by Dante King
Before I could warn him about the golem, Kegohr was already on his feet and running across the dunes, his mace swung back ready to strike.
The sound of footsteps made Mahrai look up. Her eyes went wide before she grinned and clicked her fingers. I felt the Vigor flow through the air around us, sucked in to power her impressive magics.
There was a series of swift thuds so heavy that they shook the ground. The stone golem appeared around the side of the house and ran straight for where Kegohr was heading. The half-ogre was less than six feet from Mahrai when a great stone foot slammed into him and sent him flying through the air. He crashed into one of the nearby buildings, went straight through a wall, and lay sprawled in a heap of sand and broken mud bricks.
Soldiers came running around the corner, drawn by the sounds of destruction. I leaped from my hiding place, ready to rush in and help my friend. Mahrai turned and spotted me for the first time.
Despite the circumstances, I was struck by just how beautiful Mahrai was. Though petite, she had a presence that filled the air around her. Her eyes sparkled with mischief above an arrogant grin.
“The leader of the brave travelers!” she called out. “Did you really think it was going to be this easy?”
“If I’d known you needed wooing, I would have brought flowers,” I replied.
“Charming as well as handsome. I hate to do this, but. . .” She clicked her fingers. The golem turned toward me.
“I don’t suppose you’d consider changing sides? Maybe upholding the rightful lord of Gonki?”
“So, you’re hellbent on being a moralist.” Mahrai shook her head. “Such a waste. We could have had a lot of fun.”
The golem charged at me. As it was about to trample me in the dirt, I dashed aside and let it run past. It turned and almost kicked me in the chest, but I dived clear and avoided having my ribs caved in.
I produced Smothering Mist to envelop the creature, but unlike before, the water vapor did nothing to weaken its massive form. So, Ganyir had been right. Mahrai’s golems had many forms, and this one seemed impervious to my water techniques.
I needed something to distract the creature while I worked out how to fight back. I started by launching a pair of Planks Pillars. The Vigor didn’t have far to go, and the pillars burst out of the sand almost immediately, one blocking the golem’s path to me, the other hitting it from below. The golem’s weight caused the second pillar to mostly splinter against its feet, but the wooden wall at least shook the beast and forced it to take a moment to ensure its balance.
Though I’d seen Trohai launch a Ground Strike with his foot, I was used to using my fist. Under pressure, I stuck to the most comfortable method of Augmenting. Crouching on the ground, I raised my fist, then slammed it down. The earth in front of me rippled, and a wave of earth surged toward the golem. I put a lot of Vigor into it, leaving my reserves further drained than they already were, in hopes of knocking the golem’s feet out from under it. But when the wave hit, it only burst against the creature’s stone feet in a spray of dirt.
A flaming figure charged out of the ruined building and into the golem’s side. Imbued with the Spirit of the Wildfire, Kegohr’s whole body shone with fire as the element flowed through him. He swung his mace with all of his magically enhanced strength, and flames rushed down to the head of his weapon. But all the blow did was to leave a scorched patch on the golem’s flank.
Mahrai stood back, arms folded, and laughed. She waved the soldiers back too, leaving the golem to deal with me and Kegohr.
Now, we were committed to the fight. We hacked at the golem with our weapons to almost no effect. Kegohr managed to smash away a few chips of stone with his mace, but neither the prongs of my trident nor the blade of my sword did any good.
“Back up!” I shouted to Kegohr. “I’ve got a plan.”
As we backed off, I called forth my newly developed powers to create a Mud Geyser around the golem. Mud blasted it from every side, and it stood still for a moment, keeping its feet while the ground around it churned.
As that first mud attack settled, I called forth another. The sand beneath the golem’s feet turned into a pool of muck thanks to Mud Entrapment. It sank up to its ankles, and the quicksand flooded in to fill the gaps.
The mud-covered golem heaved and strained, trying to free its feet.
“Untamed Torch!” I said to Kegohr.
We both held out our hands and blasted fire. As our techniques hit the golem, it baked the mud solid, just as it had done on Trohai. The golem’s moves slowed as it was encased in sections of solid clay.
I summoned more Mud Geysers while Kegohr kept up the Untamed Torch, until half the creature was covered in lumps of dried dirt.
The golem strained, and parts of the coating cracked, but none of them broke. Changing tactics, it roared and lunged forward. It overbalanced, toppled, and fell. I jumped back just in time to avoid being crushed as it crashed down.
The golem pushed itself up on its arms and heaved. There was a crack, and one of its feet came out of the ground, covered in solid clay.
I didn’t give it time to free the other foot. I summoned more Mud Geysers, targeting them to cover the creature’s joints. If we could bake those solid, then perhaps we could immobilize it, and then… Well, we’d worry about that when we came to it.
“Get up, you blasted lump of stone!” Mahrai shouted, her face a rictus of fury.
“I thought it was a waste that you’d taken the Straight Path,” I called to her. “But you’re clearly just a one-trick pony, so maybe it’s not so bad.”
“How dare you?” she snarled.
“Actions speak louder than words. If you were really so powerful, you wouldn’t be sitting back and letting your minion do all the work.”
“You think you can goad me into doing this your way?” Mahrai turned to the soldiers behind her. “You lot, get in there and kill them.”
The soldiers formed up and advanced slowly, clubs and war hammers raised.
“I’ve had enough of your games!” Mahrai shouted. “The so-called Swordslinger, striding in here like you’re the best thing Gonki’s ever seen. We’ll see how impressive you are against an army.”
“Stay focused,” I said to Kegohr. “I want to know if we can beat this thing.”
With half an eye on the approaching soldiers, I summoned more mud around the golem.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Mahrai said.
She snapped her fingers once more. The stone golem dissolved, its once-solid body turning to sand and then dribbling out across the ground. Within moments, it was entirely gone, leaving only the baked plates that we had formed around it, like the shell of some strange sea creature.
Mahrai strode away through the approaching army.
Kegohr and I raised our weapons to tackle the troops. They watched us warily and slowed their advance. Kegohr was still burning with magical fire, and they’d seen me summon both mud and flames before drawing a sword and a trident to fight them. If I’d been one of this horde of ordinary Hyng’ohr citizens, recruited to fight against magic with mundane weapons, I might have had second thoughts too.
“You’re smart to stay there,” I said. “I could easily destroy you all on my own, and as for Kegohr…”
The half-ogre grinned and swung his mace in a flaming arc.
The soldiers’ hands were white-knuckled around their weapons, their faces fixed and fearful. But they didn’t back off. Fear of their commanders was clearly just as powerful as fear of us. The Unswerving Shadows Cult had them in its terrible grip.
A man appeared on a rooftop at the edge of the village, looking out across the scene. He was six and a half feet tall, solidly muscled, and encased in segmented armor. His features were uncannily similar to Ganyir’s except that he kept his hair cut short and his beard more closely trimmed. He held his arms folded across his puffed-out chest. This could only be one man: Targin.
“What are you all waiting for?” he bellowed. “Get in there!�
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The soldiers shuffled forward and raised their drooping weapons, but no one was close enough yet to fight us.
Mahrai appeared on the rooftop beside Targin. “My Lord,” she said as she sank to one knee. Across the silence between the soldiers and us, every word could be heard.
“What do you want, wretch?” Targin demanded.
“My Lord, I know I disappointed you, but I did my best. No one has ever brought the golem down like that before.”
I had to admit I was surprised. I’d assumed Mahrai and the cultist Saruqin had Targin under their thumbs. It seemed that she was in fact under Targin’s chain of command.
“And you think excuses make your failure any less wretched? Should I point out that you are a coward too, running away the first time your precious pet was threatened?”
“My pet is half the reason you are still in power.” Mahrai got to her feet and took a step back. She planted her hands on her hips and glared at Targin, while below them, the soldiers advanced at the slowest pace they could.
“Your pet is just one weapon among many, as are you, you malodorous bitch. But as long as I am Lord of Gonki, the two of you serve me.”
“I serve where I choose, my lord.”
“Really?” He turned his glare away from me and onto Mahrai. “What about your loyalty to the Straight Path?”
“I’m loyal to myself, first and foremost. Anything else can only follow on from that. You would do well to remember it, Targin.”
She turned, strode away, and vanished from view down the back of the building.
“Get back here!” Targin shouted after her. “I’m not done with you. I demand your presence!”
But the only ones listening were the soldiers, me, and Kegohr. The soldiers’ eyes darted around as if worried that making eye contact might give away their treasonous thoughts. Despite the numbers against us, I grinned at their discomfort.
Targin turned his attention back to us. He was red-faced, and one cheek was twitching. He pulled out a mace and swung it about with jerky, impatient movements.
“Is all well in paradise?” I called to him. “Girlfriend troubles, perhaps?”
“I am going to destroy you, you fucking piece of foreign filth. You and that disgusting Wild you’ve brought with you.”
He whistled, a shrill sound that echoed around the low ground between the mountainside and the abandoned village.
More troops emerged, running out of the houses and appearing from beneath the dunes with Hidden Burrow technique. They circled to our left and right, staying wide out of reach. I looked back, but our path of retreat was cut off by bow-armed scouts.
The infantry moved in, weapons at the ready. Those in front of us looked more comfortable now that they had backup. They advanced again to form part of a rapidly tightening ring. Kegohr and I stood walled in, facing a row of blades and mace heads in every direction.
“You wanted to draw them out,” Kegohr said. “Looks like it worked.”
“It did.” I allowed Vigor to flood my internal channels and prepared myself for a fight against overwhelming odds.
Chapter Twelve
I’d been in some tight spots over the past year, but two of us facing an entire army was taking things to extremes.
“Any bright ideas to get out of this?” Kegor asked.
“Go back in time and make some better life choices,” I said.
“You got some sort of time Augmenting hidden in among the rest?”
“Not last time I checked, no.” Kegohr’s words did remind me of the orb I’d seen the Russians use back on Earth, and I would have spent some time wondering exactly where it might be, but now wasn’t the best situation for idle thoughts.
“Then I reckon we’ll need a better plan.”
Fire flashed as Kegohr summoned a Flame Shield on his left arm. I dug into my own dwindling reserves of Vigor and sent it running down my water channels. It flowed, cool and soothing, through my body and out of my skin. Frozen Armor formed in plates across my body. This seemed like a time to focus on defense over attack, so I created smooth plates designed to deflect blows instead of the spiked plates I’d sometimes used to inflict brutal attacks against particularly heinous opponents. The armor was a familiar friend, protective and comforting.
With the water magic in place, I stowed the trident away and summoned a Flame Shield, much like Kegohr’s. I figured that our best chance was to go heavily defensive and hold off the army as long as possible until the others arrived. They couldn’t be far away now, and they’d certainly help even the odds a little.
The soldiers in front of us looked more confident now that reinforcements had joined them. With the might of Hyng’ohr closing on all sides, they must have thought that we were doomed. What they weren’t considering was how much carnage we could cause on the way down, or how badly that might go for them as individuals. They were about to learn that the hard way.
“Remember that shield trick from the training yard?” I asked Kegohr.
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
“Aim high. Let’s make it hard for them to see what’s going on.”
We raised our shields and stamped our feet in unison. A wave of fire shot out from each of our shields, rushing toward the enemy at head height. None of the soldiers had shields, so the most they could do was to raise their weapons—little protection against a burst of flames. Some attempted to use Ground Strike to block our attacks, but their techniques were too slow. The fire flashed brightly as it scorched faces and left many of them temporarily blinded.
Still, the enemies behind the blinded ones charged. But we charged to meet them.
We hit the enemy like a pair of bowling balls hitting a set of pins. Soldiers who hadn’t even seen us coming were scattered, some falling to the ground, others stumbling back. Kegohr roared as the Spirit of the Wildfire rushed through him. He swung his mace, and half a dozen Hyng’ohr soldiers went flying through the air, knocking down others behind them.
I slashed the Sundered Heart in wide arcs, and blood sprayed across the dirt as a dozen enemies were felled in a single attack.
Some enemies were already recovering as they blinked away the aftermath of the fire flash. They formed up beside their comrades, while more came around behind them from the flanks. Behind us and to the sides, the others were closing in.
I sent up a palisade of Plank Pillars that closed us off from the enemies. At my feet were dozens of bloody corpses, but the wooden wall would protect us for a time.
“You’re next move?” Kegohr asked me.
Before I could answer, a fierce shout sounded from the left. The crack of breaking stone echoed around the whole of the sand-sunken village.
Over the dunes charged Ganyir, clad in his full plate armor. He carried no weapon but wore massive steel gauntlets on both hands. He bellowed in rage as he thundered toward the Hyng’ohr army. He rode the sand like some sort of surfer without a board, and the dirt beneath him was a mighty wave. It rippled and undulated as he rocketed toward the army.
Behind him came the rebel elements of the Steadfast Horn Guild. Tahlis led the way, his spear raised and teeth bared to grant his lizard face a more monstrous and terrifying appearance. Zedal was doing the same, her forked tongue flicking out across pointed teeth, her quarterstaff swinging. Drek and Fig ran to one side of them, Choshi and Onvar to the other, while behind them, Elorinelle perched on the remains of a ruined building and rained arrows down on the enemy.
Vesma and Kumi took the rear, their familiar faces bearing expressions of battlelust.
As he rode the sand, Ganyir slammed one foot down extra hard on the sand. A Ground Strike rippled out in front of him, more powerful than any I’d seen so far. The whole world seemed to tremble with power. Dozens of soldiers were thrown from their feet. Buildings in the village shook, and one collapsed as it sent up a shower of sand.
A few feet from the army, Ganyir passed a boulder rising from the dunes. He slammed his fist into it, and the upper half
of the rock exploded. A chunk went sailing into the soldiers, pulverizing three, severing the limbs of others, and breaking their line. Then, he was in among them, swinging to left and right. As weapons came at him, he blocked them with armored forearms or grabbed the hands that wielded them and tore the limbs from their sockets.
Tahlis and the initiates followed Ganyir into the fray. Weapons clashed, and sand flew as they went at the enemy with both magical and mundane attacks. Kumi flowed between the soldiers using the ancient martial arts of the Qihin. Her twin daggers flashed in the sunlight as she sought weak points and gaps in soldiers’ armor, slipping in and out of reach like the surging of the tide. Vesma blasted the ground with Untamed Torch and rose into the air before she sent fireballs into the masses behind the enemy’s frontlines.
Pressed from three directions at once, the Hyng’ohr lines fractured. The battle descended into a chaotic melee, with the two sides swirling around each other in small knots of action. As Kegohr and I broke the line and forced the soldiers back, we were drawn deeper into the village, among the sand-covered houses and half-fallen buildings.
I’d seen cultists among the houses earlier, but I could see no sign of them now. But it didn’t mean they weren't there, hiding and waiting for the right moment to strike.
I summoned an Ash Cloud around a group of soldiers, and the cold, black dust billowed around them like a falling storm. As they gasped and choked, blinded and struggling for air, I went in with the Sundered Heart Blade. Nydarth moaned an exalted note as I ran one through. Blood stained my hands as I cut another’s legs out from under him. A third attempted to sneak up behind me, but I whirled around and punched him in the face with the hilt of my weapon. His nose fractured, and half his face caved in before he dropped to the ground.
Kegohr was in a frantic frenzy, the combination of Wild magical power and hatred for cults having finally overcome him. He roared and charged around the village, smashing soldiers and sometimes chunks of wall that got too close.
“Swordslinger!” Targin bellowed. He was still standing on a rooftop, with four warriors in Steadfast Horn Guild colors gathered behind him. “Come and face me!”