Beastborne

by James T Callum

  “Ye mind tellin’ us just what the devil yer thinking o’ doing there, lad?” Durvin said, metal-clad fists on his armored hips.

  107

  “Yer bats!” Durvin bellowed once Hal explained what he was talking about.

  “You already know much about them,” Noth added as they entered the thick canopy of a swampy forest to the southwest. “And you have a fire-based attack that could turn them into a truly terrifying force.”

  Hal nodded. “It isn’t a bad idea, but there’s the small problem of them attacking the Settlement. We can’t risk the lives of the builders for the sake of something I don’t even know I could pull off.

  “Regardless of the cost, I might not be able to find a way to make it out of the Settlement, let alone return if there is a tide of enemies being thrown at us. It might be best to Dominate a large swath of the attacking force, sowing chaos and confusion among their ranks.”

  “You assume that they will have ranks,” Ashera said. “They could be simple beasts, could they not? It may be worth the effort of finding a group of monsters for you to control and to mark a path of egress from the Settlement to their location.”

  Angram was far ahead of them tracking down several potential paths. The ground was broken up by large roots that leaped out of the spongey earth and then dove back underground.

  Their natural root system made it hard for the others to keep on the trail, but not Angram. He went ahead, leaping from one narrow root to the next as if he was walking across flat land.

  Splicing aberration and eldritch, Hal felt the power of the monster essences fill him. Knowing he wasn’t using them in order to just do more Bonecrafting gave him an edge of excitement that he realized he missed.

  “Would that not cause more devastation?” Noth suggested to Hal’s right.

  “Durned beasts are easy to turn about if ye confuse ‘em enough. They don’t have the strength that an army would. No spine. Break the alphas, or cause enough destruction and most will turn tail and run.” Durvin snorted. “I heared some of me boys are placing bets that the durned fools turn tail and run away yelping as soon as they catch sight of our tall sturdy walls!”

  Hal could only hope that would be the case, but he didn’t think so. The Guild Mission made it seem like it was much more than some wild beasts. It was the Shiverglades itself pushing them out, rejecting their claim on the wild lands.

  A claim that Hal was determined to secure.

  Boco Bluefeather strode alongside them, watchful and thoughtful but making no further sounds besides the occasional chirp of agreement. Hal could tell the creature understood every word they spoke, he only wished he could speak karak.

  If he had some karak essence maybe, but he neither had close enough contact with them to gain any - like he did with Vorax - nor was he willing to harm a karak.

  They hadn’t gone too far out from the gap when Angram made a hurried return to the group. “You remember the voidmist?”

  Everybody nodded. Before Angram could point out the dark tendril Hal noticed it snaking its way around the wide bole of a tree. He could almost feel it in much the same way he was aware of monsters he was highly attuned to.

  “It won’t harm us,” he said with certainty. “Watch.”

  While the Manaseed that was part of his soul rarely spoke to him or imparted anything of use, it was overwhelmingly strong about this. The Manaseed back home was intrinsically tied to Hal, and as Hal was partly a Manatree, he carried with him a portion of its protection.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t carry the buffs of Founder’s Day. But he could feel the radiating pressure of the Manaseed’s shielding effect. It was drastically reduced, maybe a hundred yards judging by the distance of that dark thread.

  But as he spoke he tapped Convergence to lend his legs greater speed. Like a territorial animal, he rushed toward the tendril of voidmist ahead. The voidmist recoiled as he came closer, a faint scintillating flash forced it to retreat swiftly.

  At almost the same time, he heard Besal’s voice in his head. “We’ve got attention, above us.”

  Out flashed [Emissary] as Hal kicked off a nearby root, halting his forward momentum and diverting it to the side. His [Chain of Binding] came out next.

  A massive insect dropped down from the thick canopy above. At first, Hal thought it was a simple, mindless beast. But then he saw the armor and the strange glaive it held in one of its four hand-like appendages.

  It looked like a 7-foot-tall praying mantis, but it stood upright like a humanoid. Its carapace was perfectly colored to fit in with its surroundings, draped with moss and straps to hold several strange throwing weapons that reminded Hal of oversized shuriken.

  Hal was already conjuring Bomb Toss. With no hands to lob it physically, he sent the spell toward the mantis creature with a thought. It lacked the dramatic flair he usually appreciated, but he was so out of sorts from seeing a massive praying mantis that he didn’t think twice about attacking.

  The creature was already lashing out with its deadly glaive. It struck at the bomb with preternatural speed, the ensuing explosion blasted Hal back a bit but did no damage.

  His adversary, on the other hand, was screeching in pain as the flames seared its carapace. The moss it had festooned across itself as perfect camouflage was now set ablaze.

  Understandably, the creature swatted at itself to put out the fire, struggling when all four limbs got tangled up as they tried to remove pieces of the burning moss.

  Like the Morbolgers, the moss seemed to have a strange property when exposed to flame. Rather than burning out, it burned hotter and brighter as if fueling the flames without being immediately consumed.

  I really need to find out what that is.

  Unafraid of the flames, even though his Soul Drained fire resistance was long gone by that point, Hal rushed to close the gap.

  A shadowy form of a rushing, frantically swiping goblin presaged Hal’s attack. Its phantasmic form cut and chopped with abandon at the mantis. Goblin Rush had the creature, a Thesp Warrior by name, skittering back on a pair of insectile legs.

  Hal lashed out with his [Chain of Binding] and pulled with Convergence assisted strength. In the wake of the Goblin Rush Hal struck out with [Emissary], empowering its strike by tapping into the magical core he created at its center.

  The blade skittered off the chitinous armor of the Thesp at first as Hal pulled himself in. The Thesp reacted remarkably fast, it dropped the glaive realizing that Hal was too close for it to be effective.

  Instead, it struck out with its four arms. Its larger upper set of arms terminated in scythe-like mantis claws while the pair of arms below it were more akin to chitinous versions of hands.

  Hal reacted purely on instinct, to the point he wasn’t even sure he had summoned the eldritch and aberration tendrils. They met the Thesp’s attacks one-to-one, stealing the creature’s advantage.

  Not for long though, Hal knew. His essence-limbs weren’t nearly as strong as the Thesp’s and once the creature got over the shock of Hal’s new appendages, his advantage would be lost.

  But he didn’t intend for the Thesp to get that far.

  With a twist of [Emissary], the blade slid along the nearest chitinous plate of armor, right into a seam at its upper arm. He poured all of his strength into that strike and watched with a mix of awe and disgust as the arm was severed.

  Whatever flesh lay beneath the armor was extraordinarily weak. All it took was one good strike and the arm practically fell off.

  Had he been thinking clearly, he would have realized earlier that the creature had no internal bones. And that its armor was not armor at all in the traditional sense, but its exoskeleton. But he understood it then.

  He planted a foot on the creature’s chest, and as he summoned a Divebomb to crash into the Thesp he released the binding enchantment on the chain. He arced backward in a Convergence empowered kick. As the Divebomb struck the Thesp its green exoskeleton cracked and leaked bright purple blood.


  The creature staggered forward as Hal got his feet beneath him. He felt a snarl escape his throat as the familiar thrilling sensation of his raising Strain filled him.

  Hal summoned Feather Barrier, a whipping wind of shadowy feathers appeared around him and vanished. Using Empathy, he extended it to each of his party members.

  A quick glance their way showed him that he wasn’t the only one engaged in battle. Three other Thesps were fighting against the others but they were easily holding their own.

  The Thesp in front of him was clearly wounded but instead of continuing to fight like he expected, it spread its insectile wings, and with a loud buzzing sound, the creature leaped into the boughs high above.

  About to leap up to give chase, Hal stopped when he realized the buzzing hadn’t faded into the canopy as he expected it to. The forest was alive with the loud clicking buzz of massive insectile wings. Dozens of them.

  From every angle, a Thesp bounded toward Hal and his party. Their serrated dual-headed glaives glinted maliciously in the filtering green light of the forest.

  108

  “Watch yer left, boy!” Durvin called out from behind Hal as the party tightened their formation.

  Hal twisted on the balls of his feet, Convergence driving his limbs faster than he could have ever moved them unaided.

  He plunged forward with his bone-made falchion, its glittering [Empyreal Shardite] edge caught the green light and threw it back in a dazzling display as he picked off an attack from a descending Thesp.

  A twist and a roll of his blade over the creature’s glaive had Hal pushing the wooden weapon out wide. In the opening provided, Hal cast Goblin Rush. Shadowy blades lashed out as if Hal suddenly sprouted five more arms, each wielding a wickedly sharp sword.

  Caught out, the Thesp bore the brunt of the assault on its green carapace. Like the first one Hal fought, it didn’t take much damage from the blistering strikes.

  And Hal needed to keep an eye on his rising Strain. His MP was another matter, one he didn’t need to focus quite so much on.

  While he lacked the Founder’s Day buff, he still had over 800 MP at his disposal. And while it didn’t seem like much, his [Ravensblessed Spaulder] restored 10 MP per kill, offsetting the cost of his continual casting.

  Any limitations he had on his spellcasting would be from Strain. But he had more than just Beast Magic at his disposal.

  <“Gather up!”> Hal ordered. To his surprise, each of his friends reacted with alacrity.

  Hal leaned back as the Thesp in front of him, its carapace leaking in a few spots but otherwise unharmed, lunged at him with that serrated dual-headed glaive.

  Out flashed Noth’s scythe, turning the creature’s single weapon into a pair. Muscles straining, Noth arrested the momentum of the scythe, twisted it sideways, and called upon her Dark Knight powers.

  Her scythe snapped out at the stunned Thesp, a dark abyssal line of bleeding energy left in its wake. A thin crack appeared in the Thesp’s green carapace. Its legs tensed below it but already Noth was turning away to deal with another threat.

  Hal stared, transfixed, as he began to understand the devastation that single slash had visited upon the creature. Its legs coiled powerfully like a grasshopper’s below it and the thing leaped.

  The force showed the true damage done by Noth.

  As the creature’s legs were forced upward, the line across its carapace expanded and the upper half of the mantis-like monster fell away as its legs leaped up into the canopy.

  They fell short several feet and the two halves thumped to the ground.

  Noth uses Abyssal Strike.

  Noth defeats the [Thesp Scout].

  You gain 884 Experience Points (+4%).

  You earn 88 Sparks.

  You absorb 10 Thesp Essence.

  Hal bent forward, slamming his chain-wrapped palm onto the soft earth. <“Get back!”> came Hal’s next command.

  The force of his Leadership had everybody reacting at once, taking a step back and where possible, entirely disengaging their foes.

  Calling upon Bloodrake, large barbed chains leaped from the ground and lashed themselves to the Thesps. Over a dozen of the creatures and more were caught in the spell. A few managed to slip their bonds before they tightened too much.

  One Thesp near Hal managed to lose one of its insectile wings in its escape but that sacrifice provided it with an unparalleled opportunity to strike out at the vulnerable Beastborne.

  Had Hal been the type to fight on his own, it would have skewered him with that vicious serrated glaive. But he was far from alone. An arrow suddenly appeared in the thing’s oversized mantis eye, as if it had simply teleported there.

  Another joined it shortly after and as the creature’s charge faltered, a large hammer cracked it so hard in the chest that all of its forward momentum was stolen in one sickening crunching sound.

  The Thesp doubled over Ashera’s hammer like dirty laundry.

  Before its weight could pull down on her weapon she pulled it back, twisted her hips, and brought the hammer up in a sweeping arc that came up and around to slam the creature into the soft earth.

  Hal focused on the spell, holding the Thesps in the biting chains while his party methodically went about ending their incessant clicking and hissing.

  It reminded him a great deal of the Shoggoth where he had to keep channeling the spell to hold it in place. The Thesps weren’t amorphous - thankfully - but their carapace was hard and the spikes had trouble finding purchase.

  With a few twists, the Thesps would have been able to completely slip their bonds without Hal constantly tightening and pulling down on the barbed chains.

  “Watch yer head,” Durvin bellowed. Hal ducked down farther, rounding his shoulders as he did.

  He felt the hard boot of the dwarven leader on his back, using it like a springboard to attack some threat from above.

  Hal turned to look over his shoulder, up at the soaring bronze-bearded dwarf. His two-headed axe held tightly in both hands, Durvin twisted his hips and turned into a tornado of rising destruction.

  With absolutely no regard for classical physics, the dwarf somehow continued to rise through the air at a pair of Thesps. Even with his Perception of 20, Hal could no longer make out the dwarf amid the blur of silvery metal and red beard.

  The Thesps drove their glaives at the tornado, thinking it an easy kill. As soon as their bladed tips touched the tornado they were sheared off with a metallic clink.

  Whether by sheer skill or dumb luck, the fragmented tips of the Thesps’ blades lodged into the center of their triangular insectile heads. They were dead before they ever hit the ground.

  Durvin’s momentum was spent and he began to fall as the blurring motion of his axe slowed. Hal scrambled to the side to avoid the heavily armored dwarf that made a deep crater in the soft ground where Hal had been a moment before.

  Durvin raised his bushy brows in astonishment. “Somethin’ up there stopped me spin!” He hopped up, angrier than before and for a wonder, threw his greataxe to the side. “Ye ever seen a dwarven arrow, boy?”

  “I have the feeling you’re about to show me,” Hal said with a smirk that was mirrored on Durvin’s face.

  “Aye, ye got the right o’ it.” Durvin reached to a strap on his hip and pulled out a small hammer. The dwarf whipped his arm forward, chucking the thing end-over-end into the canopy above.

  A sharp retort sounded and down fell a stunned Thesp. It crashed into the ground just as Durvin gave a hoot of excitement and charged toward it, picking his greataxe up off the ground as he went.

  Hal released Blooodrake as most of the Thesps around them were dead or dying. Many of them were fleeing, but most weren’t getting very far.

  Between Ashera’s long strides, Angram’s expert marksmanship, and Noth’s abyssal energies there wouldn’t be many survivors. And those that managed to remove themselves from the battle, found themselves suddenly visited by a gargantuan blue bipedal bird.

 
Boco Bluefeather, the largest among the party and with dusty-blue feathers that stood out so starkly against the green backdrop had utterly disappeared when the fighting started.

  The karak reappeared wherever it pleased as if stepping out of a magical gate to put down any Thesp that it deemed worth its attention.

  Using a long knife clenched tightly in its beak, the Karak backstabbed its next fleeing victim, taking it down before it could alert any others in the area.

  Thesp essence flowed in low coiling tendrils of purple smoke as they snaked across the churned up forest floor and into Hal. The sting of a new essence was both painful and thrilling at once. EXP notifications rolled past his vision and he dismissed them out of hand.

  Summoning Deep Magic, Hal coated [Emissary] in dark crackling lightning and blood-red mist from his aberration and eldritch essences as he chased after Durvin.

  For such short legs, Durvin chewed up the ground between him and the downed creature. Hal was only halfway to the rising thing when Durvin stomped one foot down into the dirt, spraying up black loamy earth into the Thesp’s face.

  Right behind the distracting move, Durvin spun and lodged its axe right in the thing’s middle. A spray of purple blood blasted from the wound with surprising force.

  Before Durvin could yank the blade free, the Thesp swatted him with a clawed arm, and rather than fight against it the dwarf rolled with the hit.

  Hal caught a wink from the canny dwarf as he rolled out of Hal’s way. The Thesp’s right arm, as it crossed over its body presented the perfect opportunity to Hal.

  Pouring everything he could into Convergence, Hal leaped the remaining five feet and arched his back with [Emissary] over his head.

  Only then did the Thesp recognize its doom. It tried to bring its other arm to bear but it had spent too long focusing on Durvin. Hal’s crackling blade sliced down at the weaker joint and cleaved through the thing with one solid strike.