Slate was impressed despite himself that even though the man and woman recognized him, they attacked, nonetheless. The woman swung the sword horizontally at Slate’s face, and the Scion had to duck under the blow to avoid losing his eyes. As he did so, the man swung his mace horizontally toward Slate’s body. Both of the swings had come high and low from Slate’s left to right. The dual attacks made him duck low and spin around the two Vallyr until he was behind them.
Slate summoned fire to his palms and tossed underhand fireballs toward the two high lords. Instead of backing away and giving him space as he thought, they advanced. The man battered the fireball away like he was hitting a home run at Fenway while the woman sliced through the center of the other fireball with her sword. In both cases, Slate watched as his magic was dissipated and absorbed into the weapon that hit them
His two opponents adjusted their positions as if they were dancers following his lead, and now they were between Slate and the staircase. That was fine with him, though, he knew that he needed to have more space if he was going to be effective in this battle. Although the tightness of the hallway hampered his opponent’s weapons, they had the advantage of working together. Together, they would be able to largely eliminate any advantage Slate had from using his magic and his tail. As the two Vallyr tried to advance again, Slate spat acid and them and ran toward the room that they had originated from. In his earlier observations, he noticed the room was large and had few pieces of furniture. The two Vallyr sprang back to avoid the acid, but they couldn’t keep Slate from disengaging.
When Slate entered the chamber, he realized why it appeared so empty. It looked like it was something like a mission planning room. There were no chairs that Slate could see, and the only piece of furniture was a massive and ornate table with an expansive map pinned to the surface. He noted the parchment immediately and resolved to take it with him when he left. His people seriously needed better maps, and this would go a long way to relieving that pressure. The rest of the room was empty, although various parchments with notes, troop descriptions, and general’s profiles were hanging all around the room.
Matek would cream his panties if he had stumbled upon this room, Slate thought.
Slate slammed the door behind him and then turned and threw a fireball at it. The wooden door immediately lit on fire. Slate needed to stall the two Vallyr, and that was the only thing that he thought might help. Vallyr seemed sensitive to Cleansing Fire, and he hoped the flaming doors would give him the precious seconds that he needed.
He made a slow turn around the room and committed its contents to memory. He walked briskly around the table and tried to make sure that he could see every piece of text on the table or the walls, even if he couldn’t understand what they said. He assumed that they were written in a Vallyrian script that he wasn’t privy too. As long as he saw what everything was, he knew that Matek would be able to read the information from his memories. He knew that Matek would prefer to see it in person, but this was the next best thing. Even if Slate didn’t slay the Vallyr leader tonight, at least this intelligence was worth something.
A crash through the door caught his attention, and he turned back to the entrance wildly. The two Vallyr had pushed their way through the door, and Slate figured he knew how. Both of the Vallyr seemed to have a purple protective shield over their bodies. Just beyond the range of his hearing, Slate felt like he could sense the screaming of tortured souls. Slate felt his stomach churn as his gut instinct warned him of the magic they were using
Time to stop fucking around.
With a thought, he activated his Aspect of Cleansing Flame and allowed the air around him to become superheated. White flames flickered upon his body, and he looked like an overheated boiler. His flesh glowed like heated metal, and small tongues of fire flicked around his mouth. The sight of him stopped the two Vallyr cold.
“It looks like he also has an Aspect,” the woman said in awe.
“Indeed,” the man agreed. “Well, I guess we’ll have to see which aspect is stronger. Ours or…”
Slate didn’t let the man finish his monologue. He hated it when his food tried to talk back. He threw a fireball straight at the face of the man, interrupting whatever pretentious speech he was trying to issue
The man yelled in alarm and brought his mace forward to protect his face from the flame, but both parties soon realized that the motion was unnecessary. The fireball splashed against the purple aura surrounding the two Vallyr, and then it dissipated. It looked like the air had been sucked from the room, and the fire simply suffocated. Slate became alarmed. He had never seen his magic disappear in such a manner.
The man chuckled. “It looks like Nocturnus might be stronger, then. He’s the Lord of Consuming Darkness. Most of your kind forgot that in the Immortal Wars.”
Slate remained silent. Now wasn’t the time to give away information to his enemy. Now was the time for killing. Slate drew his wings behind his back and sprinted forward. He reached out with claws and tail to engage the two Vallyr. He struck out at the man with his claws and used his tail to put the woman on her back foot. Her sword clanged against his blade with a metallic sound, and Slate grinned savagely. His tail blade was just as hard as the sword. He made a mental note to upgrade it again, so the next time he could sheer through such weapons. The male Vallyr used his mace to block, and Slate observed that the aura of superheated air around him did nothing to the two Vallyr. It looked like their aspects protected them from his magic
He spat acid at them as he disengaged from them. The man blocked again with his mace, but Slate noticed that the acid started to eat into his weapon. The man heard the sizzling sound and looked down at his mace in shock. No matter how much his weapon was damaged, it still left the exchange in better health than the woman. She screamed as Slates acid fell onto her arm and burnt away the padded armor before burning into her flesh. Slate knew it wasn’t anything but a flesh wound. His acid became inert too quickly to severely damage her
A pity, he thought.
This was going to be a more difficult battle than he realized. He usually had his magic or his multiple weapons to rely on, but most of them had been neutralized. The only effective attack so far had been his acid. It was almost ironic that his very first weapon was now his most effective tool. He didn’t allow the two Vallyr to recover as the man shoved the woman out of the way of Slate’s attack. Slate let his tail extend out and clip the woman across her face as she spun out of the way. His slash peeled her cheek from bone and caused a river of black blood to begin flowing from her face. She pressed a hand against it in shock as she belatedly tried to block Slate’s maneuver. In the man’s desire to save his companion, he had doomed her. Slate’s tail was coated with duotoxin. Even such a small amount would have an outsized effect so close to her brain. Better yet, his venom wasn’t magical; it was biological. It proved, once again, that nature was more deadly than even the strangest magic. Slate didn’t bother attacking the woman anymore, and he focused on Lukas.
The Vallyr still hadn’t realized his error, and he shouted at the woman while Slate attacked him in a frenzy of claws and tail.
“Sovya! Help me!”
Slate snarled as Sovya fell to the floor, and watched in a daze as her sword clattered to the ground. Slate knew the paralytic was overtaking her body. She would soon start having a religious experience. Slate wanted to interrogate her while that happened. He wouldn’t get the chance unless he killed the man and stopped him from interfering.
Lukas was doing a poor job defending himself now that his companion had fallen. His mace wasn’t suited for fighting someone like Slate. None of Slate’s blows were powerful. He used glancing strikes to redirect and block the Vallyr’s attacks. In return, Slate was giving the man two or three cuts in every exchange. Each of his claws had venom in them, so Slate knew it was only a matter of time until he infected the man with enough venom to do some serious damage. Soon, the strikes grew even sloppier, and Slate found his opening
. After a poorly timed thrust from Lukas, Slate whirled around the blade and sent his tail slicing through the throat of the man. Slate did a poor job estimating how much force was necessary, and his blade ripped through the throat so deeply that only the spine kept the head attached to the rest of the body.
Congratulations! You have slain a level 55 Vallyr High Lord. You have earned 551,550 experience. You have reached level 59.
Slate was already turning to the woman before the man’s body fell to the floor.
CHAPTER 19: THE SCION ASSASSIN
SHALE COULD FEEL the Scourge around her within the Scourgemind. She was so angry that her mind felt like it was a blade tempered repeatedly by her infinite rage. The Vallyr had taken her children from her, and she wasn’t going to allow the insult to pass unpunished. She wasn’t sure if it was an effect of her connection to the rest of the Scourge, but she felt the same simmering wrath from the rest of them. The feeling kept building on itself until Shale wanted to explode. She was sprinting through the forest with a wave of her remaining forces behind her. They had been moving at a steady pace for the last couple days, and soon they would be coming upon the furthest patrols of the Collective. Her scouts in the area had already identified most of their positions, and she was confident that she had created a detection web entirely around the city of Ithicus. She was satisfied that the Collective would be unable to pass her forces before she had the chance to engage them. She recognized that she wouldn’t be able to kill them all, but she would do her best to try.
She passed a line of trees and found herself in a small clearing. She stopped and studied the location. A hamlet and a self-sustaining farm occupied the space. When the sun shone on the small barn and the dead fields, it revealed a picturesque, if austere, setting. The reason she had come to this particular place was that her scouts had reported a Vallyr patrol that was in the process of rounding up the family that lived here. It was the kind of multi-generational farm that was a staple of life in the rest of Somnium. Shale had experienced this kind of subsistence living in the Wyldwood. As more food became necessary to sustain the population, more trees would be cut, more fields would be created, and more people would have the ability to live off the land. In a way, Shale pitied them. They would never know the life that she was living. She supposed that in some ways, that might be preferable to someone other than her. She simply didn’t have it in her to settle for such an insignificant life.
However, dirt is easier to clean off one’s hands than blood, Shale thought wryly. She didn’t even have both hands in the first place. She had spent the last two days trying to get used to the lack of limb. She had altered the Way even more to fit her disability. She was still optimistic that the entire arm would grow back in a few weeks. It was hard to tell, but it looked even better now than it did two days earlier.
She looked around her and noticed that much of the Scourge had peeled off from this location to find more Collective patrols. Only Lynia and a couple of others remained alongside her. She smiled at that fact. The Scourge was learning. They were utilizing tactics and the Scourgemind to coordinate their movements. Their ability to pick up on more than just her surface-level thoughts meant that they could move on to other targets without her worrying that they didn’t know what to do
Are you ready? She asked Lynia.
The other woman nodded. Yes. We lost too many. It’s time that we made them pay for taking our brothers and sisters.
Shale smiled wickedly. Lynia finally understood the pain and anger that her queen felt. Why don’t you start the party then? Aim for the barn and not their home. We don’t want to take their livelihood away from them — especially this close to winter. We’ll have saved them just to let the weather kill them. The barn that she had selected was just one among many. It was smaller than most of the others, so Shale assumed that it wouldn’t be too much of a loss for the family. The grain silo, livestock barns, and the home were more important to their well-being.
Shale watched Lynia close her eyes, and so she switched over to the enhanced vision that she had been blessed with when she woke up. She could see that the ambient mana in the air was being drawn towards Lynia. It looked like her soul was taking deep breaths as she pulled her power together. Being powered by mana herself, Shale almost felt uncomfortable as the mana that sustained her was being absorbed into Lynia. If Shale had to explain the sensation, it felt like she was suffocating infinitely slowly. It wasn’t pleasant to be sure. After another moment, she stopped feeling the draw of mana, and Lynia shone like a miniature sun in her mana vision.
Shale switched off the vision before a headache started. Lynia raised her arms in a supplicatory manner with her palms facing the sky. Fire began to flicker in the air between her upraised hands. The flame grew steadily more powerful as she channeled more mana into the fire. Soon, the bonfire was more massive than the two women that stood underneath it. Lynia opened her eyes and focused on the farm. The enormous fireball propelled itself from her hands and flew through the air with a roar. It shot toward the barn like an arrow from a bow and impacted the structure with a hellacious explosion. Shale couldn’t help but flinch at the sound and then grew angry at herself for the reaction.
With a growl, she sprinted toward the explosion. Just in front of the barn, a group of Collective soldiers had been accosting the family that lived there. They had gathered three generations of the family, and two soldiers had gone inside the main house to snatch the children that were still there. The women wept and begged for mercy while the men stared hard-eyed at the Collective soldiers. Three soldiers had taken a young girl from the rest of her family under the pretext that they were going to interrogate her for more information. The sight brought tears to her father’s eyes as he protested vehemently and was silenced by a gauntlet-covered slap delivered by the Vallyr lieutenant in charge of the soldiers. He was about to threaten the rest of the family with a fate worse than death when the fireball impacted the barn behind him and turned the world to chaos.
Shale and the rest of her companions swept through the farm like a dark tide. Shale’s eyes fastened on the Vallyr leader that had been thrown off his feet by the explosion. He was just getting to his feet as she closed in on him. She could feel Lynia and the other two members of her small group find targets of their own. Shale punched her tail through the Vallyr’s face with savage glee. Her attack had been so forceful the man’s skull caved in around the blade from its impact. When she pulled her blade from the skull, black blood and gray matter were strewn across the dirt like drippings from an abstract painter.
The civilians backed away from her gore-covered visage in shock. They looked between her and the building on fire behind her with fear and awe. They saw her companions had killed their captors, and even now, one was sprinting on all fours toward the group that had taken the young girl. In a few short moments, the lizard-like creatures returned with the girl, and the Collective soldiers were presumed dead. The girl was crying, and yet she clung to the monster that saved her like she was a piece of wreckage in a hurricane.
Shale watched the shivering farmers as Lynia returned with the girl that had been in the process of getting raped. Shale noted that Lynia helped the child return her clothing to an approximation of order. Her dress was almost completely torn from her body when Lynia had caught up with the two men. Shale’s tail flicked in irritation. She didn’t like the idea of young women being subjected to such treatment. Her mind shied away from her history as she watched the girl cling to Lynia, gratitude evident in her body language. The Paramour could feel Lynia’s discomfort even from here. It occurred to Shale that she had never seen Lynia be very physically affectionate toward anyone. It was clear that she hadn’t changed with her transformation. She was startled from her thoughts by an elderly man bowing at her feet and kissing her talons while he shouted a series of expressions of gratitude.
Shale gently leaned down and pulled the man to his feet
“You do not need to thank us. We do not
do this for you. We do this for the children that the Collective took from us.” She spoke quietly, but everyone could sense the grief and anger in her voice.
The elderly man spoke to her. His voice sounded rough like he smoked and drank his entire life. “Who are you so that I can praise the Lords for your help?” He seemed awkward. It was clear to Shale that he had wanted to say, “praise Nocturnus,” but changed to “the Lords” in the last moment. Obviously, his saviors weren’t followers of Nocturnus, or they wouldn’t have been so ready to slay the Collective troops.
Shale stared deep into his eyes. “We are the Scourge. We are the only thing that the Collective fears. We are the nightmares that the Vallyr have in their silk-covered beds.”
The elderly man’s eyes widened in recognition, but the rest of the family huddled together, seemingly confused and frightened by the appearance of the savage creatures before them. Except for Shale, the members of the Scourge didn’t resemble any race that they had ever seen in Somnium. Their very appearances were strange and frightening.
“So, you follow the Lord of Light,” the elderly man said in awe.
“We do,” Shale nodded briskly. “I need to ask you if you know what the plans of the Collective are in the area. We haven’t captured one alive yet.” Shale paused to spit at the Vallyr corpse on the ground. The spit was composed of acid, and a sizzling sound started as her spit ate its way through the carcass.
The man gave the Paramour a helpless look. “I’m sorry, m’Lady. They didn’t tell us ‘specially what they were here fer. They said that we’d need to fight fer Nocturnus’ army but I know that couldn’t be true.
Shale arched an eyebrow. “Why couldn’t it?”
The man held out his hands and shrugged. “We pay our taxes to the high lord to stay out of nonsense. The Collective don’t typically take from farms as successful as this one. Plus, we’re so far away from the city that it don’t make sense to send soldiers fer us so long as we pay our taxes. It’s usually the poorer folk that get snatched up.”
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