I ran down and shredded the first Centurion in our path. Two more charged in with spears. I nailed them with tentacles before they could close and threw them over the burning corpse of the wagon. One man crashed into one of his buddies, taking him to ground; the other ragdolled into the side of the cliff and sent a fresh cloud of toxic spores into the air. I was still laughing at him when I got tackled by the Whiphorse.
"SCREEEEEEEE!” The thing shrieked, the sound tearing over the sounds of chaos barely thirty feet away. It was surprisingly heavy, and it wielded that long barbed jaw like a greatsword – twisting its torso to slash down at me with it, even as it discharged a cloud of violently purple toxic gas. Fortunately, it was no longer still on fire.
[Whiphorse releases Toxic Spores. You are immune to Poison.]
“Suck it!” I roared as terror gripped my heart like an icy fist. Up close it was even more obviously insectoid, the whips as thin as a cockroach’s antennae. Like me, it had eight primary limbs. Two of its tentacles snatched around mine, wrestling with them while it tried to stamp and stab with its needle-pointed feet. I caught one of them and bent it to the side, two free tentacles lancing up to nail the horror between two glossy chitin plates. The hypodermic tips plunged in with a sickening crunch, earning another shriek, this time of pain. I engaged Soul Drain, draining its strength and HP with Lifesteal. A whole lot of HP, because I was riding pretty on the deaths caused by the explosion.
[You drain 322 HP from Whiphorse. You gain 214 HP.]
[Select from the following abilities, you sneaky shit:]
* Toxic Spores: Release a cloud of virulent poisonous spores, capable of clinging and sticking to your enemies.
* Catastrophe: Deals damage equal to 50% of your opponent Legion’s remaining HP, or 75% of an enemy gladiator’s HP. Always deals at least 1 HP of damage.
* Enervation: Drain your enemy’s health and lower its accuracy by 30%.
* Power Whip: Deal an automatic critical hit with your whips and stun your target.
* Leverage: Inflict damage based on your enemy’s Strength stat.
“Power Whip.”
The Whiphorse spasmed and bucked, ripping my tentacles out of its body. I was about to discharge its own move into what passed for its face when it suddenly ignited on top of me. For one paralyzed second, I thought it was the Kitulyst again. But instead of pressing its attack, it pushed away from me and whirled, screeching, to face Angel.
“Get off him!” She yelled, hurling a sack at it with deadly accuracy. Napalm. It hit the burning carapace with a wet smack, igniting with a small explosion.
“REEEEE!” The legion bucked like the horse it was named for, kicking one pointy foot back into my jaw as I tried to spring to my feet, and launched itself at Angel. I couldn’t stop it. It would be a one-hit kill.
Lulu cried out and lunged for it, wrapping herself around one spiny leg. She stayed wrapped around me, too, and instead of falling on Angel, the Whiphorse was dragged back from the air and slapped to the ground. But it was faster even than me – before I could reach it, it discharged a blast of dirty black energy right at Angel.
The girl screamed – really screamed – for the first time since she’d been tied to Vanara’s altar. Agony, as the Whiphorse levelled Catastrophe on her and decimated her HP. She reeled back, stunned with pain.
“ANGEL!” I activated Psychostimulant. It was like a hit of speed to the brainstem: my pain took a big step back, and the Whiphorse came into sharp focus. I snarled, tensed, and released a blast of White Noise that briefly deafened the sounds of chaos in the passage.
[Attack power boosted by 20%. x2 Damage to Blood-type Legions, x3.5 Psionic elemental damage for a total of 5.5% stacked damage. Clever boy.]
[You deal 4471 damage.]
Now it was the Whiphorse’s turn to scream with pain as the compounded damage nearly tore it apart. The leg Lulu clung to tore clean off. Gross greenish ichor sprayed from the cracks in its carapace as it slumped to the ground with a harsh cawing cry. I ran in and began to hack at it – lashing it with its own absorbed Power Whips while my damage was still boosted. Two hundred, four hundred damage… I hacked it to pieces in a rage, until all that remained were the twitching, gooey black remains of its exoskeleton.
[You have defeated your opponent. You gain 551 EXP. Lulu is Level 20. Lulu gains Omnishell and Acid Fog.]
[Omnishell: If the Limne Absorbs a Legion prior to using Liquid Armor, it can shift itself into one of the absorbed Legion's elements and convey the strengths and weaknesses of that element to their GL. Liquid Armor DR increased to 40%.]
[Acid Fog: The Limne drenches the battle arena in an acidic fog, dealing damage over time to enemies, while forming a protective Acid-resistant barrier around their GL or trainer.]
“Angoo!” Lulu peeled off me and bounced over to the stricken human, winding around her protectively. Angel was fumbling for her potions, unable to hear or focus while she clutched at her belly. Her ivory skin looked purplish and bruised all over. Catastrophe did some kind of internal damage. I left Lulu to take care of her and worked to get my bearings. Behind us, the caravans were in disarray. What few Centurions had survived the carnage had run, leaving the trikes to get tangled up with the remaining wagons. They brayed and panted in terror, clustered around one of their fallen herdmates. The only players missing were Vade and his goons.
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"Lulu! Keep Angel safe! Vade’s out there somewhere." I scented the wind, trying to pin down the distance between us and the Allosaurus. The scent was cold. Rumbling softly, I turned and bounded back down the road, in the direction the Centurions had come from. But part of the reason the Umbrella Crevasse was such a secure route had to do with the fact that there was no obvious way down into the winding open tunnel for miles – unless you were willing and able to take a hundred-foot drop like me or the Whiphorse. I backtracked past the caravans, but the sound or tremor of the allosaur’s booming footsteps were absent. Vade had taken his scouts and his Cute and fled.
“Fucking prick and his weird-ass fucking Legions. Targent won’t be happy about him turning tail, though. I hope he gets his ass roasted.” Flanks heaving, I turned back to look around the shattered road. All the soldiers were either dead or running. It was just the three of us, a wagon full of booze, and a very limited amount of time to rush our cargo to its destination.
"Well... that didn't exactly go as planned, but it did go," Angel signed stiffly as I padded back over to her.
“Yeah. Sorry. That was my bad.” I dropped my head, and unconsciously began to sniff over her. My nose was good enough to tell if she was still bleeding internally. She smelled better, but stressed. Real stressed. “Are you alright? Were the potions we packed enough to heal you up?”
“I’m okay.” Angel’s fingers fumbled a little as I blew a puff of hair across her face. “You Lulu are both hurt, though. Here… I’ve got the Legion potions.”
“I’m alright. Dose Lulu first. I stabbed her twice in that battle.” I meandered over to one of the charred bodies to see if there was anything worth looting. Thanks to the miracle of inventories, the loot had survived. The officer at the head of the caravan had rations, medical kits, and a [Silver Patron Box]. I took that and a note: written orders from Fortuna. “Hmm… let’s see here. Officer was carrying a timetable. They were on schedule, we were almost late. Merc’s information was wrong.”
“Fucking piece of shit...” The sign for that particular curse was particularly expressive. "I don’t think Merc knew, but I'm going to have a word to her about her spies. She nearly got us killed."
"But she didn't. And yeah, we need to get to the bottom of that. Pretty crucial detail, unless the Centurions changed their schedule just today and they didn’t know." I looked back as she picked herself up off the ground and dusted off. “Anyway, we need to get out of here and get as much rum as we can to the Pigs before Vade drags Targent here. Lulu, I need you to loot the hell out of everyone before they respawn. Angel, if you’re feeling okay, come and hitch me to this wagon."
Angel didn't argue. She knew as well as I did that we were running on borrowed time. Lulu dutifully went around to each corpse and stripped it bare, throwing most of the loot into the back of the wagon. Meanwhile, at the front, Angel gerry-rigged a harness for me out of the materials from the released trikes. Ten minutes of effort later, and I was pulling a ton of gear with Lulu and Angel perched nervously on the giant turtleshell roof of the cab.
I took a switchback road back toward Pigs territory. With the clatter of wheels in my ears, I couldn't hear much. I had to trust the girls to protect us against dinosaurs, bandits, and angry British psychopaths until we reached the signal towers at the base of Oil Town Seven.
"Hey! What the fuck!" The first Hell Pig spotter leaned over the railing, a flaming arrow nocked and ready to fire. "AAAAAGH! CENTURIONS! THE CENTURIONS ARE-oh."
Angel was flashing the security handsigns I'd seen the night before. The second spotter clicked his tongue and pushed his buddy's arrow down.
"Hey boys!" She stood up, fists planted on her hips, her voice high and discordant. "Look what we found!"
"Uhh… What is it?" The first guy called down.
"Grog!" Angel threw open her arms. "So send someone down with a trike to take it in, quick!"
"Grog? GROG!" Both men nearly fell over themselves. One of them scrambled back, took a horn from the wall, and blew it.
"Uhh... Angel. You might want to get me out of these traces, before Clive gets here." I watched nervously as the gates to the road opened. "Time to ditch and run."
"Got it." Angel hopped down to the ground, followed by Lulu. She untied me from the wagon while a cluster of guards watched from the gate in confusion, then got on my back and gave them a cheery wave while I turned and bolted back into the forest.
"Holy shit. I can't believe that worked." She signed beside my head as I ran. "Are we going to go see if they take it?"
"Yep. Hold on. Lulu, strap her in."
“Ooh-hoo!” Lulu wrapped Angel to keep her on my back so I could climb one of the large trees. I took us up to the forest crown and doubled back while off the ground so as not to draw attention. There at the edge of the treeline, I leaned out as far as I dared so Angel could get her binoculars and watch the activity. The wagon swarmed with Pigs now: no fewer than ten men, jabbering and gesturing at the wagon still resting in the middle of the road. With night falling, their voices carried clearly on the still air. They were arguing over whether the wagon was some kind of trap.
"I'm tellin' you, if Clive finds out it was the Reaper Girl that brought it, he's going to burn the lot." A rangy, thin man with a tall red mohawk raised his voice toward one of the others. It was Rooster, from the beach. Now that I wasn’t terrified out of my wits, I couldn’t help but notice he had a British accent: a northern accent, like Sergeant Vade. "So if you wanna get smashed at all, we better bloody make up some other story. He'll be fuckin' pissed you didn't try and stop 'em."
"Stop a Reaper? With what, Rooster? My ass?" It was one of the tower guards he was fighting with. "What was I supposed to do? Jump on the fucking tentacles? How do we know this shit isn't poisoned, anyway?"
"Well, seems they remember us," I thought to Angel and Lulu. “I wonder if Clive or that other guy, Razor, is still looking for you.”
“Razor’s dead,” Angel signed back. “Ninered. Otherwise, his death wouldn’t have summoned Vanara.”
"So what if it is poisoned? Worst thing that happens is you die once, you fuckin' pussy." Rooster swaggered over to the wagon and threw open the rear doors, revealing the barrels. He tapped one and stuck his mouth under the stream, drinking deeply to the cheers of the other Hyena Boys there, and the chagrin of the unaffiliated guards.
"Damn... the guy can drink." I watched him deepthroat the spigot, then stand and throw his arms up in the air and crow 'it's rum!' to the others. Another round of cheers went up. I wrinkled my nose. "Wonder why they call him Rooster?"
Lulu cooed in thought. “Hoo… boog cock?”
I snerked, and relayed Lulu’s hypothesis to Angel. She groaned aloud under her breath.
When Rooster didn't drop dead, a ripple of excitement ran through the crowd. With shouts of 'grog!' and wordless war cries, the gang of men began to pull and push the wagon toward the gate.
"Oh yeah. That feels good." The tip of my tail twitched with excitement as I watched them haul the wagon up the hill toward town. "And Vade has to be in contact with Targent right now. He's going to be SPITTING. Hang on: let me see what our chat is posting."
While Angel continued to spy, I went into my inventory to see what the vox populi had to say. A lot of it was excitable emoji spam, but a pair of messages in the torrent caught my eyes:
> Oh man Big T is losing it
> War talk ahahaha
The twitching turned into a smug side-to-side wave. Because kicking off the war was exactly what we were angling for.