Before she could ask the redhead who he was or why he was here, he just… Fell into his steed. In a few brief moments it transformed around him and formed a monstrous armor.
“More are coming. My sword’s power is spent, but I can still fight,” she said to him, pulling Vysaga free of Idda’s still-warm corpse.
“Take care that you do not suffer serious injury. I will handle the reinforcements,” came a rather young-sounding voice from within the helmet. He brought out a strange key of bone and blue gemstone, floating in the palm of his gauntleted right hand, and slotted it into that strange, bulky belt on his waist. He took a brief time to move the bodies around, for some strange reason. Then, he simply walked to a tree near one of the bodies and leaned against it. Lydia knew well enough to get into cover.
In a suspiciously short span of time, both of them felt a group of presences drawing near.
They had been prepared in the forest, just in case trouble arose. When the signal went out, they sprang into action with the fervent eagerness of rabid beasts… Only to arrive at a site of slaughter, one of their targets hiding behind a monstrous cultivator with a strange staff and even stranger armor. He exuded a powerful aura, but nothing of the sort that could incapacitate the veterans that they were. After all, they were all former members of the Sanger Sect to a man, elites acting as supportive pillars for Idda’s gang from her benefactor… And Idda was dead. This would just be cleanup, including what they expected to be an easy brute-force raid on Fort 57.
“I’ve found a new appreciation for enemy reinforcements, lately. It just isn’t the same when I have to use trees instead of corpses,” said the monstrous cultivator. As if to demonstrate, he waved his staff and a gnarled, thorny vine erupted from the bark of a nearby tree. It separated, and burrowed into the man he had slain only moments earlier.
They all fell upon him at once with full killing intent, and at that same moment, he turned the key in his belt. With the belt’s opening and the ignition of its core, a blast of heat flowed out from him and the corpse he had implanted with a vine began to writhe as if it were a bag full of snakes. Flesh-brambles erupted out of the body, muscular tendrils with spikes of bone growing between individual bundles. Where the vine had seemed strong and quick, it hadn’t seemed a threat, but the sheer destructive force of these horrors threatened all but the three strongest among the cultivators.
Lydia barely got to do anything besides watch. The redhead danced with a snappy, unnatural motion, flagrantly disregarding any semblance of normal martial arts in favour of eclectic, confusing motions only made possible by the violent blasts of flame that erupted at his command from the many vents all across his armor. As he fought, his brambles rapidly surrounded the clearing, spreading from corpse to corpse in seconds, each erupting with them in turn.
He slew three men in the span of three seconds. One had his head separated from his shoulders by a rocket-propelled punch from that giant gauntlet of his, and a second had his ribcage crushed by the rocket-propelled roundhouse kick which followed immediately afterwards. A third was run through by his staff-spear, grasped in the bony hand on his back. While this took place, his fleshy tendrils engaged the other enemies, and the tendrils’ spikes continued to grow into strange, drill-like shapes. One particular man battled with the red-haired mage and seemed to be holding his own, a withered man with a scimitar.
In moments, those fleshbrambles of his had enveloped the entire clearing. One of them lashed outward and grabbed hold of a man with two guns in hand and four others floating to his sides, dragging him into the mass. Just as Lydia had gotten a good grasp on the great scale of the situation and the actual capabilities of the enemy’s individual fighters, they were already out of combat… And she was outside the tangle of death, just barely, clearly excluded on purpose.
Synchronous waves of swordlight from the surviving twelve flowed all across the constrained field of battle, yet none could strike him. Some he dodged, but that wasn’t all; white-black flame erupted from his armor with such force that it blew the aura constructs to pieces. One managed to force him to directly block, striking at him with his blade wreathed in swordlight, so forcefully and quickly that the armored mage slid back into his own wall. It was yet again the man with the scimitar..
“That will be enough,” the armored wizard said, leaping out from within his own formation, a hole just big enough for him opening up amidst the brambles.
Rapidly forming hand-signs, his fleshy constructs suddenly struck out at their foe and bound the few of them who had still been free. Then, all at once, their drill-like spines fired off like bullets. Of the thirteen survivors, six bore such wounds that Lydia thought they were still alive. Of these six, one had only sustained three glancing hits - the Scimitar-wielder. He was also the only one yet unbound by the brambles.
Facing away from the two of them from having defended himself earlier, he turned his head to glare at Lydia, then at the mage. His blade-like aura suddenly surged, and before Lydia could warn her ally, the scimitar-wielder slashed in an upward motion. Every iota of his aura shot out with that slash, tearing open a gap in the brambles. He passed through just as the formation re-sealed itself, a grunt of frustration coming from the redhead as he signed to make the re-sealing happen… Only to let it go.
“Ah. It doesn’t matter. They’re all dead anyway.”
Lydia clearly saw that they were not, in fact, all dead. Not yet.
Akaso
If you’d like to read ahead, consider heading on over to the Patreon! You get up to 20 advance chapters for both Retribution Engine and Cherno Caster.
I’d also greatly appreciate it if you could rate my story, maybe even leave a review or advanced review!
For a link to the discord, check the synopsis.
Before she could ask the redhead who he was or why he was here, he just… Fell into his steed. In a few brief moments it transformed around him and formed a monstrous armor.
“More are coming. My sword’s power is spent, but I can still fight,” she said to him, pulling Vysaga free of Idda’s still-warm corpse.
“Take care that you do not suffer serious injury. I will handle the reinforcements,” came a rather young-sounding voice from within the helmet. He brought out a strange key of bone and blue gemstone, floating in the palm of his gauntleted right hand, and slotted it into that strange, bulky belt on his waist. He took a brief time to move the bodies around, for some strange reason. Then, he simply walked to a tree near one of the bodies and leaned against it. Lydia knew well enough to get into cover.
In a suspiciously short span of time, both of them felt a group of presences drawing near.
They had been prepared in the forest, just in case trouble arose. When the signal went out, they sprang into action with the fervent eagerness of rabid beasts… Only to arrive at a site of slaughter, one of their targets hiding behind a monstrous cultivator with a strange staff and even stranger armor. He exuded a powerful aura, but nothing of the sort that could incapacitate the veterans that they were. After all, they were all former members of the Sanger Sect to a man, elites acting as supportive pillars for Idda’s gang from her benefactor… And Idda was dead. This would just be cleanup, including what they expected to be an easy brute-force raid on Fort 57.
“I’ve found a new appreciation for enemy reinforcements, lately. It just isn’t the same when I have to use trees instead of corpses,” said the monstrous cultivator. As if to demonstrate, he waved his staff and a gnarled, thorny vine erupted from the bark of a nearby tree. It separated, and burrowed into the man he had slain only moments earlier.
They all fell upon him at once with full killing intent, and at that same moment, he turned the key in his belt. With the belt’s opening and the ignition of its core, a blast of heat flowed out from him and the corpse he had implanted with a vine began to writhe as if it were a bag full of snakes. Flesh-brambles erupted out of the body, muscular tendrils with spikes of bone growing between individual bundles. Where the vine had seemed strong and quick, it hadn’t seemed a threat, but the sheer destructive force of these horrors threatened all but the three strongest among the cultivators.
Lydia barely got to do anything besides watch. The redhead danced with a snappy, unnatural motion, flagrantly disregarding any semblance of normal martial arts in favour of eclectic, confusing motions only made possible by the violent blasts of flame that erupted at his command from the many vents all across his armor. As he fought, his brambles rapidly surrounded the clearing, spreading from corpse to corpse in seconds, each erupting with them in turn.
He slew three men in the span of three seconds. One had his head separated from his shoulders by a rocket-propelled punch from that giant gauntlet of his, and a second had his ribcage crushed by the rocket-propelled roundhouse kick which followed immediately afterwards. A third was run through by his staff-spear, grasped in the bony hand on his back. While this took place, his fleshy tendrils engaged the other enemies, and the tendrils’ spikes continued to grow into strange, drill-like shapes. One particular man battled with the red-haired mage and seemed to be holding his own, a withered man with a scimitar.
In moments, those fleshbrambles of his had enveloped the entire clearing. One of them lashed outward and grabbed hold of a man with two guns in hand and four others floating to his sides, dragging him into the mass. Just as Lydia had gotten a good grasp on the great scale of the situation and the actual capabilities of the enemy’s individual fighters, they were already out of combat… And she was outside the tangle of death, just barely, clearly excluded on purpose.
Synchronous waves of swordlight from the surviving twelve flowed all across the constrained field of battle, yet none could strike him. Some he dodged, but that wasn’t all; white-black flame erupted from his armor with such force that it blew the aura constructs to pieces. One managed to force him to directly block, striking at him with his blade wreathed in swordlight, so forcefully and quickly that the armored mage slid back into his own wall. It was yet again the man with the scimitar..
“That will be enough,” the armored wizard said, leaping out from within his own formation, a hole just big enough for him opening up amidst the brambles.
Rapidly forming hand-signs, his fleshy constructs suddenly struck out at their foe and bound the few of them who had still been free. Then, all at once, their drill-like spines fired off like bullets. Of the thirteen survivors, six bore such wounds that Lydia thought they were still alive. Of these six, one had only sustained three glancing hits - the Scimitar-wielder. He was also the only one yet unbound by the brambles.
Facing away from the two of them from having defended himself earlier, he turned his head to glare at Lydia, then at the mage. His blade-like aura suddenly surged, and before Lydia could warn her ally, the scimitar-wielder slashed in an upward motion. Every iota of his aura shot out with that slash, tearing open a gap in the brambles. He passed through just as the formation re-sealed itself, a grunt of frustration coming from the redhead as he signed to make the re-sealing happen… Only to let it go.
“Ah. It doesn’t matter. They’re all dead anyway.”
Lydia clearly saw that they were not, in fact, all dead. Not yet.
Akaso
If you’d like to read ahead, consider heading on over to the Patreon! You get up to 20 advance chapters for both Retribution Engine and Cherno Caster.
I’d also greatly appreciate it if you could rate my story, maybe even leave a review or advanced review!
For a link to the discord, check the synopsis.
