Immortal Swordslinger 3

by Dante King

  Now, I was in the very center of the demons that had come over the barricade, drawing as many as I could away from my allies and onto me. For now, they were where I wanted them to be. The creatures attacked wildly, almost blindly, with little thought to either tactics or the skills of combat. Against that, I used all the martial arts that I had learned back on Earth and everything I had added since coming to the Seven Realms. I ducked and weaved, dodged and turned, stabbed and sliced as I sent bodies tumbling all around me. Demons raked across my armor with their claws but couldn’t get through. Those with weapons smashed gouges out of the ice, only for me to refill the holes. I decided then that it wouldn’t matter whether I had enough Vigor to face the cultists if everyone around me died.

  I focused on pouring energy along my acid channels, and released an Acid Cloud in a nova around me. The demons closest to me squealed like gutted pigs as their flesh melted from their bones. They clawed their way past the others to get away.

  With a little more room to move, I sheathed the Depthless Dream and started taking out demons with precise bursts of Stinging Palm. Demons clawed their way toward me, and I let fly with a volley of Magma Bursts. As soon as the molten substance struck a demon, it clung to their flesh and melted it away. The demons screamed as they tried to scratch the magma away, only to peel their own flesh away with their claws.

  More hideous beasts bounded toward me, and I superheated an Untamed Torch with Flame Empowerment and shot a series of fireballs in quick succession as they closed in. Each one blasted a hole through a demon and added its smoking remnants to the piles of corpses surrounding me.

  The constant use of techniques started to wear me down, and I felt my limbs become heavy with fatigue. I still had more Vigor in the tank, but I couldn’t use it if my body was too exhausted.

  I felt something cool touch the back of my neck. I glanced around and saw Kumi standing behind the shelter of Vesma and Kegohr. She had two of her water skins open and was directing their contents with the Song of the Sea. The water flowed through the air, forming a cord that connected me to Kumi. Down that magical connection flowed the healing power of water. It restored and renewed my spent energy, giving me enough strength to continue channeling.

  For a moment, the waves of demons attacking me subsided. It didn’t seem that the fear of death was enough to deter them, but the fallen bodies were making it harder to get through.

  The Augmenters in our force were using whatever powers they could to deal with the demons. The air was thick with dust from Sandstorms and the smoke from damage done by fire techniques. The earth beneath my feet trembled as repeated Ground Strikes ripped through the market square, sending demons hurtling in every direction. Tahlis disappeared and reappeared all over the battlefield, taking down three or more demons every time he showed his face above ground.

  Mahrai’s golem was stamping toward the barricade. She was on its back, clinging on with one hand and using the other to fight with her staff. The weapon had turned to stone thanks to a flow of earth through it, and when it hit the demons, it caved in skulls and snapped arms. But there were so many of them that it was impossible for Mahrai alone to clear them, and the press of their bodies kept the golem from reaching the barricade.

  “Batter up!” I yelled.

  I flooded my earth channels with Vigor and stamped my foot on the ground. A Ground Strike shot out from me and through the demons blocking the golem’s path. As those horned, twisted bodies flew into the air, Kegohr and Vesma, alerted by my shout, launched blasts of Untamed Torch into the flying targets like they were shooting clay pigeons with spells instead of shotguns. Demons exploded or melted beneath the heat of their hits, and black ooze rained down across barricade.

  The golem strode through the gap I’d created, stamping on a fallen demon as it went. Others tried to block the way, but Mahrai batted them aside with her empowered staff. Together, Mahrai and her golem reached the barricade, and the stone giant started tearing it apart, lifting up barrels, tables, even wagons, and flinging them aside.

  Getting through that barricade was going to be critical. These demons weren’t coming out of nowhere; they’d been summoned by the priests within. The longer we stayed trapped out here, the more of them would come. If we wanted to end this, we had to get past that barricade and into the palace.

  I cut down two more demons as they charged. The power running through me, the electrifying burn of Vigor from dozens of techniques used in mere minutes, was exhilarating. I felt as though I was made of magical energy, a being of pure force acting upon the world, making it my own.

  But that was the thinking of the Straight Path. This moment wasn’t about me; it was about everyone I fought beside.

  I climbed onto a heap of enemy corpses and called out to Vesma and Kegohr. Once I had their attention, I pointed to a section of the barricade.

  “We need to blast a way through!” I shouted. “Use your flames.”

  Without my order, the initiates lined up to either side of them and used Ground Strikes to hold back the waves of demons. Protected by these junior guild folks, Vesma and Kegohr were able to focus on the problem ahead. Both summoned large, intense balls of fire and launched them. As each one shot out, I used Flame Empowerment to make it larger and more powerful. The fires hit the barricade, and sections burst into flames.

  “More!” I shouted.

  Again we called upon the element of fire to tear into the heaped wood holding us back. The flames grew, and a chunk of the barricade collapsed in on itself, but we still didn’t have a way through yet.

  Ganyir shoved his way past the soldiers holding back demon attacks. He raised his fists, and his whole body started to tremble. Then, the ground beneath his feet shook as he unleashed some technique I hadn’t seen before. The shaking spread, an earthquake that radiated from Ganyir in every direction. Soldiers sank to one knee or leaned against each other to keep from falling, while demons went sprawling on the ground. But it was when it reached the barricade that I saw the technique’s real effect.

  All along its length, the barricade trembled, and pieces started to fall. Chairs went sliding down the backs of heaps of furniture. Loose planks fell away from carts. In the burning section, blackened timbers collapsed into heaps of ash.

  Around the square, buildings shook. Shutters banged against walls, and doors rattled in their frames. Tiles shook loose and crashed down in the street. The only thing in sight that wasn’t shaking was Mahrai’s golem, a creation of pure stone so sturdy that even the most terrible of earthquakes couldn’t shake it.

  The golem strode forward into the weakened barricade. It kicked aside the last of the section in front of it, picked up a table, and used it like a bat to smash away more of the structure to left and right. Wood splintered, and objects fell. Barrels went rolling across the street. Demons were knocked flying by chunks of furniture.

  Kegohr, Vesma, and I let fly with another blast of fire. By now, there wasn’t much left of the barrier in front of us. As the empowered Untamed Torches hit, the timbers exploded in a shower of ash and sparks, creating another gap.

  The golem strode on, turning whole chunks of the defensive line into splinters. For the first time, the demons started to retreat, not in fear but as if called by some other voice, summoned back to a duty we had yet to see.

  “Forward!” Ganyir roared. “Don’t give them time to regroup!”

  Together, we surged through the remnants of the barricade, smoke billowing around us. Soldiers, Pathless, initiates, and traveling Augmenters advanced together on the Palace of Hyng’ohr. As Ganyir had said, we were together now, no distinctions of class or status between us, a single body set on a single purpose.

  Beyond the barricade lay the steps up to the temple. In front of those steps stood another mixed army. This one was built on magic rather than human allegiances. Priests of the Cult of Unswerving Shadows gathered in their black robes with the gleaming edges. Corrupted disciples of the Steadfast Horn Guild stood in their gui
ld’s colors but with the black triangle of the Unswerving Shadows stitched onto the breast. And among them were non-human warriors—lesser demons like those we’d fought in the square and lesser golems like we’d faced in the Vigorous Zone. There were as many arcane bodies as there were natural ones.

  We had survived the first round of the battle, but the second round was just about to begin.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mahrai was on her golem’s back, her staff in hand. Her minion was the first to hit the enemy line. It charged straight at the lesser stone golems, as if it recognized its kindred and felt some deeper animosity at seeing them lined up against it. There was a loud crack as it kicked the nearest of them, and the lesser golem skidded through the assembled priests and demons, sending them skittering across the ground like so many bowling pins. The greater golem picked one of the miniature versions of itself up by the arm and started using it as a crude stone cudgel against the rest. Rock crashed against rock, and flying shards sliced the faces of nearby priests.

  I raised my hand and produced a Sandstorm. The air in front of the golem swirled, and I formed the same technique but focused on making it harder and more vicious. Sand blasted outward, tearing the skin from a demon that came too close and knocking others over. But the stone golems stood unflinching in front of the blast.

  Our force was advancing through the barricade, ready to take on Saruqin’s army. Soon, the two sides would clash again, and there would be enough action for everyone. Even so, I could see that Mahrai’s position provided the best view of the battle. It was the place where I could do the most good.

  I ran over to the golem and sprang onto its back. My fingers grabbed the rough edges of the stone, and I scrambled up past Mahrai. The golem’s greatest form had plenty of space for us both to ride the mighty colossus.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “This one’s mine!”

  “After everything else we’ve shared, you’re not willing to share a golem?” I asked with a grin. “Just how close are you to this thing?”

  “It saves me from worrying about size.”

  “It’s what you do with it that counts. And from up here. . .” I reached the shoulders and stood, gripping the golem’s head with one hand. “From up here, I can do things no one else in the city can.”

  I swayed as I stood, constantly shifting my balance to avoid falling as the golem moved around, but it was worth it for the view. I could see across the whole battlefield and the forces arrayed before us, could make out where the largest knots of enemies were and where they were gathering to launch attacks. I could target my Augmenting perfectly to make the most of my opportunities.

  I started with Mud Entrapment technique. The combined powers of water and earth flowed through me out of the mud core I had forged and into the world. I made the effect wide rather than deep, aiming to inconvenience as many of the enemies as possible and give my side an advantage as they charged in.

  The first Mud Entrapment appeared in the ground directly in front of the golem. Humans, demons, and lesser golems alike sank into mud that reached almost to their knees. As they struggled to pull themselves out, our golem knocked them flat, as if it were playing a brutal game of whack-a-mole.

  My previous worries about not having enough Vigor to fight Saruqin vanished. The survival of our new army depended on me giving everything I had.

  I poured Vigor through the widest pathways inside me and then lengthened them while slowing my breathing. A different kind of Mud Entrapment swelled from the ground, turning half the street in front of the palace into a sea of mud, full of thrashing bodies covered in the brown ooze.

  With the mud in place, I moved on to the next stage of my plan.

  The water inside the mire allowed me to activate Crashing Wave. There wasn’t a lot of liquid, but it was enough to make the mud ripple and surge. I gritted my teeth and continued burning Vigor to manipulate the wave’s movement. I almost fell from my perch on the golem’s soldiers but managed to guide the earth-filled Crashing Wave. The priests trapped within it screamed, the demons squealed, and the lesser golems flailed their limbs as I sent them crashing into the rest of the enemy ranks further up the stairs.

  Many were knocked over by the force of the wave, some demons and priests left broken by it. Even the golems were left trapped within the muck. The enemies were like insects trapped on sticky tape. Our side took the opportunity to attack, taking down those near the edge of the mud with a combination of Augmentation and long weapons.

  I was running low on Vigor and needed to find a safe spot to catch my breath and recharge. The golem was a great place to fight from, but every moment standing on its shoulder was a battle between balance and gravity. Imitating one of Vesma’s favorite moves, I sent some of my remaining Vigor into an Untamed Torch that I directed down, using it as a jet to give me extra power as I leaped from the golem’s shoulders to one of the palace’s outer towers. I landed on the edge of the sloped pagoda roof and grabbed hold of a dragon statue.

  My heart was racing, and I drew ragged breaths as I tried to regain my equilibrium. I’d pushed myself hard already, and there was still plenty of fight left to go. We weren’t even through the doors of the palace yet.

  “Well done, my sweet man,” Nydarth said. “You never cease to entertain.”

  “Now. bring us back into the fight,” Yono said, her voice filled with yearning. “I want to show these monsters the true power of water.”

  My mud attack had given my allies the opportunity they needed, and they were making the most of it.

  The golem was still the most formidable part of our lines. Arrows glanced off its stone skin. Sandstorm attacks didn’t move it an inch. Rocks thrown both by hand and by earth Augmenting bounced off it without doing any harm. It advanced unflinching into the shallow pool of mud and flattened opponents or sent them flying across the battlefield.

  From the golem’s back, Mahrai was taking out enemies with her staff wherever she could. I also noticed that every time an enemy managed to wound the golem, she would scuttle over to it and use an arcane art to heal it.

  Tahlis appeared from the ground beside the golem and shot small, focused Sandstorms that knocked individual combatants from their feet and left their skin shredded and bloody. Larger, less focused Sandstorms forced back enemy formations to create openings that the golem and those around it could exploit.

  The human parts of the enemy force recognized Mahrai and backed away from her powers and her golem. When they’d flee, Tahlis would be there to appear from the ground behind them and take them down with his spear. The trio were fighting an ever-dwindling force of demons and lesser golems as the supernatural creatures took on an opponent that they didn’t know to fear.

  The mud I had summoned created an opportunity for Kumi. Though the sea provided the best medium for her powers, any water could be used, and the mud was rich with it. She swayed and chanted to unleash the Song of the Sea and direct the mud to do her bidding.

  She flung some of that mud at the enemy, just as I had done with my Crashing Wave. But where I’d scattered the mud widely across our opponents, Kumi was more controlled. Gobbets shot from the swaying sea of mud into the faces of golems, demons, and priests, blinding them long enough for our soldiers to catch them off guard.

  Kumi also sent the mud out to heal our own side. Strands floated up and stroked the wounds of injured men and women like the hands of an attentive nurse. Beneath the muddy smears, bruises healed, flesh knit shut, and blood stopped flowing.

  I didn’t want to be out of the battle for long, but I mediated while watching from my perch so that I could regain my Vigor. I wouldn’t be out of the fight for a second longer than I needed, and when Saruqin showed his face, I would be ready.

  As my Vigor replenished, I kept watching the battle, looking for where I could do the most good. Vesma and Kegohr were tearing through a pack of stone golems, Flame Shields on their off-hands. Each, in turn, would launch an Untamed Torch against a cluster of mud
-covered golems. The heat of the flames baked the mud dry, forming a tough clay shell that kept the creatures from moving. As a golem strained against its restraint, Kegohr’s mace or Vesma’s spear would dart in and hit it precisely at some mud-encrusted joint. Stone arms, legs, and even heads tumbled into the ooze, leaving their owners broken and out of the fight.

  The demons remained our toughest targets. The clinging mud made them less effective, but my allies without Augmentation still could not harm them. Bands of Pathless and soldiers fended off troops of demons with polearms and long-handled maces, desperately holding them back in hopes that someone would come to the rescue. Even as I watched, one small group was saved from certain death when Drek and Onvar arrived just in time to slow the demons with Sandstorms.

  With my Vigor restored and my breath back, it was time to get back into the fight. I jumped from the rooftop straight into a pack of mud-covered demons. I landed on one with both feet, knocked it over in the mud, and sliced its head off with the Sundered Heart. Before the others could react, I thrust with the Depthless Dream Trident, its prongs coated in magical ice, bringing a second demon down.

  “That’s it,” Yono said. “Let the power flow through you. Destroy those who stand in the way of the Path of the Swordslinger.”

  A demon lunged at me with both clawed hands. Its movements were slowed down by the mud it was half-sunk in, but there was a fierce exuberance on its face. That exuberance vanished as I swung the Sundered Heart, fire flaring from its blade, and the demon realized that it wasn’t fighting just another soldier. I cut through both wrists in a single swipe, leaving the creature thoroughly disarmed, and plunged the trident through its scales into its soft guts.

  A dozen more demons swarmed me. I waited until the last moment to draw them in, then used Hidden Burrow to sink into the ground and out of reach. With the earth turned to mud, it was easier to move around with the Burrow, and a second later, I popped up behind the pile of confused monsters. I wasn’t exactly where I’d wanted to be, but I was close enough. Now, the demons had their backs to me.