Killstreak Book One

by Stuart Thaman

  Kadorax focused on Chaos Step: Rank 1 and added the ability to his rapidly growing list.

  He was tempted to activate it immediately, but quickly pushed the notion out of his thoughts as his mind wandered to the incoming attack Elise had warned of. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t expect the jackals to be dumb enough to try an assault on the fortified camp. Her kind of ‘always prepared’ mentality was a hallmark of the Blackened Blades, though, and he couldn’t deny that the possibility was strong enough to warrant being ready.

  The jackals didn’t arrive until sometime late in the night. Most of the camp was asleep when the first outrider came back from the woods, shouting from horseback to rouse the fighters and warn the civilians. Kadorax, Brinna, and Syzak had been asleep in the Blackened Blades’ main building, more a collection of poorly made huts linked by covered walkways than any real headquarters, when the alarm was raised.

  Half-dressed and quickly strapping on sword belts and bits of armor, the Blackened Blades assembled in front of their building to await Elise’s instruction. The three adventurers stood out at the back of the group, their unmatched and non-conforming leather clashing with the dark, stained armor of all the assassins and rogues. There were roughly twenty Blackened Blades assembled, and Kadorax figured more of them were away from camp, deployed against the various temples and jackal strongholds throughout the region. A trumpet call rose up from the Priorate Knights’ compound, and it was quickly followed by the ring of steel against steel as the knights all moved in practiced unison.

  Elise strode forward in pitch-black leather that blended in seamlessly with the dark night. There were only a few torches planted here and there, and Elise was nearly invisible when she found the dark patches between them. “Blackened Blades,” she began, pacing at the front of the assemblage as she spoke. Behind her, the outrider’s call to alarm still rang throughout the camp. “We’re after their leaders! Let the knights handle the brunt of the assault and the lower-ranking, untrained jackals. Our place is not on the front lines. Remember your training, wait for the bulk of the jackal forces to engage the knights, and then find your targets one at a time. Each doghead leader we kill is worth at least ten of the soldiers.”

  Kadorax couldn’t deny the smile on his tired face. The strategy was the exact one he had taught to Elise, the only difference being the presence of the knights instead of some city’s formal guard or militia. A few stray howls lifted up through the trees all around.

  “They’re almost here,” Elise continued. From her left, a small contingent of knights marched into view and spread out, forming a line behind crude wooden barriers. “Remember: don’t engage them head-on. Even if you see them breaking through and reaching the camp, just stick to the plan and hunt their leaders.”

  There was a murmur of assent from the gathered assassins and rogues, and then the first wave of jackal attackers reached the palisades only ten paces or so from the Blackened Blades’ buildings.

  “Let’s go!” Kadorax yelled to his two companions. He had every intention of following Elise’s instructions to the letter. The knights could handle the assault en masse, and he didn’t have a shield—not that he’d know how to effectively block with one anyways.

  Next to the two seasoned adventurers, Brinna looked almost out of place. She wasn’t a combat veteran like Kadorax and Syzak, and her hands shook no matter how much she tried to hide her fear. She kept pace, though Kadorax wasn’t entirely sure how well he could count on her given the scale of the battle erupting on the front lines. He had been the same way when he had first arrived in Agglor: constantly scared for his life. Stopping for only a second to offer the woman a shred of confidence, he placed a firm hand on her shoulder and nodded, his jaw set like stone. “Keep your head down. Wait for them to come to you. Don’t waste your talents.”

  Around them, the Blackened Blades sprang into action all at once, darting for the darkest glimmers of shadow. The three adventurers took a wider path around the rest of the fighting. Keeping single-file, they wove through trees and over exposed roots at a slow pace, placing the chaotic sounds of the battle far to their left.

  “What are jackal leaders like?” Brinna asked, her voice shaking less than Kadorax had expected. “Were there any in the temple?”

  Syzak shook his head, though none of them could see him in the darkness. “Their leaders are usually magic users, but not always. You’ll know the real leaders easily because they’ll always have a few members of their pack close by. The bodyguards will be warriors, and they’ll protect the leader to the death. We just have to get close without being seen.”

  “Neither of you have any Sneak talents,” Brinna reminded them, fear in her voice.

  “Then you’ll have to do most of the heavy lifting,” Kadorax told her grimly. “You’ll do just fine.”

  As they stalked along the forest floor, Kadorax ran through the skills they’d have left at their disposal. He had consumed nothing more than a few activations of Cage of Chaos, and he figured he had at least one more use of it left. Syzak was the most depleted. All the snake-man had left was Summon Rain and Rat Trap. Luckily, Brinna relied mostly on passive abilities that didn’t need time to recharge.

  With his new ring allowing him vision enough to at least see where they were going, Kadorax led them for some time, occasionally stopping as groups of jackal warriors scampered by on all fours. They changed their direction after every group they saw, trying to keep the jackals always to their left so they’d make a wide arc around whatever leadership they would manage to find. After what felt like far too long in the woods, they found a ring of jackal soldiers protecting two others in robes. A pair of unarmored jackals served as runners, bringing information to the robed dogheads and confirming Kadorax’s suspicion that the group was indeed that which they had sought.

  “What the hell is that?” Kadorax whispered, pulling Syzak down hard to the forest floor with him.

  Brinna practically yelped with fear as she dropped to her stomach as well.

  “What?” Syzak whispered, his snake eyes scanning the scene over and over. “Just jackals. What did you see?”

  Kadorax rubbed his eyes, but everything he saw did not change. “I… You see it, right?” He couldn’t figure out how to describe the World War Two-era object to his medieval-minded companions. The vehicle’s engine was still on, gently idling in a small clearing, and there was a huge black gun mounted toward the rear of the frame. “At least they’re on our side, sort of…” Kadorax muttered as he noticed the white star painted on the hood.

  “What is it?” Syzak whispered. He peered as intently as he could, then shook his head.

  “Run,” Kadorax said, pushing himself backward. “They’ll fire on us. They’ll kill us all.”

  Brinna shook him hard on the shoulder. “What do you mean?” she quietly demanded.

  “The Jeep!” Kadorax urged. He pointed right at it. “How can you not see it! There’s a Jeep from Omaha Beach sitting in the middle of the forest, and one of the jackals it standing on the back with a fifty cal looking in our direction! Get out of here! Go!”

  The rogue woman backed off, clearly terrified.

  “Syzak! Run!” Kadorax implored. He didn’t bother trying to cover his steps or prevent his footfalls from making all the noise in the world as his mind tried to come to grips with reality. He’d been in Agglor for thirty years. He hadn’t thought of Earth history since the day he’d woken up with a stat sheet blinking before his vision. If people could show up here, why not other objects? Why not a car? A tank? His mind reeled with possibilities. He’d never seen anything from Earth in Agglor before, just the occasional Earth-born person he had met on his travels, most of which had been homeless and entirely ill-equipped for life in a fantasy realm.

  “Where?” Syzak yelled at him, both scaly hands on Kadorax’s chest. “What is it?”

  The jackals had heard all their commotion, and the ring of soldiers began stalking in their direction with their
weapons and claws at the ready.

  “There’s a fucking gun!” Kadorax screamed. His brain was delirious snapping through a thousand different scenarios all at once. “They’ll cut the forest to ribbons! We’re all going to die! Just RUN!”

  Syzak chanced a single look over his shoulder before joining the mad retreat of his companions. They didn’t get more than fifty feet before Brinna’s foot caught on a root and sent her sprawling to the ground in a heap of arms and legs, tripping Kadorax in the process. The jackals weren’t far behind.

  “They’re on us,” Syzak breathed, hoisting the two to their feet. “We don’t have a choice. Time to fight.” Buying time, he summoned a cloud of rain in the space between himself and the jackals, but it wouldn’t last long.

  “The gun! The Jeep! They have a damn car!” Kadorax continued to bawl.

  Syzak stepped forward, letting his friend collapse back to the ground. He gave Brinna the most confident nod he could muster. “I only have one trap left. There’s six of them. Time to earn your keep, rogue.”

  The woman nodded back, but her face told a completely different story. She was terrified. Her knees shook, matching the trembling of her hands and arms. She had both of her daggers out, her knuckles white around the hilts. “He’s—”

  A jackal burst through the magical rain Syzak had created and cut her off. The creature’s sword was aimed right for her chest.

  In a flash, both of Brinna’s daggers launched up and crossed, and the small handguard on the dagger in her right hand deflected the jackal’s attack at the last possible moment. Syzak lunged at the enemy with his fangs bared and caught the jackal by the neck, wounding and scaring it, but doing little else. He was out of venom, and the beast didn’t need long to free itself.

  A second jackal stalked into view just as the last of the magical rain subsided. It wielded a spear between its fur-covered paws.

  Syzak shoved the first jackal away in order to focus on the second. He trusted Brinna to fight, but his trust was all he could give her. She’d have to survive on her own.

  A nest of rats—dark, beady-eyed vermin with patchy hair and broken whiskers—erupted from the ground in a flurry of dirt and filth. They clawed up the spear-wielding jackal, biting and scratching him, causing the jackal to stumble backward and use his spear to keep his balance. Syzak lowered his head and ran forward, pushing the jackal backward. He got lucky, and a smile spread on his face as the jackal fell into one of its compatriots who had been a step or two slower in the pursuit. Both jackals landed hard on the ground.

  Syzak emerged a moment later with jackal blood running freely down both of his scaly claws. Sadly, his rats dissipated back to the realm of magic whence they had come, leaving him with no spells whatsoever to cast. Behind him, Brinna was not faring well.

  Brinna turned and kicked as the jackal slashed after her again and again. She had blood on her face—someone’s blood—and a lot of it. She kept moving farther and farther backward. At the rate she was giving up ground, she’d be on top of Kadorax in a matter of seconds, likely knocked to the ground and then swiftly killed.

  The snake-man waited for his moment. There were more jackals coming, but they were still a few paces from reaching the fighting. He waited, and when the jackal lunged for what should have been a killing blow at the exact moment Brinna tripped over their prone companion, he slammed his claws into the creature’s shoulder blades. The jackal howled and jerked, but Syzak held fast. He pulled the jackal in close to his body and tore at the hairy neck with his fangs, ripping out chunks of bloody hide and letting them fall all over the jackal’s own chest.

  The little clearing was quiet a moment later. “Come on,” Syzak urged, lifting Kadorax by the shoulder. “Either fight or run, no other option.” The rushed words mixed with his natural serpentine hiss to produce a sinister sound.

  Finally, Kadorax began to figure out how to clear his mind. His face still clearly displayed his bewilderment, but the lack of thunderous rifle shots cracking through the air was starting to bring his mind back into reality. Brinna fell down to her knees at his side, clutching the top of her scalp, and the sight of her wound brought him fully back.

  Kadorax grabbed his whip from his belt and planted his feet, accepting the next jackal’s charge with an activation of Torment. The jackal’s torso spurted a thick line of blood into the air. Before Kadorax could strike again, the creature turned with its tail between its legs and fled. Another two were there to take its place, each of them holding a spiked mace and baring their large, white fangs that glimmered in the moonlight.

  “Chaos Shock!” Kadorax yelled, clenching his left hand into a fist and pulling out a seashell-sized bit of coagulated undeath from the chaos. He rammed it forward, catching the lead jackal on his forearms where the creature had attempted to block.

  The jackal’s flesh began to melt away where the undeath had touched him. His skin and hair oozed, sloughing off of the bone and onto the ground. Kadorax dropped his whip and grabbed his sword, slicing the edge along the jackal’s exposed skeleton as he drew it.

  The second jackal was not as reckless. Having seen the utter destruction that had been visited upon its friends, the creature took a more cautious approach, circling and pawing the ground instead of committing itself to a charge. Kadorax waited as well, measuring his enemy’s steps and constantly scanning the forest any new attackers. Finally, Kadorax was the first to break the standoff. He skittered forward and feinted to his right, then cut back to his left, willingly exposing himself to the jackal’s sword on his right flank. He took the hit, dulling it with his armor and expending his last charge of Cage of Chaos. The reactive ability shot a narrow line of silky spider web at the attacker, entangling the jackal’s blade. Not wasting a single breath of time, Kadorax used Chaos Step and suddenly appeared on the jackal’s opposite side, behind his head and completely out of view. A single downward stroke of his sword left the jackal dead at Kadorax’s feet.

  “The leader,” Syzak said, his eyes locked on the tree line. Behind him, Brinna clutched at her jaw. Her eyes had rolled back in her head to show only the sclera, and the smell coming from her shirt said she had thrown up on herself.

  Kadorax gave the rogue one last glance before running back through the trees. “I… I don’t know what I saw,” he growled to Syzak as they ran. “Maybe it was real, maybe it wasn’t. If it was, we’re still going to die.”

  “Not without a fight,” the snake-man said between breaths.

  They reached the small copse where the jackal leader had made his command and skidded to a stop. The leader was dead, and two Blackened Blades stood in the center of the trees, blood dripping from their daggers.

  “The Jeep,” Kadorax muttered. The vehicle was nowhere in sight. He stepped from the concealment of the undergrowth with his hands held out before him. “Did you see something here? Something strange?”

  The two assassins looked relieved to see him. “Thanks for pulling all the guards,” one of them said.

  The other took a moment to look around the clearing, then shook his head. “What do you mean?”

  Encroaching Insanity: Rank 2 - The seed of chaos living within your soul rod. As the bastion increases in level, the power of the chaos grows, further weakening Bond. At Rank 10, Encroaching Insanity becomes Living Nightmare.

  Kadorax dismissed his stat sheet and looked down at the ring wrapped firmly around his finger. “It wasn’t real,” he said more to himself than any of the others. “The Jeep wasn’t real. It was all in my head. I’m losing it.”

  Syzak put a bloody hand on his back in a weak effort to comfort him. “Just tired, that’s all,” he said.

  Both of them remembered Brinna lying in the dirt at the same time. They made sure the two assassins didn’t have any other jackals in the area they’d need help dispatching, then returned to fetch their friend. They could hear the sounds of battle a little ways off toward the camp, but nothing else reached their ears beyond the normal sounds of the moonlit fo
rest.

  Brinna was unconscious when they arrived. “We need a bandage or another potion,” Syzak stated. He propped the woman’s head up on his knees and grabbed her forehead to stymie the bleeding.

  “Here.” Kadorax ripped off a bit of one of the jackals’ sword belts and handed it over. “Better than nothing,” he said.

  As Syzak applied the meager bandage, Kadorax wondered what Encroaching Insanity would do next to alter his mind. He began to question everything he had seen in Assir. The grave-armored centipede had been something more akin to nightmares than even the mythical creatures of Agglor, though the others had reacted exactly as he would have expected from such a gruesome amalgamation, telling him it had been real. But what other things could have been the machinations of his tainted mind? The endless possibilities—the things he might not have noticed—were nearly as frightening as the one hallucination he had so clearly seen.

  The two assassins regrouped with Syzak and Kadorax a moment later. “Did any of them escape?”

  Syzak surveyed the battlefield once more as he thought. “I don’t know.”

  The assassin scowled, but the expression was born more from frustration than disappointment. “The leader had a scroll,” he said. “It looks important.”

  Syzak took the scroll and unfurled it in his grasp. He held in plain view for Kadorax to read as well, but the bastion was lost in his own thoughts. “Ah, I can’t read any of this,” Syzak said. The language of the jackals was the same as everyone’s on Agglor when spoken, but many of the races had developed their own independent scripts for the sole purpose of sending messages that were harder to intercept and decode. The jackal script, written by beasts with paws instead of hands, looked so erratic that it bordered on nonsense.