Ulric winced as his stolid Shadow applied the antiseptic and mildly Sano infused salve to the stitched cut over his eye, its stinging leagues out of proportion to the wound that it was supposedly going to assist healing.
"Do not flinch so, Glade Chief, the others will mock you. Even more than they have already." Advised his partner sagely.
Easy for her to say, she wasn't having her face smeared with wasps, after it had been bludgeoned with bone clubs.
It was Midsunsfall, with plenty of hours before darkness, but they were halted because the caravan's scout had arrived back at camp beat like a drum, muscles still spasming randomly, at times, and hauling two dead billy goats. Not the gruff kind. More like Thor's. It took no rocket scientist for the Iriel'en woman, long marinaded in her partner's ways, to decipher the most likely chain of events, but she wanted to hear it from her mate's own mouth; it would be far more hilarious that way.
Already, the Orlethrem were, loudly, coming up with their own theories and none of them were flattering to Ulric's person. Several of them were riding the line of demanding he challenge the one who offered it to an accounting, but it would have been petty to beat an injured person and they knew it. It wouldn't stop an Elf, mind, they saw it such that if you had the energy to run your mouth, you had the energy for your ass to be beaten for it. He was, unfortunately, still too human for that. Much more of this though, and he'd be coming around to their way of thinking.
"Would you care to tell me again, Ulric, how it comes to be that you are returned from a relatively straight forwards look ahead in this condition?" Prompted Taipan, who was not laughing until she pissed herself only by the most ironclad strength of will.
Waiting would buy him nothing. What was he going to do, anyway? Save his dignity? Hah!
Ulric took over holding the compress his wife had pressed to his bruised face bones, the swelling already severe enough to close one eye, and began his sorry tale.
***************Four Hours Prior, Steep Descent*********************
The first step of science is observation. It was one thing to witness the actions, traits, and habits of his study from a perch a hundred meters distant, mostly hidden behind a rock outcrop. It was more useful if he could get close enough to see them in detail, particularly that nifty bit of high tier magic that sprung up from between the horns of the subjects. After having smote the mountain gorilla and, or, yeti from their territory, the herd of sheep had done nothing impressive. A lot of chewing, a little defecating and scattering of urine, some stamping against the loose turf on occasion. Just normal goat shit. Ulric decided that there was little to be risked and much to be gained by getting a closer look. If he could use a pulse of magic from his core to resonate with the suspected Kataigis or storm mana, of these animals it would be a tremendous boon to his understanding of how fundamental elemental forces combined into the more sophisticated phenomenon of Varda's landscape.
Thusly decided, the scientist slowly crept closer, moving carefully and quietly from cover to cover, stalking the sheep while they, oblivious to his presence, continued cavorting about the hill, showing no hesitation to jump small bluffs nor particular effort to climb the steep slope or hop down it for whatever moved their musky hearts. And musky they were, as a stiff breeze informed him. The ewes, which he now saw had smaller horns than the billys, were dogging a set of energetic kids that were almost cute. Those males though were shaggy, foul smelling, ill tempered, head butting sonsofbitches, not content unless they were chewing something or mating, which they did frequently with any ewe they could corner. Nothing he saw, as he watched for the next hour, indicated anything special about the mammalian Vardan mountain goats. Had they not been substantially larger than the extinct big horn rams of the North Americ Rocky chain of mountains he'd have said these were one of the less intimidating instances of wilderness ecosystem. Damned good thing he'd witnessed them kill the shit out of another animal just minding its own business or he'd have been unaware of their true nature.
Ulric had already tried a [Core Pulse] from hiding but the signal was too faint, too complex to be deciphered from this far away. There was Caelum and Aquae everywhere in the air around here, and Ceraun mixed in too from those approaching storm clouds and the signal to noise ratio for his ability was nowhere near good enough to parse the signatures of this new manaform. He needed to wrap this up and get back to the caravan before the weather turned on him. Just a bit closer.
A bit of loose gravel crunched under his foot as he approached the patently hostile highlands monsters ahead. The sound, sharp in the early morning air, was a gross mistake. Varda…well, you know the drill.
Ears stood up and the beasts went rigid. This close, about thirty meters away, Ulric could see the chewing of their jaws on whatever they'd scrounged up from the hillside stop and the dense pelts on their back raise in alarm.
Shit, Ulric remarked to himself, looks like his plan of studying the creatures from closer up was a failure. He readied himself in case the goats showed any of the aggression they'd shown that primate looking thing earlier. Just as well he had, things went from one to break the knob off and pitch it out the window.
The herd of [Thunderhorn Sheep] scattered across the steep decline that marked the highland plateau's transition towards rolling meadows below, graceful and powerful as they bounded with incredible agility across the treacherous terrain. All but three of the beasts, that is. The same three that had charged the ape-thing and these tore up the slope towards him with murder in their horizontally slitted, sickly yellow goat eyes. Evil eyes.
"Oh, shit." Ulric announced, unnecessarily.
He drew from his core, remembering the treatment given to the last ape to disturb these monsters.
[Warrior's Instinct]
[Battle Rhythm]
Between great spiraling horns, forming a pair of battering rams almost a meter in diameter on either side of their skulls, miniature storm clouds formed, whirling little thunderheads that made no sense coming into being. Damn.
Ulric pulled upon his own core and drew several throwing knives from their place on his thigh bandolier, charging them with electromagnetic force to create the link to his [Lightning Javalins]. When the monsters were within twenty meters, and closing fast, he threw the knives with impressive accuracy and cut loose the held spell.
[Lightning Javalin] X 3
Three bolts at once lanced out to strike the sheep head on, almost simultaneously ending the threa-
"Oh good goddamn, that's fucking rude!" Ulric shouted, watching the violet arcs crackle around the spiraling horn and into the churning clouds where it pulsed once and was gone, absorbed by the monsters.
Change of plans. Ulric freed his sword and used his [White Interference] to create a pool of unaspected magic, preparing a different approach, but the creatures had powered through his spells undeterred and then they gave him a taste of his own medicine, blurring forwards with sudden incredible acceleration, reminiscent of his own [Surge].
Ulric's blade intercepted the first in a powerful diagonal slash, the strength of the blow and the vicious cutting power of Xef'tocht shearing apart horn to cleave into the ridiculously thick skull below. Even with so much resistance, the power of the beast's charge, coupled with Ulric's own might buried his blade in the monster's brains. That didn't stop the momentum of over a hundred kilos of lightning infused goat from lifting him bodily from the ground, his elbow wrenching as he refused to release his sword's hilt and he was jerked through the air, attached to the dead monster while it hurtled to the rocky hillside.
Rising from his inglorious fall, Ulric tried to pull his weapon loose, scanning for the other foes. "Fucking ba- Stulgh!" Ulric coughed as the second sheep butted him in the side, a mighty tackle slamming him with magically infused force, absorbed mostly by his armor's plates.
Those plates did not so much good against the surge of electrical fury that rolled into him like a high surf, turning limbs rigid, and then launching him away from the offending horns far harder than the initial substantial impact warranted. Again, there were shades of his own abilities in that, a form of electromagnetic throw. He did not enjoy the experience, feeling the air whip by his face and his muscles spasm uncontrolled.
Ulric soared through the air, his sword still stuck in the corpse of his first kill, and he hit the stones of the slope roughly, world spinning crazily as he bounced to a stop.
Adrenaline fueled reflexes and long training got him rolling to his feet, even while his conscious thought was still coming to terms with being knocked ass over elbow some fifteen meters across the hill. He shook his head to pull the cobwebs free and tried to ready himself in the Undan but a spasm in his thigh shattered the stance and he nearly toppled. The third goat had redirected after the second had pummeled him, and Ulric couldn't do shit about getting out of the way, his thigh muscles cramping, a little arc of remnant electricity peeling across his armor, announcing that the initial hit wasn't the end of the goat's combined physical and magical assault.
He'd lost his sword but his core was still holding white mana so Ulric attuned Terra and raise a chest high [Stone Wall], just in time to intercept the shaggy monster's goat version of his [Surge] ability. The lunging charge smashed through his shield and clobbered him, horn cushioned by his own raised stone as it clubbed him across the head, his helmet making him see stars, thunder cracking again, even as he was launched a second time through the air. He landed in a stunned heap, and rolled to lay spread eagled, flashes of light filling his vision.
It took what felt like eternity to convince his limbs to get under him and another to find his footing. This time, he was almost completely concussed and even adrenaline had limits when you got your bell rang that hard. Which was why billy goat gruff number three was bringing its cloud bearing hammer down on him before he figured out that he was supposed to be doing something about it.
Instincts whipped into him by Idra's elite training and Taipan's never ending tutoring on all things killing got his knife ready from its belt sheath and he pulled his mana hard, drawing on his [Ceraunic Knight] abilities to deflect the oncoming ram. Roaring desperately, Ulric viciously back handed the butting horn with his gauntlet with all the strength he could manage.
[Maxwell's Parry]
Lightning mana met the storm charged horns of the sheep and a brief magical tug of war raged as the creature's own mana tried to resist the impelling of his own magic. Life hung in the balance for an endless moment before his Ceraunic core ripped the electric force into alignment, warping the magic within those horns to Ulric's will and the third and most devastating charge was hurled aside, the beast's mana turned against it. Which didn't stop the rest of the creature from hurtling into him, or the rebound from pushing him heavily backwards.
*CRACK*
Shaggy shoulders hit him in the chest and shoulders and he was sent sprawling, the animal's weight on top of him. Ulric pumped his knife, mostly out of reflex, driving it deep into flesh, clean punctures all the way to his fist doing terrible damage to the beast's innards.
Suddenly, Ulric realized through the rage and chaos of the battle that the monster wasn't moving and hadn't moved since hitting him. He turned his helmeted head slightly and saw the Cloud bearing horns were tilted at an extreme angle, its entire head sideways compared to the bulk of its neck, and Ulric dully realized that the animal's thick neck was broken by the sudden force of the mana laden collision. The recoil of the meeting of powers had moved him backwards, sort of cushioning the impact with the rest of the thing's body and reducing the hit to him significantly, even though he was now on his back for a fourth time in less than half that many minutes.
Ulric heard an angry bleat from the side and turned away from the dead goat's broken form to see the second goat that had hit him, pawing the hill for another turn, this time with a foul-smelling hairy bastard of a corpse on top of him, pinning him down.
Fury and magic combined and, with a brief [Surge] he shoved the heap off him and got his feet under him, readying himself to face the last of his enemies, blood dripping from his knife. He was a wreck, arcs of remnant energy refusing to completely subside and the thrashing impacts leaving him slow and vulnerable. He was in no shape for another direct meeting of powers.
There was blood pouring down his face, he realized, and he couldn't see out of one side of his helmet's visor, from where it had been bashed into his own face hard enough to cut him above the eye. Lightning was out, they had countermeasures. But what about Infrig? Ulric knew that Ceraun and Infrig didn’t play well together, the impetus of movement within the lightning magic being incompatible with the stillness of ice magic. Cold magic, to be more precise, but he’d argue semantics later, when these fucking goats were dead.
Difficult or not, that didn't stop him from calling on his core's magic again, cleansing it of the Lightning essence and harmonizing it to sheer, brutal cold, the crystalline clarity of Infrig, before weaving into that piercing lack of heat the whirling freedom of Caelum. Ulric was done playing around and he knew exactly how he was going to use his core’s ability to weave threads of power to kill with air and ice working in tandem. The usual difficulty of wielding ice magic bowed before the might of heat equations and thermodynamic formula, the calculus of removing energy from one body to shunt it into another snapping his mana to his will. In this, Ulric Einar’s will and intent were meshed perfectly to bring a siphon of thermal energy, Caelum and Infrig woven to tear the heat from the air and send it to the thermal sink that was the rocky earth beneath his feet, held in a tight grip to keep the system closed, the barrier of air snapping into place around the goat isolating it.
[Winter's Breath]
As corded muscle tensed above the cloven hooves and its long strands of fur rose from the power it gathered, Ulric slammed the [Thunderhorn Sheep] with a field of cold that would deep freeze a walrus. The burst of power that the billy used to propel itself now turned against it, and its hooves skipped across the surface of frozen rock instead of launching it forward. The animal laid itself horizontally out in the air in a manner that was faintly comical. In the heat of things Ulric could only find a grim satisfaction that the beast was still inside the clutches of his working. Incapable of anything but hate for all things four legged and horned, the [Lord of the Ancient Glade] was grimly overjoyed when the shaggy goat hit the flash frozen slope on its stomach.
Magic poured from his core, and Ulric made a clawing motion with his hand as he ripped the heat out of the air and sent it into the ground below. Fog billowed out from the node of his frigid spell, the construct intensifying its bitter work. The goat, dead center of the Infrig hybrid spell, climbed awkwardly on now ice-covered rocks set at a steep pitch, ice that refused to lend it grip to move with its usual ease.
More.
Ulric gripped his working and channeled it as hard as the arcane nexus in his chest would allow, pouring mana through the weave to strengthen its bindings on the spell's radius. Frost grew in as if in a time lapse, blooming in a ring from the circle of his magic, climbing over stones and bringing feathered white to the grasses. Brittle sparkles captured the light of the suns and the goat stopped its struggles, stilling without sound.
Snarling, Ulric didn't release his hold on the magic for another handful of breaths, until rational thought came back and he realized the goat was almost certainly dead beneath that coat of icy fur. He released the working and the barrier of Caelum allowed the cold inside to radiate outwards. For a moment, in the dead of spring, snow fell again on the hillside. The Sweat and blood on his face froze and remelted, as did the gore on his knife hand and wrist.
Silence swelled loud across the descent only broken by his heavy breaths and pounding heart. That silence broke when the statue of the beast fell over and shattered like porcelain, fragments of shaggy bastard scattering across the hill in a pile, some of the pieces rolling down the slope.
Body aching beneath a fresh set of bruises and limping slightly, occasional flashes of rampant electricity continuing to pulse as he struggled to tame the not quite familiar storm mana that was jolting his muscles, Ulric realized with a curse that he now had to drag these two remaining fuckers back to the wagons. That had been the point of all this, gaining the chance to study the manaform that was, even now, making his back muscles vibrate painfully. The cramps didn't really end, they just paused while they migrated. It was extremely annoying and incredibly devious. A fighter could adjust to a consistent weakness. A cut, a bruise, a broken weapon, these could be accounted for and worked around.
Having your trapezius clench mid swing, without warning, was debilitating. Bastard goats. And he had a long way, uphill, to haul them. Ulric Einar wouldn't so easily leave behind the fruits of his labor, not after so much pain to go along with it.
He'd lived. Gotten the shit kicked out of him from that headbutt and tackle, but he'd lived. And learned. And, once he'd cut these asshole sheep apart and figured out how they manufactured a storm cloud between their horns, he'd be a more powerful wielder of his own magics.
************Present, Refugee Caravan*****************
Taipan nodded to herself as he concluded his story.
"And what did Varda teach you today, husband?" the huntress asked, sharp teeth showing in her smile.
She enjoyed overseeing his growth, like any veteran craftsman watching a greenhorn earn their stripes. There was significant schadenfreude to be had in the trials of a rookie. For all that they'd experienced in the time since leaving Iriel, and even his time before he'd left the glade, Ulric was still not seasoned. Today had shown him that well. Furthermore, he'd had time to mull that fact over, dragging the three billy goats gruff, sonsofbitches that they were, up to the plateau's edge, aching the entire time, seeing double on the regular, and throwing up twice from the sheer ungodly migraine that had probably come from a concussion.
Take nothing for granted. And kill your enemy as hard as you can, before it does the same to you. Hunt like the [Shadow Panther], that doesn't pounce twice or give its prey even the slightest hope of escape before the bite that takes a life. And also, he concluded, remembering his lightning bolts being consumed by the horns of the beasts, when a creature wields the same forces you do, don't assume it doesn't have means to counter its own powers.
Ulric told her, and she was appeased, choosing not to scold or mock him when Varda had already done so fairly thoroughly.
"Good, Glade Chief. Not a few are tried and found wanting, unable to survive the lessons that the wilds offer." His mate said, solemnity speaking to kin she'd known that had perished.
"There are a good fewer young Hunters than older ones. That is because most who are returned to the forest, to join Varda's Dream, do so within the first three years. The rest figure out how not to be stupid or slow or clumsy." She added meaningfully.
Eyes closing to keep the double vision from making him sick again, he nodded gently, "Heard and understood Taipan." was his simple reply.
Ulric winced as his stolid Shadow applied the antiseptic and mildly Sano infused salve to the stitched cut over his eye, its stinging leagues out of proportion to the wound that it was supposedly going to assist healing.
"Do not flinch so, Glade Chief, the others will mock you. Even more than they have already." Advised his partner sagely.
Easy for her to say, she wasn't having her face smeared with wasps, after it had been bludgeoned with bone clubs.
It was Midsunsfall, with plenty of hours before darkness, but they were halted because the caravan's scout had arrived back at camp beat like a drum, muscles still spasming randomly, at times, and hauling two dead billy goats. Not the gruff kind. More like Thor's. It took no rocket scientist for the Iriel'en woman, long marinaded in her partner's ways, to decipher the most likely chain of events, but she wanted to hear it from her mate's own mouth; it would be far more hilarious that way.
Already, the Orlethrem were, loudly, coming up with their own theories and none of them were flattering to Ulric's person. Several of them were riding the line of demanding he challenge the one who offered it to an accounting, but it would have been petty to beat an injured person and they knew it. It wouldn't stop an Elf, mind, they saw it such that if you had the energy to run your mouth, you had the energy for your ass to be beaten for it. He was, unfortunately, still too human for that. Much more of this though, and he'd be coming around to their way of thinking.
"Would you care to tell me again, Ulric, how it comes to be that you are returned from a relatively straight forwards look ahead in this condition?" Prompted Taipan, who was not laughing until she pissed herself only by the most ironclad strength of will.
Waiting would buy him nothing. What was he going to do, anyway? Save his dignity? Hah!
Ulric took over holding the compress his wife had pressed to his bruised face bones, the swelling already severe enough to close one eye, and began his sorry tale.
***************Four Hours Prior, Steep Descent*********************
The first step of science is observation. It was one thing to witness the actions, traits, and habits of his study from a perch a hundred meters distant, mostly hidden behind a rock outcrop. It was more useful if he could get close enough to see them in detail, particularly that nifty bit of high tier magic that sprung up from between the horns of the subjects. After having smote the mountain gorilla and, or, yeti from their territory, the herd of sheep had done nothing impressive. A lot of chewing, a little defecating and scattering of urine, some stamping against the loose turf on occasion. Just normal goat shit. Ulric decided that there was little to be risked and much to be gained by getting a closer look. If he could use a pulse of magic from his core to resonate with the suspected Kataigis or storm mana, of these animals it would be a tremendous boon to his understanding of how fundamental elemental forces combined into the more sophisticated phenomenon of Varda's landscape.
Thusly decided, the scientist slowly crept closer, moving carefully and quietly from cover to cover, stalking the sheep while they, oblivious to his presence, continued cavorting about the hill, showing no hesitation to jump small bluffs nor particular effort to climb the steep slope or hop down it for whatever moved their musky hearts. And musky they were, as a stiff breeze informed him. The ewes, which he now saw had smaller horns than the billys, were dogging a set of energetic kids that were almost cute. Those males though were shaggy, foul smelling, ill tempered, head butting sonsofbitches, not content unless they were chewing something or mating, which they did frequently with any ewe they could corner. Nothing he saw, as he watched for the next hour, indicated anything special about the mammalian Vardan mountain goats. Had they not been substantially larger than the extinct big horn rams of the North Americ Rocky chain of mountains he'd have said these were one of the less intimidating instances of wilderness ecosystem. Damned good thing he'd witnessed them kill the shit out of another animal just minding its own business or he'd have been unaware of their true nature.
Ulric had already tried a [Core Pulse] from hiding but the signal was too faint, too complex to be deciphered from this far away. There was Caelum and Aquae everywhere in the air around here, and Ceraun mixed in too from those approaching storm clouds and the signal to noise ratio for his ability was nowhere near good enough to parse the signatures of this new manaform. He needed to wrap this up and get back to the caravan before the weather turned on him. Just a bit closer.
A bit of loose gravel crunched under his foot as he approached the patently hostile highlands monsters ahead. The sound, sharp in the early morning air, was a gross mistake. Varda…well, you know the drill.
Ears stood up and the beasts went rigid. This close, about thirty meters away, Ulric could see the chewing of their jaws on whatever they'd scrounged up from the hillside stop and the dense pelts on their back raise in alarm.
Shit, Ulric remarked to himself, looks like his plan of studying the creatures from closer up was a failure. He readied himself in case the goats showed any of the aggression they'd shown that primate looking thing earlier. Just as well he had, things went from one to break the knob off and pitch it out the window.
The herd of [Thunderhorn Sheep] scattered across the steep decline that marked the highland plateau's transition towards rolling meadows below, graceful and powerful as they bounded with incredible agility across the treacherous terrain. All but three of the beasts, that is. The same three that had charged the ape-thing and these tore up the slope towards him with murder in their horizontally slitted, sickly yellow goat eyes. Evil eyes.
"Oh, shit." Ulric announced, unnecessarily.
He drew from his core, remembering the treatment given to the last ape to disturb these monsters.
[Warrior's Instinct]
[Battle Rhythm]
Between great spiraling horns, forming a pair of battering rams almost a meter in diameter on either side of their skulls, miniature storm clouds formed, whirling little thunderheads that made no sense coming into being. Damn.
Ulric pulled upon his own core and drew several throwing knives from their place on his thigh bandolier, charging them with electromagnetic force to create the link to his [Lightning Javalins]. When the monsters were within twenty meters, and closing fast, he threw the knives with impressive accuracy and cut loose the held spell.
[Lightning Javalin] X 3
Three bolts at once lanced out to strike the sheep head on, almost simultaneously ending the threa-
"Oh good goddamn, that's fucking rude!" Ulric shouted, watching the violet arcs crackle around the spiraling horn and into the churning clouds where it pulsed once and was gone, absorbed by the monsters.
Change of plans. Ulric freed his sword and used his [White Interference] to create a pool of unaspected magic, preparing a different approach, but the creatures had powered through his spells undeterred and then they gave him a taste of his own medicine, blurring forwards with sudden incredible acceleration, reminiscent of his own [Surge].
Ulric's blade intercepted the first in a powerful diagonal slash, the strength of the blow and the vicious cutting power of Xef'tocht shearing apart horn to cleave into the ridiculously thick skull below. Even with so much resistance, the power of the beast's charge, coupled with Ulric's own might buried his blade in the monster's brains. That didn't stop the momentum of over a hundred kilos of lightning infused goat from lifting him bodily from the ground, his elbow wrenching as he refused to release his sword's hilt and he was jerked through the air, attached to the dead monster while it hurtled to the rocky hillside.
Rising from his inglorious fall, Ulric tried to pull his weapon loose, scanning for the other foes. "Fucking ba- Stulgh!" Ulric coughed as the second sheep butted him in the side, a mighty tackle slamming him with magically infused force, absorbed mostly by his armor's plates.
Those plates did not so much good against the surge of electrical fury that rolled into him like a high surf, turning limbs rigid, and then launching him away from the offending horns far harder than the initial substantial impact warranted. Again, there were shades of his own abilities in that, a form of electromagnetic throw. He did not enjoy the experience, feeling the air whip by his face and his muscles spasm uncontrolled.
Ulric soared through the air, his sword still stuck in the corpse of his first kill, and he hit the stones of the slope roughly, world spinning crazily as he bounced to a stop.
Adrenaline fueled reflexes and long training got him rolling to his feet, even while his conscious thought was still coming to terms with being knocked ass over elbow some fifteen meters across the hill. He shook his head to pull the cobwebs free and tried to ready himself in the Undan but a spasm in his thigh shattered the stance and he nearly toppled. The third goat had redirected after the second had pummeled him, and Ulric couldn't do shit about getting out of the way, his thigh muscles cramping, a little arc of remnant electricity peeling across his armor, announcing that the initial hit wasn't the end of the goat's combined physical and magical assault.
He'd lost his sword but his core was still holding white mana so Ulric attuned Terra and raise a chest high [Stone Wall], just in time to intercept the shaggy monster's goat version of his [Surge] ability. The lunging charge smashed through his shield and clobbered him, horn cushioned by his own raised stone as it clubbed him across the head, his helmet making him see stars, thunder cracking again, even as he was launched a second time through the air. He landed in a stunned heap, and rolled to lay spread eagled, flashes of light filling his vision.
It took what felt like eternity to convince his limbs to get under him and another to find his footing. This time, he was almost completely concussed and even adrenaline had limits when you got your bell rang that hard. Which was why billy goat gruff number three was bringing its cloud bearing hammer down on him before he figured out that he was supposed to be doing something about it.
Instincts whipped into him by Idra's elite training and Taipan's never ending tutoring on all things killing got his knife ready from its belt sheath and he pulled his mana hard, drawing on his [Ceraunic Knight] abilities to deflect the oncoming ram. Roaring desperately, Ulric viciously back handed the butting horn with his gauntlet with all the strength he could manage.
[Maxwell's Parry]
Lightning mana met the storm charged horns of the sheep and a brief magical tug of war raged as the creature's own mana tried to resist the impelling of his own magic. Life hung in the balance for an endless moment before his Ceraunic core ripped the electric force into alignment, warping the magic within those horns to Ulric's will and the third and most devastating charge was hurled aside, the beast's mana turned against it. Which didn't stop the rest of the creature from hurtling into him, or the rebound from pushing him heavily backwards.
*CRACK*
Shaggy shoulders hit him in the chest and shoulders and he was sent sprawling, the animal's weight on top of him. Ulric pumped his knife, mostly out of reflex, driving it deep into flesh, clean punctures all the way to his fist doing terrible damage to the beast's innards.
Suddenly, Ulric realized through the rage and chaos of the battle that the monster wasn't moving and hadn't moved since hitting him. He turned his helmeted head slightly and saw the Cloud bearing horns were tilted at an extreme angle, its entire head sideways compared to the bulk of its neck, and Ulric dully realized that the animal's thick neck was broken by the sudden force of the mana laden collision. The recoil of the meeting of powers had moved him backwards, sort of cushioning the impact with the rest of the thing's body and reducing the hit to him significantly, even though he was now on his back for a fourth time in less than half that many minutes.
Ulric heard an angry bleat from the side and turned away from the dead goat's broken form to see the second goat that had hit him, pawing the hill for another turn, this time with a foul-smelling hairy bastard of a corpse on top of him, pinning him down.
Fury and magic combined and, with a brief [Surge] he shoved the heap off him and got his feet under him, readying himself to face the last of his enemies, blood dripping from his knife. He was a wreck, arcs of remnant energy refusing to completely subside and the thrashing impacts leaving him slow and vulnerable. He was in no shape for another direct meeting of powers.
There was blood pouring down his face, he realized, and he couldn't see out of one side of his helmet's visor, from where it had been bashed into his own face hard enough to cut him above the eye. Lightning was out, they had countermeasures. But what about Infrig? Ulric knew that Ceraun and Infrig didn’t play well together, the impetus of movement within the lightning magic being incompatible with the stillness of ice magic. Cold magic, to be more precise, but he’d argue semantics later, when these fucking goats were dead.
Difficult or not, that didn't stop him from calling on his core's magic again, cleansing it of the Lightning essence and harmonizing it to sheer, brutal cold, the crystalline clarity of Infrig, before weaving into that piercing lack of heat the whirling freedom of Caelum. Ulric was done playing around and he knew exactly how he was going to use his core’s ability to weave threads of power to kill with air and ice working in tandem. The usual difficulty of wielding ice magic bowed before the might of heat equations and thermodynamic formula, the calculus of removing energy from one body to shunt it into another snapping his mana to his will. In this, Ulric Einar’s will and intent were meshed perfectly to bring a siphon of thermal energy, Caelum and Infrig woven to tear the heat from the air and send it to the thermal sink that was the rocky earth beneath his feet, held in a tight grip to keep the system closed, the barrier of air snapping into place around the goat isolating it.
[Winter's Breath]
As corded muscle tensed above the cloven hooves and its long strands of fur rose from the power it gathered, Ulric slammed the [Thunderhorn Sheep] with a field of cold that would deep freeze a walrus. The burst of power that the billy used to propel itself now turned against it, and its hooves skipped across the surface of frozen rock instead of launching it forward. The animal laid itself horizontally out in the air in a manner that was faintly comical. In the heat of things Ulric could only find a grim satisfaction that the beast was still inside the clutches of his working. Incapable of anything but hate for all things four legged and horned, the [Lord of the Ancient Glade] was grimly overjoyed when the shaggy goat hit the flash frozen slope on its stomach.
Magic poured from his core, and Ulric made a clawing motion with his hand as he ripped the heat out of the air and sent it into the ground below. Fog billowed out from the node of his frigid spell, the construct intensifying its bitter work. The goat, dead center of the Infrig hybrid spell, climbed awkwardly on now ice-covered rocks set at a steep pitch, ice that refused to lend it grip to move with its usual ease.
More.
Ulric gripped his working and channeled it as hard as the arcane nexus in his chest would allow, pouring mana through the weave to strengthen its bindings on the spell's radius. Frost grew in as if in a time lapse, blooming in a ring from the circle of his magic, climbing over stones and bringing feathered white to the grasses. Brittle sparkles captured the light of the suns and the goat stopped its struggles, stilling without sound.
Snarling, Ulric didn't release his hold on the magic for another handful of breaths, until rational thought came back and he realized the goat was almost certainly dead beneath that coat of icy fur. He released the working and the barrier of Caelum allowed the cold inside to radiate outwards. For a moment, in the dead of spring, snow fell again on the hillside. The Sweat and blood on his face froze and remelted, as did the gore on his knife hand and wrist.
Silence swelled loud across the descent only broken by his heavy breaths and pounding heart. That silence broke when the statue of the beast fell over and shattered like porcelain, fragments of shaggy bastard scattering across the hill in a pile, some of the pieces rolling down the slope.
Body aching beneath a fresh set of bruises and limping slightly, occasional flashes of rampant electricity continuing to pulse as he struggled to tame the not quite familiar storm mana that was jolting his muscles, Ulric realized with a curse that he now had to drag these two remaining fuckers back to the wagons. That had been the point of all this, gaining the chance to study the manaform that was, even now, making his back muscles vibrate painfully. The cramps didn't really end, they just paused while they migrated. It was extremely annoying and incredibly devious. A fighter could adjust to a consistent weakness. A cut, a bruise, a broken weapon, these could be accounted for and worked around.
Having your trapezius clench mid swing, without warning, was debilitating. Bastard goats. And he had a long way, uphill, to haul them. Ulric Einar wouldn't so easily leave behind the fruits of his labor, not after so much pain to go along with it.
He'd lived. Gotten the shit kicked out of him from that headbutt and tackle, but he'd lived. And learned. And, once he'd cut these asshole sheep apart and figured out how they manufactured a storm cloud between their horns, he'd be a more powerful wielder of his own magics.
************Present, Refugee Caravan*****************
Taipan nodded to herself as he concluded his story.
"And what did Varda teach you today, husband?" the huntress asked, sharp teeth showing in her smile.
She enjoyed overseeing his growth, like any veteran craftsman watching a greenhorn earn their stripes. There was significant schadenfreude to be had in the trials of a rookie. For all that they'd experienced in the time since leaving Iriel, and even his time before he'd left the glade, Ulric was still not seasoned. Today had shown him that well. Furthermore, he'd had time to mull that fact over, dragging the three billy goats gruff, sonsofbitches that they were, up to the plateau's edge, aching the entire time, seeing double on the regular, and throwing up twice from the sheer ungodly migraine that had probably come from a concussion.
Take nothing for granted. And kill your enemy as hard as you can, before it does the same to you. Hunt like the [Shadow Panther], that doesn't pounce twice or give its prey even the slightest hope of escape before the bite that takes a life. And also, he concluded, remembering his lightning bolts being consumed by the horns of the beasts, when a creature wields the same forces you do, don't assume it doesn't have means to counter its own powers.
Ulric told her, and she was appeased, choosing not to scold or mock him when Varda had already done so fairly thoroughly.
"Good, Glade Chief. Not a few are tried and found wanting, unable to survive the lessons that the wilds offer." His mate said, solemnity speaking to kin she'd known that had perished.
"There are a good fewer young Hunters than older ones. That is because most who are returned to the forest, to join Varda's Dream, do so within the first three years. The rest figure out how not to be stupid or slow or clumsy." She added meaningfully.
Eyes closing to keep the double vision from making him sick again, he nodded gently, "Heard and understood Taipan." was his simple reply.
