Chapter 340: Marked Hunter |
Marked Hunter
Monastery, Lowest Floor
Fueled by the Great Gemstone, the vacuum sphere continued to build speed inside the hall, dragging in air even from the stairs. Strong wind rushed past everyone, almost deafening. The underground hall now felt like the top of a mountain, filled with raging wind and thinner air. The Saint Lich stood beside it, nurturing it by feeding it power from the Great Gemstone. Her eyes remained on the fight, with a cruel look on her face for the men who had killed her children.
The howling wind swept through the ruined hall and pressed against Sir Morton's ethereal sphere. His unsteady footsteps echoed across the corpse-strewn ground as he tried to whittle down his opponents. They had numbers on their side, while he was already exhausted. Breathing heavily, he parried a close thrust from a Lich’s spear. Sparks flew, and before he could launch a counter, instinct screamed at him to guard his right. He kicked off the ground and turned just in time to see a Wraith’s spear hurtling toward his face.
He caught it on his hilt and answered with a lightning-quick diagonal slash, but it only cut through the Wraith’s clothing.
They had learned his movements and his speed. Now they faced him like a pack of hyenas closing in on a wounded lion.
Sir Morton had just secured his rank as the highest vassal of the Shogunate and married the beautiful tailor, the love of his life, all within the span of a single year. He had expected his life to grow less dangerous, far steadier. He had even planned to take on a student or two from the Mage Guild to fight his battles in the near future. Instead, here he was, fighting for his life. Yet that only made his heart race harder, his eyes sharper, and his grin more vicious.
A different Wraith, either more patient than the others or broken off from another group chasing the three Hunters, struck from behind. Sir Morton sensed it only as a disturbance when his ethereal sphere was pierced. It took only a blink before the strike hit his side. The spear did not pierce his cuirass, yet the impact of solid iron was nothing to laugh at.
“Ghk!” He felt it in his bones. More than pain, the blow threw him off balance.
Sir Morton did what his mentor had taught him early in life. As he went down, he deliberately kicked off the floor to hasten the fall, and when he landed, he turned that momentum into a roll. It carried him clear of his opponents and let him spring back to his feet in one motion. It was perfectly executed, but it was not enough against the relentless Liches and Wraiths.
He parried a thrust from a Lich, only to take a heavy blow from a Wraith against his shoulder. His pauldron held, but the force rattled his bones. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to move again as he saw another spear coming in too close to evade. He knocked it aside with his gauntlet and tried to counter, but his timing was off.
Cancelling his counter, Sir Morton saw the Lich in front of him wearing a predatory grin. Then, like a mirage, its brother appeared at his side from behind. The second Lich lunged too fast for the weakened Mage Knight. By instinct alone, Sir Morton knew there was no time.
Within the blink of an eye, the Lich closed the distance and drove a powerful spear thrust into his chest plate.
CLANG!
The spear did not pierce, but the blow hit his shoulder and body like hammers and sent him crashing to the floor. His concentration broke, and his protective sphere of air collapsed.
Mercilessly, the Liches and Wraiths came down on him. Their spears struck as he tried with all his strength to kick off the floor and rise again.
Three blows landed on him. The Wraith’s strike was the worst. Her spear nearly smashed into his face, but struck the side of his head instead, nearly tearing off his ear. Blood burst forth as the hits threw the Mage Knight to the floor.
The Wraith and the Liches laughed as they pulled back their spears. They cared nothing for the Saint’s earlier wish to capture him. Deep inside, they knew better than to share the Saint's love. With shrieks, they moved in for the kill, but a fierce wind blew past them.
Suddenly, one of the Wraiths coughed so hard that she vomited blood.
That stopped everyone. The Wraith fell to her knees, gasping for air.
The others, too, felt their steps turn sluggish, which baffled them.
As they grew distracted, Sir Morton managed to rise onto one knee. Blood flowed from his ear, wetting his shoulder-length hair, while pain coursed through his body. That drew their attention back to him, and he spoke.
“Careful. Thin air.”
The four fell creatures shrieked. Sir Morton merely snorted. He had not taken the fall and endured those blows for nothing. At such close range, he had already cast his magic into them. Before they could rush him, he raised his left hand, palm open toward his opponents, and slowly closed it.
The Liches felt themselves constricted. Their breath was taken away. The Wraiths had it worse, crawling and gasping for air.
“You’re not undead,” Sir Morton said, tightening his grip on his flamberge. “I can see your chests rising and falling. Your Saint’s magic will kill you before it kills me.”
Refusing to believe him, the three Liches and the remaining Wraith charged at him, only for Sir Morton to snap his left hand into a balled fist. At once, the creatures stopped as they felt their breath being forcefully taken away. Even with their greater physique and endurance, they still needed air, and their primal instinct to breathe seized them.
Two Liches tried to prop themselves up with their spears. Another fell to his knees. Meanwhile, the last Wraith fled toward the Saint.
Fighting a splitting headache, Sir Morton strained his source to choke these fell creatures. He did not know how long his magic would hold, and so he rushed at them like a moving shadow. Before they knew it, he was already upon them, his flamberge already halfway through its swing.
There was no time to react. The first Lich, the one always in the vanguard, was struck. Dark blood gushed from his neck. Before his severed head had even struck the floor, the second Lich’s skull was split in two from crown to neck.
Sir Morton was about to move on to the third when his vision suddenly doubled.
He staggered before collapsing to his knees. He had reached his limit and could do nothing but breathe heavily in that deathly thin air. His flamberge slipped from his hand. There was not enough air to feed his burning muscles. Even as he inhaled, there was no relief. Even keeping his eyes focused had become a strain. All he could do was draw in enough air to keep himself from fainting.
Led by instinct, he tried to find where the fresher wind from the stairs was passing, but it did not move in a straight line. Though raising the ethereal sphere again was possible, the air inside it would be just as thin. With barely enough breath left, he remained where he was, not knowing what to do next.
Like a poison, the lack of air nearly blacked him out. Shaking his head, he looked to his left and right and saw that it had all gone quiet. The older Hunter sat with his back against the wall, unmoving, his unkempt beard resting against his chest, a young Lich still in his embrace, likely killed with his last breath.
Meanwhile, Arnaut was nowhere to be seen, along with the youngest Hunter.
Did they get past the stairs?
His memory blurred. The lack of air made everything hazy, but he still remembered their shouts as the Liches and Wraiths swarmed them.
The older Hunter had been holding off two Liches while Wraiths circled around, waiting for an opening. “Arnaut, get him out!” he had shouted as he fought.
From the side, Arnaut had rushed in. He had likely hauled the wounded Hunter off the floor and run. Before he left, he had shouted his senior’s name. “Alexios!”
“Go!” Alexios had barked as spears flashed around him.
Sir Morton was sure that was the last he had heard from them.
At least two had escaped...
With that thought, he looked again at the hall before him. Except for the wind still whirling toward the sphere of vacuum, the hall had gone quiet.
Like the older Hunter, Alexios, who now sat unmoving some distance away, Sir Morton had not expected the Saint Lich to let so many of her children die just to stop them. He had thought they still had time to fight. Time to escape.
They had overplayed their hands, but at the same time, the Saint had shown herself to be far more powerful than they had anticipated.
But now it mattered little to him. All he could focus on were the approaching footsteps. He looked up to see a figure walking barefoot, her long, yellowed linen raiment dragging across the floor as she moved.
It was the Saint. The realization, together with the lack of air, struck him like a blow. At last, his focus broke.
***
The Saint
Taking her time, Nay stepped carefully over the corpses and moved toward her children. It was impossible to conjure air out of nothing with the hall nearly a vacuum, but she could still cast Corrupted Healing on them and spare them the worst of it. Her children would not die from suffocation, but they would faint and later wake in agonizing pain that would take days to heal, even with the abundance of magic residing in the Great Gemstone.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
It was a nearly inexhaustible source of magic. Even raising three thousand with Animate Dead had drained only a small fraction of its power. She had to admit that this Great Gemstone of House Bengrieve was of far higher grade than she had dared to expect.
Again, she knelt to cast Corrupted Healing on her fallen children. Some had rushed upstairs to chase the fleeing Hunters and had escaped this fate. In hindsight, she should have ordered more upstairs, but she had not wanted to dirty her hands fighting these Hunters, especially when they might possess magic she did not know.
She had also ordered Gemma, her confidante, to flee out of an abundance of caution.
Nay herself could still move, for she had augmented herself to a degree no mage could ever imagine.
At last, she came to stand before the Mage Knight.
“Yes, kneel before me,” she said, then kicked him squarely in the chest. The Mage Knight was thrown several feet away, his black armor scraping against the floor as he crashed onto his back.
She came to his side again while the man was as good as drowning, and muttered like a cat to a caught mouse, “Should I kill you, or keep you? You are far too dangerous.”
Yet, her eyes sparked. “Priceless body, useless head," she muttered. "Then why not just replace your head?”
She drew a knife from her waist. With her left hand, she grabbed the Mage Knight by the hair and pulled him close. His eyes still held traces of defiance, but his arms already dangled limp. No air was reaching his head.
An ugly smirk spread across her face before she pressed her lips against his and blew some of the air from her lungs into him.
Despite the vile absurdity of it, the Mage Knight gasped greedily for the air, kissing her as if in passion.
She pulled away after only a moment, still holding him by the hair, and muttered, “Yes, breathe. I need you alive to feel all the pain I’m going to give you. My only grief is that I was not able to do this to that lowly Baronet, Stan.”
With her knife already drawing blood from his neck, Sir Morton’s eyes shifted past her shoulder. Surprise crossed his face as he muttered weakly, “Alexios.”
The Saint frowned and said mockingly, “I am not aware of any curse that sounds like that.”
“No, Lich. It's my name.”
The answer came from behind her. The Saint’s breath caught. She turned sharply.
There stood a bearded man with unnaturally long limbs. Even standing upright, his hands hung low enough to brush the floor. She recognized at once that it was no man. Nay brought both hands together, one gripping the other’s wrist.
[Empyrean Fire]
A sphere of light formed before her, and as quickly as it appeared, it burst with the heat of ten thousand torches unleashed within a single breath. It was as if morning had erupted in the dead of night. Blinding light flooded the hall. The air turned searing hot. Skin felt as though it were melting. And then it ended.
Everything before her along its path had been seared by light. Even the floor radiated heat. Nay’s own palms were left raw, split, and blackened, the skin blistering from the force of it. It stung deeply even as she poured Healing into them.
It was not entirely a spell, but a dangerous release of magical energy she had kept sealed within herself. It was the most inefficient use of the innate magic she had preserved for a single cast, but in a moment like this, it was a blessing to have.
Gasping from the toll it took on her body, she searched for what remained of the false-man the fallen Mage Knight had called Alexios, but found nothing.
Suddenly, a darker shadow slipped in behind her. Nay sensed the gaze and turned. This time, she drawn her Golden Specter from her waist and triggered the innate gemstone set within it. Sparks burst to life along the weapon, crackling and arching in violent strands as she swept it across. It struck something, and thunder cracked through the hall.
Alexios answered with a wet cackling sound and a sweep of his oversized hand.
Before she realized it, a line of shadow crossed her neck, and a red mist burst from the wound. Nay screamed and pressed her left hand to her neck, her attack breaking in confusion. She did not understand what she was facing. At once she fled, running toward the Great Gemstone.
The false-man, Alexios, walked toward her, hindered only by his own growth as he swelled taller and broader. He moved like a mirage, there one instant and gone the next. Half his body was charred, and blood dripped constantly from him, yet he showed no concern. Life had already left him, and the corruption of the Fell Beast within him had broken free. Now, only spite, stubbornness, and sheer willpower held him to this world.
“Come, child. It's time to leave this world,” he said, his voice growing inhuman and distorted by the starved air.
“GET AWAY FROM ME!”
Alexios did not heed her. “I’ll make it easy. You and I will journey together.”
“No!” Nay screamed with all her heart as the creature came at her in impossible leaps, like an apparition.
The creature had grown considerably larger and taller, yet its hands still touched the floor. At one point, it stopped as the Saint hid behind the Great Gemstone.
Alexios raised his oversized, clawed fingers to his face and tore it apart, peeling it open to reveal a skull that looked neither human nor beast. Then, from the empty sockets of that skull, a black void rushed toward the Saint. She cried out in fear.
Using the Great Gemstone, she flooded the area with power and unleashed Static Charge. It was premature, but the force of it was still terrible. A violent surge tore through the floor and climbed the creature in branching lines of white fury, snapping across its body with the sound of chained thunder. Stone trembled underfoot. The reek of scorched flesh and burnt blood filled the air.
But Alexios remained standing. Instead, he drew his oversized arms inward, drove both hands into his own chest, and ripped it open. Red blood burst outward. Then the heart exploded, showering everything before him.
The Saint could only stare. Before she could even close her gaping mouth, an ethereal form took shape before the dead Alexios. It had the exact same shape, and then it sprinted toward her.
As if maddened, she screamed, dropped her scepter, and wrapped her arms around herself as she leaped back as far as she could.
The ethereal figure shot past the Great Gemstone and caught her in midair. It passed through her like light and shadow, and Nay suddenly saw nothing but pitch black. Her mouth opened breathless as her body struck the floor. There she lay still.
Her heart stopped.
A distance away, her sphere of vacuum collapsed with a dying whimper, and the dust it had gathered drifted down like ash.
There was nothing left moving in the hall. Even the Great Gemstone’s light had ceased.
...
Alexios’ flesh smoldered as air returned. It burned like firewood. Soon, scarcely anything of him remained but his bones.
All of a sudden, a young Lich drew one great breath before choking and vomiting. He kept retching as he looked around. His milky eyes saw poorly in the dark, but magic still allowed him to see. What he saw stunned him.
“Mother!” he cried. Forcing his wobbly legs to obey, he staggered up and ran toward the Saint.
He found her lying motionless. His training as a Healer, though still incomplete, seized him at once. He checked for a pulse and found none. So he drove both hands against her chest again and again, trying to force her heart back to life. Each desperate push was followed by a surge of healing magic poured into her lifeless body.
“Mother,” the young lich called desperately.
There was no answer. He kept working.
“C’mon, Mother, please...”
No answer.
“You’re immortal. You promised us.” His pushes grew violent and forceful, their rhythm turning erratic.
Yet the Saint's body remained motionless.
“You promised us!” he cried, his breath ragged as anger welled up.
The Saint gave no response. Her lips were already turning blue.
The young Lich cried out in agony. In frustration, he hammered his fist against her chest. Without warning, her eyes snapped open.
...
Holding her right arm with bloodied fingers, Nay walked unsteadily toward the stairs in a daze. Death had touched her, and it had ruined her understanding of immortality. Worse, her stomach ached with an unbelievable hunger she could not explain. Her inner vessel had been crushed along with her very essence. The connection to her soul had nearly disappeared.
She climbed the stairs without echoes, gripping a spear she had taken from the floor.
Her fight had been brutal. She had not expected a Mage Knight and three Hunters to drag her to death’s door.
Fortunately, her children, especially her sons, were so much like her that she had no trouble claiming their flesh and blood.
Recalling the taste, she licked her lips clean. The iron tang and slight bitterness of the son she had just devoured still lingered on her tongue.
While she could find more dead sons on this floor, she did not want to. Her appetite craved fresh, pure blood, not blood from damaged bodies already fouled.
Slowly, her strength returned as her vessel reconstructed itself. That frightening Hunter had been the most destructive, but she had survived.
Nay finally stepped onto the next floor. It was dark, as expected. And somehow, just like below, all she saw now was red. A Mage’s Night Vision should have allowed her to see shades of green and gray, along with the silhouettes of magic. But now there were only shades of red and deeper red.
The Saint kept moving, heading toward the stairs that led to the surface.
She heard no fighting, which gladdened her weary heart. All was calm, which meant her children had won. Certainly, no humans could stand against them. And she had already taken out the best the Black Lord could send.
Her careful approach had been proven correct. Had she been brash and gone against the Black Lord directly, she might have been cut down in pitched battle. By sending only her followers, she had been able to gauge the enemy’s true strength.
Crossing the length of the corpse-riddled floor, she saw the stairs but did not head for them. Instead, she continued toward the antechamber and one of its corners. Her hands touched the stone and found the two bricks that needed to be pressed at the same time. They sank inward, and the hidden mechanism allowed a small section of the wall to swing open. The opening was narrow. It allowed only a single person to slip through in a deep crouch.
Inside, Nay found a secret chamber and, beyond it, a flight of narrow, steep stairs thick with cobwebs and dust.
In the past, visiting nobles had used it for clandestine meetings with their lovers. Back then, the Monastery had been far from what it was today, a place of greater freedom despite its rules. The wealthy would feign illness to lie with Healers, hoping to bring mage blood into their families.
While such activity beside a hall meant for bathing and preparing corpses was far from ideal, they said the dead told no tales.
Compelled by hunger, she stopped reminiscing and climbed the stairs. Where they led would allow her to check on her children. She promised herself she would spare those who were exceptional. She wasn’t hungry enough to devour all.
Next, she braced and composed herself. She needed to look regal in case anyone saw her emerge into the corridor. Her raiment might be bloodied, but that was hardly an issue. She was, after all, the perfect image of a Healer, the embodiment of a compassionate and virtuous figure who treated even the lowliest.
At last, she reached the end of the narrow stone stairway. With one hand against the wall, she pressed the hidden catch, and a section concealed within the woodwork swung inward. Nay slipped through the opening and stepped into the corridor just behind a pillar.
Now on the surface floor at last, Nay watched the dim light of lanterns and small chandeliers spill across the corridor and felt it prickling against her skin.
Though she refused to admit it, she was gladdened to see color returning to her vision, no longer only shades of red. Then she saw what had been done to her Monastery. It had been thoroughly desecrated.
It had been her home for more than two hundred years. She knew every worn curve of its floor stones from centuries of passing over them. So she vowed to cast out anyone who did not belong in this place. Before morning came, she would have all her enemies’ heads cut off and set upon pikes around the hill for all to see.
The world needed to know that the Saint was victorious.
With dignified steps, she walked toward the stone gallery, expecting to find her children finishing off the last of the intruders. Instead, she saw the courtyard bathed in white light from the skies, and a great host of men-at-arms gathering corpses into great piles and burning them in towering bonfires.
She gasped as she recognized that some of her children had also been dragged there, headless, to be burned.
Nay shrieked, wailing like one gone mad.
Outside, hundreds who heard her turned their heads, trying to locate her position. Shouts rang out, and groups of men began rushing toward her, searching for the source of the cry.
Enraged, Nay began the incantation for a wide-area Static Shock. This time, she built it from the ground up, driving it toward its fullest potential. Sweat quickly formed on her brow, for her vessel was still in pieces, and her connection to the Great Gemstone had been severed. But she no longer cared. She wanted to see whether her deadliest spell was still worthy, and what better way to test it than on the few hundred sinful men gathered in the courtyard below.
“You all deserve to die,” she screeched, driven mad by the fate of her children.
At once, the air in the courtyard turned sharp and metallic. Men felt their skin begin to prickle. Hair rose on their arms and necks. They looked at one another as the taste of metal spread across their tongues and throats. And beneath it all, the floor stones seemed to shudder with gathering power.
Then, from the corridor she had passed only moments before, someone shouted.
“We found her!"
***