I suddenly felt as though I was one with the soldiers all around me. I could think and they would do as I commanded, because this was my turf, damn it, and those orcs didn’t belong here.
As one a couple of elf soldiers brought their weapons up and sliced neatly into the orc’s arms before he could finish bringing them down. The sword he’d been carrying clattered to the ground, followed by two wet meaty thumps as what remained of his arms hit the ground.
I stared in astonishment. I couldn’t believe those elves actually stood up to those orc assholes. They’d been on the verge of pissing their leather armor, and now they looked every inch the elf warriors I knew they could be.
The orc captain, or whatever the fuck he was, stared down in astonishment as well. I mean it was a hell of a sight to behold. He had two stumps sticking out of his sides with black blood spurting out of them as whatever passed for a heart on the motherfucker refused to get the memo that it might not be a good idea to be pumping that lifeblood considering there were a couple of exits that shouldn’t be there.
Which was fine by me. The sooner he expired the better. He locked eyes with me and bellowed again, and I winked at him.
“Nice knowing you,” I said. “Would you boys please take care of him?”
With a surprising ferocity the elves stepped forward and stabbed the orc repeatedly. Like we’re talking they were really starting to lose control as they stabbed the motherfucker over and over.
Don’t get me wrong. If ever there was an asshole who looked like he deserved to have his ass stabbed repeatedly then it was that orc motherfucker. Especially considering he’d been on the verge of trying his best to slice and dice yours truly.
“Um, I think you got him guys,” I said after another minute where they didn’t seem interested in stopping.
Eleric watched his men for a long moment, his mouth turned down in distaste even as his eyes twinkled with the joy of what they were doing. I could feel the faint desire within him. He wanted to get in on that action.
Well damn. How about that?
“Guys?” I said.
The orcs were worrying me. At first they’d looked like they were having trouble deciding whether or not they wanted to get in on that action considering what’d just happened to their captain, commander, whatever the fuck he was. Only the more they saw the elves hacking at the deserving motherfucker the more angry they seemed to get, and I could see their bloodlust getting the better of any sense of self preservation that might’ve been lurking deep within their thick skin and deep skulls.
The orc nearest to the reenactment of every Friday the 13th slaughterfest ever brought his own sword up and slammed it down on the closest elf. I tried to do a mental command to get the damn elf to get out of the way, but the bloodlust that’d overcome them was overriding my ability to get them to move out of the way in a timely manner.
Damn it. I felt as that sword made contact. Motherfucking piece of shit!
The elf let out a grunt of surprise as the sword sliced him clean through. I let out a grunt and my crystal flashed as I moved down to my knees. That was how powerful the hit was.
I mean don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I was actually getting sliced through, so it’s not like I was complaining. Not all that much, at least. Still, it was a painful son of a bitch feeling what was going on in the elf’s brain as he found himself bisected and sitting on the forest floor looking like he was doing one hell of an accurate cosplay of the Black Knight from Holy Grail.
“Motherfucker!” I shouted. “Will you fuckers listen?”
Whatever momentum my guys had gained was gone as the orcs advanced on us. I got the feeling bad things were about to happen to us.
“Fight!” I shouted, pointing to one of the elves. “Move to a flanking position and slam into them. You in the front make sure you’re keeping them occupied with your shield up. You in the back, I need you to sneak around them as best you can. The rest of you need to get to the trees and hit these fuckers from above with those crossbows you’ve been keeping slung over your backs where they’re useless, great fucking plan there by the way.”
I barely spoke above a whisper, but despite the noise of the orcs bellowing with battle rage, I knew they could hear me. The mental link let them hear me despite the battle raging all around us.
Which was a neat trick considering there was no other way I was going to be able to get their attention in the middle of a brewing battle. Not to mention bellowing out orders for attacking these orc fuckers would’ve resulted in those orc fuckers countering the attack pretty easily.
I was working on the fly here and coming up with stuff as best as I could. Unfortunately that didn’t exactly make for great strategy, but fortunately the assholes on the other side seemed like they were obliging us by acting like idiots.
The elves started to move into action. Meanwhile the orc who’d had both his arms removed fell to the side and landed with a thump. He was still twitching, but I didn’t think that’d do his friends a damn bit of good any more than hopping around on one foot at Graham Chapman had done John Cleese a damn bit of good in his black knight getup.
“Get them!” one of the elves yelled.
I slapped a hand to my forehead. “Don’t shout your plans!”
Only it was already too late.
Shouting “get them” had been enough to alert “them” that someone was trying to “get them.” Naturally. Which meant that instead of the well organized attack I’d thrown together at the last minute to take advantage of the orcs’ temporary surprise at the sudden demise of their leader, there were now orcs on the defensive and pushing back against my soldiers.
Motherfucker son of a bitch!
I looked down at my hands. I was still clutching the crystal, and it seemed to pulse and glow. It was also giving me a bit of that healthy glow like what I’d enjoyed in the alley back home, and I figured there was something I could do about this.
So I threw myself at the nearest orc. It occurred to me that it was a terrible idea as it raised its sword. That was definitely a hell of a lot more dangerous than the assholes who’d been using their fists in that back alley, but it was already too late for second thoughts as I went to my knees and did a power slide.
For a wonder I ended up sliding on my knees like something out of a hair metal concert from back in the ‘80s or something. Which meant I was lined up quite nicely to slam a fist between the orc’s legs.
I probably wouldn’t have been able to get through that armor if I didn’t have that strange magic backing me up, but with the magic the orc let out a bellow of pain as the armor cracked and pressed in against his favorite bit of anatomy. The fucker went down for the count like a tree toppling, and I let out a yell of triumph.
Take that, fucker!
I whirled around, ready to give it to any orc that came at me.
Lucky for me there was an orc there with his sword raised to give it to me nice and painful. The sword was already sailing down with enough force that I could hear it whispering through the air by the time I saw him.
I cast around, desperate to see if any of the elves might be able to save my ass, but unfortunately they were all a little busy with their own orcs.
Motherfucker. I was going to die on this strange world less than an hour after waking up and getting the local equivalent of godhood. That seemed like it was a hell of a lot worse than the track record that hottie Rachel from the darkness had.
I hoped she was able to enjoy the rest of her life wherever the fuck she’d wound up. At least I could die knowing I was able to do something for her, even if I wasn’t able to save myself.
I closed my eyes. Waited for the inevitable. I just hoped the sword hit me in a vital spot so I wouldn’t be in pain for long. Not a very heroic thought, but what the fuck ever. You try thinking heroic thoughts when an orc that shouldn’t be on a world that had no right existing was about to kill you with a barbed sword that looked like it could do some serious damage!
9
Improbable Rescue
There was a loud thunk followed by a bellow right in front of me. A bellow that sounded an awful lot like an orc who was pissed off because something had just attacked it.
I didn’t dare to hope, but enough time had passed that I figured I either should’ve been going on to whatever was waiting for me on the other side of the veil between the living and the dead, or something had happened to prevent me from slipping through that veil.
I opened one eye. I didn’t want to open up both eyes on the off chance they’d both see that sword coming down at me.
What I saw was the orc standing there looking down at a stump that’d been its arm. It looked almost indignant that it’d had its arm removed. Then it bellowed in pain and pulled a dagger from its side. A dagger that it used to try and attack a very sexy figure with red hair in leather armor who’d appeared out of nowhere.
I stared in astonishment at this new arrival. She was pure sex in tight leather, and she fought with a martial prowess I could only dream of having. Master Kenny eat your tubby heart out. She was kicking more ass even than the elves all around us.
Though admittedly it’s not like it was all that difficult for someone to kick more ass than the elves all around us. They were holding their own, well all of them but one unfortunate bastard who was now a steaming pile of entrails on the ground, but the point was doing better than the elves wasn’t a high bar to clear.
She was amazing as she waded through the orcs and sliced them open like it was nothing. It was a messy dance of bloody death, and I wasn’t sure if I should be turned on or emptying the contents of my stomach.
Luckily for yours truly I tried retching and it turns out either the food and booze I’d enjoyed the night before hadn’t made the transition between the worlds, or enough time had passed that there wasn’t anything but bile left in my stomach and the other end was thankfully keeping everything in place for the moment.
Not my proudest moment, but it’s not like any of this was something I was used to. I didn’t live in a world where violence on this level happened on the regular.
Well, I didn’t live in a part of my old world where violence on this level happened on the regular, for all that I was well aware it was totally something that happened around the world in places that most of my fellow countrymen couldn’t even pinpoint on a map, for all that we’d caused a lot of the misery that resulted in those places being the kind of place where violence on this level happened on the regular.
The girl slammed into the orc one final time with a blade that seemed to be made of the same glowing crystal material as the spears the elves had been using. It cut through the orc armor like butter, and as I watched her doing her thing I thought I might be falling in love.
Also? There was totally another one of those orc fuckers sneaking up behind her. They seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork in this fucking forest, and I didn’t like it.
I thought about calling out, but I was close enough that I figured I could take care of business. Maybe make up for the pathetic way I’d needed to be rescued in the first place.
So I charged the orc, holding my hand out beside me and feeling the glow coming from the crystal as I slammed into the orc with a punch that sent it flying back and slamming into a tree. The trees around here were big enough that there wasn’t a chance that one was going to do something cool like snapping in half, but what the fuck ever.
It splintered and swayed nice and good, at least, and that was something considering how big the motherfuckers were.
The girl turned to smile at me, and my heart stopped. Because it was none other than her. Rachel. The girl from the darkness. She was in that leather that looked like a cross between armor from a medieval themed RPG and something a Han Solo knockoff might wear. It was stylish, it formed to her body in all the right places, but was also strangely functional.
Basically it was the kind of armor that could make all those pedantic asshole keyboard warriors I saw typing their fingers to the bone about how ridiculous some lady armor was in games eat their hearts out.
“You!” I said.
“Me!” she said, her eyes going wide as she grinned in mock surprise. “You sure have a funny way of helping a girl out, by the way.”
“Sorry for whatever I did,” I muttered.
So much for helping her out. If she was back here then it looked like I’d failed at even sending her back from whence she came.
“No time to be sorry. Right now we need to kill these orcs before they can get away and report our position to the main body of the army and the Dark Lady,” she said. “That would be bad.”
I grinned a lopsided grin at her. “I’m fuzzy on the whole good and bad thing.”
She grinned right back at me. “Imagine an army of tens of thousands of orcs stabbing every inch of your body at the same time while a deranged dark goddess uses her magic to flay your soul.”
“Right,” I said. “Nice safety tip.”
An orc stumbled past me and I reached out to casually swat it with a glowing fist as the elf attacking took advantage and stabbed the prick.
We were in the middle of a battle. I needed to keep that in mind. Not exactly the kind of place to stop and have a long chat about our improbable second meeting that referenced ‘80s classics that were probably exciting and new for her.
I turned to another orc and slammed my fist against it. The slam wasn’t as powerful this time around. That was weird. I really needed to figure out the rules that determined when and how this magic gave me an assist.
“Seriously?” Rachel asked, rolling her eyes.
“What!” I shouted.
“You’re using that magic all wrong!” she growled. “That’s one of the most powerful artifacts you can find on this world and you’re using it to punch things?”
“Well what the hell am I supposed to do!”
“It’s a Dungeon Core, so command your fucking dungeon!” she growled. “Honestly. If you’re the best Leila could come up with then we’re seriously fucked here.”
I wanted to be offended by what she was saying, not to mention I really wanted to know how she knew Leila, but honestly I sort of agreed with her. We weren’t doing all that well. The only problem was I wasn’t sure how the hell I was supposed to be using this thing to command troops considering it’d been hit or miss whether or not they obeyed those commands when I gave them.
It wasn’t that the elves around me couldn’t fight. Some of them were giving as good as they were getting, sort of. It’s just that they seemed terrified of the things they were going up against.
Perfectly reasonable, considering they were going up against a bunch of hulking orc creatures that could easily bisect an armored elf without breaking a sweat, but still.
I needed to do something. I needed to get back to whatever had happened when I was able to take control and get them to follow my orders. I had no idea how I’d done it, but I held the crystal pulsing in my hand and reached out. Brushed their minds and thought I could almost feel what they were thinking.
I closed my eyes, focused on the battle, and suddenly something hit me. It was as though I was zooming out to look at the scenario from the top down. Which was a kind of combat I was far more used to.
Tom was always going on about how consoles provided the superior gaming experience, Dragon Age came to mind as a perfect but not-so-recent example, but I’d always known the superior gaming experience came on a PC where you could zoom out and enjoy a tactical game instead of hacking and slashing via button mashing.
And now that I was getting this view it was a hell of a lot easier to see what the fuck needed to be done.
With a mental command I pulled back two elves hanging around the periphery not doing much. I also searched for units that had ranged capability and ordered them into the trees with my mind since none of them had followed that order so far.
The crystal pulsed, and units with crossbows on their backs pulsed and mov
ed up into those trees as though they were pieces on a game board.
Eleric was in the middle of everything dusting it up with the orcs. He was doing a surprisingly good job of taking on multiple orcs at once. I was surprised to see little bars that looked like a health and stamina bar from a video game appear over his head.
Huh. How about that? This magic was eerily similar to the way games worked on our world. I wasn’t sure what to make of a world where things were presented like that, but what the fuck ever.
If it was a tool I could use then I was going to use it. Like I could see that Eleric wasn’t in any great danger for the moment, so I figured I’d use him to tank this encounter. I hated using terms from MMO dungeon runs to describe a tactical situation, but it was basically what we were doing here.
One orc tried to make a break for it, and with a mental command I sent a couple of melee units on the ground after him. I just hoped they’d be fast enough to track the fucker down.
They’d certainly been fast enough to keep ahead of me, but then again beating me at a footrace through the woods wasn’t exactly a great accomplishment.
The ranged guys got into place. Finally. With a command I had them unleash at the same time. From my top down view I saw them pull out their crossbows with bolts made of that same glowing crystal.
I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on with that stuff, but it seemed like the kind of weapon that could give my people a hell of an edge in combat against orcs. I was surprised that I was already thinking of them as my people, but whatever.
For now they were following my orders and we were in this scrape together, so that made them my people, damn it.
“I hope you have a plan!” Eleric shouted as he severed an orc’s legs.
The elves up in the trees loosed at that moment, sending glowing death flying down on the orcs. I worried about their aim, which might end up in a bad day for the elves on the ground, but I shouldn’t have worried.
Their aim was true, and the orcs were suddenly bristling with the powerful glowing gems. I thought about how it’d felt to have one of those crystal points embedded in me, thank goodness for this gem doing a bit of the old healing on me, and it hadn’t been pleasant. I could only imagine it was even less pleasant when you were inflicted with a wound that wasn’t going to be healed up by magic any time soon.
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