Four days later, and the last stronghold of kobold kind was packed to the brim with refugees. It was loud. No more than six hundred kobolds yet existed in the caves after repeated defeats while Tyr furiously brainstormed a way to pluck himself out of this mess. They were cowards, these creatures. Most of them, that is. Their inherent fear of the humanoid monsters he'd affectionately decided to call 'tuskers' certainly didn't help. Kobold hunting strategy was a swarm game, one that didn't work against opponents neither their frail blades, claws, or teeth could bleed.
Tyr didn't understand how his magic had gotten stronger, it just had. Quite a bit, actually, though it still paled in comparison even to some noble children he'd seen cast before. These kobolds had begun to call him something in their native tongue, which surprisingly was not common, that roughly translated to 'hot hands man'. Named for those same hands had killed no less than six tuskers. The problem was, there were so many of them. He'd expected a few dozen, but during the last attack well over a hundred of them had appeared. If not for their complete lack of intelligence, they would have swept the caves free of kobolds. Recently Tyr had been throwing the eyeless fish at them like makeshift grenades, and the scrum that erupted from their attempts to eat said fish did more damage than the kobolds did.
Kobold weapons were incapable of piercing tusker hides. Their teeth were sharp, but it was clear that after generations of vegetarianism that their bodies were weakened. They had to be – otherwise they never would have made it all the way down here. They bred fast, but that seemed to be their only racial quirk worth a damn. Besides Luk and two other 'shaman' of weak magical ability, they were worthless in all respects. He didn't hate them though, he saw their struggle and made it his own. As it stood, whenever he tried to scout or leave the blocks surrounding the 'den', tuskers were on him. Faster than his horse, which had unfortunately perished during the last attack. What was left of it found its way into their bellies. Those monsters were voracious, eating anything and everything that looked edible, including the saddle on said horse.
His shame was exacerbated by the fact that the kobolds didn't blame him whatsoever for violating their long held treaty, nor their defeats. Foisting some savior or messiah complex on him and declaring him the 'greatest kobold to ever live'. Their 'hero', the hot hands man. Tyr was no stranger to fleeing when the situation didn't favor him, but he didn't stylize himself as a coward either.
I can't abandon them. He sighed. If he could, perhaps he would, but he couldn't. On foot, he'd never made it more than two blocks away from the submerged nest of theirs without being chased down. Thus, he projected his impotency onto his twisted sense of honor and remained to 'help'. To win, really, all Tyr could think about was how much better than these creatures he was. The pressure in his skull building when he considered the fact that he was being outplayed.
This was his last shot at doing something real before he made a game of lopping off his own limbs and leading the appetite obsessed trolls on a wild goose chase on his way out of this hellhole.
They waited in the streets. Ranged about with every available kobold taking position behind hastily formed barricades with those crossbow esque weapons. Nearly as long as the creatures were tall, they required a lance-like couching in piles of sand and rubble to keep them steady. The tuskers came as expected, first by the handful and then by the dozen. Lining up conveniently on one end of the street and providing a similarly convenient line of fire. Cunning at times, but not smart. Not even those capable of speech. Simple brutes, and that was how they'd die. Well... They'd die, or the kobolds would. Tyr would continue existing in whatever sort of misery they'd put him in. He wondered at the limits of his ability to heal and if it would outpace the stomach acid in their gut. A terrifying fate, something that kept him up at night.
“Ready go. Ready go. Ready chief. Ready.” At first they'd balked at the concept of touching these 'sacred' artifacts, but down here – Tyr's word was law. As their great hero and chosen one of their great 'gods', whatever gods were worshiped by these creatures – it hadn't taken long to convince them that their salvation lay in the uh... The 'gifts' their 'gods' had left them. It was the only plan he could come up with, combined with the other apparent weapons they'd found, two of the significantly longer and sturdier tubular artifacts were carried on Tyr's shoulders. Those that were far too heavy for kobolds to operate.
Tuskers came, forming up in a disorganized mob, waiting impatiently until some unheard cue called them forward into a pelt down the perfect straight street. Their red eyes glinting balefully under the flickering yellow light of the mana crystals moored to the buildings overhead. The kobolds began to panic. He could see in their eyes, the will or perhaps instinctual need to flee and cower that was so common among their kind. But they held, for now at least. Waiting, twitching uncomfortably and shaking like leaves in the wind, their fingers clenched to the trigger mechanism of their arms.
“Fire!” Tyr cried out, flinching as kobolds were blown off their feet by the incredible recoil of the bizarre cannons. Turning the street into a storm of metallic projectiles that turned the leading ranks of the tuskers to powder and mist. Their aim was nothing special, but with so many of the things pointed in the same direction – it reaped a fearsome toll on the enemy. The noise alone rolled like thunder throughout the city, completely drowning out the roar of their unfortunate enemy.
Those kobolds in the first ranks lay bruised and battered on the ground as their weapons were hoisted awkwardly by the next. Fired again, and so on and so forth through the third and four ranks. Tyr couldn't hear a damn thing, unsure if his own commands were reaching the lizards. Thankfully, their well drilled exercise of picking up after the fallen was carried out reasonably well. All was death, on both sides. Not all kobolds were killed by the recoil but many were left with broken bows, their maws distended in agony. Tyr could not hear them, but he could feel it. All of that pain condensed in one place was driving him mad.
These weapons were not enough to kill the tuskers outright with a single shot. Few died, truly, only those who had taken a bolt to the skull seemed to stay down the first time, but that wasn't the whole plan. There was a liquid, a liquid the kobolds had discovered and dipped their torches in before leaving their home to light those paths where the mana crystals had broken. It reeked with a unique tang so fierce Tyr could literally taste it in this mouth. Everything in this place seemed to use it to some degree. Like pitch or lantern oil but clearer and far more reactive. That was the goal, the handheld cannons were only to slow the beasts and pack them nice and tight.
Behind the wild and disorganized mass of tuskers tripping over one another in their efforts to approach the kobolds still firing on them, Luk and his gang sat in wait. Closer. Closer. Closer until Tyr could smell the press of filthy bodies. He prepared to depress the firing mechanism on his own artifact with a soundless roar to match the beating in his skull.
He hadn't known what to expect. The prince had observed these devices at length and confirmed that they did indeed have a capacity for repeat firing. But the ones on his shoulder, he hadn't tested them overmuch. There were too few of them, which must be some indication of their value. Some wondrous mechanism that fed rounded cartridges into the chamber the cannon barrel, something far beyond the capacity of any of mans engineers. His weapons, or whatever they were, possessed no such thing, these were long tubular cannons with both ends open, and he did not possess any additional ammunition for them. Those blocky slabs of metal like the smaller cannons had, slotted into the bottom of the stock. These had one shot each based on his admittedly lacking knowledge, and that was it, no more to be found.
Taking a stance and preparing for the recoil, he pointed the arrow at the front of the devices toward the charging enemy and fired. Contrary to his expectations, there was barely any recoil at all. None of the shoulder smarting force generated by the smaller artifacts. There was a 'whump' that he felt throughout his body, and two tongues of flame as long as he was tall belched from the tubular internal mechanisms to loose two identical ovoid projectiles the side of Samson's fist. A kobold unlucky enough to be too near the back end of the thing was caught by the backdraft of the device, crushing its upper torso and leaving a charred mess of a corpse cartwheeling through the air.
The first punched clean through the chest of a tusker before tumbling and landing on the street without much of an effect. Tyr felt his heart sink. He'd expected more, but at least they had the--
BOOM.
He had forgotten the second, so focused on the first that he was struck full in the face by the incredible force of the resulting explosion. Everywhere was hot. A veritable firestorm had combusted the bizarrely liquid and turned the place into a charnel house of melted flesh and wailing tuskers. Half of Tyr's body was ripped to shreds, sending wave after wave of incredible agony pulsing through his mind. Even so, he was conscious enough to see what he had wrought. These things were some kind of alchemical bombs. Coupled with the 'fire water' that had been left coating the street and in basins all around the edges, the effect it had far outstripped his expectations.
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As soon as the flames from that bomb had burst into being, the entire street had been bathed in violent crimson, coating everything. Even some of the walls of the buildings forty feet in the air were ablaze, glass melting and chunks of burnt meat falling from the sky with wet slaps on the ground below.
For once, the inherent cowardice of the kobolds had been a boon. If they had not fled before the approaching enemy, most of them would be dancing balls of flame just like those tuskers. It spread and followed the lines of firewater to the horseless carts and combusted them as well, nearly a third of the city was lit up in a crimson wash of ash that rained down from above. Tyr sat, still aflame, split between awe and terror. Whoever these people had been, the ancients who had built this city – he failed to understand how they had simply disappeared. Had there truly, once, been such a powerful enemy that had rendered this horrific technology impotent? The prince hoped not. Humanity wouldn't stand a chance, and neither would the other races present on all of the continents combined.
The power to turn aside armies with the press of a button, to crack and wound the earth with naught but their simplest and most common weapons... The artifice of gods, the violence of devils. These old things that had taken the art of war and stripped all the art away. Masters of death.
He waited until the flames crisping his flesh died down and took two of the smaller cannons, stringing one across his back and hobbling through the burnt mess of a street. They didn't hurt him, or at least not as much as he'd expected, the flames. Perhaps his nerves were dead to sensation, all he could feel was heat but no searing agony. A burnt, fleshless, naked reaper that stalked the firestorm and ended those creatures that had avoided death. So lost in their wild mania and fear that those few who had not ignited could barely move, staring at the flames in terror as he placed a bolt right between their eyes to send them to their end.
He felt it. Something. Impossible to describe. Intoxicating. Like a string being plucked, every death seemed to strike a chord that brought a symphony just beyond his minds eye into clearer focus. But it was never enough. Tyr could feel it. He could kill thousands and beyond and it'd never be enough, a hunger not for blood or murder – but for... For life? His very spirit suckled greedily at it. There was no pride or superiority in his thoughts or movements anymore. This time, he was the winner, but winning no longer matter. He hungered for more and more and more, the corpses piling up around him.
He wanted more. There was never enough.
In a haze, he stalked the streets of the city. For hours? Days? Weeks? He didn't know, but the fire clung to him. When it dimmed, he simply soaked himself again with the firewater and set himself ablaze. He didn't know why. It was alien to him, the intelligence driving his actions. He wanted to kill and burn and maim and dive into the ecstasy that only the killing could bring him. Like the finest wine he'd ever tasted, he couldn't stop. Addicted. Addicted like the poppy addicts on the outskirts of the capital who stayed in the basements of brothels until they ran out of money or died – whichever came first.
They fled from him, those tuskers. Feared him. Not him though, but the fire he was blanketed in. Fear like nothing Tyr had ever seen in a man. Men had fear, but this was primal and animalistic, fear that killed the mind and froze the limbs. Unable to think or act, perhaps, but some of these things – those smaller than the others – would die even before he touched them. Their minds breaking and leaving them as naught but drooling vegetables when he buried whatever bits of bronze metal or crushed rock he could find in their skulls. Long gone was his supply of bolts, but that didn't stop his march. Something about the death. It scared him, or would've, if he'd had a thought in his mind besides seeking more of it. That invisible hand at the back of his neck that pushed the burning man forward. Insane in his desire to see the work done, to annihilate this race once and for all. It screamed at him, named them impure. Abominations of the flesh that should not be.
Why? He couldn't know. No kobolds died at his hand, those yet uninjured enough to walk followed, chanting his name. Something about this simple action spurred him forward. They loved him for what he did, so he... Did. Killed their monsters, smashed their terrors and anxieties. Cast a torch on the fear and darkness that had ruled their lives. And they ate, devouring the charred remains of tuskers in his wake, hooting and cavorting with glee at the taste of it. Throwing away their unnatural custom and partaking in the flesh once more.
He was an implacable demon of scorched flesh and weeping scabs lurching through the burning city, an embodiment of everything they feared.
And then... Nothing. Just like the action of achieving his revenge, Tyr's mind settled and he felt empty again – the pain and exhaustion of the long time spent stalking the remnants of this strange race through the city. He was human after all, and though he had seemingly surpassed his limits several times over – he still had them. Collapsing, hungry, he joined the kobolds in tearing at the disgusting flesh of the tuskers. This continued against for an indeterminate period of time, following the food instinctively right to their camp. The center of the city and where most of tuskers had conglomerated, in a filthy pile of rubble and warrens dug in what soft soil remained in a place of steel and glass.
He killed them all, too. Only one. One left, resistant to the fire. Old beyond measure, it stared up at him in equal parts fear and revulsion. An unwillingness to accept the extermination of his race.
“We didn't want this.” It said. Soft, weak, unlike its kin. It hadn't and didn't want to fight. Had never wanted to fight. Their ancient leader. Whatever it was, wrinkled and riddled with cancerous tumors all over. Tyr could feel a wisdom in the thing, a wisdom that would indicate its life had ran long past the other members of its race, and perhaps even the primus' themselves. Perhaps even all humanity. It was old, a mass of twisted flesh too heavy to move of its own accord. “We just wanted to live, we just wanted to--”
Tyr buried a pipe in its skull, leaving it twitching and dying amidst the rubble. A warmth, like the heart of a sun burst in his breast. Lines to finish the tapestry of all he had wrought here were burnt into the sclera of his eyes. From the death and the celebration of the kobolds, Tyr could feel it. Feel everything. All of the pain and the suffering too. It whispered to him. Loathing. Regret. Something. Tyr didn't care, he wanted their lives and would have them. Not wanted. Needed, he felt a compulsion on him that transcended the wants and needs of a mortal men. Not to reap death, but to cleanse. To take the fears of the kobolds and grind them to dust. But why?
“Jakuul.” It moaned, this tusker warped beyond humanoid form with cancerous growths and tumors. “Jakuul.” It repeated. Again and again, no matter how many times Tyr beat the brassy pipe into its skull, it continued to speak that foul word. Jakuul. Jakuul. Jakuul. Interspersed with pleas to a 'Jurak', and he was gone.
Blackness. He was taken. Somewhere. Dragged through the rubble by a hand, thrown in a pile of loose limbs and burnt flesh, naked on the stone. Somewhere. He didn't know where, only that the being who had dragged him here was far stronger than him. Every attempt to resist was met with a harsh hand that rattled his skull and broke his bones repeatedly until he agreed to submit.
He woke in fits and starts, unaware of what had happened. Like a waking nightmare as his flesh melding together to return him to some relative state of normalcy. Everything hurt, and burned, and itched. But the pain... He was surprised to find that he didn't dislike it.
–
“He's been gone too long.” Samson concluded. Resolute. Regardless of the boys bizarre and unnatural powers, he regretted allowing him to leave without an escort. Suddenly, one day, the prince has disappeared without so much as a goodbye. To travel those mountainous lands in the winter was foolish, and the man had no idea what Tyr had been thinking. “I'm going after him. Tell me where he has gone.”
“I cannot.” Thomas, that old man who seemed to have been training Tyr. He refused to answer their requests to search for the prince, insistent that it was necessary. “He is alive, and will return shortly. That is all you need to know.”
“As you have said for weeks now, you dumb geezer.” Samson was stoic, but Mikhail was angry. They'd sought answers many times, and the old man refused to provide. Rorik joined them, threatening a banishment or exile from the village only to be met with apathy. He'd known Thomas for many years, but had never expected him to be so strong. All three men, with Tor nervously watching alongside Fennic from the rear, lay panting and bruised in the snow. Three against one, and they'd lost in as many strikes as their number. Thomas was too strong, too fast, clearly more than just a simple lumberjack.
“Please tell us.” Rorik pleaded. He respected martial might and always would, but... “This is our prince we are talking about! If something happens to him, the village would be--”
“Be at ease. You'll see him soon. I would not allow him to die a meaningless death, he is on the path all of his kind must take. A crossroads, facing a decision.”
Fennic spat. Something was unnatural, perhaps even magical about this old man. Not in the sense of a mage, but he'd never seen someone of such an advanced age beat three strong men down with nothing but a stick. He had an inherent distrust for the mage, the apostate, and the sorcerer. No less displeased with the lack of answers than Mikhail, he would wait regardless. There was nothing to be done, though he cursed himself for not following the boy whether he commanded against it or not. From Fennic's perspective, Tyr was really just that – a boy. A boy and a prince, privileged and selfish and headstrong, but within the norm of those faults expected of the youth.
He was lucky. As they all were, even those dogs who'd chosen desertion to take advantage of freedom they did not deserve. Given to them by the prince. A good lad who had helped harvest alongside him to aid the villagers. Even a pregnant woman. Honorable, albeit misguided, Tyr did not deserve to die alone and frostbitten in the mountains.
Fennic would wait. He'd wait for the return of the prince, forever if need be. The gods had chosen him for a purpose, he was sure of it. They'd wait, and they'd slap the boy around if he refused to apologize. Two months. Two months without word, through the snows and sleet of winter passing. They waited.