The west was full of the red light of the sun, but it was well above the horizon. Twilight would have been a better time honestly, but it wasn’t as if they had much choice in the matter. This was the best spot, and their targets would only be here so long.
“I’m n-nervous.”
“We need to do this. We khannot rally my people without first ensuring we khan khill a reaver. They have proven to be far more powerful on average than my people judged.” Her whisper became even quieter. “To our sorrow.”
“I understand, o-of course. We’ve been t-training and planning for this for a while. I’m just telling you that I’m n-nervous.”
Emokha looked at him for a moment, then reached out and shook his shoulder lightly. “Thankh you. I am also not without trepidation.”
“C’mon ya’ll. Worst case scenario we lose, get captured, and spend the rest of our long miserable lives being humiliated and tortured endlessly. What have we got to lose?”
“Shut up Zekhow.” Her tone undercut her terseness.
“Y-yeah, shut up.”
Gloe obligingly ceased talking and began gesticulating wildly, miming a highly exaggerated defeat that with him collapsing to the ground and ended with him suspended in the air with his arms pulled into to his sleeves to mimic amputation.
“I w-wish you were half as funny as you think you are.” Emokha just put her face behind all four hands and shook it. “Anyway, he is in there. Did you see any others?”
“N-none, aside from the four in his party and the stationmaster. I got a c-closer look at the four though. They’re w-wearing those weird clothes and all have the suicide daggers.”
“Tsch” Emokha clicked. A recurring theme in their raids the last few months had been these oddly-garbed demons. They seemed to be aberrations but never used abilities, and tried to commit suicide with strange daggers when defeated. “We’ll need to takhe them out first then. Stealth Plan 2?”
“Still n-nervous, but it might be best” Oresus agreed. Gloe just nodded. “Speakh Zekhow” Emokha said resignedly. He had played dumb for days in the past. He seemed to think it was hilarious.
“Oresus has this in the bag” he said with a thumbs up. “I’m fully confident he has the cultists dead to rights. Complete toss-up on us nabbing the reaver though, since we don’t know his abilities at all. I say Stealth Plan 2, but we switch to Assault Plan 1 once the cultists are dead if he isn’t detected. You have the best chance of blitzing the bastard.”
“Interesting. I hadn’t khonsidered that.”
“We didn’t have much time to plan after all. This opportunity came up on short notice. Oresus?”
“S-sounds good. What should I give for the s-signal?”
“Err…hand in the air if I should attackh, hand to the left if we need to flee.”
“Hand to the right if there are complications but you think the situation is salvageable. Flailing motion if we need to freak out and conduct a murderous retrograde.”
“What even i-is that?”
Gloe winked. “If we ever need it, I’ll demonstrate.”
“A-alright. I’m g-going.”
“Good luck.”
“Have fun!” That last earned Gloe a glare, then Oresus slunk off into the bushes. Gloe watched his furtive movements approvingly. They’d been training and raiding for months, and clearly it had paid off. Oresus favored more conservative approaches, primarily manifested in rigorous preparation and defensive strategies. The same tendencies gave him a real appreciation for good intel and the art of surprise, so he’d been cultivating his stealth techniques.
Gloe had pieced together a suit for him generously patched with shadow mole hide and as full of their stealth as his magic could arrange, but even without it Oresus would have been hard to make out. His movements were sporadic but smooth. He would stop and survey his surroundings, then move at a propitious moment, gliding along under cover of a faint breeze. It was pretty impressive, especially for someone without a dedicated stealth ability.
Following the plan Oresus dropped a handful of seeds at two of the entrances, opening a wooden flask and carefully pouring a thick liquid over each. He still wasn’t comfortable enough to reveal all the details of his ability, but Gloe knew it allowed him to modify seeds somehow, or something similar. The liquid was monster blood. Proper fertilizer seemed to be important. Regardless of the how, within minutes two of the entrances were blocked off with newly grown robust thorn bushes. Nice.
The ninja gardener slipped into the only remaining unblocked doorway and vanished completely from sight, but Gloe could still keep tabs on him to some degree. The source of nerves moved into the building, already occupied by six other sources. Avarice, superiority and four shuddering masses of hatred and misery.
Three. Two. Zero. Well that seemed like it had gone well. Just nerves, avarice and superiority left. Oresus reappeared as smoothly as he’d vanished, then raised a hand in the air.
Emokha’s turn. Eschewing conventional stealth she flew straight up, then over, closing the distance high in the sky, out of earshot. Once above the trade station she let herself fall, slowing herself occasionally with brief flutters of her wings. She was moving quite slowly when she arrived at the door, setting down with barely a puff of dust. Good technique, and done without her ability too.
Now she was activating it though. Gloe got a healthy taste of rage. Idly he wondered which limitation she was surpassing, then discarded the speculation as irrelevant. Instead he snuck closer to join Oresus. He didn’t have the latter’s stealth focus, but he got by most of the time. He continued to try to train everything, preferring to be an all-rounder rather than a specialist.
Fear and shock spiked inside. “She’s begun” he hissed to Oresus, who nodded in response and moved closer to the door. Just in time too. The station master came bolting out in terror. Oresus tripped him and stabbed him through the chest with a spear. Only one left.
But apparently he was putting up quite the fight. Both occupants were emitting pain. He ate Emokha’s and began to rush the entrance, but before he could a figure came speeding out. It wasn’t her, but she was in hot pursuit.
The reaver shot up into the sky and hovered, arms outstretched. Projectiles shot from his hands, and all three targets scattered. The shots weren’t super high-speed so dodging was very feasible, but unfortunately that wasn’t the only arrow to his bow. Upon impact the projectiles exploded in clouds of yellow smoke. Gloe caught a bit and staggered. Poison.
Emokha blew it clear of her with a burst from her wings and surged into the sky. Oresus wasn’t as good a match-up. He’d dodged clear but the gas had caught him and he was down. Gloe grimaced and stopped breathing.
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It wasn’t a great solution. His regeneration could heal the damage from oxygen deprivation, but the trading station was isolated. That was great for the purposes of their ambush, but it also meant he was only feeding off the pain and emotions of three people. Granted some of them were pretty emotional, but it still kept him well below his current capacity.
And even that capacity couldn’t regenerate asphyxiation in realtime. His healing was still too low-level for that, and the damage was too comprehensive. He could delay incapacitation and death, but he needed to stop the damage and take time to heal or that’s all he’d manage.
Pushing himself he sprinted through the gas, snatching up Oresus. Once clear he took a grateful breath before collapsing to the ground and performing CPR. He only vaguely remembered how to do it, but he was smart enough now to extrapolate from what he did know. Once he’d gotten some good air in the man he chased it with a previously liberated healing potion. The pain emissions ebbed and Oresus began to splutter back to life. Phew.
Above a bizarre dogfight was raging. The reaver seemed to have the ability to manually detonate his shots, and he was using it to try to catch Emokha in cloudbursts of chemical attacks. She was mostly dodging them with seemingly impossible aerial acrobatics, but she was having difficulty closing the distance with him, and she had no ranged attacks.
Once he was certain Oresus was recovering Gloe carried him inside the station and began ransacking it, looking for anything that would allow him to assist her. He couldn’t see the ongoing fight but as long as her rage kept flowing and her pain didn’t increase she probably was okay. There was a lot of good stuff in the little building, but no anti-air weapons he could find. No ranged weapons either. He did find a nice length of rope, then discarded it for a long chain. Maybe Emokha could force the reaver down and he could tangle the guy up? No, that didn’t seem too likely. He kept looking.
In the end the fight was over before he found anything. He emerged to find a winded Emokha leaning against the wall and breathing heavily. “I khould not khill him.”
“Rough match-up?”
“If I…enhanced flight…he put up defensive khlouds. If I…enhanced holding my breath…he flew away. So…tired.”
“I can tell.” Gloe looked up into the distance. “Fear, exhaustion…I think he’s tired too.”
“That does me…no good.” Emokha slumped against the wall, slamming three hands against it in frustration.
“Oresus, you good?”
“I w-will be.”
“Great, keep an eye on her. I’ll be back in a bit.”
“What khan you do that I khould not?”
A tongue click and a finger gun answered her. “Tch. You’re tired, he’s tired. But I’m feeling great.”
...
The reaver was flying a bit unsteadily but his course was more or less straight and his speed remained fairly high. The nearest garrison was only an hour away or so at his current pace. More importantly there was no sign of any pursuers. The sun was still barely peeking over the horizon but he saw no sign of anyone in the sky, and he’d flown over several open fields to check for a ground pursuer. If they weren’t in sight there’d be no way to track him through the sky.
So although he didn’t let down his guard or slow, he did relax just a bit. Not that it really mattered in the end. Even if he had been fully alert he probably wouldn’t have had reason to avoid flying over the hill directly in his flight path at a steady altitude.
No one expects to take a dead tree to the face, even if it’s a pretty small one and not thrown all that far or hard. However, as it turned out, arboreal impacts tend to be extremely detrimental to the maintenance of aerial transportation. The reaver crashed to the ground, his trajectory wrecked. Only his shroud saved him, keeping him from being knocked unconscious and giving him the chance to regain control right before he smashed into the ground.
Disoriented, but not badly damaged. He shook himself, realizing he had been ambushed. Reflexively he fired a defensive cloud all around himself, both for the concealment and to prevent himself from being rushed.
It was half-effective. It kept him from realizing he was being charged until it was too late. Gloe was moving fast and holding his breath. He didn’t have time or the visibility to deliver a telling blow, but he was able to tackle the reaver into a nearby solid tree trunk. The reaver responded with another defensive cloud of gas. Perfect.
Gloe ducked out, took a quick breath, then whipped back in. Working by feel he whipped the chain he’d taken from the trade station round and round, securing the reaver to the tree trunk. Another dip out for a breath, then he carefully tied it off on the opposite side from the reaver.
Now there was time for a couple breaths. Gloe stood well behind the tree, where he couldn’t be hit. The reaver was firing off projectiles wildly in all directions. The chain must not be fully restraining his arms, but at least the shots let Gloe know his target was still stuck there.
“I’ll kill you, you fuck! How the fuck did you get ahead of me?” The reaver was practically screaming. “Fucking cheater!”
His breath caught, Gloe pivoted back into the cloud, slamming a bone dagger into the reaver’s thigh. No penetration. Too much shroud. Nuts. He took refuge behind the tree again.
“Hah! Fucking bitch! Your cheating ass build can’t deal with my power. You ain’t got shit on me! I’m going to break free…ugh…and shoot you until you’re fucking goo!” The chain rattled as he struggled wildly.
Heading back in Gloe pulled the axe off his back. He didn’t want to risk hitting the chain or tree, so he aimed low. Two solid chops, then he retreated.
“What the fuck? You think you can break through my ki you weakass cheating bitch? You ain’t shit! You ain’t shit! I’m going to…ugh…skullfuck you, you piece of shit!”
Another two chops while the reaver was struggling, then Gloe faded away again, pursued by more vituperation. He continued on that way for some time. The reaver began holding back on the gas, trying to catch Gloe in the act and hit him directly with a projectile, but increased visibility just made Gloe’s hit and runs easier to execute.
The reaver was raging and panicking, wasting his energy trying to escape and unable to stay properly alert. He was already tired from his fight with Emokha, and his mana had to be running low. Most of all he was deeply upset at the thought that his perfect build had been countered. He didn’t seem to realize he was about to die, probably because as long as his shroud held he was experiencing very little pain. He was clearly fairly high-level, at least comparatively.
Idly Gloe wondered how many he had killed, how long he had been riding the high of superiority and seeming invincibility. His build was very strong. Superior flight let him outmaneuver evenly matched opponents and flee from stronger ones. His projectile/gas combination gave him a direct attack and a way to exercise control over the battlefield. The gas was also clever because it partially bypassed shroud. Shroud still reduced the damage from breathing the gas, but didn’t affect the oxygen deprivation from holding one’s breath, or even the reduced oxygen taken in when the gas displaced it.
Synergy was the key though. The reaver must have bombarded countless foes from the safety of the sky. Those who were able to dodge the projectiles could be hemmed in by the gas clouds. And when someone took to the skies thinking the reaver had to be weak there he was able to counter with flight skills and a gaseous form of flak. Once he leveled up enough his high-level shroud also made it difficult to beat him with one hit, so he could always flee, scattering gas in his wake to deter pursuit. Very clever, very difficult to beat.
No enhanced strength though, nor any utility abilities. He was a min-maxer, but this wasn’t a game. His opponents were not confined to using their abilities in preset ways. Gloe would have really struggled to defeat him alone, but once Emokha had worn him down it was actually pretty easy. Ugly and time-consuming, but easy.
“Ahhhhhhh! Fucking fuck! Fuck you! I’ll fucking kill you!” The reaver suddenly created a new gas cloud, one that was greenish yellow rather than green. His pain spiked, as did his struggling.
Bursting in, Gloe could feel his skin burning. Some kind of acid. The reaver was trying to corrode himself free. Gloe locked his eyelids tightly shut to protect his eyes, feeling his way in with deteriorating fingertips. There. Drawing the bone dagger once more he drove it into the throat. Wearing down shroud had worked, and this time he got partial penetration, and that was all he needed. He leapt clear, rolling around in the grass to try to get the residual acid off of him. Then he sat down and focused on regenerating.
Impressively the reaver did manage to break free. The acid must have done enough damage to the tree or chain that he was able to wriggle free. He wasn’t in great shape though. He was burned all over, and given the way he wildly pivoted about his eyes were probably damaged. The sun had set and he seemed to be having difficulty seeing in the moonlight.
Still, he tried. He fired at every stirring leaf and imagined phantasm. His projectiles were coming sporadically and unsteadily now. He must be almost out of mana.
He was mostly out of shroud. The acid had done a number on it, as had the dagger Gloe had used. It was enchanted with demonling venom. Gloe had certainly killed enough of those to start to comprehend their venom. It wasn’t all that strong, but in the reaver’s weakened state it had helped tipped the balance.
The reaver was still swearing incoherently, his mouth burnt and barely functioning. It covered the sound of Gloe’s approach. Knocking him to the ground, Gloe dodged one final set of projectiles. Then he brought the axe down. Again and again, until it was over.