Chapter 25.1 - Atharost
From behind the ifrit three arrows soared into the room and planted themselves in the ifrit’s back. The demon howled and in a fury burst completely into flames again, snarling while it did. Whirling around, the living inferno roared and literally flew out into the hallway to slam into the culn archers that had dared attack it.
Trey just watched as fire streaked to the left of the hall, then to the right, blasts of yellow, orange and red light filling up the room from outside. He had a wave of relief hit him as he watched his mana bar slowly fill up. The wounds he’d received were now fully healed, and Rivia stopped her chant while nervously making her way over to where he sat.
“... What now?” Rivia asked shakily. The priestess was anxiety-stricken and obviously trying not to hyperventilate.
Meanwhile Trey to keep his head in the game. He snapped out of it with urging from Sithis and began to get up, then he took another look at Jerekka’s body.
Control Limit Slots: 4 of 4 used.
Trey’s Minions:
* Napoleon, Oblivion Imp, Level 6 (1 slot)(Liked)
* Talsh’Noc’Un Greatsword, Living Weapon (1 slot)(Content)
* Jerekka Zoz, Culn, Level 5 (1 slot)(Hated)
* Rivia Ahst, Culn, Level 2 (1 slot)(Terrified)
That worthless asshole had hardly helped at all and immediately died coming in. Now it would take days for him to respawn... Trey didn’t have that long. He would find another culn or maybe even a minotaur on the way out and force them into subjugation before he left.
“... Master?” Rivia asked again nervously. The young woman was shivering violently and Trey almost, ALMOST felt pity for her even after what her people had done to the prisoners he'd helped escape.
“You are dismissed, slave.” Trey said a moment later, using his minion’s call spell to channel the dark magic and sent her to the nether realm with a pentagram of red glowing light. A second later and she was gone. Another second later and Trey had unbound Jerekka from his minion contract.
“You have dissolved Jerekka Zoz’s minion contract. Your culn minion is now free from your service, but because he is currently dead his soul will be sent to the void.”
Trey shrugged indifferently. The guy had been no different from the other douchebags who had eaten the humans and dwarves alive. He couldn’t care less about some jackass NPC’s soul going to ‘the void,’ wherever the hell that was.
Control Limit Slots: 3 of 4 used.
Trey’s Minions:
* Napoleon, Oblivion Imp, Level 6 (1 slot)(Liked)
* Talsh’Noc’Un Greatsword, Living Weapon (1 slot)(Content)
* Rivia Ahst, Culn, Level 2 (1 slot)(Terrified)
Picking up Talsh’Noc’Un by the hilt and coming to the doorway, he was shocked by the trail of bodies left in the ifrit’s path. There were at least twenty of the corpses strewn all over the hallway, most of them being cooked into medium-well slabs of steak.
The sound of fighting was continuing further down the passage and back where he’d come from earlier towards the feasting hall. Cursing his luck at having to go back through the battle to escape, he began creeping forwards along the charred stone floor at a slow but steady pace.
He had to hand it to Talsh’Noc’Un though, the sword’s intuition about summoning that creature was right on the money.
Coming to a stop at the nearby bend in the passage, he inched his face across to get a good look at what was happening. Unfortunately for him, this meant a face full of flames from a misfired spell when he poked his head out at the exact wrong time.
Screaming and swatting at the flames along his head and face Trey rolled around on the ground until they eventually died out. Second and third degree burns peeled off his skin in patches and his left eye was done for. Tears streamed down and he began to hyperventilate for a minute or two, not having realized how painful burning to death would be until that very moment.
Booms and echoes, screams and battlecries sounded off with flashes of light that told him the ifrit was still very much alive. Not that he hadn’t expected it anyways because of the fire that’d just charred him.
While he got up, he heard someone or something screaming; and it was getting nearer. In particular - his horns felt the vibrations of something big running his way. Ignoring the pain of his burned face as best he could and pressing up against the wall, he waited until the screaming was directly on top of him. Readying the greatsword his eyes widened in surprise as a large minotaur completely alight with flame rammed into the stone wall to his right, flailing about in uncontrollable wailing while it tried to unsuccessfully put the fires on its hairy body out.
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He took the opportunity at hand and brought his greatsword down on the creature, ending its suffering, but he had to be careful not to step too close to the corpse lest he get burned again.
“You have gained XP.”
Trey twitched with pain. Turning around the corner, he was thankful that no flames hit him again, and it took him a bit of squinting with his remaining good eye to take in all of what was going on.
The ifrit was cornered.
Bolts with connected steel wires and numerous nets littered the feasting hall. Burning, turned-over tables were plenty and many more corpses littered the ground than when Trey had first left this room. Some of the bolts were embedded in the ifrit’s legs, chest, or right arm - having skewered the demon all the way through and holding him there so he couldn’t fly. The wires were attached to modified crossbows that five of the culn were grappling with. A steel wire net had also been thrown over the ifrit and heavy lead balls weighed it down to further slow it.
Meanwhile, the ifrit was screaming in an enraged fit of violence: firing out as many blasts of flame as it could, but Trey could tell it was running low on mana. The original blast of fire Trey’d first seen was immensely stronger than the smaller ones emitted now, and the roaring inferno that had encompassed the ifrit’s body was now down to a smoldering flicker.
“FORWARD!” a culn soldier roared behind a tower shield in phalanx formation with ten others like him. Five in front, five in back. They pressed forward into the flames, over the bodies of their fallen comrades and minotaurs to slowly advance despite the flames crashing against their defenses. Behind the front line, the soldiers used their own tower shields to protect the tops of the front line while readying their spears to rush in on the ifrit when chance permitted.
Now the ifrit was panicking, trying to fire off at the culn holding crossbows but for the mostpart missing, only scorching the tops of their heads or bottoms of their feet as the archers kept a wary cover and did their best to hold onto their bolted cords. If they let go, the ifrit would be free to fly again. That, in turn, would spell disaster for the culn.
So there stood Trey, behind the culn lines and watching in amazement at the battle between the two sides. On the opposite end of the room stood the previously hidden entrance, still ajar and inviting him in.
But he had to cross the battle to get there.
“GET READY!” the leader of the culn squad yelled out to the acknowledgement of the others in the phalanx. “WE CIRCLE IT AND KILL IT FROM ALL SIDES! KEEP YOUR SHIELDS UP AND SPEAR THAT BASTARD! GO NOW!”
Battle cries sounded again as the culn broke formation and charged. They all still kept their shields up but they broke ranks to begin surrounding the ifrit and hoisted their spears to run it through. One, two and then three culn soldiers fell screaming to a cindered death before the other 9 collapsed in on it.
“CULN WORMS!” the ifrit screeched as the foremost of them ran him through. The spear entered the ribcage at a downward angle and exited out his back. The look of shock on the ifrit’s face was apparent, even with the five bolts lodged in his body, but he took the hit in stride and whipped his tail around to impale that same culn warrior’s hand.
Then another spear shoved itself forward and pierced the ifrit’s shoulder. The ifrit cried out, this time in horror as yet another spear arced across his back to leave a wide bleeding gash. The flames along the ifrit died down further as yet ANOTHER spear shot forward into his gut, staying there while the culn wielding the weapon whooped and hollered victoriously.
“DIE, IFRIT!” screeched the soldier who had designated himself leader of the culn charge. But when he finally brought back his own spear to thrust, the culn soldier went limp. Without a word he fell to the floor, a deep gash in his cervical spine and a greatsword planted halfway into his exposed back.
Trey’d been able to assassinate three of the culn archers before the other two had noticed, and he’d taken the initiative amidst their warning cries to rush the frontline fighters. Yanking his greatsword out of the culn’s chainmail armor, he grinned widely. His mana was halfway regenerated now, allowing him to cast three consecutive chaos balls.
They exploded on impact, shattering one enemy’s face and breaking another’s shield along with the arm that held it. The third chaos ball missed completely, the soldier dodged and cursed at Trey before counterattacking with his spear.
The attack never hit though. Trey vanished in a puff of shadows to reappear right behind him, lodging his greatsword squarely into the man’s armored skull. It was a particularly cheap move that worked readily enough, shadowstepping behind an enemy’s back to counterattack, but Trey didn’t care about the means as long as the outcome was favorable.
The thin layer of linked steel wasn’t enough to keep the warrior alive. Blood splattered and the culn’s eyes rolled back from shock, his body dropping limply to the ground with his cervical spine severed.
“You have gained XP.”
“KILL HIM!” yelled another warrior, yanking a throwing axe from where it was attached his hip just when he was tripped by Trey’s tail wrapping around his ankle. The ifrit immediately took it upon himself to pour what remaining mana he had into another blast of flames, baking the culn alive inside his metal shell with a sadistic grin now that the tower shield had dropped.
That being said, even as the ifrit grinned maliciously, Trey could tell the light was leaving its eyes. The movements were sluggish and bleeding, gaping wounds littered the ifrit’s body. It looked at Trey with mild curiosity in its dying moments, and was going in and out of consciousness while more of the culn fell around him.
Another whip of Trey’s tail disarmed one of the remaining culn soldiers, flinging the spear away and pulling the demon man downwards just as Trey’s foot came up to spartan kick the guy’s face. The culn’s neck snapped back and stunned him so that when the claws came for his neck - he couldn’t react fast enough.
“You have gained XP.”
Now there were only two archers and a single spearman alive. Cursing and tossing aside their cabled bolts that held the ifrit, they exchanged them for free flying bolts with lacerating edges.
Sithis internally reveled when he accurately fired a smaller chaos ball out in Trey’s peripheral vision to slam into the archer’s weapon, breaking the crossbow along with the culn’s hands in an agonized wailing fit. During that same moment: Trey was doing battle with the last of the culn soldiers, the man was losing ground and he stepped back in a panic. Each strike let off with Trey’s sword was deflected by the heavy steel shield, leaving dents in the shield’s metal but it was still holding out.
Trey tried the demon’s left flank and rushed him only to have a bolt land squarely across his ear. If he hadn’t reeled back his head in time he would have been killed instantly. Instead, it just took the entire ear off and left a streak of bloody laceration across the entire left side of his face.
“DAMN IT! Not again!” Trey yelled as the culn archer laughed. The spearman capitalized on the opportunity and in a strange move that Trey didn’t really understand: rammed his shield into Trey’s exposed front.
It wasn’t the act itself that Trey didn’t understand, it was the faint green glow the culn’s body left off before it concentrated power into the soldier’s shield. It was the discharge that blow gave off when it made contact, and it was the enormous force behind an attack that didn’t look like it could’ve downed Trey at all.
Trey’s body was flung crashing through a burned table behind him, and the impact stunned him for a moment. He saw the spear coming for him as he looked up and back-flipped, returning immediately after to do a spinning roundhouse kick - courtesy of his martial arts training.
‘HAHAAAA!!!! STYLE POINTS!’ Sithis laughed internally as the culn’s neck snapped at the impact, leaving the archer’s mouth gaping in astonishment. It didn’t take a heartbeat later for the last remaining culn soldier, the archer, to get up running and screaming for help.
“Your hand to hand combat has increased by 1 level. You have gained XP. You have gained 1 overall level.”