Hamanymu sighed in irritation as the blistering rays of the desert sun beat down upon his body hard enough that it almost seemed like they were a million burning needles that were trying to cut into his forehead.
It had been close to an hour since the others had departed to perform reconnaissance into the desert. The rest of them on the other hand, had remained here as glorified body guards, best at only watching the excited archeologists digging vast trenches into the sand.
With every second the archeologists would dig up some bones or half rusted away tools which had lost whatever colour it had once possessed.
He had taken a seat upon the top of the Bee with Thor at his side as lookouts. They could only look around in the hopes of seeing the others return from the horizon that they had disappeared into.
"This is so boring," Thor groaned as he sat up.
"This is the job," Hamanymu replied, this was something that he had experienced in the capital. He had hoped for some action here but alas, no such luck.
"I know, but I thought that there would be more fun or something to hit with Mjølnir, " Thor responded as he stretched his limbs.
"You and me both," Hamanymu said as he switched his attention from the only people who seemed to be enjoying their time here and to his fellow knights.
Theseus stood like a statue, motionless and ever watchful of the archeologists who kept pulling more and more fossilized remains from the earth.
"Stearing is rude you know," someone said behind him and instinctively, Hamanymu yelped in surprise as he leaped to his feet with his hand reaching for his sword, Imwami.
As Hamanymu turned, he moved too hastily and he tumbled off the edge of the Bee before landing with a sharp thud upon the steaming hot desert sand.
"Oh," he groaned as he staggered upwards with sand tumbling through his armor and into places that sand should never reached.
"What do you think that you are doing?!" Theseus demanded as he stomped towards Hamanymu.
"I.... I tripped," the red and gold Knight responded as he looked upwards to where he had been and in his place stood Munales teammate, Kalunga Dunda.
"You don't just trip, do your god damn job right," Theseus snapped at him as his face turned into an even deeper shade of blue.
"I understand, now get the hell out of my face, Troezen!" Hamanymu stood his ground to the Fae.
"Wait." one of the archeologists shouted in surprise, catching their attention.
The man leaped out of the hole and he rushed foward before reaching a halt in front of Theseus. He then levelled his finger at the Fae's face with a look of joy, written all over his face.
"You are a Troezen, as in an actual surviving Troezen!?" He asked in such excitement that he looked ready to start leaping for joy.
"I... I..." Theseus was dumbstruck and he stuttered out some gurbald words before turning to face Hamanymu, his facial features contorted into a visage of pure contempt.
"Don't you dare look at me like that, I don't know or care about what a Troezen is!" Hamanymu shouted back.
"How can you not know about one of the oldest and most famous noble houses of old Avalon. One of the five who led the rebel forces to the Burning Water's?" the man asked and Hamanymu could only draw a blank "What do they teach you young people nowadays?"
" Well, I am not from here. How am i supposed to know that?"
His response drew a face of realization from the archeologists "Oh, you are one of those refugees from that place.... Earth right?"
" Yes."
"I apologize for my outburst" the archeologist bowed respectively before he turned to face Theseus, while asking " I hope it isn't a bother, but I have so many questions to ask?"
Theseus looked ready to refuse, but he simply sighed in defeat and he walked away with the archeologist following closely behind, firing question after question.
"So that jerk is a noble?" Hamanymu said.
"No he is not," once more he heard Kalungas voice behind him and much to his shame, Hamanymu leaped once more in surprise.
"Will you stop doing that. I know that you are dressed in all black like a ninja, but this is just annoying!" He snapped.
"You should be more aware of your surrounding," Kalunga ignored his question.
"Will... wi... what?!" Hamanymu felt like ripping out some chunks of his hair in frustration.
He paused and took a deep breath to calm his nerves " What did you mean about Jerkseus?"
"The Troezen were powerful once. But like the other noble houses, they resented the grip of the old king and queen. Then the fourth Night Terror incursion happened and in some foolish attempt to reassert their dominance, the noble houses ignored the crowns orders and took over sixteen hundred thousand of their troops and relatives to Sandan lake to meet the Night Terrors," Kalunga began explaining and Hamanymu could not help but glance to the Fae to whom this was related.
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"They were massacred to barely five thousand. Many noble lines ended and those who survived had lost so many troops, that the families of those hundreds of thousand dead men were less than interested in accepting their over lordship again. The noble houses vanished or were reduced to be barely no better than those peasants that they had ruled, the Troezen are no different and they have nothing more than a old castle and an overinflated sense of self importance to their names now."
" You know quite a lot about them."
" It is known history. It might help you with understanding your friend."
Hamanymu felt like gaging at the implication of the words that him and Theseus were anything approaching friends.
"I..." Hamanymu began speaking but he stopped as a great shadow fell upon them.
He looked upwards and where there had once been a few clouds and a bright burning sun, was now a series of dark purple clouds that beat with the rumbling of thunder.
"Is that rain?" He asked as loudly as he could, to stop his voice from being drowned by the violent winds that beat about around him.
"No, that's no storm, those are shadows," Thor replied and from the dark clouds, bolts of purple lightning rained down upon the earth in thousands.
The lightning bolts left large craters in the earth, but nothing came out of the holes in the earth, nothing that was except for living shadows.
These shadows stood at seven feet with distended limbs that made them walk in a twisted and awkward manner. The only other thing that gave them away were the burning purple eyes within their mass of blackness.
"What the hell are those?" Hamanymu asked as he placed his hands upon Imwami.
"Shadecan, beasts of pure shadow. Be sure coat your weapons in energy," Kalunga replied.
"Why?"
" Because they are intangible little bastards," Kalunga replied as he placed his helmet upon his head.
The shadows screeched with voices that sounded like nails being dragged across a chalkboard. Hamanymu winced from the sound which reverberated around him. The Shadecan then rushed forward with blinding speeds.
"Cover the archeologists and get them to the Bee!" Theseus shouted as he raised his axe and he cut down a Shadecan that tried to tackle him.
"You heard the man!" Thor shouted, though he could not keep the expression of giddy excitement off his face.
He raised his great hammer, Mjølnir, towards the Shadecan and from the obsidian hammer came a stream of a hundred arcs of electricity that cut through the Shadecan. The very sand that they stood upon turning to glass from the intensity of the electricity as the Shadecan were torn to shreds.
Hamanymu raised his sword and he swung it at a nearby Shadecan, but the blade flew straight through the creature that just ran past him without a care in the world.
"What the hell is that?!" He shouted in surprise.
"I told you. Infuse everything you use with magic," Kalunga shouted as he used his blade to cut down shadows with excellent precision and form " They are intangible, you can't hurt them with mundane means."
" I don't have the time for this stupid magic jumbo," Hamanymu complained as he drew the threads of magic within himself and he wrapped them around his body and his blade.
He raised Imwami and he slammed the blade tip into the sand, pouring in all of his energy. From the ground multiple red and yellow roots erupted and impaled multiple Shadecan through the chest.
"A plant life variant of earthen magic, impressive," Kalunga shouted before he simply vanished within a puff of black smoke.
Suddenly six Shadecan stopped running before they simply fell over, their heads tumbling far from their bodies. A second puff of smoke erupted and Kalunga materialized once more into view.
"You know that you could have just complimented me without showing off," Hamanymu said as he cut down a Shadecan that was hoping to sneak up on him.
"But where is the fun in that," Kalunga replied as he fought his way deeper and deeper into the mad melee.
"Come in the tens of thousands if you must, you will die all the same!" Thor's voice loudly boomed as he raised Mjølnir and with a single swing he sent five Shadecan flying eight meters into the air.
"He is having too much fun," Hamanymu thought as he managed to shake off a few Shadecan that had tried to bury him under a pyramid of their own bodies.
The Shadecan soon found themselves at the tip and edge of Imwami and regardless of how they fought, he cut them down all the same.
Within this chaos of the hum of electricity and the the screeching of the Shadecan, another sound emerged. It was like two great boulders being slammed into one another at high speeds.
The sound got even louder and that was when Hamanymu saw it. A great green monster, it's body made from steel and at its head was Mulale Livistone, who was piloting it.
This was one of the legendary mech armors that the Galgan brigade prided themselves in piloting. The twenty meter tall goliath easily crushed and smacked aside everything in its path.
Upon its shoulder rested a cannon of sorts, and while Hamanymu could not quite see what it fired into the sea of shadows, he felt it. The earth trembled from the impact and the shockwave which followed every shot, almost uprooted him from his feet.
Another shot went off and Hamanymu was staggered by the burst of kinetic energy that washed all over him. This momentary distraction from his path of cold butchery left him open and the another group of Shadecan swarmed him.
He felt their cold fingers interlock around his body and though not one of them could equal his strength, twenty-five of them were more than enough to hold him in place, no matter how hard he tried to shake them off.
He paused from his struggling when he heard words being uttered from the mass of shadows upon him.
"Slit his throat."
" Rip out his eyes."
"Just go for his tendons, we don't need to end the fun so quickly."
" This bloody armor is too tight."
The voices of a near legion spoke to each other, arguing about what torture would be horrific enough for him but would leave him alive long enough to keep the fun going.
"I am not sticking around long enough for that nonsense," he thought as sent some threads into the sand and mixed together a familiar tapestry.
A group of sixteen flowers slowly rose from the sand and with the flower head pointed at them, Hamanymu pulled the mental trigger and the flowers let out a wide puff of golden pollen that fell upon them all.
He had closed his eyes in advance and the worst that the pollen gave him was an itchy nose. But for the Shadecan, their eyes were attacked with a horrific, burning sensation.
They were sent into a frenzy, cursing and roaring in pain as their eyes burned. They forgot about holding him down as they screamed in agony and he used Imwami to silence all of them.
"Just how many of these things are there!" He snapped as he raised some more roots that tore through the nearby Shadecan.
A burst of wind and electric came around him as the walking wrecking ball of havoc that was Thor tore through multiple Shadecan before coming to a halt besides Hamanymu.
"More than enough for us to kill all day," Thor said as he backhanded a nearby Shadecan, sending the wretched creature thirty meters into the air.
"Sometimes you worry me," Hamanymu responded.
Another wave of Shadecan came rushing their way, but a strange projectile from the heavens tore through them. Hamanymu raised his arms to protect himself from the large amounts of sand that went flying through the air.
As the sand lowered , he caught sight of a familiar blue armor laying in the arms of another figure in red armor within the crater that their landing had created.
"Chris?" He stated in confusion as he approached his downed friend.