“I’m surprised you came. Didn’t think you mighty Greaters would stoop to our level,” Creti dropped her usual helpless facade and greeted the Greater Fiends with a bit of tongue and cheek. “And you can take those stupid things off of your faces, you just look silly. I promise not to use my Curse on you, if nothing more than to not see how dumb you look with them on.”
The four Greaters removed the goggles they’d all donned before their arrival. Their one and only purpose was to negate the manipulation effect of Creti’s curse. There was quite a bit of tech involved, which basically added an overlay to distort their perception of her and her alone. As a result, the goggles were pretty bulky and looked straight out of a sci-fi novel.
“You’re lucky that we even invited you here to begin with,” Creti acted like she’d done them a favor. “We could have just kept this job all to ourselves and our popularity would have skyrocketed once people found out about it!”
“So why did you invite us, anyways?” Xard broke the ice and asked, raising his voice since the ambient noise had spiked around them. The two groups had been keeping a reasonable distance from each other as well, making it even harder to hear.
“To prove our superiority, of course!” Creti boasted.
“What?!” Kada yelled in response, since she couldn’t hear the answer.
“I said, To Prove We’re Superior!” Creti repeated even louder.
“Whaaat?!” Kada still couldn’t understand as the noise grew.
“ABOVE IS BETTER THAN YOU!” Creti was practically screaming at the top of her lungs, but all the noise around them suddenly stopped, making it just an awkward outburst.
“Ahem,” she tried to recompose herself. “So you got the gist in my message, right? We’ll be having a contest to see who can kill more of these things. We’ll be dividing it up into sections to make it easier to monitor. Once everyone is in position, I’ll fire the signal to start, and then you can all cry when Above comes out on top!”
◆◆◆
The mission in question was to kill a raving horde of Starbits. They’re a cross between starfish and rabbits. Basically just a starfish in shape, they were covered in various colors of fur and had a pair of rabbit ears sticking out of the center—tentacle monsters bordering on cute given a unique perspective.
While not a particularly dangerous monster by any stretch of the imagination, their insane ability to multiply made them a burden for any monster hunter. A rabbit’s natural instinct to reproduce, coupled with a starfish’s ability to reproduce asexually, mixed with a dose of radiation, created the world’s most insane breeding machine.
It didn’t help that when a Starbit felt threatened, their natural instinct was to divide its limbs, each producing up to four more fully formed Starbits in a matter of minutes. They normally lived in colonies in the middle of the ocean or along some shorelines, rarely overpopulating beyond their means. So why Drazah’s Fault was absolutely stuffed with them was a mystery.
Drazah’s Fault: A clever, yet annoying, play on words where whoever named it was undoubtedly very proud of themselves. Ironically, Drazah’s Fault was not actually the fault of the Drazahs, but it was only named such after they lost the war.
Another topographical anomaly that plagued scientists for centuries, the fault was originally just a line that divided biomes along a southern section of the continent. But the line itself was what made no sense. It split two biomes perfectly along a completely straight and sheer line, like the land had been cut away from elsewhere and smashed together.
The line also served as a border between two countries since it was just too geographically convenient not to. The line would also become the center of a no-man’s-land during the Drazah War. It held site to some of the biggest skirmishes and battles the continent had ever seen.
A tundra and a marsh: biomes that an army wouldn’t particularly want to fight over. But each army held onto their side like it was holy ground—refusing to let the enemy advance even an inch over the line.
To add to the anomaly, there were ponds on the side of the marsh that ended entirely at the line, met by solid, perfectly-vertical ground. Snow would also only fall on the side of the tundra, only the odd occasional flake ever crossing the line. To many, it really was the barrier between good and evil, so they gave their lives to protect it.
The Fault was the result of a rather ingenious plan—in theory, anyways. The Drazahs held the marsh while the combined armies of the rest of the world held the tundra. Not even Relyk Drazah ever considered that they would try to dig through the frozen ground.
So as the many battles waged, there was always a dedicated team chipping away in the background. A sprawling series of tunnels soon littered the underground, used for supplies and secret enemy movements, but also to try and sneak under the main Drazah base. Their goal wasn’t infiltration, though. It was destruction. Once a full circle of tunnels surrounded the Drazah’s underground without them knowing, it was lined with explosives.
Boom! The biggest blow the Drazah’s ever took during the entirety of the decades-long war. Untold lives were lost and a good portion of their military might was crippled. It should have been a decisive victory for the united forces, but things didn’t quite work out as planned.
The explosions started a chain reaction, causing the entire network of tunnels to collapse. Any soldiers who were still underground were buried alive. Whatsmore, the collapse destabilized the entire area, and a giant sinkhole swallowed almost the entire battlefield.
Immeasurable losses struck the united countries, though not quite as severe as the Drazahs themselves, so it was still touted as a victory. With the landscape ruined, the ravaged no-man's-land was abandoned and fighting moved elsewhere. Thus was the birth of Drazah’s Fault—not quite a fault by the standard definition, but since it occurred along such a strange fault line, no one seemed to mind the name.
The burning question now was why the fault was filled with Starbits to begin with. They were naturally aquatic creatures, though they could survive on land, but there were no major bodies of water anywhere around.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Undoubtedly, they had to have been put there. Was it entirely coincidental? Had they been picked up and carried by a bird and just happenstantially dropped there? That would explain why there was an influx of Starbits since the creature would certainly multiply out of fear and panic.
More likely, though, they had been put there and purposefully disturbed so that they would reproduce and fill the fault. But to what end? There were plans to build a highway through the area with a giant bridge crossing over the fault, but those plans were now on hold until the Starbits were removed.
Had a rival construction company sabotaged the construction since they didn’t get the bid? Or perhaps they hoped the current one would back out and they could swoop in for a lower offer. It was surprising how often crazy situations like this actually occurred in the real world, and it was the current working theory by the officials that had submitted the request.
Ultimately, the reasons were unimportant. This wasn’t the Fiends For Hire’s job to begin with, so they had less reason than usual to stick their noses into it. Really, it was unlikely they would have accepted Above’s provocation to begin with, but this was a serious matter that needed to be taken care of properly.
Drim, especially, knew how creatures like this worked, and he needed to make sure they were all concisely disposed of or the issue would just flare up again. It was a bit annoying on their end that their group hadn’t been the first one contacted since they absolutely would have taken on the job. The level of reliance that Drim wished for certainly wasn’t up to his standards yet, or maybe some still couldn’t trust a Drazah—a bias that may never be overcome no matter what they tried.
◆◆◆
“Hi, I’m Xard,” he stuck out his hand to formally greet the Fiend. There was no reciprocation, not even an acknowledgement of Xard’s existence. Since there were four Fiends on each side, the fault had been divided into quadrants and the Fiends had been divided into pairs before the competition started. Each pair was now standing on the edge of the fault on their respective sides.
“You’re Kalter Berius, right?” he still tried again.
“I don’t like you,” Kalter finally said something, and gave Xard the briefest glare that firmly expressed his distaste.
“Oh, that’s fine,” Xard almost seemed relieved. “I don’t like you either.”
“Eh?” Kalter seemed shocked and almost a bit offended that his hostile attitude had been met with more hostility.
“Yeah, from what I’ve heard, you’re kind of a massive zjikbag,” Xard wasn’t going to hold anything back at this point.
“And what have you heard?!” his cool demeanor gone, Kalter was staring Xard down now, grinding his teeth in vexation.
“That you’ve been hijacking sporting events—running onto the field and scoring as many points as possible to flaunt your superiority. When really all you’re doing is disturbing everyone’s day while proving nothing since you’re just abusing your Curse. It’s like an adult being happy that they’re superior to children.”
“And what’s worse, the moment anyone tries to stop you, you run off with your tail between your legs. The gall to commit the act but not the conviction to see it through. Real small dog energy. To me you just look like a brat begging for attention, and you don’t care who you upset to get it.”
After they’d accepted the challenge, Phon had done a full deepdive on each member of Above and shared the information with the others so they knew exactly who they were facing. The pictures Xard had seen, though, hadn’t really done him justice.
He looked the same overall, most notably his Wenge-colored long hair that draped past his shoulders. It looked more like a mane than proper hair since it was almost beastlike—looking as if it had never been combed. However, the main difference was that in all those pictures of Kalter ambushing sporting events, he’d always looked ecstatic. But now meeting him in person, Anger-Issues Athlete was certainly an appropriate moniker.
Kalter fronted on Xard until their chests were almost bumping together. He was a bit shorter, so it probably didn’t have quite the intimidating effect he intended, but that didn’t stop him from acting like the toughest guy around. His eyes screamed that he wanted Xard dead, but still couldn’t do anything about it.
“Yeah, well I’ll show you just how superior I am.” Kalter’s fire-colored pupils were burning with hatred now, but Xard almost laughed since it paled in comparison to looks he’d seen from Drim. “And when I win down there, I’ll make you preach about how amazing I am, since spouting zjik looks like all you’re good for.” A decent provocation, but it was hard to take him seriously when he looked like he was about to burst with rage—the antithesis of calm and collected.
◆◆◆
“Why did I have to get paired with you?” Alk wasn’t exactly thrilled with the outcome.
“Ah come on, Alky, we have a history!” Kada on the other hand looked ecstatic to see her again. “We’re practically best friends already!”
“I didn’t give you permission to give me a nickname, especially a poor one at that,” she seemed more insulted by the lack of effort and imagination than it existing at all. “And when did we even become friends, let alone best friends?!”
“Are you still upset that I read all that stuff about you?” Kada bugged her further. “I guess it was kind of like reading your diary without your permission. Oh, I know! You can read my bio if you want. No secrets here. My life’s an open book.”
“It’s also open on your face,” Alk actually made a joke. “Everything I need to know about you is written all over you, or you’d shout it at me if you wanted me to know. So why exactly would I want to learn more about you?” Even though she was being contrarian, Alk still did sneak a glance or two at the bio open on Kada’s phone.
“That’s fine,” Kada stuffed her phone back in her pocket before Alk could finish reading it. “Too bad that Drim said I couldn’t just use my Curse to bury all these weird tentacley rabbit things. Said that we wouldn’t know for sure that they were dead. If only Niloy came along, then we could make another whirlpool of death. Whatever! I know we’re supposed to be having a competition or something, but I hope we can just have a friendly match!”
“Who the heck is Niloy?” Alk inquired for some reason. “And I told you, we’re not friends!”
◆◆◆
“What are you staring at?” Lieu Caffold had been silent since arriving at his spot and standing with his eyes closed, refusing to properly look at Phon. But he finally said something when her burning stare got to him.
“You tried to kill my brother,” Phon continued to stare, unrelenting.
“Yeah, well, I was upset, and a bit drunk, and had a crushing vendetta,” Lieu listed some excuses.
“Had?” Phon poked at the specifics.
Lieu sighed. “Thanks to being able to talk out my issues with my fellow members, I have come to accept that you and your brother are not to blame for my issues. And to some extent, I recognize that the ghost of your mother isn’t my enemy.”
“Wow, that’s surprisingly healthy of you,” Phon was stunned, caught off-guard by his honest admission.
“The name Drazah still pisses me off any time I hear it, though,” Lieu was back to spouting hostilities. “And I think your group is a bunch of entitled children who believe they’re on top of the world without really knowing what it means to be at the bottom. And—Nevermind. I’m not going to let you all get to me.”
“Uhuh… Seems like you’ve got it all figured out,” Phon cared little for his ravings. “Just remember that if it happens again… Unlike Drim, I won’t let you live.”