursett and Palamera, already close to covering terrain angles blocking the line of sight to those smoking heights. No one else was with them and he had his orders, even if they felt like cowardice. His training left no argument for what he should do: obey, at whatever pain, for the greater good of the community. It was well that it happened to include protecting Palamera.
His eyes couldn’t help passing over the scene, as he saw Aerion blessedly still mounted, with Urchon clinging behind him and them racing for rocky cover to the north. Ryza was slowing down near her husband, her bow loosing faster than the eye could fully track, up into the smoky divides, though it didn’t seem to be effective. On a third pull of the bowstring, she aimed for half a breath and loosed the shot of anyone else’s life, as the bodkin-pointed arrow appeared to fly right into one of the tubes down to the fletching, causing it and the vague shape behind it to recoil back and disappear.
But still more shots rang out in another volley and more aloga screams answered those violent cracks. The beast immediately behind Palamera fell, tripping up several more behind it — she looked back in fright, but her gallop didn’t slow and she appeared unharmed, for their unwitting sacrifice. Deros was already nearly on them, so he angled widely around the fallen beasts to avoid any tangles.
Glancing back, he grimaced as he saw Olarius down, rolling in the dirt holding onto the lead of the other he had as it dragged him away. Ryza and Daexo were blessedly speeding away under the unshakeable, aloof discipline of her mount Selephael, and there was no sign of Aerion, hidden by the terrain. Deros could only hope for the best for him. Meanwhile, Thalamon was running for cover with a bow in his hand, separated by a wide margin from any mount not suffering in the mud. Above, the guns had recoiled entirely, leaving nothing but smoky rectangles, indefinite shapes moving behind them.
Just as Deros was beginning to wonder what the point of it all was, he saw them: riders. Flaring from around either side of the cliff, coming from somewhere behind them by appearances, were demonic figures like out of a nightmare, riding creatures much in their likeness but even more terrifying.
In brown and gray-green hues, they were covered in an organic carapace like a beetle, segmented into multitudinous plates in the overall shape and mockery of a man. But their heads were larger and ended in four horns curving upward, almost like a claw clenching backward. On the sides of their heads where a man would have ears, long antennae stretched up and behind. Six eyes stared out, glinting iridescent — two larger at the top in long slanting ovals, with two smaller under each of them, more like stretched triangles. They had no mouths, only more of the slanting plates jutting out, with a central slight divide or meeting of slope that seemed to consistently stretch all the way down their body. They held guns in one hand, shorter seeming than the ones that had fired so recently, but perhaps wider.
The creatures they rode looked as if they could be their kin, all in the same colors and with the contours of a thick carapace, but they were four-legged and massive, with demonic heads possessed of the same six iridescent eyes. Their mouths seemed unopened, but something like tusks extended out from either side, more like curved, sharpened blades than anything natural, and they even shone like polished metal. Despite their size, they moved with great speed, kicking up clouds of dust in a bounding gait, long segmented tails almost reptilian-like whipping behind them.
It was only for a scant few moments that Deros saw them, terror and loathing rising in his gut like bile, before they were hidden by the terrain. He heard himself make some loud, indefinite exclamation, and he heard Palamera cry out as well, the full definitions of which were lost in the din and disorder of the madness that suddenly seemed to possess the world. He felt hot — hotter than he ever had before like a fever would boil him in his sweating skin, and a wildness was in his head where even the sand and rock in front of him was like an alien landscape ready to burst into some new insanity, to flood his senses with more. He did not know what reality he was living in, where such creatures existed and chased them, fired guns at them — they shouldn’t. They couldn’t. He was in a nightmare.
In such a stunned state, he barely noticed Eursett and Palamera veering off sharply right — barely heard their cries. His name — Deros — being screamed out from Palamera’s lips somewhat caught his attention, so his eyes rose, following her gaze. Rather numbly he saw the cause of their change of course: silhouetted by the falling daylight star were a clutch of the demonic figures on their dread mounts, paused on a slope above them, too close and three of them pointing their guns with two arms seemingly wrapped around them, as if intimately cradling a prize, vaguely glinting eyes staring from right above their steely jewels. Aiming.
This is it. Not her. Please.
The firing guns were different than before, just as loud but less sharp, and somehow he could see — just barely — the streak of the projectiles, was aware of some wider, trailing bit of it flaring and spinning. Two of the shots hit the ground in near-misses, in a strange burst or explosion, and the third struck a riderless aloga near Deros, which was brought down in a tumbling mess. From the impacts, a mass burst and sprouted out like constructed of some irregular net or twisted fiber attached to a central branch, and before Deros’s amazed eyes, it seemed to branch more and more, in lesser strands neverending. Around the beast’s entire front quarters, it wrapped and entangled, restricting it from any chance at rising.
“Hard north!” Deros found himself yelling as loud as he could, in a hollow voice he barely recognized as his own. “Hard north, get to sand — straights!”
Turning to look back as they galloped down the least rocky path they could find, he saw five of the riders in pursuit, charging down the incline with ease and ignoring the fallen aloga. Three seemed to lag behind slightly, working their guns and the strange mechanical works with both hands in some fashion Deros couldn’t track. The other two were holding their weapons up in one hand, not yet pointing them, heads low with the other hand on some bizarre extension of… contoured saddles, growing right out of the beast’s backs, as if a part of them.
They want to get closer, don’t want to miss again. Miss their prey. The thought was like needles in Deros’s chest: how outclassed he felt, how much he did not want to know what the creatures would do to them if they were captured. The beasts seemed of similar speed to aloga in the rocky terrain, their bulk made up for in powerful muscles twisting under the smooth curves of plates, as well as seemingly reckless abandon in their gait, like the rock meant nothing. Aloga were at their best sprinting in soft sand, and theirs were all fast runners. They had a chance, there. He was certain of it.
Deros realized one moment after he thought to use it that his bow was already in his hand. He pulled an arrow from the quiver at his side and twisted up and back in his saddle, breathing measured for calm as he pulled the string back between thumb and forefinger and aimed at the nearest bounding figure. Breathed, then loosed — into the center torso. It was too much for any further aiming, his own body rocking up and down with motion, shooting at a moving, equally gyrating target.
The broadhead tip struck the creature square in the chest… and snapped in two. There was not even a flinch. Like it knew the arrow would do nothing. Cursing inwardly, Deros pulled another, aimed for the head, and let loose, all by the instincts of tireless practice. It went wide, just slightly, but he saw the creature’s head flinch sideways in avoidance, though it might’ve been too late if he’d been on target. Involuntary reflexes?
A foe like any other. I don’t have to be afraid. He was though — horrified, ready to break, lost like he was falling down a cliff in pitch darkness. But the body could act, could go about its business saturated with adrenaline, grab for handholds beyond the mind’s capacity to keep up. And so he let it: let his body do what it needed to, to save them.
He went to pull another arrow, but Enseres trembled and shifted from some minor avoidance, and Deros flung himself back forward and gripped with a hand to aloga neck fur, his balance thrown. It was a simple adjustment, but as he looked ahead he could see he had fallen behind the others. Palamera flashed a terrified glance his way. It would be well enough if they got away, even if he didn’t. But five pursuers made the matter difficult.
When he looked back behind, they were closer, especially the one he’d fired at. The demon was aiming its weapon one-handed…
Deros turned around and steered Enseres hard left, gritting his teeth to resist looking back. He flinched as he heard the telltale crack, but he was still riding free as he also just barely heard the strange burst of impact behind and to his right, which was the side of his damaged ear. If one sound came before the first he couldn’t tell, as they seemed simultaneous.
Ahead, the land forced them at an incline despite the promise of softer footing — when Deros glanced back he saw the other lead rider had stuck well left and had gained on them all. It was pointing its firearm out with both arms to aim, but not at Deros. Beyond.
Before he could even call a warning the shot rang out, and Deros could see the streak once more, of a seemingly too-large projectile through the air, impossible to fully track — and then a burst of continuously branching and expanding fibrous strands, greenish-yellow with a vaguely wet sheen, all at the front shoulder of an aloga. Palamera’s. The mass stuck and wrapped around the legs in a grotesque splatter like some nightmare creature, immediately causing it to buckle and pitch forward hard into the ground, head and neck first.
His heart leapt into his chest as he watched — helpless — as Palamera went down with it, but she was no stranger to such falls and let herself be thrown clear, rolling in the sand.
Deros could do nothing but veer away from the tumbling aloga, passing by then slowing to wheel around, fighting the urge to just stop, knowing he’d need momentum to have any chance at outmaneuvering the demon riders. Just before he did, he saw Eursett still galloping away with two other aloga following, looking back with both alarm and cold assessment at once, somehow. She was not slowing, nor stopping.
Good. Go. Warn the others. If she escaped, he could feel better about going back. There was never any question or hesitation he would. He wouldn’t leave Palamera to save himself, nor to save any other — not for the world itself. He’d sooner die.
When he wheeled around to go back, he saw them all steer just as clear of him as he did of them — two of the riders soared past, after Eursett, while the other three slowed and lingered, manipulating their contraptions with an air of routine, seemingly gutting them from the middle, though he couldn’t spare deep attention. Two of them effectively blocked off the path of the slope, with the other covering routes more western. It left few good paths.
When he directed Enseres toward Palamera, she was not even looking his way, stumbling through the sand to flop down at her aloga’s great body, screaming its name. Graceful. Deros felt sick as he saw it — her — convulsing on the ground, body able to do little more for the dreadful injury it took in the fall. Deros had seen it once before and knew it had broken its neck. At best its life would be a lot of suffering on the way to a slow death.
As Palamera’s hands touched its head and makar’osa flared out from her to flow through the fallen mount, she only screamed more, shrill refusals contorted by sobs. The sound wracked Deros with sadness and loathing. He could feel it, and it hurt him too… her grief and agony to lose a companion precious back to childhood. Something magnificent made into ruin.
Her head dropped down, her abilities let go to unravel as her arms wrapped around its neck, crying. Confirmation, then — of Graceful’s doom.
Deros rode up close trying to keep moving despite slowing, calling out, “Palamera, come on! We can’t!” But it was no use. She was consumed by grief and didn’t even seem to hear him. “Palamera! Please!”
He was aware he’d stopped, holding his hand out to her, and finally she looked his way, face sandy, stricken and looking utterly lost. “Deros,” she said, hollow and in seeming amazement at his presence. Then her eyes flitted around.
They were quite surrounded by the three demon riders, all pointing their guns from close, right at him. Their mounts did not even seem to twitch, holding stiff and still. They had him, even if he wanted to take off on his own. He put his hands up, still with a bow in one, as if in surrender. They did not fire.
Not really thinking, he slowly and carefully dropped from atop his mount, eyeing them. He stood there in the sand as Enseres danced around nervously, pawing at the ground and grunting in warning.
Adrenaline still pumping through him, feeling the fear and desperation of what he was facing, Deros tried to figure out the best play. Nothing brilliant came to him. He tossed his bow to the ground and scowled at them, holding his hands out wide. Challengingly. “How about one of you face me like a man, demonspawn! Or will you just be cowards and hide behind your guns!”
He had no clue if they could even understand him, but if they did on some level and accepted, he could stall for time and come up with something. In the sheer madness of it all, a mad ploy was as reasonable as anything. He thought it was what Daexo would do.
But it seemed they did understand. They glanced at each other, briefly, then one dismounted. As if it were an answer, the others seemed to relax slightly. One of the still-mounted ones approached slowly and crossed between Deros and Palamera, toward Enseres. The loyal beast turned and its fur bristled up as it growled, posturing in threat and warning. But it started giving ground, bit by bit. Deros’s fur cloak slid more and more down the saddleback from the wild movements, until finally it slipped entirely free into the sand. Enseres’s eyes rolled his master’s way anxiously.
Deros whistled the command, ‘flee, run’ and waved his hand. Enseres still hesitated, tossing his head and backing away. “Go, Enseres! Run!” Deros shouted and whistled louder. Enseres whined but turned and darted away in the opening that was allowed him, ears flicking in uncertainty and worry, pausing to look back repeatedly.
Just then, several shots in succession could be heard in the distance. Deros didn’t even react, though Enseres flinched. He could only hope it wasn’t Eursett. He couldn’t determine direction, thanks to his half-muted hearing.
“Go,” Deros repeated, less loudly, and the animal finally dashed out of view. It twisted his gut, but at least the brave beast could get away. At least he’d not be demon dinner or the like. For their part, the riders didn’t seem to care either way about the aloga. Or, if they did, they’d permitted him to do what he’d done for other motives. Honor? A shred of sympathy?
Are these truly demons at all then? Or another… kind? Species.
He considered as he watched the massive creature approach, shoving its gun into a holster at its belt, where in actuality two guns were kept one atop the other, both about the same size from what he could tell. The monstrous figure was over half a meter taller than him and thicker than any man, with strong hints of powerful muscles under the carapace — on display with its sauntering approach. It had its own accouterments of travel and warfare wrapped around its person, including belts and several pouches of a heavy, dark material that might’ve been leather. What looked like a knife was strapped to the opposite side of the guns. On the top left breast, a single small red triangle seemed to be painted.
Deros reached over his shoulder to undo a restraining tie, then pulled free his spear, bringing it around to his front in a simple two-handed position. As his hands slid over the smoothed greatcane surface, he pulled its strap taut across its length. His foe slowed to a stop a couple of meters away and seemed to just be taking the measure of him. It did not pull out a weapon.
Palamera was standing and seemed to have gained enough of her composure to absorb what was happening and become concerned. Voice warbling, she said, “Deros, please! Don’t do this. I didn’t- I’m sorry, for… but you can’t win. Please stop. P-persons, gods — whatever you are — please stop. Don’t hurt him, I beg of you. We surrender.”
The one that had chased off Enseres had turned back around — it barked a laugh, in an eerie, tinny facsimile of a Hamaleen one. Then it made some adjustment to its protruding mouth-plates and spoke, in words Deros didn’t quite catch or understand, though he strained to hear whether it was his own language. Either words or syllables were close, but the accent was thick, quick, and bizarre. Moreover, it was as if from behind many layers, but also amplified, echoed. And fairly masculine.
The one closer to Palamera — still mounted — shook its head, adjusting its mouthpiece while it said a quick slurry of things. Deros thought he caught ‘if they’ but nothing more. Then it said, in slow deliberate enunciation, “Just stay out to it, girl.” The voice was once again eerily similar to any other, but like blown through a tin horn that was buried in straw, and with the strangest accent. “Move and you get splat d’tõì. Et? Like your pet.” It might’ve been somewhat feminine.
Palamera’s face contorted as she glared at the one that spoke. She took a shuddering breath, then spat, “She isn’t a pet.” Her voice was saturated with emotion. “She’s my friend, and her name is Graceful. And you didn’t spl-... you broke her neck.”
“Not our intention? Condolences.” It was stated flatly, without mockery or true sympathy.
“I broke its neck.” The one in front of Deros raised one hand up, without turning around. It was a deep, masculine voice, enunciated more clearly and with less accent, though still strange and metallic. “And I’ll put it out of its misery too — as soon as I’m done with your boytoy-here’s education.”
As the figure spoke, Deros pushed his farsense out as hard and as concentrated on it as he could, feeling every contour between them like he was embracing it, while with makar’osa he only minorly improved his vision, primarily for acuteness and to see clearly in the somewhat reduced light of the failing day. The use of focused farsense in close combat was a powerful edge if trained, and he’d been trained by the best in Daexo, who specialized in it. Especially against those without it, and all of his enemies indeed lacked it, by his reckoning.
The towering figure felt like nothing he’d ever farsensed before, muscles and indescribable substances in multiple layers he could not well sort. Something like a man was on the inside, heartbeat in the chest, but layered over was more alien matter, and a second heartbeat pulsed in rhythmic answer from the rather upraised, protruding back. Tiny, unseen hairs coated the outer carapace, and it certainly, oddly, produced sweat — he could even see the sheen of it. He became the most confused from focusing on the head… breath from inside, vibrations just like lips moving. A hidden mouth, behind the plates? They had all adjusted the plate and pulled it outward slightly, to speak. Sadly, though his farsense was acute, it couldn’t give him the details a Hospitaller’s makar’osa could.
Fighting his revulsion and dread for the monstrosity, Deros glared at it all the same and asked, “What are your intentions — what do you want with us? Where did you come from?”
It only shook its head and seemed to make a shrug. “That is not a part of the curriculum I have in mind for you, primitive. In fact, I think you ask too many questions when you should really be making statements. Submitting your report. With steel.”
It charged him suddenly, dancing briefly with a feint before going for an obvious grapple. Deros easily avoided it, back and away, while utilizing his still-superior reach for a quick jab with his spear into the creature’s abdomen. He made sure not to over-extend or commit himself with the strike, not wanting to present any opportunity to grab for his weapon.
The spear point chinked and slid off without effect like he’d hit a piece of polished bronze. He backed away, and his foe pursued more carefully. They circled one another, getting a feel for the approach. Deros held his spear in a defensive, staff-fighting posture and tried not to give away his relative ease at reading the other. He wanted another opening to present itself via baiting, but not too obviously.
I need to target a soft point. The inside of a joint. Under the arm. Deros could tell the chitin or whatever it was was not as heavy or hard in the places needing articulation. Sadly the neck was well-protected, except perhaps from downward angles.
The mounted male made a kind of ‘tsh’ sound. “I think he is a prime-user. Regressed tribals, sad ass pont’bâvâ.”
“They call these Blessed, here,” the maybe-feminine one replied.
“He’ll need to be extra blessed to hurt me with a pointy stick,” the one circling him growled, then dashed toward him again.
Deros knew right away his foe was trying to go for his weapon, in the tense hesitation with which he poised, despite his advance. So Deros presented a retreating feint as if striking for the head, which caused the great horned beast to raise its arms. The angle didn’t make an underarm strike safe or very viable, so Deros stabbed hard at the inside of an elbow, still retreating.
His enemy’s reflexes were sound, though, twitching enough to make the blow glance off uselessly. The momentum of that great body was significant and not perfectly easy to gauge, and this was well utilized in an attempt to barrel through and slam into Deros on the follow-through.
Just barely, Deros dodged and took a graze of an arm and shoulder, causing him to spin as he rolled with the glancing blow. He quite easily recovered in the controlled movement, and there was nothing more for his opponent to do but stumble past him.
There were a few chuckles from the mounted ones as the charging figure righted itself and turned around, seeming to take a deep, deep breath — all-in-all doing so with the airs of annoyance.
I need to take a gamble here. It — He — is not going to keep doing this forever. Eventually, he would just pull out the… splat-gun and be done with it. Nor could he be worn out, anyway. He was moving with greater ease than Deros, even with the bulk, and he was not pushing himself with heavy Blessed sensory use.
Deros took the initiative, advancing and utilizing his superior reach for a succession of low-risk jabs. His opponent took on a defensive stance, obviously trying to goad out a more significant strike, so Deros obliged, though not designed to succeed. They were feints that didn’t look it, all specifically to represent frenetic action without letting his spear get taken.
Then Deros deliberately tripped into the sand, and like clockwork his foe pressed the opportunity immediately, moving in close and trying as he endlessly did to finally take hold of the weapon. The Blessed hunter of Miracle Springs was ready, though — he ducked down and sideways and slipped under an arm to drive his spear up with all his might, right into the underarm’s cup of presumably-softer flesh.
It found purchase and pierced part-way — not as much as could be wished but the blow would normally be damning to any other, possibly fatal if it slipped the right way. But the creature only grunted instead of screaming, as if in no real pain. It closed its arm down over the spearpoint like a muscular vice, shortly before its free hand closed over the wooden shaft.
Deros knew immediately, hopelessly, that he had no chance against the superior strength of those hands. So he let go and shifted his attention to his only apparent salvation: the gun, unguarded and within reach.
Moving with as much speed as he could muster he wrapped his hand around a handle and pulled the gun free of its holster. Its owner was of course not happy with this, letting out a furious nonverbal cry while swinging the butt-end of the spear hard and directly at its former wielder. Deros barely ducked under it, more or less having to hit the ground and roll in a scrambling, inelegant dive to the sand.
Able to affect nothing more than a crouch before his enraged enemy bore down on him, Deros frantically tried to figure out how to operate the queer contraption in his hands. One hand fit naturally around the contoured handle, front fingers resting near a metal piece like a loop, with something like a small lever within it. That was it.
He anxiously pointed the weapon at its owner and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
In the span of a heartbeat, the creature’s free hand gripped the far end of the gun, while its great leg came up in a sweeping kick at Deros’s side. There was no real retreat from it, and all he could do was shift his head down and away and take the strike on a braced arm and shoulder, aiming to roll with it.
The blow was much stronger than he could’ve imagined, sending him slamming into the sand with force and knocking the wind out of him. His shoulder stung sharply with pain, as did the rest of him as he slapped the ground — his head hit too, though thankfully took the least of it. Nonetheless, makar’osa slipped from him and his vision blurred and flecked with color.
He was aware of Palamera crying out something his mind didn’t absorb in the haze — he thought to try and get up, but somehow he only writhed and half-arced up from being on his back, a position he didn’t remember being in. When his vision cleared he saw the great figure looming over him, pointing down the gun, his other hand pulling back what looked like a little hammer.
“Nice try, primitive…” the carapace-covered giant said. With that, he pulled the trigger and the little hammer fell, striking sparks and causing the gun to fire. Deros was trying to scramble away, roll to the side…
The crack was deafening up close, and initially, Deros thought he dodged it. But a burst of great force slammed into his back like it had erupted out of the sand, and foul-smelling green-yellow strands of sticky fiber coated him from the backside to the front, the tendrils blossoming and expanding and seeming to grow across him like lightning. He kept rolling, partly from the impact, but all he succeeded in doing was cocooning himself as the trailing end of the mass was pulled out of the sand to meet the other. It stretched back to itself and as it finally stopped expanding it seemed to shrink and tighten. His struggle did nothing more than tighten it more, and as his breath became more shallow he forced himself to stop, closing his eyes and fighting down his panic.
“... but you failed the test.”
