J'VANN
A breach in the wall is a problem for both sides of a battle.
For the defenders it means their physical barriers are gone, and now the enemy has a real chance of pouring in, past their best defenses, to the unguarded areas where he can do much more damage than before and bring the entire defense down in ruinous defeat. On the other hand, for the attackers, while it does hold that opportunity it alsotends to hold a lot of very frightened and angry defenders with a widely diverse selection of sharp pointy things, hot shooty things, and various other articles designed to inflict maximum injury and discomfort and, while holding those things, they also know exactlywhere the people they want to use them on will be coming from.
J'vann and Sasha were not the first ones to reach the breach. The first ones to reach the breach were the burly villagers with a lot of auram in their bodies, the ones with half-formed Regalia. They carried melee weapons pulled from their professions, hoes and axes and huge industrial wrenches, and auram glowed off of them as they waded into the bandits. The slammed into the bandit line before the knights could, their auram-hardened skin tough enough to shrug off blows and dampen the effect of gunfire. Bandits fell in bloody, battered heaps until their line split open like an ugly, seeping wound to reveal two bandits in active Regalia.
The first was Kaddo, who Chaddim had pointed out to them earlier. The other was new. He was tall and thin limbed. His regalia was a chest plate, arm guards, and shin guards over a set of filthy tattered rags. He carried a long chain with a spiked ball almost as large as he was on the end. His face was thin and gaunt, as if he was starving, a ragged graying beard sticking out from it at odd angles. The ground around his feet was wet and gray, the color of rotting and death, as if his footsteps killed the grass nearby.
“Boss!” one of the retreating bandits said. “They sent the knights after us! They're too tough!”
“They sent two knights after you, you cowards!” Kaddo snapped at the bandit. “The rest of them are just farmers and shopkeepers with a little extra auram!”
“But boss--”
“Pathetic!” Kaddo grabbed the man around the throat and he began to choke and wither, like fruit dying on the vine. “At least this way you can still make yourself useful. The rest of you men! I'll clean the vermin out of the breach here, and Vogin is going to go make a few more! So stop being cowards and get back to killing!”
“Vermin am I?” a huge blonde man carrying a hoe sneered, raising his weapon up over his head. He brought it crashing down and a wave of auram shot out, digging a furrow in the ground that tore apart everything in its path...except for Kaddo, who stood completely unfazed as it passed through him.
“That's an impressive amount of auram you've got there!” Kaddo said appreciatively. “Oh, I mean thank you it's so thoughtful of you but I can't accept it, it's too much. Here, have it back.”
Beams fired from Kaddo's eyes, drilling a pair of holes through the farmer's torso. He fell gargling on his own blood. A dark skinned man with a wrench brought his weapon down on top of the bandit's head, also sparkling with aruam, but the bandit just smiled.
“No way!” the wrench wielder gasped in the few before the other bandit's enormous spiked ball slammed into him. He flew across the field dead, his corpse rotting away even as they watched.
“Everyone else deal with the regular bandits!” Sasha called out. “We'll handle these two!”
“Assuming you can handle us,” Kaddo chuckled. “Vogin!”
“Going!” Shouted the lean man with the rotting beard, running away from the melee to find a new section of wall to break down.
“I have him!” J'vann said, running after the bandit. Sasha didn't watch him leave, just raised her spear to square off against the gloating little man in the spiked Regalia.
As J'vann's stomach rolled. There was something wrong and rotten about the man, a tainted smell to the air around him. It even made J'vann's auram recoil.
The Verdant Knight was tall, and powerfully built. He was never going to be as fast as someone light and quick like Fann. But he was a knight, his body trained and suffused with auram, so his speed was far greater than a normal man's his size would have been. And his regalia was light. Barely any conjured metal on it at all, just a pattern of branchlike tattoos going up from his waist all the way to his cheeks. For a weapon he had conjured a massive wooden bludgeon, grown the same way he had grown a tree to place on a dead man's grave. He was used to carrying it, and it didn't slow him down.
But he wasn't as fast as Vogin. The bandit pulled ahead, swinging the enormous spiked ball over his head on its chain. Finally he threw it, set to crash a knew breech in the wall, but J'vann threw his log bludgeon like a javelin into the ball's path. When the log landed vines erupted from the ground, weaving together and catching the ball in midair. Vogin pulled the ball back and the vines rotted away. J'vann caught up and lifted his bludgeon again, squaring off against the bandit.
“That's a pretty neat trick,” Vogin said. “And a nice Regalia. What's its name?”
“I am the inheritor of the Verdant Regalia,” J'vann told him.
“Yeah I thought it would be something like that,” the bandit laughed. “Well it's a real damn shame. I guess you're just too unlucky not to die.”
Vogin threw the ball again. J'vann knocked it aside with his bludgeon, then swung the heavy weapon at Vogin's head. Vogin didn't bother to step aside. When the bludgeon struck him it exploded into pieces, now made of nothing but wet, rotten muck.
“I warned you,” the bandit grinned. “I was the worst opponent you could possibly have met. My Blight Regalia rots anything that grows the moment they touch.”
J'vann held out his hands an a green sprout glowed into being in his left palm. It grew between his palms into a vine, with thickened and grew until it had become a new log-bludgeon for him to wield.
“Rot is a part of life,” J'vann said. “The green always regrows again, stronger the next time. As long as I hit you, I can make an endless number of these weapons.”
“It doesn't matter how many weapons you've got,” Vogin twirled the chain over his head. “If they're all useless, now does i!”
He threw the ball at J'vann again. The knight leaped to the side, dodging the weapon, but something in Vogin's grin made him pause.
The wall!
J'vann turned back towards the ball, but it wasn'tflying into the wall and creating another breach. The bandit had pulled it back, so just as J'vann turned it slammed into him. The spikes dug into his sides and chest, leaving deep, bleeding holes. His bludgeon rotted away as he picked himself up off the ground.
“Fooled ya!” Vogin laughed, swinging the ball again. “Pretty soon those wounds will rot you from the inside out.”
“That problem lies in the future,” J'vann said, summoning another bludgeon. “For now, I have sworn to stop you.”
He slammed the flat end of his bludgeon into the ground. The grass at Vogin's feat erupted with sharp-tipped stalks like thick bamboo spears that stabbed for the bandit's gut. Vogin leaped back away from the blades.
“Well if that's the case,” Vogin said, “It's gonna take a lot more than you've shown me so far!”
Vogin threw the ball at J'vann again, who knocked it aside with his bludgeon. He then tossed the rotting log away and summoned another.
“May I ask you why?” J'vann asked.
“Because I'm a tougher son of a bitch than you'll ever be,” the bandit sneered.
“That is not what I meant,” J'vann shook his head. “Why all of this? Why come to bring death to these people? Because they defied you? But why steal from them at all? Your Regalia truly is powerful. There are places which could use that power, for more than battle and carnage Places it could do great good. Why be a bandit?”
“That's a stupid question!” Vogin snarled.
“It is not a stupid question just because you do not have an answer,” J'vann said. “And it would be foolish to die simply because you never thought to ask it.”
“You think I'm gonna die?” Vogin laughed.
“I think you fight a great many battles for very little purpose,” J'vann said. “In any one of those battles, you could die. You would risk death without a reason? Or worse, without knowing the reason?”
“You getting all mystical on me now?” Vogin scoffed. “Hoping I'll have some kinda religious experience and let you go? I'm not risking one damn thing.”
“Allow me to correct that assumption,” J'vann said. He slammed his bludgeon into the ground again. Vines erupted from the ground and shot not at Vogin, but at his spike ball, wrapping around it like tentacles. They wriggled into every imperfection, cracks appearing between the spikes as the vines wrestled with the metal weapon. Even though they rotted as fast as they grew they were making headway, and as if the ball were fighting back it rolled across the ground.
Vogin was too stunned and confused to move before it was too late. His own chain wrapped around his arms, pinning them to his sides.
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“Huh!?” he looked down at his own body. J'vann was moving. Blood dripped from his wounds as he leaped into the air, raising the tree trunk bludgeon high above his head and bringing it down on Vogin's head with a thunderous crack. It exploded in rotten pieces, but the bandit fell back with a bleeding nose.
“You moved at the last second,” J'vann said, summoning another bludgeon. “If you had not, that blow would have cracked your skull open. As it is, I believe it is likely that you have a concussion.”
“Yeah alright,” Vogin snarled, climbing to his feet. “I'll admit, you rang my bell. But it's the last chance you're gonna get!”
The ball had won its battle against the vines. It was cracked, but still solid. Vogin swung it over his head and sent it crashing into J'vann's side. J'vann blocked with his bludgeon, but it was useless. The enormous log shattered into rotten splinters, and the ball continued into his side. There were ugly snapping noises from his left leg and arm, and he began to bleed from fresh holes punctured in his side and shoulder. The knight let out an ugly yell of pain.
But it hadn't been for nothing. As the bludgeon cracked open vines erupted out of it, wriggling into the cracks left by the last batch and shattering the spiked ball to pieces. J'vann stood, panting heavily. His left leg was bent at an unnatural angle, barely supporting his weight. His left arm hung uselessly, ugly bruising hinting at breaks in at least two places. Blood seeped from at least a dozen holes where the spikes had punctured his flesh.
“You have lost...” J'vann panted, “....your weapon. The fight...” hahh, hahhh,“is over.”
“You think I need that thing to kill you?” Vogin roared, closing the distance between them. “That thing's just a bonus.My Blight Regalia will rot your ugly carcass!”
He slapped the palm of his hand against J'vann's chest. After a few moments he tried to pull away, but J'vann's right hand grabbed his wrist, holding him in place.
“This feels wrong!” Vogin said. “This isn't right! I can feel it...I can feel it growing,I can...”
“The Verdant Regalia was not made with human auram,” J'vann said as the veins in Vogin's hand began to wriggle and pulse. “Or Zandir, for that matter. It was a Regalia born from the roots of Yggdrasil itself. By becoming it's bearer I am now a branch of the World Tree, a piece of the being who's spore gave rise to all life. Your Regalia may rot everything that grows, but it cannot rot growth itself.”
The wriggling motion had worked it's way up Vogin's arm now. The skin of his arm split open and branch with full, green leaves dripping red blood poked out. The wriggling moved into his chest, his neck, until the whole outline of his body began to mold and change as if it were full of worms on the inside.
“Th-that's impossible!” Vogin managed in a choked, strangled voice as a branch erupted from between his lips.
“The only method you possessed to harm me was the brute force of your weapon,” J'vann told him. “It is a shame, but I am the worst opponent you could possibly have met. I suppose you were merely too unlucky not to die.”
Vogin tried to gurgle something around the branch in his mouth. It might have been a plea, or a final insult, or a scream. All that game out was choked, inarticulate garble. The wriggling no longer resembled worms, now it was like the bandit's body was clay in the hands of a giant child. He twisted and molded and tore, bark and leaves and branches erupting from every break, roots bursting free of the skin on his feet and digging into the ground, until at last there was nothing of the bandit's flesh and bone left, just a tree growing where once he stood.
“For what it is worth,” J'vann said, bowing to the tree marking the bandit's grave, “I am sorry. I would give you a proper bow, with fingers to palm, but you have made one of my arms currently useless.”
He summoned another bludgeon and leaned on it. The battle was not yet over, and with his mastery of growth he could still fight. He hobbled towards the sounds of dying, back the way he came.
SASHA
Sasha leveled her spear at Kaddo. Her Regalia was full active now, a visor molded in the shape of a wolf appearing over her eyes, attached to a wolf-fur cowl that went down over her shoulders and to the small of her back. The bandit showed absolutely no concern.
Up close his face looked innocent, almost cherubic. But there was an ugly slant to his smile, and if there was anything but cruelty sparkling in his eyes it was only the sickest kind of merriment. The battle went on all around them, but he seemed content to sit and wait as long as she did.
“Well?” Kaddo said. “If you're not going to stop me, I'll just go back to killing people...”
Sasha charged him and delivered a rapid flurry of spear thrusts. At first he simply slapped the tip of the spear away with an armored hand, but he wasn't ready when she switched up her attack and brought the side of the handle into his stomach. He stumbled back clutching his gut and Sasha went in for the kill. He dodged her thrust and grabbed the first person he saw, sucking the life from them like he had with his men earlier.
He takes auram from people and gets stronger, Sasha thought. She jumped back just in time to avoid another blast of energy from his eyes. Not just the auram they expel, the basic auram all life uses to sustain itself.
“Alright,” Kaddo said. “Fair enough. You're pretty tough. I guess I'll have to fight you for real.”
He charged at her. He was astonishingly fast, especially with all those big heavy spiked plates on his armor. He grabbed for her, trying to reach her and suck her dry, but she wasn't about to let him. As he had with her spear thrusts she turned his grabs aside with the handle of her spear and, when she saw an opportunity, she swung the weapon. He jumped back, but not before the blade grazed his cheek, drawing a trickle of blood.
“You're better than I thought,” Kaddo said.
“Same to you,” Sasha said.
“I suppose it's time I got serious then,” the bandit smiled. The grass around his feet began to die, and the space between his armors plates began to glow. The attack came from his eyes again, not beams of light but darts of it. Sasha could brush them aside but more kept coming, steadily pushing her back.
“I'll never run out of ammo!” Kaddo chuckled. “Not out here!” He grabbed someone. A villager, this time. He sucked them dry, eyes glowing and ready to attack. “Is that all the big bad knight has got to show me?”
“No,” Shasha said, dropping into a fighting stance. “I'll get serious too.”
Her outline blurred, and then there were four more of her.
They were five identical clones in identical Regalia, wielding identical spears. The maximum number of copies she could create. Because the power of the Wolf was in the pack, and the owner of the Wolf Regalia would never be without a pack. Technically she and each of her clones only had a fifth of her auram, but in the a pack the wolf was not merely five times the warrior but a hundred.
All five of her bolted forwards, ready with their spears. They moved in confusing patterns, making defense nearly impossible. And at the right moment all five of them struck, impaling their spears through Kaddo's body.
Or at least they should have.
Kaddo had blocked the spear thrust from her real body, catching it in both hands. The copy's spears had plunged into him and...disappeared. They seemed to sink into his armor like it was water.
“Wrong move,” Kaddo laughed. Her copies twisted and flickered, turning to pure energy before they were sucked into his armor. He punched her in the chest, sending her flying back on the grass. She picked herself up, clutching her fresh bruise, trying to figure out what happened.
“This is the Thorny Devil Regalia,” Kaddo laughed. “It's a desert lizard. Ever heard of it? I bet you've heard the name, they live on dozens of planets.”
He shimmered and disappeared. Shasha recognized the movement, it was just like Rimni when he moved too fast for the eye to follow. She tried to figure out where he was, but she was still getting her bearings when the bandit reappeared and his fist slammed into her face, drawing an ugly cracking sound from her nose and she stumbled back with blood pouring down her lips.
“They have this neat trick where any water that touches their scales flows around to where they can use it,” Kaddo laughed. “And I can do that....with your auram. Hitting me with copies made of pure auram was like sending me rain in the desert!”
He rained down blows on her face and chest, finishing with a kick to the stomach that sent her rocketing backwards through the air. She hit the wall and crashed through it, spilling out into the streets of the fortified village. She could feel bruises forming on her face and, when she tried to stand up, a pain in side drew her attention to a large shard of wood half-buried in her stomach. Panic tried to rise up in her mind but she muttered a quick prayer in the Gudwallam, finding her calm in the familiar cadence of the Hunter's tongue.
Instead of trying to stand she sat down, her legs crossed and her hands resting in her lap. She had done this a thousand times. In her room as a child. On hunts the Greatwilds before leaving Shadd. In the Wolf Temple surrounded by incense. On spaceships traveling between the stars. She could have done it in an exploding volcano. A battlefield was no trouble.
The pack was the wolf's strength. Knowing itself, completely, is the source of the wolf's power.
And I am the Wolf, she reminded herself. He is too fast for me to see him move, but sight is not my only way of hunting. I will stop relying on my eyes, and I will scent his movements.
She sank into the powers of regalia and the world of scent. The senses of the Wolf were as different from sight as a way to experience the world as sight was from touch. She smelled the grain in the fields. She smelled creatures scuttling between the stalks. She smelled the wood of the town. She smelled sweat and blood and fear, and the filth of the battlefield. And she smelled auram, its many tangs and tastes. She smelled her opponent, and on him she smelled herself.
He is more powerful than me, she thought. But the power he fights with isn't really his. It's stolen power. My power. I am one fifth of what I should be. My pack is gone.
No. Not gone. Merely lost. They are still of me. We still hunt together.
We will hunt this prey and kill it.
She opened her eyes just Kaddo appeared in front of her, fist raised to strike.
“No,” she said, lashing out with a palm and shoving him backwards, her hand flashing with auram. He picked himself up, eyes wide, expecting her to follow up on her attack, but she stayed where she was on the ground.
“Oh so that's it,” Kaddo laughed. “You got hit, so now you're planning to sit there and not let me pass?”
“I was just reminding my pack that the hunt isn't over,” she said.
“You mean your duplicates?” Kaddo chuckled. “They're nothing but fuel for my powers now.”
“No,” Sasha shook her head. “They're still a part of me. All they needed was a reminder.”
The spaces between his armor plates glowed brightly, and five identical right arms holding five identical spears raised themselves from the glowing light.
“What the hell is....no!” Kaddo shouted, but the spears rammed home. His regalia couldn't absorb auram that had already become a part of it, so it's powers did nothing as the spears slammed through armor and flash alike. Kaddo spat blood, collapsing to the ground, but with his last breath he raised a hand and sent a sizzling ball of auram at the wall, blowing a fresh hole in the defenses.
Three breaches in the wall, now. And hundreds of bandits outside. The battle wasn't over. With a grunt she pulled the shard of wood from her side, trusting an auram-reinforced body to hold up under the injury, and climbed unsteadily to her feet. With Kaddo gone she had reabsorbed some of her lost auram but she still needed to use her spear as a cane, at least until someone put her arm over her shoulder and started helping her along.
“I got you,” Verro said, guiding her towards the breach.
“Just get me over to the battle,” she said. “I'll take it from there.”
“Fine by me,” the Eagle Knight smiled.
He did let go of her once they reached the battlefield, but he stayed close. Sasha didn't mind, that, knight's were supposed to back each other up. And against that tidal wave of bandits, they did. Fann appeared, slashing with his katana at lightning speed, leaving a trail of blood and cleanly severed limbs behind rim. Rimni followed close, cutting at ankles and sowing chaos. Not long after that the grass rose up against the bandits, tripping them and making it easier for the defenders to strike them, the action directed by a bleeding and exhausted J'vann using his bludgeon as a crutch.
And the villagers poured on the destruction. They were still outnumbered, and there were breaches in the wall, but no bandit had set foot inside the village yet. And all the enemy Regalia users were gone, while all of theirs were still alive. Most of them injured, and hobbling, some of them barely remaining conscious but still there,while the bandits had nothing like it. All they had was numbers.
And in a flash of light, their numbers were no longer enough.
A wave of energy blew across the battlefield, digging a smoking hole in the dirt and sending bandit's flying everywhere. After it came Andry, Aurina, and Tyram on the snail—both snails? A two headed snail?
Sasha wasn't going to question it because whatever was going on, whatever that thing was, its arrival was too much. The bandits broke and ran.
After that, she clutched her bleeding side and let herself pass out.