by Eric Vall
Just then, a deep, ground-shaking bellow rumbled through the air. I covered my ears and winced as the noise echoed painfully through my skull.
Suddenly, a rambler the size of a small church burst through the side of the granary like a kid tearing through a set of wooden blocks. The thing was massive, and it had to be at least five times the size of the smaller ones.
Even worse, it sprayed a red, watery liquid from its mouth as it charged. As the liquid contacted the stones and wood of the nearby debris, they sizzled and smoked as if dipped in a powerful acid.
Well. Shit.
“What was that you said about not worrying again?” Varleth asked as we gawked at the terrifying monster before us.
“Okay,” I admitted as the massive rambler pounded toward us. “I was wrong.”
“Um, should we move?” Erin asked.
“Naw,” I said calmly. “Let’s wait a little bit. The faster it goes, the worse its turning radius becomes. I want it to be unable to follow us.”
“I’m afraid the other ramblers aren’t going to wait around,” Arwyn pointed out.
She was right. The group of six smaller ramblers roared out one by one as their boney heads swung to focus on us.
En masse, the group of ramblers began to run without any sign of restraint. It seemed like they were committed to their charge toward our group.
I commanded my bullet basses to cover us with metal, then I threw out the crystal for my kalgori.
My kalgori emerged with a flutter of pale, green wings. My unassuming little monster looked much like a butterfly, but its long, glowing wings were tipped with razor-sharp metal.
As I commanded it to multiply, the butterfly split into two separate monsters, then four, then sixteen. In under a minute, it was an entire swarm of hungry, eager little bugs.
However useful my kalgori were, they didn’t do well against a running opponent, so I would have to pin down a rambler before I could put them to use.
For that, I threw out my roosa, which emerged from its stinger-shaped crystal with a chitter of anticipation. It was almost identical to a scorpion, but my roosa was massive enough to ride on, and its claws were a little over ten feet long. Its tail could extend up to a dozen feet in front of its body, and it was tipped with a venomous stinger that easily proved deadly to most smaller monsters who met their end by it. Even better, my roosa was covered by a metallic chitin that could protect it from fire and physical attacks alike.
Then I took a small essence crystal off my belt and threw it atop my roosa, and it shattered to reveal a speed slug.
My speed slugs weren’t very impressive to look at, since they were simply green, slimy monsters about the size of my forearm. However, when I attached one to a monster or a person, the slug greatly enhanced their speed, and I’d found my speed slugs to be a very valuable addition to my team. Summoners usually looked down on such minor monsters, but I only cared about results, so I wanted to use whatever worked best in my battles.
The smaller ramblers neared us as they thundered through the ruins of the town, and my skittering roosa met the one at the head of the pack. The roosa made a sound like metal on metal as it collided with the lead rambler.
“Start taking on the other five,” I ordered as my monster fought the rambler, “I’ve got this one.”
Erin cheered as my roosa used its metallic legs to pin down the rambler in its tracks. I ordered my creature to push diagonally at the rambler’s flank, and the rhino-like monster collapsed with a bellow as its own momentum was used against it.
My roosa stabbed forward with its stinger, but its tail barely put dents in the tough exterior of the rambler, and the bony monster showed no symptoms of the venom. That was fine by me, since I didn’t expect the roosa’s venom to work on these monsters anyway. The rambler thrashed as it struggled against my roosa, but it couldn’t escape the six powerful legs and claws that pinned it down.
That was where my kalgori came in. My swarm of butterflies reached my roosa quickly, and my scorpion like creature scrambled away as it followed my orders to retreat before I recalled it. On the ground, the rambler slowly lumbered back to its feet, but it was too late.
My kalgori surrounded the rhino-like monster, and it never had a chance to muster up the speed to escape. My kalgori spun into a storm of whirling, flashing blades, and the rambler bellowed as it was dissolved into nothing more than small chunks of flesh and bone. Blood and viscera sprayed out in a wide arc that painted the ground with red fluid.
“Disgusting,” Nia commented as she looked at the aftermath of my kalgori attack. “Good to see that your fighting style is still as gruesome as ever.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I joked back, “I don’t see you putting in any effort to stop these things.”
Nia rolled her eyes as her fingers twitched over the intricate spell in her hands. It had grown to a massive size, and the swirling ball of ice and wind in her hands looked amazing as she spun it on her delicate fingers.
“Watch and learn,” she advised me before she tossed the ball at the closest rambler.
In an instant, her spell exploded into a forceful gale dotted with shards of knifelike icicles. They flew with bullet-like speed toward the group of ramblers, and the monsters bellowed as they were hit by the attack.
Ice slashed through them and tore deep, bloody marks into their hides. The nearest two ramblers collapsed and twitched out in spasms and shuddering moans as they died. The next three staggered as they were hit by a few ice shards, but those remaining ramblers continued to charge at us with nothing in their minds but fury and bloodlust.
“Nia,” I ordered, “get ready with your water.”
I threw out a trio of drillmoles, and I ordered them to churn a deep, wide furrow in the earth in front of us. They couldn’t move the dirt very much, but they could definitely break it up until it was loose and supple.
My drillmoles were obviously very similar to moles, but they had rocklike skin and huge dagger-like fangs. The three of them had long claws on each foot in addition to the drill-like horn that sprouted from the crown of each of their heads. They were extremely useful monsters for use in basic mining and construction labor, but sometimes I found they gave me a perfect advantage in battle as well.
The second my drillmoles popped up from the earth, Nia took over.
Water bubbled from her hands and spouted into the furrow my moles had dug. In an instant, what had once been regular grass and dirt was now a deep trench full of sloppy, wet mud.
It was just in time, too. The ramblers had crossed the wide field, and they were only a few seconds away from smashing into us at full force. Instead, the three of them landed stomach deep into the trench of mud, and they rumbled in pain as their legs faltered and gave out.
I even heard a leg snap as the enormous creatures caved to the unsteady footing and tumbled headlong into the mud.
“Finish them off!” I shouted.
Varleth and Arwyn were already on top of it. Varleth’s shadowy banisher sword cut a thin slice across the skull of one of the ramblers, and it sagged limply in death as the life force was drained from it.
Arwyn summoned her fabricated sword, and it glowed as she drew her arm along the length of the blade to create it. She leapt toward the second rambler and cut a deep furrow through its neck. Blood sprayed out, and the rambler sputtered noiselessly before it too collapsed. It cost Arwyn a lot of mana to summon her sword, but it was also sharper than any ordinary one, and that came in handy in this sort of situation.
Finally, my kalgori swarm arrived to take care of the third and final smaller rambler. They whirled around the rambler in a howling storm, and blood sprayed out as they tore the rhino monster apart.
Arwyn and Nia got a facefull of it, unfortunately. They ran back to me with irritated expressions as they wiped drops of blood from their faces.
“Very smooth, Gryff,” Nia said dryly.
“It’s not too bad,” I said as I helped her wipe some blood droplets o
ff her forehead. “The first time I did this, I ended up totally coated.”
Arwyn laughed and shook her head. “You’re one of a kind, Gryff.”
“Hey,” Erin spoke up. “Sorry I’m just relaxing while the rest of you kill things, but should we worry about this enormous rambler yet?”
We turned to watch the huge rambler eat the distance with its enormous strides as it quickly narrowed the gap between us.
“Wow,” I admired, “it came a long way pretty quick, huh?”
“Yup,” Erin agreed. “So, verdict?”
“Let’s bounce,” I instructed. “There’s no way it’ll turn fast enough to catch us now.”
I led my team in a sprint toward the forest in a direction perpendicular to the rambler’s charge, which led us back to Erin’s airship.
The rambler roared and swung its bony head toward our group as we sprinted, but I was confident it still wouldn’t be able to stop in time. I did notice it merely leap over the mud trench, which was too bad, but we hadn’t made the thing for church-sized monsters.
Suddenly, the massive rambler dropped its head to bury its bony crown into the dirt at its feet. Dirt sprayed as it buried its feet and head into the earth as it physically gouged itself to a stop. It looked painful for any normal monster, but this thing was motivated only by a desire for violence.
And it was stopping pretty quickly.
The rambler slowed and began to turn quickly as its back feet dug into the earth and rotated the entire monster at a ninety-degree angle.
In just a few moments, it faced us, and it began its charge again.
The only problem was, directly behind us lay Erin’s beloved airship, and that monster wasn’t going to stop itself from wrecking the thing without a moment’s pause
“Well, shit,” I swore as the earth below us began to rumble and shake.
“Any ideas?” Varleth asked with a wince. “I’d rather not be trampled flat.”
“We can’t let it charge past us in this direction,” Erin said with worry. “My airship is behind us, and it could destroy it. Or worse, whichever townspeople have fled into the forest in that direction.”
“Give me a minute to think,” I requested.
What did I have at my disposal, here? I could probably piss the thing off with my pyrewyrm or some of my other medium-sized monsters. This big, bony rambler would probably withstand the small knives of my kalgori, even if they did manage to catch up to him. I could summon my baroquer, but he wasn’t very fast, and I didn’t want him to face that charging rambler head-on.
“Oh!” I realized. “Maybe I can just throw him back where he came from.”
“What in Mistral are you talking about?” Varleth asked. “He doesn’t look easily moved.”
“Not with my hands,” I explained with a shit-eating grin. “With the very thing he came from.”
You’re lucky I’m willing to lend you the power, Sera hummed. If I liked you any less, I’d let that monster charge into the forest and wipe my hands of the issue.
Yeah, yeah, she was totally in charge, I’d heard it all before. I found it very easy to ignore the fact she had godlike power, these days. Sometimes she felt more like an ever-present roommate than the legendary monster that possessed my mind.
Touching, Sera purred. As roommates, I have to say, you look positively delicious. I would just sleep in your bed every night. Well, there wouldn’t be much “sleeping” happening.
I wasn’t sure what fucked up kind of ideas she had about roommates, or where she’d gotten them from, but I brushed the thought off. I just wanted to open this rift and be done with it.
I started the spell to open the rift, and Sera guided me with a few mental images and directions before I felt the power tug through her into me.
“Gryff, you’d better hurry up,” Varleth warned as the beast neared us.
The portal cracked open in front of my hands, and I twisted my fingers through a few more movements before I thrust our magic into opening the rift.
The dark, murky depths of it expanded quickly, and I smirked as the rift bloomed into an enormous, dark oval. Sweat began to trickle down my face, and my arms shook, but I knew I wouldn’t have to leave it open long.
“Oh, Maker, I hope you know what you’re doing,” Erin yelped as the rambler raged toward us.
All the pebbles and twigs from the ground around us jumped slightly with every footfall of the enormous beast, but I held onto my rift and shored up confidence in my own power to keep it open.
The huge rambler shoved its head down into the dirt to try to slow its movement, but it was too late for it. It slid and skidded right into my portal, and the mouth of the huge oval began to swallow it up whole without the slightest resistance.
When it was most of the way through, I reversed the thread of power, and the portal clapped shut at an incredible speed.
Not all of the rambler made it through.
The back hindquarters of the rhino-like monster got caught between the shut portal and the human realm, and the back end was sheared off as if a giant kitchen knife had cleaved the monster in two.
In a flash, Nia threw up a wall of crystal-clear ice between us and what remained of the monster.
The enormous hindquarters sprayed blood like a fountain from a dozen different spots as the flesh toppled before us. Entrails looped from the remainder of the monster and steamed as they spilled onto the ground. A thirty foot high and thirty foot wide rambler cross-section slumped to the ground like a butcher’s prime cut of beef.
My friends stared wordlessly at the carnage for a moment. Blood dripped from Nia’s ice wall in watery, pink rivulets and obscured our vision. We walked out from behind the ice wall with mincing, careful steps to look at the remainder of the giant beast.
“I think whatever ended up on the other side is dead,” Arwyn proposed lightly as she eyed the pile of dripping flesh.
“Maker save us all,” Nia said in wonder and shock, “this is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m completely unsurprised it’s Gryff’s fault.”
I couldn’t even think of a comeback. Even I didn’t expect the outcome to be so drastic.
“I thought maybe it would get stuck or something,” I said with slow awe as I looked at the rambler’s hindquarters. “Not chopped in two.”
I wondered what happened to it in the Shadowscape once it lost its back legs. Realistically, it had probably died almost as quickly as it did here.
“Congrats, Gryff,” Arwyn said with a celebratory pat on my shoulder. “You’ve developed a new way to fight.”
You better not ask for me to do that very often, Sera purred. I like you, but I’m not going to jump whenever I’m called like some pet on a leash.
“Though, the rest of us can’t exactly replicate it,” Varleth pointed out as he stepped toward the corpse. “Damn, this is cool.”
“I’m not even sure I could replicate it,” I admitted. “That was almost pure luck, and I’m positive very few monsters are big enough or predictable enough for me to do this with.”
I wiped the sweat from my forehead and shook off the mana drain as I grinned with pride.
“Still feels good,” Erin added with a laugh. “Wow, Nia’s right though. Completely gross.”
A bone-chilling sound split the air, and it sounded like a cross between a horse’s neigh and a piercing scream. We all flinched as the noise scraped across our ears like the sound of nails on a chalkboard.
We were so absorbed in our triumph over the huge rambler, we had forgotten about the even bigger threat.
From the ruins of the village, the undead satyrid stalked among the houses as it smashed all in its path. As we stared, it turned its head sideways to scan the terrain around it.
Then two of its glowing eyes landed directly on us.
Chapter 4
As the undead satyrid glared at us with its amber, glowing eyes, a thrill of anticipation shivered down my spine.
“Er, how good is the eye
sight on that thing?” Erin asked consideringly.
The undead satyrid turned its body to lumber toward us with slow, unhurried steps.
“I couldn’t hazard a guess,” Arwyn replied as she chewed on her lip, “but I wouldn’t bet on a seventy foot skeletal horseman with four eyes being particularly blind.”
“Fuck it,” I said, “I’m not waiting for it to come eat us. We’re going to bring the fight to it.”
“I’m all ears,” Varleth chuckled out, “your plans today have worked out fantastically so far.”
“Let’s hear it,” Nia added.
“Great,” I started with a grin, “Erin’s going to summon her stagi and ride it with Nia toward that big guy. I want Nia to just pour on the ice like crazy, but don’t try to do any serious damage to it. Focus on his legs above the hooves, and that should do the trick.”
“Frostbite,” Varleth commented lightly, “the bane of any monster.”
“Ha, ha,” I replied with a dry tone. “You may laugh now, but this thing is enormous. It’s gonna suck for it when it falls over.”
“Using ice to brittle its legs won’t be enough,” Nia pointed out with concern as her eyebrows knitted together. “We’d have to knock into them with some incredible force to get them to break.”
“Besides that,” Erin added, “I don’t want the two of us getting flattened when it gets mad at us, which it will. We’ll need a big distraction, or Nia and I are toast.”
I grinned cheekily and popped an essence crystal off the top of my bandolier. “Let me and my baroquer take care of those two problems.”
Varleth shook his head, but he had a smile on his face.
“You and that baroquer really are kind of the dream team,” he commented. “I guess this plan isn’t the worst, but what should Arwyn and I do?”
“Evacuation and emergency treatment,” I explained. “Nia, Erin, and I are going to be leading this thing in circles, and it’s probably going to wreck a lot of the surrounding area. If there’s anybody trapped under rubble or hiding in the untouched houses, I want them out and safe.”