With her plague minions breaking up the cohesion of Technis’ soldiers, Bex, the wonderful mixture of Bel and the plague serpent Bex, had an opportunity to go on the offensive. She manipulated her liquified shield, wrapping most of it around her body to leave her with a smaller shield more suitable for a moving fight. Before charging into the fray, she took a moment to evaluate the battlefield.
Her minions were slow and unremarkable until they came into contact with human skin, at which point they sank hooks into the human’s flesh and injected themselves into the blood of their new host. A few moments later, the person desiccated and ten or more new spirits burst forth from their victim.
She watched proudly as they overwhelmed the soldiers through sheer force of expanding numbers. A few soldiers still shot the occasional arrow at her – and one annoying one had a bag of nails that he tossed at her in a steady stream – but their group cohesion was breaking apart. She looked the nail-thrower in the eyes until he glanced up at her, at which point her glare locked his muscles into place. That made him easy prey for the nearest of her minions.
Meanwhile, the closest of the plague spirits were flowing to Bex herself, fusing with her body and bringing with them all of the essence they’d liberated from their victims. Bex practically swelled with power as her cores advanced.
She was feeling confident. More than that, she was feeling powerful.
Then a new group of people kicked open a door and strode into the courtyard. With barely a glance spared in her direction, the crisply dressed man in the center of the group tipped back his over-large hat and flicked his hands through the air. Sparks leaped from his fingers, alighting upon the slug-like spirits and any soldiers suffering from their effects. The sparks burrowed beneath their skin and burned them all, spirit and human, to cinders.
Bex knew that the spirits weren’t truly dead, but they did break apart. For the purpose of the battle there was no practical difference. The little spirit specs lost their purpose and drifted aimlessly away with the wind.
I’ll have to take the Incinerator out, she thought to herself, giving a name to her new foe,and I’ll have to do it quickly.
Bel would have pounced upon the man, but Bex didn’t have legs – or a body suitable for rapid movement. She crawled towards them at her full speed, gnashing her teeth with frustration as her minions were wiped out.
One of the men next to the Incinerator saw her determined progress and waved his hands in her direction. Several slabs of ground rose up around her before diving inwards, sealing her into a rocky prison. She scoffed – as if a few rocks could hold her. Bex blasted her way free with a liquid shockwave, but kept hold of a large chunk of rock. Once the dust cleared, she destabilized it and tossed it into her opposition. She was rewarded with a loud explosion and the instant death of a dozen soldiers.
She sent another explosive rock into the ensuing chaos with similarly satisfying results, but a third stone was deflected by a wall that lifted out of the ground. Her lower body undulated in panic and she quickly reformed her armor into a shield as her exploding rock came back to her. The shield protected her from immediate disintegration, but the concussive force of the blast lifted her from the ground and sent her rolling back into the wall. Her senses were dazed and her mind reeling, but she staggered upright.
Luckily, she had enough presence of mind to keep her shield pointed at her enemies. As the ringing in her head cleared, she created a small hole in her shield to look through.
What she saw was displeasing. The soldiers had shaped the ground into a large platform a few strides from the ground, which kept them out of the reach of her plague spirits. All of the surviving soldiers had climbed up, and the Incinerator was laying waste to everything around him, cleansing the courtyard with fire. Their platform had turned into a sanctuary within a sea of flames.
Bex hissed angrily. Her energy had been refilled by her minions so her Bel-Vex fused state was maintainable, but she was forced to admit that it wasn’t doing her any good. It stung – Vex’s distaste for the healthy and Bel’s hatred of Technis combined into something stronger that she didn’t want to give up. However, she wasn’t too stubborn to admit that her current form was poorly suited for her current challenge.
As a final vindictive act, Bex reached out to the potential victims and liberated the essence from the weaker ones. She watched with satisfaction as a handful of bodies toppled from the platform and into the blaze below.
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Then she ended her mixed spirits, allowing Vex to flow back to her serpent form as the rest of her body returned to Bel’s usual gorgon self. There were a few confusing moments as she readjusted, but then Bel lifted the shield from the ground as she stood upon her human legs.
The Incinerator’s flames were expanding outwards, somehow still burning over the empty courtyard as they hungrily groped in her direction. Bel snorted – they were still treating her like some kind of sewer beast. She locked eyes with the nearest soldier – a well-muscled man who was tracking her with his bow – and pounced.
He quickly adjusted his aim, but Bel glared before he could release his arrow. His core was strong enough that her ability only caused a brief spasm to cross over his body, but that was enough to make his prematurely release his missile. It flew useless below her, lacking whatever abilities he had intended to use. While he grabbed for a second arrow with ability-fueled speed, an entire shield wall formed in front of him
Three men knelt side-to-side with interlocked shields at the edge of the platform and two more stood behind them with spears facing her. A blue glow enveloped the entire group as they activated Technis’ signature ability, leaving just the glinting tips of their weapons outside of their protective shell. They had executed the maneuver so swiftly that Bel wondered how many times they had practiced it. Rather than attempting to break through their defense, Bel rammed into their barrier and let herself slide off.
She stood upon her shield, sledding down the side of their blue dome as they poked at her with their spears. They probably expect me to fall into the fire below, she thought with a grin.
Instead, as she passed over the edge of their raised platform, Bel reformed her metal shield into body armor and stabbed the metal-tipped nails of her hands deep into the rock. Then she swung her body to the side, kicking into the platform with a liquid shockwave.
The rocks buckled and collapsed, and Bel was swung back by the force of the explosion. As she struggled to maintain her handholds, the edge of the platform gave way, converting the organized group of soldiers into a tangle of arms and legs as they fought gravity to stay out of the inferno below.
Bel swung herself over to the steeply sloping ramp of loose stone and scrambled after them on all fours. She rammed into one of the men, shouldering him hard enough that he tumbled over the edge. She jabbed her nails through the neck of a second as he fumbled for a short blade on his waist.
As she pulled the essence from his lifeless body, she looked up to see that the other three men had gotten back to the feet with the assistance of a stone manipulating soldier who had still the sliding rocks. Seeing his hands twitching in her direction, Bel pounced again, risking a moment in the uncertain sky rather than staying within reach of his element.
An arrow immediately struck her in the leg. It bounced harmlessly from her armor, but then it warped in midair and twisted around her ankle. That was a problem she would have to worry about later – at the moment, she was about to crash into the spear and shield duo who had stepped in front of her target.
Bel used her liquid body to pass around a spear rather than allowing it to slow her approach, but she was brought to a sudden halt by the shield and its immovable wielder. The heavy slab of metal glowed with sudden heat as he attempted to cook her, but Bel used thermal regulation to pump the heat into her magma snake, countering his ability. Then she grabbed onto the top of his shield and leaned backwards, attempting to pull him off balance and throw him over the edge.
It was like his feet had been welded to the ground – he didn’t budge at all, and the attempt left Bel dodging a thrust from the second spearman while another arrow bounced from her back and wrapped around her elbow. She growled in frustration, ducked under another spear thrust, and shoved her hands into the dense metal of the shield as she attempted to liquify it. Bel clenched her teeth with effort as she felt his abilities resist her own, but he couldn’t last for long. When her hands shot through the suddenly porous metal, she obliterated the man with a shockwave.
As the man behind him cleared blood and gore from his eyes, Bel ran her hand over her metal armor, freeing a curved section that she formed into a short, wicked blade. Her skills with metal shaping were a far cry from Escalope’s ability, but Bel was satisfied that her weapon could kill if she swung it with enough force: a hypothesis that she immediately tested upon the spearman’s head.
Another arrow bounced off of her armored knee, once again animating and wrapping around her limb afterwards. She wasn’t sure how the archer had figured out his missiles would pass through her liquid body, and she wasn’t sure what countermeasure he was planning, but she was going to take him out next.
Bel turned in his direction, but before she could take a step she was hit by a huge slab of stone. Whatever thoughts she’d been thinking were scoured clean from her mind as the stone scraped her against the ground. Her mind screamed in alarm as she neared to the edge of the platform and the fires below, and Bel reflexively obliterated the stone with a liquid shockwave.
I’m running out of essence again, she realized. Why the hell do I always try to take everyone on by myself?
She got to her feet and felt a plink as another arrow bounced off of her left arm. Her angry growl turned to a surprised yelp as the arrows that had wrapped around her arms and legs turned attractive and yanked themselves together. She fell back down, neatly squished into a tight ball by the four arrows that pulled her limbs together. Bel did the only thing she could think of: she rolled downhill, away from the soldiers and certain doom and towards the fire a likely doom instead.