Eight 5.38: No More Holding Back II

Stepping within ten yards of the stairwell’s landing triggered the sound of a bell tolling, along with a blast of disorientation like I’d taken a punch to the chin, rattling my brain. I withdrew immediately, yet I still caught the tail end of a Thousand Spears spell across both arms. Water poured from the Hoarder’s Pocket to snake around the wounds and heal them.

The disorientation took longer to shake. Healing Water didn’t fix it, and precious seconds were lost as I continued to fall back, dodging three consecutive casts of Thousand Spears, each one moving deeper down the stairs.

Then I heard a man grunt. The guards had come within reach of the herd’s boundary. A hit and run by the Deer God interrupted the casting and bought me time.

Yuki and I scrambled to diagnose the source of the problem, which turned out to be an inflammation of my inner ears. A directed Healing Water did the trick, clearing the way for me to join the fight.

The alarm didn’t trigger a second time when climbing the stairs, so I rushed the last ten yards, popping up to see the Dear God disappearing into the herd and the Maltrans with their backs to each other. He’d positioned them, so that the stairwell was in their peripheral vision.

The soldiers’ names according to the Status camera were Hatwelei and Duswasa. As for their primary talents, Hatwalei had one called Lock Down, while Duswasa had two, Perceiver and Illusory Spear. The soldiers also possessed a number of talents in common: Trained, Very Well Trained, Epitome of Training, and Unswerving Loyalty.

Thinking at the speed of Dog’s Agility, I launched myself at Hatwalei to close the distance before he could work his magic. Yuki read my intention and shared it with the Deer God, who emerged from the herd in a pincered attack.

An invisible shield deflected my stilettos, the same true for the Deer God’s antlers. We held our positions to overwhelm it. The Deer God pushed with all his strength, while my hands blurred as my empowered stilettos banged into the shield, the Spiral Pierce spells filling the air with a crack-crack-crack.

The shield broke, yet I couldn’t follow through; the disorientation slamming into me again. Hatwalei wielded a sword, and he hit me with a straight thrust to the hip before I could withdraw.

“A talent for talents and a talent for qi,” he said. “A hunter, scholar, and Water-Touched.”

At the last, the two of them paused their counterattacks to retrieve masks from their pouches, which they then used to cover their mouths and noses. A water rune was stitched into the cloth.

As soon as I was fine again, I dove back into close range. Just in time, too, the heel of my boot tore away—it hung in the air where it’d been, frozen in place.

‘Are you satisfied?’ the Deer God asked. ‘Do you have a sense for how they fight?’

It’d only been a taste so far of what it was like to pit myself against fighters of their caliber, but reinforcements were surely on the way, and we were meant to be running. I changed gears—storing the stilettos, so that I could pull Bearbane from the pocket.

The Maltrans shifted along with me, recognizing a shift in the pace of the fight. Hatwalei switched positions with Duswasa, so that the two spears could duel each other. The soldier grinned at me, his expression promising a world of pain. I smiled at him, playful.

The soldiers lined up back-to-back again. Yuki blinked me forward, and my spear re-appeared, already piercing their throats. Duswasa’s eyes bugged; he watched me tear the spear out the side of his neck with Bear’s Strength. Blood spurted as both Maltrans collapsed, their spinal columns severed.

Their silvered bodies continued breathing, but the tracheas were cut, too. The result was a bubbling at the top of their torsos. Space attempted to Lock Down around me, but I danced aside, circling the men on the floor.

‘Blink is such a cheat,’ Yuki said.

I know, I thought, stabbing Hatwalei through the eye. His ghost afterward looked so confused. Soon, he was joined by Duswasa’s ghost, and I stored both their bodies in the Hoarder’s Pocket.

Enough blood had splashed around to tell Sister Moon’s people that their comrades were dead without telling them how. I made sure to leave a track showing me running for the exit.

It felt weird with a heel missing, but I’d rather wear a torn boot than one that didn’t fit right.

The air outside was hazy with dust. Hardly a tree was visible, and those that were, were flattened as if a volcano had erupted. The forest’s spirits wailed at the sudden devastation, and the number of ghosts—of people and critters—were too numerous to count. Flashes of otherworldly light shone here and there as the process of moving on took hold.

I didn’t linger and ran straight for where Sister Moon had withstood the landslide—the area littered with the bodies of those executed by the empress—then sprinted past it going at full speed. The length of my stride would tell anyone following that I was in a hurry.

I cast a Camouflage spell as I ran, since I’d be out of range of their alarm stones. The Deer God kept pace for a time before rejoining the herd.

All good on this end, I thought.

‘Ready here,’ Fala sent from underground.

###

The average, healthy blynx could teleport a maximum of fifty yards assuming they had line-of-sight on their destination. Yuki’s range was a hundred yards, so that was how far I ran past Fala’s traps before spinning around to find cover.

There were plenty of fallen trees to choose from. I crouched down behind one and waited.

It was about a minute or two, which was endless in the context of a fight, but couldn’t have been considered wasted time when being careful of subtle, ruthless enemies—namely my family and me.

A guard plastered with scout-based talents emerged first, hot on my trail. She gave a wave to those behind her, and the rest of the Maltrans followed. I held my breath, then let it softly sigh out when Sister Moon appeared among them. The whole crew was traveling together; no one was left behind.

My Status camera rapidly scanned through their talents. All of them were deadly fighters, including it turned out Kolwei. I’d been right about him; he had a talent called Master of Meat coupled with several anatomy-based talents that sent a shiver down my spine. I marked him as a priority target, as well as the healer and the Earth-Touched among them.

As for the empress, I unfocused my eyes and clicked randomly before her talents displayed:

Sister Moon (Human, Silvered)

Talents: Born to Climb, Unmatched Charisma, Subtlety First, Hidden in the Waves, Tireless, Intoxicating

She possessed six talents, and each was heavily developed. That said, I couldn’t help feeling like this strength was hollow. Much of the silverlight used to fuel her rise in levels had come from creatures that she hadn’t hunted herself. She’d grown tall on the backs of the people under her.

The scout covered ground quickly, but held her place when she got to about twenty yards ahead of Sister Moon, like she was on a leash or something. Once she was at that distance, she moved forward at the empress’s pace.

The same thing happened with the rest of the soldiers—they spread out in a constellation around the empress and matched her walking speed, their eyes searching in every direction. Even Sister Moon’s attendant and Kolwei took up fixed positions five steps behind her.

‘Ritual circle,’ Yuki said. ‘I can feel the qi being expended from here.’

It’s still working, even though there are a couple of open spots for the soldiers we killed, I noted.

‘Built-in redundancies,’ Yuki suggested.

‘I’ll want to see that later,’ Fala sent. ‘How much longer until they get to me?’

The scout was close to crossing over the trapped area. The empress should reach you in about twenty beats, I thought.

‘Ah, I feel the scout’s steps now,’ she sent.

The scout slowed to examine the bodies, seemingly to make sure they’d remained untouched. She no doubt saw the boot prints I’d left in the blood on the ground. Fala was holding very still underground, not daring to express even a hint of her influence for fear of alerting the Maltran above of the trap underneath.

The scout resumed tracking me, and a predatory smile escaped onto my lips.

Timing will be based on Sister Moon, I thought. The Dear God to call ready, in, and target sequencing.

‘We will rid the world of this pestilence,’ he sent.

‘I’m all set here,’ Fala sent.

‘Same,’ Yuki added, and I felt them reinforcing the Blink emulator’s structure. We were about to put it through some heavy, heavy use.

I kept my eyes on the scout for now, not daring to look toward Sister Moon’s direction yet. I waited and focused on my breath, stayed loose and ready to slip into the stream of action.

‘Ready 3, 2, 1.’ The Deer God directed my eyes to the Earth-Touched among the Maltrans.

My peripheral vision caught a glimpse of Sister Moon, causing my heart to waver, but Yuki was on it. They slammed the connections to the Blink connector home, and I was suddenly behind the Earth-Touched. I grabbed hold, then Yuki immediately sent us skyward—a hundred yards up. Up, we went again in a rapid-fire series of teleports until we were about five hundred yards in the air.

The Maltran had started to fight back after the second Blink, but I managed to keep him from turning on me, clinging to his back like a limpet and warding his elbow strikes and the smashes from the back of his head.

Then, at our intended apogee, I let go. From this height, he should hit the ground at or near terminal velocity. Not that we would let him.

As I fell alongside him, the air blasting my clothes and my hair, I saw his initial panic turn into determination. He eyed the ground below like it would be his savior instead of his death.

I took out a throw-away spear from the pocket, and Yuki spit him with it like a shish kebob, re-materializing the weapon so that it ran from the top of his head and out through his crotch. I had a couple of seconds afterward to dig out his light, then let the rest of the body fall like a meat bomb onto the people below.

At about a hundred yards to the ground, Yuki blinked us down the rest of the way. We didn’t even touch down completely; I just grabbed the next target in line before we zoomed back up. The others didn’t even know where the Earth-Touched gone. They’d been too busy panicking over Sister Moon’s sudden disappearance.

Fala had dropped the empress into a long tunnel leading down to a gap in the stone big enough for a human being, then she’d sealed it along with the entire path down. Without an Earth-Touched, there’d be no way to get to her.

For good measure, Fala had compressed the stone until the body inside pulped. She’d felt it give.

Kolwei had dropped into another of Fala’s traps at the same time I’d grabbed the Maltrans’ healer. This one fought me from the beginning, and I felt my heart stuttering to a stop, the skin on my hands beginning to rot, and my hair falling out—falling free to flutter in the wind as we rocketed up to about four hundred yards.

Yuki cut the trip short, because they feared for my life. I speared the healer like the Earth-Touched before him, then did it again, when one shish kebob didn’t appear to be enough.

We blinked away, down to the ground and out of sight so that we could work on restarting my heart and fixing the damage to my hands. It was the first time the hidden mind had ever cast the Spark spell inside my body.

Let me tell you—it hurt like all get out. Then Yuki did it again, with a Healing Water spent in between, and that did the trick to get my heart beating again.

The rot on my hands took another two spells to heal, the skin left a mottled pink afterward.

We were spending mana and qi freely, not holding back at all, and in the process killed Sister Moon and crippled the strength of the remaining Maltrans terribly. We could flee now and happily say that we’d accomplished our mission and much more.

Check? I asked the network.

‘Wounded but fighting,’ the Deer God answered.

‘My wells are full,’ Fala sent. ‘I could do this all day.’

Yuki and I are down to about a third capacity each, I thought.

‘Then let’s keep going,’ Fala sent.

‘If we’re going to clean up a mess, let’s do it properly,’ Yuki said.

So that’s what we did—killing the Maltrans to the last. I’ll give them this, they didn’t break. They were tenacious and didn’t give up on trying to rescue their empress. They just didn’t know it was too late. She was nothing but mangled clump of meat and bones from almost the beginning of the fight. Fala hadn’t needed to set on eyes her once.

The Maltrans couldn’t solve the puzzle we posed. We’d laid the ground too well, and once we removed the critical pieces from their side of the board… honestly, they didn’t have a chance.

###

Afterward, we collected the light and buried the bodies deep underground. We also went back to clean up any evidence of our presence, looting the place down to the bones.

We were about half way done with sealing up the fortress and arranging to fill its interior with water when I spotted a team from Gorwenta coming to investigate the disturbance up on the mountain. One was silvered, two were dawn, and the rest were under level 5.

They got to about a hundred yards from where the walls to the mining compound had once stood before we could intercept them. While Fala continued to drill channels for the water, the Deer God gored one of the dawn. When the soldiers’ eyes turned to see him drop, I grabbed the silvered to disappear him up into the sky.

He wasn’t nearly so skilled as the empress’s guards, and I was able to stab him in the kidneys on the way up, then puncture his lungs, the sound of the air hissing out him lost in the long drop down.

The body burst about ten yards from the other dawn soldier. She turned that way, her alarmed spear at ready, which gave the Deer God the window he needed to kill the others on her team. The soldier spun to see their bodies falling together, the two covered in sudden punctures.

In a matter of seconds, she was the only one left. The soldier took off running back to Gorwenta, and we let her. She’d carry the story back of the landslide, the demolished fortress, and the creature that killed invisibly. That should delay any further investigation until we wrapped things up.

###

As the fortress’s interior filled with water, Fala and I strained anything living from the flow. Obviously, we were unable to filter microbes, but anything bigger and more advanced than that was kept out. The idea was that it’d reduce the risk of a creature taking advantage of the tear between life and death, like for example the spirit king had.

Once that was done, I spent close to half a day infusing the water with my influence—willing it to exorcise spirits and to heal the wound in the veil. It was well after dark by the time I was done. Then, it was time to say goodbye.

“Are you sure?” I asked the Deer God.

He nodded, then turned to gaze at the mountain rising beside us. ‘Our precautions are good, but someone needs to watch over this place, at least for a time.’

“It might take hundreds of years,” I warned him.

‘A hundred here, a hundred there—when you’ve existed for as long as I have, the years don’t mean as much. I’ll use the time to familiarize myself with my body more.’ The Deer God butted me with his head. ‘It’s you I worry about. The trouble you’ll get into without me watching over you.’

‘That’s what we’re here for,’ Yuki said, piping up.

“We’ll keep our Eight out of harm’s way,” Fala added.

‘I know you will,’ the Deer God sent, ‘and when I’m finished here, we will meet up again.’

‘Until then, you can join us in Ollie/Eight’s dreams,’ Yuki said. ‘We’ll make sure you don’t get lonely.’

‘I expect I won’t,’ the Deer God replied, the edges of his mouth lifting in a smile. ‘Now off with you; you have a long way to go.’

I gave him a pat on the flank, then moved in for a hug. Fala joined from the other side, and we said goodbye, at least temporarily, physically.

We left the fortress, picking our way through the forest under the light of the moon and the stars. The effort we’d made to erase traces of our presence wouldn’t be wasted by us staying another night. Besides, even after everything we’d done that day, neither Fala or I were tired, and our wells had re-filled enough to cast dozens of Night Eyes spells if we needed them, not to mention my Spirit Eyes.

We had no problem traveling at night, and Fala and I moved closer, so that we could intertwine our fingers as we walked.