Just to see how it would fail, I reached for the soldiers’ Mana-flames and tried to break them. Any truly intelligent thing could resist this blunt method - but as I reached out I met a black membrane of resistance, a dark force curled around their souls.
I felt the presence of a power like my own.
[https://i.imgur.com/4gzRSG9.png]
Lyssaian Nomad
[ Abyssal ]
Kingdom Animalia
Age - 32 Years
Physique - Bronze
Arcana - Null
Psyche - Abyssal
Diet - Consumate Omnivore
Biome - Flexible
Cycle - Diurnal
The Lyssaian empire was beautiful and broad, running along the coast of a grand continent full of deep deserts and fertile riverlands, their cities planted at the deltas, in rich mud and swaying palms. They gave the world the fruits of their art, their science, their crafts. But they were calm and good-natured. Their gods hid them from the violence of the world. They were no culture of the sword.
When the Black Wolf came they asked to be made anew by the Lord of Valor. Begged to be given the strength to stand as warriors. He gave to them a bloodthirst unmatched, a dull-minded hunger that drove them mad in battle, unable to rest till they devoured their foes. He promised he would restore them their peaceful way when the battle was won.
And he did keep that promise, for a time. But when the Lord of Valor fell, he called to his armies, and the beautiful cities of the Lyssaian were torn apart in cannibalistic fury. Nothing remains of that empire now. Precious little remains of who they once were.
Tainted by the Black Wolf.
Notable Features - Musical communication, reinforced exoskeleton, Abyssal corruption.
The world erupted into violence. The soldiers were fast, their spears long. The lemurs burst from the depths of the grass, shadows with yellow-moon eyes, one breaking to either side of the first of the enemy’s charge.
Two hook-blades cut out, one for his wings, one for his face.
He kicked upwards, the wings on his back letting him sail over them in a simple flip. The spear’s barbed tip swung down, his wings extending to full, stilling for a moment as he shifted his momentum. Down. The spear dove down, driving straight through the first lemur’s shoulder and into the earth. Even as the creature screamed in pain, he let his wings go still, dropping and curling his body tight.
As the second lemur lunged forward, that spring-coiled stance extended outwards. Braced against the spear where it drove into the earth, he pushed himself outwards and parallel to the ground, foot flying forward to smash into the beast’s muzzle, breaking teeth.
It stumbled back. Its neck twisted, head trailing blood as the impact sank through its body. The blow lifted it onto the full height of its lanky legs and it looked as if it would topple backwards.
But the insect-soldier had underestimated my craftsmanship.
The beast let out a fearsome scream as it shifted one foot back, steadying, and swung its muzzle down, blood on its long teeth. A lanky arm shot forward, seizing the insect by the heel and ripping him away from his spear.
He let out a buzzing scream of pain as the hook-scythe whipped across his belly and split him apart. Yellow blood and gore sagged forward as the lemur flung his body aside.
Then the next four closed the gap and my beast was overtaken. Their wings gave them not just speed, but airborne leaps, and they vaulted onto the lemurs back, spears stabbing forward like biting serpents. Blow after blow pierced its heavy hide, their talon-like feet clinging on as they struggled to bring it down.
Ramses prepared to charge, but I held him back. Not yet. Not yet.
I reached out, and gave a command that made me sick.
Step back.
It was my final message. Even then I wasn’t sure it would be heard. My beast was soaked in blood, wild with pain. It could barely stand as the enemy clung on, their poison-drenched jaws ripping into its flesh, eating it alive with a wild glee. Tilting its head up it roared out a final cry and pushed all its might into taking a single, stumbling, backwards step.
Its foot landed on a copper plate I’d sunk into the ground.
For a second I hesitated.
Then I burnt the Mana within the stone guardians, and pushed raw, vivid-white lightning through the earth. It raced down the pathways I’d lain out, and through the lemur’s body. Into the pests clinging onto its back.
The statues blazed as the gemstones set within lit up, painting their grim faces with light. Wild strands of electricity wreathed the white marble.
A surge of lightning threw them aside and scorching their wings, embers eating away the thin silk and clinging to their armored bodies.
Now.
Ramses rose from the water and let loose his battlecry. The soul-breaking sound struck them as they fell to the earth, struggling to control their bodies while electrical impulse spasmed in their muscles. They were dazed and weak.
He bore down and crushed the first one before it could stand, crushing it underfoot. One was already finding their footing, burnt wings hanging broken, spear used for balance.
Go. Everything. Now. For a moment I felt as if it was over. As if we’d won. Two were already dead, and the three weakened. Disoriented.
My wings sailed above. The hawk blazed gold, shrieking out to bury the battlefield in thunderous sound. The crow brought a wave of fog up from the waters, whispering across the battlefield in silence, crawling up the legs of the combatants until they were buried in the depths of a grey storm.
I could still see.
Spears tore at Ramses’ side. The hawk dove, the crow sneaking behind like a shadow in the mist, harrying at the soldier farthest afield from his ally and keeping him from following the fight. Ramses was leading them. They were too fast for him, too clever.
Their blades whipped across his body and caught his loose, flabby skin, the barbs ripping open lengths of bloody flesh in his calves and flank. They moved constantly, one baiting, one striking. With the reach to evade him and the quick coordination to wear him down there was no hope. The gold symbols that covered him gleaming in the light of the fading lighting-stones.
But he wasn’t a dumb beast. He was leading, leading, trying to wedge one between him and the water so his next charge would send it back out of the shallows, deeper than it realized. Then it could crush them.
Everyone fought. Everything surged with violence, blood staining the ground. The lemur who had been impaled let loose low, shrieking sounds of pain as its blood dripped down the spear. Only Shine-Catch held back, hidden in the grass. Fingers shaking on the grip of her weapon.
Below, Lazarus was still entombed in a shell that no longer fit him, the soft flesh below slowly growing its new armor. I fed Mana into him, not sure what else to do. The lemur was too far from my waters to be reached by my healing. I was too slow to make a new creation in the midst of battle.
A second ago I’d felt confident.
Now I felt more like the goblin, watching a battle I couldn’t sway by my own hand. Seeing Ramses bleed, bellowing desperately as the blows added up, his flesh torn and ragged between deep cuts that bared pink muscle, white bone. For a moment one of the bugs slipped into position.
He took his chance and charged, ungainly now, that strange grace that usually inhabited his movements and hid his weight gone - he was a galloping mountain of muscle and fat that crashed into the water and sent the assailant back a step too far. The plan worked. Surprised, the insect-soldier fell into the drowning pit, and Ramses came thundering after him, his whole body hidden by the foam of bubbles his descent kicked up.
For a moment they were weightless in the water, Ramses gaining. His tusked mouth snapped open and grasped the pest by the shoulders, digging his great teeth down till the exoskeleton cracked. The bug bit him in turn, wild, the brief glimpse of humanity I’d seen gone; it sunk its jaws and clung on with no more intellect than a spiteful desert insect.
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He slammed it against the stony walls, again and again. Battering and breaking with all his fading might, until the jaws slackened, the arms fell limp. Until the insect-soldier was a broken doll in his grasp.
Ramses kicked up, and broke from the oasis with a triumphant bellow, tossing the dead thing from his mouth to land against the ground.
In the distance, the soldier who’d been broken from the pack was dying. A dozen strikes of the crow’s venom had sunk into his body. Something had changed there too, and the paralytic had become a terrible agent of living death, turning his flesh to a black slime. The ammonia-laden stench of rotting meat poured from him as his body began to fail.
One left.
One left.
I could have chanted it a million times and still not convinced myself.
A light blazed in the sky. Orange-umber, the color of flames licking up from beneath ash, coals gone hot and hateful beneath black char. It wasn’t the sun. Night had yet to end.
Fire carved a crown in the sky, the crown of the man who’d killed this world.
“Just die.”
The crown descended, shrinking, and the last of the Lysaaian’s fell to its knees, trembling, trapped like a bug under the hand of the god. As it fell two streams of light appeared in the air, one sky blue, one pale as spidersilk. They tangled around the crown and tried to break it. Butterflies and moths appeared as it shook violently in their grasp, breaking sparks of their essence away as it continued to force itself down.
I could feel the air shake and tremble with a conflict that spanned the whole of the real world and more, a fight taking place in the Pale Beyond as the divinities warred for control. Magic itself lost cohesion for a moment. The leylines of Mana that I had threaded through the oasis shattered and reformed in a moment of utter pain.
My creatures heard me scream, and the barrier faltered as the crown fell through.
The crown was weakened - fractured and bent and sputtering like a fire about to go out - but it laid itself atop the creature’s brow as it knelt, unable to escape.
“Go. Go now.” I whispered with the voice of tiny frogs and toads, the wind in the grass, every small and secretive thing I could. I whispered to Shine-Catch, hidden and forgotten.
She was trembling, but she nodded, and with two quick steps broke above the cover, bare feet speeding into a run that took her up a stack of fallen rubble and off, leaping into the air as she cast her crystal spear forward with a wild shout.
It spun in the air - aimed for the beast crowned in flame.
I pushed Mana into the statues, into the stones they held. I gave everything I had, everything I could drink from the corpses littering my domain, and brought sparking tongues of lightning whipping forth as the stones blazed and cracked under the strain.
They lashed out through the air and caught hold of the spear, drawn to it.
The spear itself was only a shadow in the inferno. The world was white and black with the light.
I saw - and felt - and tasted - the lightning’s heat as it closed in on the god-crowned soldier, but the moment was slow, full of horror. I already sensed the power surging forward in its chest as the crown set fire to the blood in its veins.
A hand snapped up and caught the spear. The lightning collapsed from a single bolt into a thundering explosion, a white blossom of force that tore the creature’s hand apart and incinerated the arm, lifted its body, threw it down.
The shockwaves pressed across the earth and made the water kick backwards in a wave. Shine-Catch was caught midair and thrown casually away. The birds were flung on wild arcs through the air.
The green life of the oasis was cut short, and where grass had stood, now there were severed fingers of ash ending in still-burning stumps of orange ember.
The deafening ring faded and the soldier had already rolled onto its feet, hideously burned, bleeding profusely from the cracks in its shell - and barely slowed. One of its interior arms, the small and seemingly delicate secondary limbs, lifted the crystal spear from its smoking crater. It unfolded wings of fire and flung itself towards the oasis.
Ramses threw himself in the path, head down, trying to ram against the foe and force it back.
The soldier caught him by the tusk and lifted him, yanking his forelegs off the ground. One of them kicked it, made it stumble, and the insect let out a keening shriek as it turned and jabbed the spear up into his soft belly. Once, twice, three times. The spearpoint jabbed in and ripped out. The hawk shot for its eyes and was slapped away by the third hand.
Ramses sagged limply in the evil thing’s grasp, all the breath gone out of his roar.
It dropped him and kicked him aside.
A winged shadow fluttered bravely in its face, cawing defiance, and one of the small secondary arms shot forward to grasp- nothing. The crow was elsewhere, creating strange duplicates. Doing what little it could to give me time. Time to think, time to think...
There had to be something, something I’d missed. Some way out. Shine-Catch was still alive, although she was groaning miserably. If the crow could distract the soldier even for a moment she could…
The sword. She could dive and get the sword from where I’d hidden it.
From-
It wasn’t there. It had already been taken. It felt like I was falling in the moment where I saw the empty hollow in the earth, the sword already gone, dug free from its prison. For a moment, I’d been full of hope. Full of desperate clumsy schemes. Full of the conviction that I would survive, I would find the way out, I would win.
There was nothing there. It was gone.
For the longest possible moment I simply felt like I was falling.
Then something moved in the depths and I realized why it was gone. This once someone was ahead of me.
Lazarus swam upwards from the pools heart, his new shell the color of night sky, crossed with veins of star-gold orichalchum. The shining metal formed warped runes on his back, but the segments in his shell were thin, almost decorational.
There’d only been so much of the sword to absorb, and the bulk of it lined his single great claw with a glittering edge of ragged metal. He was bigger now, grown half-again in size, and his spiny legs carried him across the walls like a demon-thing from some abyssal sea, slimy with water on his glistening black caparace.
I let go. I stopped pretending there was anything more for me to do, and simply trusted in my guardians.
[https://i.imgur.com/4gzRSG9.png]
Glyphea Leviathan
[ Silver ]
Kingdom Animalia
Age - 29 Days
Physique - Silver
Arcana - Silver
Psyche - Unranked
Diet - Fish
Biome - Deep Ocean
Cycle - Nocturnal Once a humble creature of meagre origin, the consumption of star-metals has reforged body and mind alike with the faintest echoes of celestial power. The strength of its shell unmatched, this creature has the potential to grow endlessly, its single claw sheering through lesser material with ease. Having tasted starfire its dull intellect is filled with dreams of the deep fathoms of the Celestial Sea. Born of the Oasis Dungeon.
Notable Features - Regeneration, constant growth, arcane resistance.
Let him pass.
The crow ceased harrying the god-bound soldier, which seemed blind with anger, willing to lash out fruitlessly at the shadows forever. It paused, and tilted its neck.
Hearing something I could not.
Without question, it stepped forward, wading into the waters, and dove down.
There- in the depths- sound was muted. The fiery shape of the crown seethed off long chains of steam as it melted the waters, unleashing an eerie, muted orange-gold light across the deep shaft I’d slowly dug to hide myself in.
On the walls, Lazarus waited. The insect’s wings were extinguished as it fell, moving along the edges where it could grasp the walls and kick against them, spiraling down the pit’s edge to keep on the far side from my beast. This shaft I’d cut as my last defense was only a few dozen feet deep.
If it got past him, it could close the distance in a single leap.
It hefted the spear, braced, and sent it lancing towards Lazarus in a thin blaze, the power within exhausted. His claw swung through the air and swatted it away with a spray of sparks. The crystal tip bit into stone, cracking the walls.
In the moment of recoil from his parry, the god-bound soldier flung himself down. Lazarus kicked off, moments behind, his weight making up for his weaker strength, his sleek build suiting the water well. It could see me. Its dark eyes could sense my light even buried beneath the thin layer of sand I’d, somehow, thought might help.
It reached out, and Lazarus collided, throwing it aside - its fingers could have almost brushed me.
They tangled, wreathed in foam, crashing against the sandy floor of the drowning pit and skipping up again, weightless. The Lyssaian had no weapons left but his jaws, which grasped for some weak point, some place on the sleek shell to find enough grip to slowly bite down and crush inwards to the flesh below.
Lazarus had him by the secondary arm, the limb already half-gone, hanging by a scrap of sinew. With a casual motion the orichalcum-edge of his pincer clamped down and ripped away. It struck him desperately in the eyes with the heel of its palm, with its one main arm. Pulp billowed outwards as the glassy organ was crushed to paste beneath the blow.
But that hardly stopped him. His antenna cast across the thing’s face, his legs grasping its body. His jaw reached for its throat.
It sacrificed its one strong arm to stop him, and he bit through exoskeleton and flesh with brutal efficiency. It twisted, legs wedging up, against his underbelly. A kick and for a moment the insect was free, scrabbling through the mud.
The crown on its head flickered, and ran down its face, across its one remaining arm. As the liquid flame reached the palm it reformed into a blazing lance, longer than the wielder was tall. The water recoiled in a spiraling drill of steam.
It hardly even needed the soldier’s strength to throw it. It vaulted forward and slammed into Lazarus, lifting him, throwing him high and away with a force that crushed him against the wall. For a moment the fire held strong, like a living thing. It pushed him higher and higher, scraping into the stones, grinding loose an avalanche.
Then it sputtered and went out.
Lazarus drifted in the water. Half his legs were broken and he was too far away to help me.
The soldier turned, its whole body oozing liquid droplets of flame. Sustained not by any life left in that broken, battered body - its lungs already full of water - but by the will of its god. It reached for me.
Lazarus’ claw swept the air and traced an arc of blue-black flame. The spell contained within the sword he’d consumed, now written across his shell in letters of ancient elvish. The same that had cut his own carapace.
It bore down, seeming fast and slow at once, a drifting wave of razor-sharp flame.
I felt the insect’s hand grasp me, felt the fire burning beneath the armored skin.
The guillotine of black fire slammed down, and took the arm. Took the head. Split the last of the Lyssaians in two.
Blood drifted through the sudden silence of the waters.