“Anything worth takhing in these wagons?”

“N-not much. It’s all f-food.”

“We khould use some travel rations.”

“N-not like these, I don’t think.” Oresus held up an intricately wrapped and rune-covered package, opening it to reveal some sort of elaborate cake. “All d-delicacies and luxuries. H-how about the wagons you checked?”

“Unfortunately they are not much better. Khlothes, but of the same quality as this food.”

“Uhh…c-court clothes?”

“Exhtremely, almost ridikhulously so. I’m salvaging what I can to repair our own deficiencies in that area, but I don’t know how to sew. Don’t expect too much.”

“Ahh. H-how do you think…” the sound of breaking glass cut him off.

“Not well I would guess.” Emokha sighed, then raised her voice. “Zekhow! Would you khome here for a moment please?”

More breaking glass sounds came in response, this time accompanied by the crack of wood shattering. “I’m a little busy over here! What do you need?”

“We would likhe to diskhuss our findings. Please, it will only takhe a few minutes.”

“Oh, our findings eh? Yeah, I could do that!” Gloe stormed over, several ornate wooden cases in his arms. “The wagons over there are full of potions!”

“Since that sounds useful I’m sensing there’s a khatch.”

“Oh, you could say that! I’ve been sampling them, and I’m not real happy about what I’ve found so far!” He set the boxes down, opening the top one and gesturing inside. “Aphrodisiac slash sedative, mind-clouder, etc. This is a fucking date-rape kit!” He picked up the whole box and threw at the ground hard enough to break it at the hinges.

“And this one! Pain-enhancer, burning anti-sleep, panic-inducer!” He smashed it too. “This one is tricky! Hunger-inducer, taste enhancer, emetic!” Another crash. “Apparently this is what these fuckfaces see as essential war supplies!”

“I’ve n-never seen you this angry before.”

Gloe grinned. “Well, truth be told my feelings can’t really take the helm, but sometimes I think it’s useful to emote in order to communicate my sentiments. A convoy like this is indicative that the rot is far more advanced and integrated than I previously thought.” He shrugged, still smiling. “What did ya’ll find?”

“Khlothes and frippery.”

“D-delicacies and a mobile wine cellar.”

“Typical.” He sighed. “Looks like the looting part of this raid is a bust.”

“Not khompletely. I’m salvaging some pieces of khlothing to repair our own. Here, a shirt and pants for you. Oresus, you can use these sashes to try to hold together places where things are starting to fray.”

The conversation paused while the two men tried to improve their apparel situation. “So, are you trying to make us look like pirates, or is that just a sad coincidence?”

“This was the best I khould find! Come and see what I had to workh with if you doubt me! These demons dress like kholorblind khlowns!”

“At l-least you managed to find something of value. There’s nothing in these w-wagons basic enough that we can take with us as travel rations. Although I s-suppose we could use some of the hard liquor for disinfectant.”

Gloe’s eyes glinted. “They have hard liquor? High-alchohol content?”

“Yes, l-lots. Why?”

“The uh, sojourner I was in prison with taught me a special cocktail recipe. I think ya’ll are going to love it. Tch.” He winked.

...

The riverboat convoy floated along, everything going smoothly. The sun was shining, the river was placid and all was right with the world. It would have been shocking if the lookouts had noticed anything out of place, especially something as ordinary as two dead trees blending in with the forests on the riverbanks. True, the trees were on opposite banks, bracketing the river. They were also recent arrivals, but a lookout would have had to memorize the entire bank to pick up on that.

And he would have needed water-penetrating vision to spot the submerged boom chain the lead boat hung up on. Neither the chain nor the trees should have been able hold up to the impact, but Oresus was hidden in one of the trees and was imbuing the whole arrangement, keeping it secured to the earth. The boat jerked to a halt.

As the other boats tried to slow the captain of the lead vessel sent men forward. He believed he had hit a snag. He was so busy checking his charts that he didn’t even notice Gloe slithering into the wheelhouse until his head was bashed in.

The fanatics were a little more aware, so the first one actually dodged as Gloe attacked, whipping his scimitar out as he did so. Gloe brought in another overhand strike and the fanatic dodged again, bringing his weapon around for a counterstrike. If they hadn’t been on a boat it would have been a tough fight, even with Gloe’s leveling from the convoy kills. The fanatics were incredibly well-trained and difficult to best in a conventional fight.

None of their drills had prepared them for Gloe targeting the deck itself with his sledgehammer. He was fast enough now that they didn’t have time to leap aside completely, and their footwork didn’t take into account the possibility of holes opening up beneath them. Worse, Gloe was imbuing the deck in a radius around him, then dropping imbue in a rough circle around his target’s feet. It was a variation of the technique he’d used to break the road, altering the relevant physics.

The sledgehammer should have just punched a hole in the deck, but instead it roughly knocked out the entire un-imbued section. The fanatics didn’t see it coming, and even once the later targets realized what he could do they had difficulty countering it. Gloe’s new speed make outright flight difficult and they had no training in longer-range dodges. To make things worse Gloe could adjust the size and shape of the unimbued area to compensate for any effective tactics they formulated. He didn’t have precise control, but only rough shapes were required for this.

Once a fanatic had fallen it was more or less over. The holes were never big enough to easily allow their whole body through so they were left halfway between decks. At that point they could either try to wiggle fully down through the hole, climb back up, or parry Gloe’s follow-up. Wiggling down worked a few times when the fanatics were fast enough, but it also took them temporarily out of the fight, and when they returned to the deck they were faced with the same tactical conundrum.

The other two choices proved fatal. Without footwork or room to maneuver Gloe was free to shower blows on his downed foes, and between relatively evenly-leveled opponents a scimitar proved inadequate to the task of consistently parrying a sledgehammer. Gloe was able to smash his opponents one after another in a rapid succession that, coupled with the element of surprise, allowed him to slay all of them before they could gang up on him.

Of course that only applied to the lead vessel. The fanatics on the other boats were watching carefully as they drew near, murmuring together and devising countermeasures. For the moment Gloe had managed to keep the boom chain intact, but once the other boats drew alongside he would be swarmed over by fanatics. There were only a handful on each vessel, but they were coordinated and focused. He wouldn’t stand a chance.

Perhaps a little too focused. It was unlikely anyone would have seen Emokha regardless, given how high in the sky she was. As it stood though no one was really even looking, aside from cursory glances around. They certainly realized something was wrong in a hurry once she launched her attack though.

Fire burst to life on the rear vessel, the roar of the wood igniting almost drowning out the breaking of glass. Again and again the small flaming bottles fell, and before long the entire boat was blazing merrily. The fanatics on board could stand the heat and continued to try to fight the flames, but it was in vain. The rest of the crew quickly leapt overboard, and the fire was too comprehensive for the remaining fanatics to extinguish before it spread. Worse, the projectiles had fallen so rapidly that none of the demons were quite sure what had happened.

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The results were pretty clear though. The boats were all clustered up, preparing to board, and now there was a fireship drawing down on them. This created a conundrum.

In their hearts, the fanatics wanted only one thing- to rip Gloe apart. Experience had shown that they were incredibly aggressive, always on the attack if they could help it. In their heads though, they knew that their duty was to protect the shipment. They were very regimented and disciplined, and their passion rarely was allowed to overwhelm their reason. They couldn’t do both, not at once at least.

Heads won out. Orders began to ring out, and the non-fanatic crewman began desperately trying to guide the boats clear. Meanwhile the fanatics rushed towards the blazing menace, seizing bumpers and boarding pikes en route. The plan clearly was to use their superior strength to hold it off until the boats could be maneuvered to the side. Then they could go back on the attack.

Maybe that would work out for them, perhaps it wouldn’t. Either way Gloe had other fish to fry. Now that all the fanatics on his boat were dead the surviving crewmembers were either abandoning ship or hiding. None of them wanted anything to do with someone who had just killed that many fanatics, so the boat was essentially his. For the moment. Problem was he didn’t want a boat, he just didn’t want Laukis to have any.

Hiding demons scurried away as he made his way below deck. He made no attempt to chase down any of them, even though he easily could have. It wasn’t that he was averse to killing them, quite the opposite in fact. Their uniforms marked them as direct supporters of an evil regime, so they were fair game. They just weren’t worth his time in the way the fanatics had been.

Once at the lowest point he once again imbued part of the boat’s hull, leaving a large unimbued section. Then he knocked it loose with his sledge. Water came pouring in with incredible force, but Gloe had connected himself to the hull through his imbue, so he was able to weather the initial rush. Once he had gauged its motion he released, using the movement of the water to help propel him to safety. Two more holes guaranteed the boat would sink.

Arriving back on deck he saw that things were proceeding apace. There were isolated fires on all of the remaining boats. Most were clearly the result of Emokha’s continued bombardment. She seemed to have a proclivity for hitting the deckhouse roof, but really her projectiles had been aimed anywhere that was difficult to see or get to. Whatever it took to give the flames time to spread.

More subtly, the exterior hulls of some of the vessels were burning right above the waterline, partially out of sight of the crews. As Gloe watched another spear impacted, the small glowing spark nestled in it quickly blossoming into a true fire. Oresus had left the boom chain and joined the fight.

Not unnoticed. The fanatics seemed to have regrouped and worked on a plan while he was below decks. They were massing and rapidly conferring. Their discipline was impressive, and they were surprisingly adaptive for such conventional fighters. As they split up the broad strokes of their new strategy became clear.

They couldn’t do anything about Emohka at the moment except wait for her to run out of fire bombs. She was too high in the sky for even ranged weapons to hit, using her ability to drop molotovs with terrifying accuracy. Only a dedicated ranged reaver/chosen or someone with flight capabilities would have even had a chance to bring her down.

Keeping that in mind the fanatics were focusing on what they could do. One group was obviously staying in place, protecting and guiding the crewmembers as they fought the fires. That was the largest. A smaller group was moving towards the shore, their gaze fixed on Oresus. The few remaining fanatics were looking at the opposite bank. They had traced the effects of the boom chain and were moving towards the dead tree it was anchored to on that side. Smart.

Gloe highly doubted they had forgotten about him. They were far too trained and experienced for that. More likely, having lost track of him, they had designated a sub-group to hit him once he reappeared and re-engaged. If they hit him at the right time he could end up trapped between two forces of fanatics and overwhelmed. So he decided not to play that game.

Ignoring all of the fanatics he leapt to another boat. Once there he stood at the bow and began smashing downwards at the prow itself. By imbuing all but tall skinny chunks he was able to damage it below the waterline without reducing the weight overly. As water began to flow in the boat began to heel over and twist, slowly sinking in front as the problem cascaded.

As suspected a group of fanatics detached themselves without any discussion, moving in a coordinated fashion to envelope him. He abandoned ship, skipping over the next nearest and attacking the tiller of the one behind it. The fanatics were in hot pursuit, but he was able to knock it loose before giving up on it and moving on to a new target.

In terms of speed Gloe and the fanatics were fairly evenly matched now, but as always Gloe had the edge in agility. They quickly discovered it was very difficult to pin him down given his ability to move three dimensionally. Creating a cordon around him on the surface plane was easy enough, but they couldn’t hang above him, so he could always leap clear. If they managed to preclude all routes to the other boats he would simply bounce back to the shore and re-engage from a new angle. Each time they lost a bit of ground to an unexpected evasion he took another chunk out of a boat’s hull.

It was a battle of attrition, and given that Gloe didn’t tire he had an obvious advantage, at least on the surface. But the fanatics were playing for time too. The group going after Oresus wasn’t succeeding, but they had managed to keep him in place on the shore. That meant the other side of the boom chain was unguarded. The group sent there hadn’t been able to quickly unwind the chain, but working together they had managed to hack the anchor tree to bits. The way ahead was clear.

Leaving the bulk of the fanatics behind to deter pursuit the chain team began boarding the less damaged boats and sending them forward. If they could get the boats all in a line it would simplify the angles of attack immensely, making ambushing Gloe easier. Besides, there was a military outpost farther down the river, and if the boats reached it they would be massively reinforced. The important thing was to get moving.

In some ways it felt a little cheap to use the same trick twice in a row, but war was all about using what worked. Besides, there had been no survivors from the convoy ambush, and this flotilla had been far upriver at the time. There was very little chance they’d have caught wind of what had happened.

That was the assessment at least, and it proved to be accurate. Under normal circumstances the riverboatmen quickly would have detected the boulders in the river given that they were looking for shifting sandbanks and sunken snags. Fleeing while under attack they did not.

The first boat ran aground with a dreadful crunching sound, the second plowing into it despite the crew’s best efforts. The other boats managed to stop in time, back-punting and dropping improvised anchors. They were undamaged, but back in the same dire straits. The momentary hope made the situation feel worse.

And it was. As the fanatics reacted to the failure of their plan Emokha dropped silently out of the sky, her normally buzzing wings stilled until the last possible moment. The strain of suddenly reversing her momentum must have been immense but she was using her ability continuously so she found a way to offset it.

Given the fact that she had been raining fiery projectiles from the sky the fanatics had quite naturally concluded she was a ranged fighter. After all they had no way to threaten her in the slightest from that height, and she was shockingly accurate. There was no good reason for her to engage from their perspective.

Because they didn’t know she was far more deadly up close. The momentary distraction was all she needed to close the distance undetected, and the abrupt buzzing of her wings was masked by the sound of fanatics being shredded in rapid succession. It was the beginning of the end.

Up until this point the fanatics had held two critical advantages- they had the numbers and coordination to swarm their foes over, and they were in control of the terrain- the boats- that was being fought over. Abruptly that changed. Emokha hit at the moment when their coordination was wavering given the sudden failure of their plan. As she cut her way through the fanatics Gloe altered course and joined her. A few minutes later Oresus climbed the side of the hull as well. The water streaming off him took a great deal of blood with it. Some of it was his own. Some.

Rejoined the trio wasted no time eliminating every fanatic onboard and taking control of the boat. The remaining fanatics were reduced in number, their energy and morale drained. They would never give up, but the setback was enough to goad them into falling back to regroup. If they had immediately counter-attacked with everything they had they might have been able to overwhelm the small group. As it was though they completely surrendered the initiative.

Without pause the fight was taken to the demons. Gloe took the van, pushing at a furious pace to keep the pressure up. He wasn’t necessarily going for kills, just trying to keep the threat live and continuous. In and out, hit and run, but always aggressive and moving forward when possible. He crippled, injured or even just knocked down his foes when he could. When he couldn’t he settled for tiring them out, ceaselessly having to react and chase someone who was effectively tireless.

Emokha was right behind, showing no signs of flagging. Her ability likely had something to do with that. At times she would charge in right behind Gloe, taking advantage of the disrupted formations left in his wake. At other moments she flitted into a flanking position, using her flight and hover capabilities to effortlessly cross the gap between boats and catch fanatics off-guard as they prepared to receive Gloe’s assault. Even more rarely she would dip below the hull-lines or fly overhead, circling around unseen to attack a particularly well-prepared group in the rear. She wasn’t moving as aggressively or frenetically as Gloe, but she was also sticking in each engagement for a few seconds longer on average before bouncing away again. That gave her more time to do damage.

Of the three Oresus was clearly the least active. He didn’t have an ability that staved off tiredness, and it had already been a pretty long fight. He’d started it well-rested and prepared, so he was in better shape than the fanatics, but not by that much. He lagged behind considerably, but ironically that didn’t do much to reduce his kill count. Following behind he administered the coup de grace again and again to fanatics fallen or maimed by his compatriots. He wasn’t zipping around, but because of that the exhausted fanatics were ignoring him to a certain extent, giving him time to finish quite a few. When a foe or two did decide to try to pick him off quickly they discovered he wasn’t quite as tired as he looked. His acting skills had improved substantially through leveling up, and he used them to great effect to make his enemies underestimate him.

In this manner the three moved from boat to boat, laying waste to the fanatics. About halfway through the riverboatmen attempted to make it to shore to flee, but their furious leaders slaughtered them to the last man, clearly venting their rage. It could also have been a last-ditch attempt to level up, but if so it was in vain. By the time the trio came to the survivors they had each killed many a fanatic, and they were beginning to outstrip the latters’ average level. There were no survivors.

As the sun sank below the horizon its fading light was reflected in the burning of the remaining boats. The raiders watched until the last boat slipped beneath the water’s surface and settled on the bottom. Although long and hard, the result had proven this to be a good day.