by Logan Jacobs
Lizzy barked out a war cry as she happily charged.
The guy in the front and center of their V-shaped formation, that my central self encountered first, looked like the product of an elephant copulating with a cactus.
That self didn’t have a weapon besides a rock yet, and I couldn’t really envision any way of tackling that monster without one that wouldn’t end with me pricked fuller of holes than a sieve, and then pulverized shortly thereafter. So I screamed a war cry at the top of my lungs while making my most aggressive possible facial expression and standing as though I fully intended to wrestle him into submission. Then, when I estimated that, based on his approximate mass and velocity, he had accrued too much momentum to be able to stop or change course, I leapt out of the way, let him barrel past with the force of an earthquake ripping through the ground, and pounced on the fighter immediately behind him and to the right.
He looked a bit like a tiger from the waist up in regard to musculature and his claws. His face had human features, although it was furred and striped. He was wielding a flanged bronze mace that I really liked the look of.
His first double-handed overhead swing whistled past me as I dodged aside. From watching the way he gripped and handled the heavy mace, I suspected it wouldn’t be easy to wrest it away from him. So instead, I decided to take advantage of the relative weakness of the lower, less tigrish half of his body.
As he raised his mace for another swing, this time angled from the side, I dropped my rock to free my hands, then dove in and slammed my shoulder into his hip with the side of my head pressed against the side of his ribcage while I latched my hands behind the back of his thigh just above his knee and yanked toward me with all my might. He went down hard.
I threw myself on top of him immediately to keep him from getting back up. I straddled his hips and punched him in the face as he attempted to fend me off with both his free hand, and the mace, which he had kept hold of. Then I picked up the rock I had dropped before, which had luckily landed within my reach, and smashed his skull in. The striped pattern of his lightly furred skin inverted in an interesting way around the concave depression that I had just created, but then it quickly became obscured by the blood that soaked the area.
The flanged mace was mine for keeps.
The next closest fighter, a nearly human but slightly reptilian looking fellow, had a spiked flail. As he whirled it at me I stuck the mace into its radius, and the spiked metal ball flew in decreasing circles around the mace handle as the chain wrapped itself around. I yanked, and the flail handle flew out of the reptilian’s grip.
He pulled a dagger on me next, but I smashed it out of his hand with the brute force of the weight of the mace combined with his flail that was still tangled around it. Then I swung the mace-flail bulky combination weight into his face, where the flangs and the spikes of his own flail embedded themselves. His scales were not thick or hard enough to impede the sharp metal, and I heard his skull collapse with a sickening crunch. As he crashed down, I ripped the mace-flail back out of his face in order to block a sword thrust that was coming down at me from the right. The remnant of his face looked like macerated meat. The single yellow slit-pupiled reptile eye that remained intact blinked once at me before the consciousness faded from it.
Meanwhile, my other self had been using the stick that I had picked up from the forest floor to duel another of the mutant fighters on the right of their formation. After knocking him out with the stick, I took possession of his sword, drove it through his throat and out the other side, and then after withdrawing it, I used it to slash the next across his unarmored belly which spilled his disgusting entrails over the ground in front of him.
With four down by my hands and three down by Lizzy’s, the only surviving fighter was the prickly elephant type that I had sidestepped at the beginning, who had gone on to careen into a tree and bust it into splintered halves. While we were dispatching his companions, he had been struggling to extricate himself.
Now that the other seven lay dead or on the verge of dying, he finally succeeded in freeing himself and charged straight at me and Lizzy with an earth-shaking bellow of fury.
“Stay out of this, Lizzy,” I yelled. “Even if I die, there are more of me. And you can’t bite this guy or wrestle him because of the prickles. So I’ll handle this one.”
Lizzy growled her disapproval, but what I had said was obviously true and rational, and she took a few steps backward to signal her intention to comply.
At this point one of my selves was armed with a flanged mace in one hand and the flail which I had disentangled, in the other, and my other self was armed with a sword in each hand.
I both jumped out of the path of the incoming monster, one to the left and one to the right. As it charged past me I swung the flail so that the spiky ball embedded itself in the tender sole of the creature’s left hind foot.
As soon as the elephant-like monster next planted that foot, it bellowed with pain, took one more limping step, and toppled over on its side. The fall, in and of itself, probably caused some internal injuries, given its weight and the prickles, some of which may have been forced through its own skin. It lay there thrashing and screaming in pain and rage and attempting to smack me with any limb that I came within reach of. Before it could struggle back up to its feet, I both swooped in and simultaneously delivered a skull-crushing mace blow and a sword through the neck. I couldn’t say which of those injuries was the one that proved fatal first, but the prickly monster spasmed, frothed enormous bubbles of blood around its tusks, and then stopped moving.
Lizzy barked something that probably translated approximately to “Good job.”
“We’re not done yet,” I said as I pointed at the camp below the watchtower. Helmed and horned heads appeared from behind the fence of sharpened stakes and in the tower.
I hadn’t even finished the sentence before arrows started raining down around us.
Whatever was in that camp, these guys really, really didn’t want Lizzy and me getting anywhere near it. Maybe normally I’d be okay with that, since I had come out here to collect nerisbane, and the camp wasn’t the reason I was here. But the warriors reminded me so strongly of Thorvinians that I had to find out what it was they were trying to protect.
The stakes didn’t look that high, only about twelve feet. And the swinging front gate was the most heavily guarded point along the entire fence.
So I yelled to Lizzy, “Think you can jump that fence?” I’d seen her jump higher than that in her wolf form, so I knew that it was possible. I didn’t like the fact that the stakes were sharpened, which meant that she would be impaled if she miscalculated her jump, but it would be even more dangerous for her to barge through the front gate into the thickest knot of fighters, all of whom were ready and waiting for us.
Lizzy barked affirmatively. She sprinted for a section of the fence. I both sprinted for a different section, so that the defenders would be forced to divide up to deal with the three of us. I didn’t split up my two selves, however, because I needed both to surmount the fence.
When I reached the fence, I planted my hands against it and lifted one foot to knee height. I knelt, cupped that raised foot in both of my other self’s hands, and heaved myself up as high as I could. I grabbed the top of the fence in two of the v’s between the points of stakes and pulled myself up the rest of the way. Then, before I dropped down from the other side, I hung there with my arms dangling over to the outside of the fence.
An arrow plunged between the ribs of my self that was suspended on the inside of the fence in that vulnerable position. It hurt like a bitch, and I started gurgling blood. Another arrow punched into my thigh, and then a third into my back between my shoulder blades. But I stayed alive and conscious long enough for my other self on the outside to back up for a running start and then kick my way up the fence until I could grab onto my own hands. I pulled myself over to the inside of the fence.
My intact self grabbed the sword out o
f the sheath at my dying self’s belt while using my dying self as a human shield from more incoming arrows and started running. As soon as I left the shelter of my own damaged body, I reassimilated it, sent it back out ahead of me, and tossed myself the spare sword. The swords were the reason I hadn’t simply projected a self through the fence, then reassimilated the outside one back into the inside one and sent it out again to get both of me inside, since that would have left me with no weapons with which to meet these Thorvinian-like defenders.
I both reached and dove behind a wooden structure that I assumed was probably a barracks where I was protected from the hail of arrows for the moment. When I emerged on the other side, I was met by a fighter that looked half bear and a pair of fighters that both looked like living gargoyles of a malevolent variety. One of them even had large, powerful, bat-like wings.
While one of my selves engaged with the half bear fighter, both of the two gargoyles rushed my other self with talons that were like scythes. I ducked under the sharp claws and ran one of the gargoyles through with my sword.
While I was in the process of withdrawing my sword from his teammate’s belly, the other gargoyle grabbed me by the ankle with his talon, pumped his wings, and propelled us both into the air, with me dangling upside down.
In the same moment, the bear-like fighter ripped my other self’s head off with a swipe of his claws, which killed me instantly. That left just one of me in the vicinity, and I was already about fifteen feet off the ground, which meant that if I sent out a replacement self, it would be in an immediate freefall.
Then a massive furry shape came flying off the edge of the roof of the nearby barracks and smacked straight into the gargoyle that was lifting me and tangled up his wings, which brought us all crashing down to the ground.
Falling about twenty feet and then getting clobbered by four hundred pounds of wolf that landed on top of me could have resulted in instant death if the angles had been even slightly different, but the outcome for my self in this case was a shattered leg.
Through the agony I forced myself to focus enough to project my second self, and then I immediately reassimilated the self with the broken leg and sent out an intact replacement so that there were two uninjured copies of me once again. I had dropped my sword when I fell before I got reassimilated, so the sword still existed and lay on the ground near the tangle of wolf and gargoyle. I picked it up so that at least one of my selves was armed.
Meanwhile Lizzy furiously tore chunks out of the gargoyle with her teeth. I saw her sample the taste of one of his wings and then make a face and spit it back out. I can’t imagine how terrible he must have tasted, considering that I had seen the she-wolf scarf down pustule-covered plague-ridden corpses with as much relish as if they were delicacies.
“Thanks Lizzy, you saved my ass,” I said.
She barked cheerfully and scampered off to find her next victim.
Meanwhile, I both turned my attention to the bear-like man who had ripped my head off before, who had understandably hung back a bit while Lizzy was doing her thing. Now that the giant wolf had left, he seemed to be under the impression that just because he had killed me once meant he would be able to do it again.
As he charged me again, one of me tackled him to the ground and the other finished him off mid-roar with a sword through the neck. His head went limp and flopped to the side with his tongue hanging out. That made me feel better about our previous encounter, but I was a little miffed that neither the bear man nor either of the two gargoyles carried any weapons that I could conveniently claim, since they relied on their natural tooth and claw assets as built-in weapons like wild animals instead.
But in the next minute, approximately eight impressive-looking weapons came rushing my way as if in answer to my wishes, carried in the hands and other analogous appendages of five more mongrel combatants. In the seconds before they reached me I quickly catalogued the weapons: sword, mace, spear, another mace, another sword, axe, hammer, pitchfork. There were also three sets of horns, four sets of claws, a spiked tail, two sets of tusks, and one set of venomous-looking fangs to be accounted for.
But by this time my bodies had been nicely warmed up. The two of me swiftly cut a swathe through the group while acquiring some useful weapon upgrades along the way. I focused not only on delivering fatal blows but on lopping off the body parts that posed the greatest threat to me whenever the opportunity presented itself. My final blow in that encounter was a pitchfork stab to the neck of a viper that was sprouting out of some man’s ass like a tail. The rest of him was already neutralized, but the snake tail seemed to retain some residual life force, so I didn’t want to take any chances.
Once Lizzy and I had dealt with all the fighters that charged us out in the open, and I had climbed up the watchtower, killed one winged archer with a pitchfork, and pitched the other two, non-winged archers out of the platform to their deaths, the three of us methodically proceeded to clear each of the buildings in the camp of the last few survivors. All in all, the camp seemed to have been manned by a force of about thirty, including the eight that had left the fence to attack me and Lizzy.
The last building that the she-wolf and I entered, which was the most heavily guarded, turned out to be the most interesting. The other buildings had looked like barracks, a dining hall, a commander’s headquarters, and a few outhouses, but this one didn’t serve any purpose that was immediately familiar to me. It had two fireplaces with cauldrons, drying racks for herbs, a shelf filled with books and scrolls, and a table with cutting instruments and a mortar and pestle and various jars and vials. There were four bushels lined up against one wall, so I walked over to see what they contained.
Nerisbane.
In one bushel, there were fresh plants, with the flowers still intact, so I couldn’t mistake the pointed white daisy like petals and red centers. In the next bushel the flowers had been snipped off and only the stems and leaves remained. That was also the case in the other two bushels, but the plants had clearly been picked much earlier and they were dried out.
“Uh, Lizzy?” I said.
She padded over on her giant paws to see what I was looking at.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.
She made an excited grunting sound.
“I can’t really understand you,” I said. “We’ve already cleared the camp, so it should be safe for you to change back now.”
A second later she stood there as a human woman in all her fully naked glory.
“We won’t have to go pick any more of Marvincus’ stupid flowers, we can just snatch a bushel of these back to get Toady fixed up,” she said excitedly.
“Er, well, yeah,” I agreed. “But more important than that. I think this room must be the purpose of this camp. I think it must be a Thorvinian outpost, and what they’re doing here is gathering nerisbane to transform Thorvinius’ followers into these… monster hybrid super-warriors. They must be distilling it into some kind of drug that contains kirinyet, and I bet Thorvinius’ powers amplify the effects somehow too, since Marvincus’ book said that kirinyet only induces short-term transfigurations, but I’ve never seen a Thorvinian get changed back into a normal human form.”
“Hmm,” she said. “You mean all those ugly mugs we just tore up were Thorvinians?”
“I think so,” I said. “They were exactly like the ones that attacked my temple. Well, not exactly, since no two of them are exactly alike. But you know what I mean.”
“Guess that’s why they were tougher to kill than usual then,” she said. “And why they tasted so fucking nasty.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be stopping for snack breaks during a battle anyway,” I suggested.
“But I gotta refuel though,” she complained.
“Are you still hungry?” I asked. I wondered what the Thorvinians ate, and if there were any food stores left around their camp.
“Well, you could kinda say that,” the she-wolf purred. She walked over to the table
and hopped up and sat on the edge with her long legs that ended in furry hind paws dangling off while she batted her spring green eyes at me. “I still gotta lot of blood pumping through my system. You know how when you’re fighting, you get all kind of excited, and then after you just wanna-- ”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I interrupted as I walked over to her. I grabbed her by the back of the neck and the small of the back and crushed her against me in a kiss that was passionate verging on brutal. I was pretty sure we had both cut each other’s lips and drawn blood in the minute that it took before Lizzy started clawing at my clothes.
I helped her strip them off. Then, when I was naked too, I pushed Lizzy’s knees farther apart to expose her glistening entrance fully, guided the tip of my cock inside, grabbed her ass with both hands, and simultaneously pulled her farther onto me and thrust deeper into her until I had worked my entire length all the way inside. She groaned with pleasure and locked her legs around me. I fucked her for a few minutes in that position with our arms wrapped around each other and our torsos pressed together, then I pushed her down flat on her back on the table so that I could watch her full breasts quiver with our rhythmic movements. Once she was lying down, she tilted her hips up slightly to allow me to penetrate her even deeper. I gripped her by the hips to hold her in place and slammed my cock in and out of her until we both climaxed explosively at the same time, sweaty, panting for breath, and with my seed dripping down the insides of her thighs.
Meanwhile, my other self rifled through the books and scrolls on the shelf and quickly confirmed that they pertained to the scientific properties of plants, instructions for drying, preserving, distilling, and otherwise processing them in order to maximize their potency, and so on and so forth. The room was a laboratory of sorts.