The people of Atra Oblor, whose investment into religion and belief in their god borders on psychotic fanaticism, no doubt believed that their god would deliver them through the trials and tribulations they faced in the form of the powerful beasts. With the wholehearted belief that their god would grant them a power that would deliver them through their troubles, it is of no shock to me that their magical power manifested in the form of Gifts that awaken in their time of greatest need.
Excerpt: A History of Magic – Galen Cletus
Erin crouched just inside the treeline, cataloguing every guard patrolling the wall and mentally noting their positions and weapons. Ashe crouched beside her, trying to remain unobtrusive as Erin surveyed the camp. “So, what do I do?” Ashe whispered to Erin, as quietly as he was able to. Erin flinched and hoped that none of the guards had hearing that was enhanced enough to hear Ashe. Erin’s father would have been able to hear his whisper from the wall, as clearly as if it had been shouted right next to him, if not clearer as shouting tended to blur words together.
“For now, just stay here. Once I get up to the wall, I need you to try and sneak inside. Once you’re on the other side of the wall, I’ll be as big of a distraction as I can. You just focus on trying to get everyone you can reach to safety and let’s hope that they aren’t stupid enough to try and take on any of the guards.”
Ashe nodded, “Got it.”
Erin moved out of the bush, running straight for the wall and being spotted nearly immediately by the guards patrolling it, “Hey, look!”
All of the guards reacted to Erin’s presence quickly, pointing to Erin and shouting out for the alarm to be rung. Drawing their weapons, they assumed a stance ready to try and fight Erin but, even from her lower perspective, Erin could see that they were only moderately trained; enough to handle any normal person or poorly trained thug, but they hadn’t received any extra training since she was last at the camp.
Erin jumped up with a burst of fire from her feet, launching herself high into the air. Eyes wide with shock, none of guards were able to react in time as Erin jumped onto the wall, fists first. Before making it past the barrier that suppressed power usage inside the camp, Erin used one last surge of fire from her feet, boosting her and adding power to her punch. Erin’s fist slammed into the leather chest plate of one of the guards and, with her body reinforced by her advancement to the Viscount Stage, Erin’s fist was barely even bothered by the leather and there was no trace of abrasion as her knuckles deformed the hard leather.
Erin paid no attention to the punched guard as he flew off the wall, likely with some cracked ribs and probably some more broken bones after he landed. Erin immediately ducked, swirling around with a sweep of her foot to wipe people’s feet out from under them. All of the guards surrounding Erin fell to the ground with thuds and shouts of alarm. Wrenching a blade from one of the fallen guards, Erin stabbed three of the guards with quick jabs to the throats before they could get up and fell back, using their corpses as obstacles, before the others could get to their feet.
Erin glanced behind her, taking in the guards rushing towards her from other places on the wall, and judged how much time she had remaining before they’d reach her. Stepping forward, Erin slid her foot under one of the corpses and flung it upwards with a grunt of effort, towards the guards that had just stood up. Yelling in surprise at the sudden corpse flying towards them, the guards blocked with their hands which was just enough time for Erin to step in and slash at the gaps between pieces of their armour that had been left for mobility.
Sharp enough to cut into flesh, Erin left shallow wounds on two of the four remaining guards, the two that had been close to Erin, and Erin had cut the tendon in the back of one of the guards’ legs, making them nearly collapse as they had to support all of their weight with their right leg.
Erin ducked under a stab from the guard she hadn’t hamstrung and grabbed their sword arm, twisting it to lock their elbow and striking their wrist with the pommel of her sword. As the bone broke and they dropped their sword, Erin released their elbow, catching the falling sword and sending them stumbling back into their compatriots with a kick.
Immediately, Erin dodged by rolling forward, into the space she’d created, and she avoided a spear throw aimed at the back of her head. Instead of hitting Erin, it took the guard with the broken wrist through the chest and emerged from the back of their breastplate. Quickly, Erin lunged up from the ground, over the collapsing body, and took the two remaining guards from the first cluster through the bottom of their chins, which were only protected by leather straps that Erin’s strength was enough to overcome.
Dead before Erin had even removed her blades, the bodies slumped to the wooden walkway and Erin whirled around to face the oncoming assailants. One axe, two spears, and a sword. Erin needed to avoid the axe entirely, or else it would smash right through her swords and would kill her. The spears, Erin would need to take out first or get inside the range of. If she didn’t do that, she’d be peppered by annoying stabs as she tried to fight the others.
Rather than deal with the spears, who were behind the others, Erin decided to try a risky manoeuvre. It was something she’d practiced many times, of course, but one that even the slightest mistake in could spell her doom. Erin jumped over the bodies in front of her, charging the four guards that were about twenty metres away. That was five metres gone, and now the guards were stopping to face her charge. Another five metres put Erin just within range of the guards, who had been moving towards her, and Erin stopped abruptly, jumping to the side and spinning to dodge a spear. Erin sailed over the edge of the wall, letting go of a sword and grabbing onto the waist-high edge that lined the wall so people didn’t fall off. Hoping that the wood would hold underneath her momentum and weight, Erin felt the weight on her shoulder as she swung herself around the front guards and collided with the shocked back guards, feet first.
Smashing into the sides of the turning guards, Erin pushed the two spear wielders off the edge of the wall and, as they drug their spears of the wall with them, the axe-wielder was yanked backwards, into the lip on the edge of the wall, making him easy to deal with. Still in the air, Erin threw a foot out, into the face of the axeman, even as she let go of the wall’s lip. Erin’s momentum snapped the neck of the axe-wielder and sent their body over the edge of the wall. Erin deflected a blow, even as her foot landed on the other edge, and then stabbed forward. Desperately, the swordswoman only just managed to deflect the stab but Erin’s fist crashed into their solar plexus, doubling them over as their diaphragm spasmed. Erin, her motion arrested, fell to the floor on her chest. Rolling over, Erin stabbed upwards and took the woman in the face. Letting go of her stolen sword, Erin rolled like a log as the woman fell down, moving out from under the falling swordswoman.
As the corpse fell on its face, Erin heard the crunch of the sword’s hilt breaking the dead woman’s nose. Blood dribbled from the corpse onto the wood and Erin climbed to her feet, grabbing the sword from the fallen woman. Giving it a testing swing, Erin nodded as she felt the mildly unbalanced weapon. It felt much the same as the other swords she’d stolen, not that she’d had time to preparatorily swing those.
From both directions, a large troupe of guards was running along the wall and Erin quickly took stock of the situation; she wasn’t going to be able to beat all of them at once. Groups of four, five, or even six guards she could do but anything more than that became dicey. If it had been personal combat, Erin would wipe the floor with all of them and barely break a sweat, but numbers had a quality of their own.
Instead, Erin would have to jump off the wall and kite them around, slowly thinning the numbers of the guards. Of course, she couldn’t jump to the outside of the wall. Even if she was a higher Stage than most of them, jumping down where they’d have access to their powers, even if she had access to hers, would be profoundly stupid. Instead, she’d have to do it inside the camp… where Ashe was trying to get everyone away from the guards and their attention. Erin resisted the urge to groan. It was better to save most people than none of them, Erin supposed.
With only about ten seconds until the guards reached her, Erin grabbed the sword that she’d dropped when swinging herself around the guards and jumped over the wall, rolling easily with the swords out so she didn’t stab herself. Running to give herself some space, Erin turned to face the guards, “Come and get me!” Erin taunted.
Immediately, one of the guards jumped over the side of the wall, trying to land with a roll but they didn’t know how to land safely with weapons in their hand. As they landed, they curled around the blade of their sword and the weapon bit into their chest and thigh and they screamed. As they did that, one of the other guards immediately shouted for them to run to the nearest staircase, which were periodically spaced out around the wall to offer easy access to the wall for the guards. Immediately, they scrambled for the staircase even as Erin walked alongside them, looking relaxed. Some guards tried to take advantage of Erin’s seeming nonchalance to try and throw a spear at her but she easily cut them out of the air, deflecting them with her swords.
As the guards reached the stairs, Erin readied herself to fight for her life once more, settling into a defensive stance, taking in the guards, and memorising their weapons. Clambering down the stairs, it seemed like the guards couldn’t reach Erin quick enough, and Erin smiled internally; their enthusiasm would be their downfall. The first guard to reach Erin had a spear and they attempted to stab at her with their weapon. Erin easily deflected the stab and cut her blades into both sides of the spear, using her swords to rip the spear out of the guard’s hands. Before Erin could deal with him, though, she twisted her arms around so the spear spun and knocked an incoming sword out of the way. Erin pulled her blades out of the spear’s shaft and punched the spear forward, her knuckles supported by the hilt of her sword.
While not that dangerous, the spear was enough to make the guards pause in their rush, tangling up in limbs and weapons, and that was all Erin needed. Immediately, Erin rushed forward on the attack and stabbed two guards through the eyes. Erin left her swords in their skulls, blood and eye fluid dripping down the blades, and grabbed the axe from one of the guards. Spinning around and using the falling bodies as shields, the axe cleaved through the next guard’s neck just as the bodies dropped far enough for Erin to swing the axe through. Head already falling off, Erin brought the axe across further, twisting it so that the blade faced the sky, and used its beard to deflect a sword coming towards her.
Erin used her foot to kick up one of the bodies and pushed it hard into the guards, stepping back as she did so. That was three guards down, and only about thirty to go. Erin slowly backed away, making sure to plant each foot as the guards approached her. After the initial rush, when three of them had died in nearly as many seconds, they were far more wary of Erin’s abilities. Erin would have thought that they’d learnt from how many guards she’d killed on the wall, but there was no substitute for witnessing something up close and they would have been angry from the deaths of their friends. Now, though, they’d seen how good Erin was and they were unwilling to just throw their own lives away.
Erin slowly backed up, making sure to keep all of her assailants in front of her, as the guards tried to encircle her. Two spears poked out at her, and she deflected one with the axe and dodged the other, making sure to keep her distance. Biding her time, Erin waited until one of the guards stepped close to stab at her and lunged forward. Immediately grabbing onto their spear and wrenching them towards her, Erin used their body as a shield when another guard swung at her. In the way of the axe, the guard died as the axe lodged in his neck and stuck into his vertebrae. Four.
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Erin pushed forward, throwing the body backwards and disarming the guard, and cleaved downwards with her axe. Punching through the leather armour, it lodged in the skull of the disarmed axeman and his neck broke from the force of the blow. Five. Letting go of the axe, Erin ducked and spun towards the nearest guard, towards the wall, as swords, axes, and spears came towards her. Grabbing the outstretched arm of the guard, who had lunged forward to stab Erin with their sword, Erin threw the guard over her shoulder, into the path of the oncoming weapons. Wary of the weapons penetrating through the entire body, Erin stepped backwards even as a spearhead dented the leather armour and an axe cleaved through the guard’s arm, sticking into the corpse’s ribs. Six.
Arrayed in front of Erin like a crescent-moon, six guards immediately tried to take advantage of her seeming lack of weapons, stepping forward to strike at Erin’s legs, body, and head all at once. Erin jumped back, even as she heard the creaking of a bow from the wall behind her. Erin turned her head and saw the archer from the corner of her eye. Quickly judging the trajectory of the arrow, Erin jumped up as she saw the fingers of the archer slip and reached her hand downwards. With a quick mid-air spin, Erin caught the arrow that had aimed to cripple the back of her knee and threw it back towards the archer as fast as she could. While her strength was prodigious, and far greater than a normal human, Erin was still unable to match the speed of a bow and the archer jerked back, a thin red line marring their cheek.
Unable to devote any more attention to the archer, however, Erin’s split attention nearly proved deadly when a spear lanced towards her neck and chopped off some strands of hair as she rolled backwards. Erin quickly moved a hand up to her head, checking on her spatial storage, and also taking five daggers out of the storage. Thinking Erin had reflexively checked her hair, the guards rushed forwards and five of the guards that had been arrayed in a semi-circle were met with daggers in their eyes. Eleven.
Hit in the brains, all of the guards fell to the ground mid-stride. Erin reached out as a spear-wielder fell and yanked it from their grip, spinning it around to face the last guard from the six and lunging forward, taking the guard under the armpit as they, themselves, tried to lunge at Erin with their sword. Piercing through the guard’s lungs and heart, the spear erupted from their other armpit with a spray of blood and organs, the guard’s internals impaled on the spear’s tip. Twelve.
Erin spun around to her left, away from the other group of guards and around to the front of the guard with the spear through his chest. With a powerful kick to the corpse’s chest, it sent a number of guards to the ground, the corpse’s arms splayed out like a grotesque scarecrow as the long spear bowled down a number of guards.
Erin use the time as a breather, positioning herself so that she could keep an eye on the archer on the walls, who had an arrow nocked but not drawn. Erin figured they’d take shots only when they saw moments of opportunity, especially after what Erin had done just before.
Erin recounted all of the guards, finding that 23 remained and that they were all extremely wary of approaching her. Immediately, Erin pulled a long, thin piece of wire from her belt – a garotte – and settled into a ready stance, waiting for the guards to move to her. Slowly, as they clambered to their feet, the guards rallied together, grouping even tighter than they had before to support each other. Erin nearly grinned like a crocodile; the way they were grouping up, she’d be able to take down clusters of people with every move and they’d obstruct each other’s movements.
Erin stepped to the side as an arrow came whistling at her, lodging itself in the ground. Erin shot the archer a glare and stepped forward as the guards rushed towards her. Immediately, Erin dodged a spearhead by millimetres and wrapped her garotte around the spear’s shaft. Squeezing her garotte, Erin cut through the spear’s shaft and the spearhead began to drop to the ground.
Erin disregarded the spearhead, even as it fell to the ground with a thump, and used the motion of snapping the spearhead off by pulling the garotte tight around the shaft to loop her hand around the spearwoman’s neck, drawing a loop around her skin and yanking it tight. With a small hop, the head of the guard fell off her body, even as it collapsed. Thirteen.
Erin’s hands continued moving, her ridiculously strong garotte being used to not just block swords and axes, but cut through them. Thankfully, it was made from a Duke Stage material called serpent steel, which would readily and easily bend to extreme degrees. This was unlike the weapons the guards were using, which were just made of regular steel and iron. Erin ducked and dodged around the flying blades as they were cut off from their respective handles before whipping her garotte around and releasing one side of it. Drawing her hand through the air in an arc, Erin’s garotte sliced through every head in line without slowing down, parting brains from their bodies and splitting vertebrae one by one. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.
Erin stepped back with a spin as the bodies fell towards her, using her garotte to slice an arrow down the middle and sending the halves into the ground on either side of her. Erin turned back to the guards, whom she’d killed more than half of, just in time to somersault backwards with an upwards kick, deflecting an incoming spear thrust. Lashing out with the garotte in the air, Erin’s garotte cleaved the man in two from his crotch to his skull and the two halves fell apart with a gruesome splash of blood, fluids, and organs that sprayed his fellow guards. Nineteen. Erin’s other hand reached up to her hair tie mid-air and grabbed a small throwing dart from the spatial storage. Twisting as she landed, Erin threw the dart directly towards the archer, piercing their chest and heart even as they nocked another arrow to their string. An extra for good luck.
Trying to take advantage of Erin’s distraction, the guards began to try and run away, dropping their weapons in fear for a boost of speed, but Erin couldn’t allow that. Erin pulled a bow from her spatial storage, the huge compound bow seeming like it had just emerged from Erin’s hair. Having been strung by Erin just before her attack, Erin nocked three large, heavy, armour penetrating arrows to the string and drew back, instincts kicking in. Near immediately, Erin smoothly released and the arrows shot out of the bow, which had a draw strength of over 150 kilograms and could only be properly utilised by people with magic. Erin immediately pulled another three arrows from her hair, sending them flying before the first ones had even hit their marks.
Each arrow hit its mark, punching through the guards’ leather armour and barely slowing down. Immediately, guards began falling as though they were puppets that had had their strings cut mid-step. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Erin fired and nocked another three arrows, which she shot at another three fleeing guards, while her second volley was still in the air. Erin continued the trend, firing off each set of arrows within a second of each other and just counting the number of dead guards until she fired a single round of two arrows at the last guards, just before they managed to make it behind a building. Erin breathed a small sigh of relief. While there had been a total of 50 guards in the camp, she knew that some of them slept through much of the day because they were assigned to the night shift, which left maybe five guards roaming around the camp, unless they were out searching the forest… which would mean that they’d find Sammath.
Shit. I can’t leave now. I have to get this over with quickly, or he’ll end up being killed. Erin immediately set out for the guard huts and found a number of them looking around in confusion as people began to cluster around the far wall. Erin smiled very, very lightly; Ashe was doing his job. Before they could categorise her as friend or foe, Erin took out all of the emerging, bleary, half-armoured guards. Erin, her garotte still in her hands, ran past the first guard and whipped it out towards him. With a small snick, the piece of wire sliced through his neck and his body and head both toppled to the ground.
Erin continued running, dodging a startled sword thrust from the next guard, and wrapping the garotte around her head like a noose; a very sharp noose that wouldn’t break your neck, just cut through it. Near immediately, the swordswoman fell and Erin flipped off her falling body, lashing out at two other guards with the garotte. From the air, Erin bisected their torsos with her whipping strand of serpent steel. Bones, muscles, and organs slid apart as they were cut in half, and they fell to the ground with wet splats.
That was four out of the ten guards that had emerged from various tents, and the remaining six were immediately on guard against Erin, trying to defend themselves against her. It didn’t matter. While she was in the air, Erin retied the garotte around her waist and pulled a huge sword from her spatial storage. Emerging from Erin’s flapping ponytail, the sword cleaved downwards with Erin’s momentum and the force of her fall. Stopping Erin’s flipping with its own motion, even the opposition posed by a raised sword did almost nothing to the massive blade. Knocked very slightly off-centre, the greatsword split the guard in twain with a wet, slurping sound and loud cracks as it met and shattered bone.
Erin landed heavily, the weight of her sword and momentum from her fall ensuring that her feet dug shallow imprints into the ground. Erin’s blade continued deep into the ground, making a large line into the soil that was nearly half the sword deep, impressive considering the blade’s hilt reached halfway up Erin’s head. Erin jumped up again, flipping herself over her sword and using that momentum to draw it back up from its hilt of soil and clay. Muscles straining to redirect her greatsword’s momentum as the blade camp up over her head, Erin swept the sword across the front of her body to smash away an axe with a huge clang, breaking the normal, wooden handle of the axe with the sheer force from the collision. Slowed but still moving, Erin whipped her sword around her body and slashed across the torso of the axeman in front of her, cleaving him into two halves with a grisly spray of blood and viscera.
As she did so, Erin marvelled at the strength her Viscount Stage body had, as she would never have been able to slice through people so easily at the Baron Stage. Of course, if Erin were to face someone at the Viscount Stage, it would be a little more difficult to cut through their body. As it was, though, the Baron Stage bodies of the guards provided just enough resistance to Erin’s extremely sharp sword to slow it down very slightly but nothing more. Even their armour, which was made of toughened leather, did barely anything as it came from mundane animals. When pitted up against the sharpness of Erin’s heavy sword that was made from, like the garotte, Duke Stage materials, they couldn’t do anything.
Erin, using her entire body as leverage and digging her feet further into the ground for extra stability, moved her massive sword around and set it on a path that would demolish her opponents guard, smashing apart their spear even if they managed to block, and continue through to slice them into two pieces. Releasing one hand from the massive sword and trusting in its momentum, Erin leant backward even as the sword continued to slice diagonally upwards and grabbed a second spear that was coming for her head.
With her feet dug into the ground and her right arm straining to keep her sword on its arc, Erin violently wrenched the spear up and over her head, around to her back. Cleaving through a guard, Erin’s greatsword wasn’t stopped and continued to arc around her body. Moving with this motion, Erin twisted her upper body around and forced the spear into the ground, Erin’s greatsword tracing a path through the air like that of the winter sun. Erin’s shoulder strained with the effort of keeping her greatsword on track and she had to dig her fingers into the dirt, around the spear shaft, to maintain the motion but it was worth it when her sword came around and bisected the spearman, Erin’s huge blade lodging itself in the dirt after cleaving the man in two.
Shoulders hurting slightly, Erin pulled her sword from the ground, twisting it and bracing the side of its blade against her body as she stepped forward and it collided with the sword swing that had aimed to hack into Erin’s chest. Erin’s blade quivered slightly but remained practically unmarred as the sword bounced back, ringing loudly. Erin spun around her upright blade, lashing out with a kick that sent the swordswoman stumbling and bringing the tip of her greatsword up at an angle, splitting the woman from her crotch to her shoulder. Splinters of her collarbone and splashes of blood flew from her body as Erin’s greatsword emerged from her flesh.
Using the greatsword’s momentum, Erin brought it’s hilt close to her hips and reset the huge sword’s position, balancing the tip of the blade above her head. Erin stepped backward to dodge a thrust from the last remaining guard, using her backwards step to let the sword begin falling down, and contorted her body around the withdrawing sword as she thrust forward with her greatsword, the massive blade easily reaching the guard and smashing apart the armour, cutting huge rents in the leather and splitting a massive hole in the guard’s chest from which blood splattered Erin and began to pump out. Falling down, the guard’s arm became limp and Erin stepped forward to push the corpse off her sword before it drug her blade to the floor. Pulling the large blade from the guard’s body, Erin let it hang down to the ground and let its tip touch the soil.
Panting lightly, Erin removed a cloth from her spatial storage drug her blade off to the side, finding some open ground where she could sit down without getting her clothes bloody. Sitting down easily, Erin rested the thick back of the blade on her thigh and began to wipe the blood and dirt off the blade. Wherever the cloth passed, dirt, blood, and pieces of organ and bones that had stuck to the sword’s surface fell off like they were trying to hold onto a perfectly smooth surface.
Erin slowly and methodically removed all the grime that covered her sword, making sure it was completely clean. When Erin was satisfied with the blade, she placed both it and the cloth back into her spatial storage and stood up, looking towards the head of the camp who was walking towards her. A Viscount Stage like Erin, she knew that he’d be the hardest person to fight in the entire camp, “It’s time to finish this.” Erin called out.
Large ranseur in his hands as he strode towards Erin, the camp head nodded, “I couldn’t agree more.”