20.

Naomi blocked the heavy swing of the minotaur’s club, her sword hitting the magically hardened wood with a clear ting, rattling her hands as she pushed back the monster’s attack to the ground. All around her was chaos as her team fought back against the tribe of juvenile minotaurs. Alan stood toe to toe with the only mature minotaur to take the field. The bull headed monster was landing bone shattering blows with every swing, Alan’s body deforming and bursting apart with each strike.

His body reformed as fast as it was torn apart. For every blow that landed, Alan hit the beast three to four times, his bare knuckles a blur of blood as he punched the monster. Aura was slowly gathering around him, a red-purple ugly bruise of power that was slowly rolling up his body with every strike. His hands and forearms were coated in the aura so thickly that Naomi couldn’t see through it to his hands.

Naomi was forced back to her fight as the minotaur lowered its head and tried to charge, yellowed horns still covered in sticky red-black gore attempting to skewer her. She struck its head with her circular shield, the sharp edge flaying flesh and cutting to bone as she tossed the seven foot monster to the ground.

As it flew by her, she slashed with her longsword, hamstringing the monster as it landed on the ground. It mooed in rage as she walked and got atop of it, heavy boots pinning its arm as it tried to rise. She lifted her sword perpendicular to the ground, point down, and severed the spine with a single thrust downward.

Now free of the annoying monster she looked back to watch as Alan did his gristly work. In the time she had looked away, the aura had crept to his biceps. Each of his blows punches landed with cataclysmic force now, rocking the nine foot tall minotaur backwards with every strike.

The minotaur was beginning to look panicked as Alan refused to die. Blood burst from its bovine lips as Alan stuck hard, bone breaking in the minotaur’s chest. It staggered, roared in rage, and then brought around its large club in a massive overhand strike. Alan punched up, aura swirling around him so thickly it was like a blanket. The aura condensed around his fist and when it connected there was a burst of power as the club shattered apart like cheap glass.

The minotaur stood stunned for a second as Alan began to start the process all over again. His first punch was weak, just his regular strength that the minotaur hardly noticed. The next, only a half second behind it, was slightly stronger. Naomi watched as Alan launched a flurry of jabs, each strike growing his strength as he stole from the minotaur.

She quickly went to help one of her people, a processor named Aida, who was trying to run away from another juvenile minotaur. She stepped in the charging monster's path, catching a crushing blow with her shield while she stabbed upward with her longsword. The creature’s rush forced itself onto the sword, sharp steel parting flesh and muscle as she twisted and tore the blade free, ending the minotaur’s life.

Aida was panting hard, her oversized pack dwarfing the small woman. Her emerald eyes were filled with fear as she looked around her, shrinking into Naomi’s shadow as survivors of the fight started flocking to her.

“TO ME!” Naomi roared, lifting her sword over her head as she tried to rally those of her party still alive. They had set out days ago with nearly forty people, much more than she had been planning on going with. There were simply too many people who had wanted to go and too many objectives to achieve with just a small war-party. Now nearly a third of them were laying on the ground, still forever.

Her fighters were mostly fine, one or two having fallen in the surprise of the ambush. It was her gatherers and processors who had taken the worst of the losses. They had managed to collect plenty of rare ingredients and build caches on their way here that would be useful later. Now they would have to build cairns for the dead.

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Everyone drifted to her while watching Alan’s duel. It was devolving from a closely contested contest of strength and endurance into just a beating. The minotaur refused to back away, but Alan was overwhelming it with every passing moment. Each blow collected more of that ugly aura around him until, as the minotaur began to sway on its feet, he struck with a single hook and the aura condensed down to explode in a burst of power that disintegrated the minotaur’s head.

Silence fell over the deserted town center. There was a den around here somewhere, likely with a few more minotaurs lurking around, but for now it was peaceful. Alan stepped away from the dead cow, shaking his hands out as if they were asleep. His gaze was still sharp, lucid, no trace of madness on his face.

“Alan? You good to hunt?” Naomi asked him. They were closing in on his hometown, only a day or two away at their current pace, but he had yet to turn down a chance at hunting down monster dens.

“Yeah. You coming with?”

“No. I need to stay here and set up camp. Lucas, Gio, Darnell, and Monica, go with Alan and clear the den. Bring back whatever we need here. Aida, I want you to start securing everything from the fallen. Anything that we can use and need or be repaired. We’ll secure a cache here. Josie, you and two others, start grabbing anything burnable and start building pyres.”

Everyone got to work as she took the remaining fighters and spread them out in a loose perimeter. She had sent her top fighters, aside from herself, to go with Alan. Those who remained were fresh Acolytes with little higher end fighting experience. They were rattled, the speed and ferocity of the minotaurs had taken them off guard and they were reacting badly to how quickly they had lost friends.

She went to each of them, checking on them, touching a shoulder or arm, trying to ground them. She told them they had done well, that they were good warriors. She judged each of them silently, none of them were going to ascend past peak Acolyte. They lacked the strength of will, the iron conviction to keep pushing past all normal boundaries. They would still be valuable. They could contribute and add to the community she was building and thus they were worth the time she invested in them.

It took over an hour for Alan to come back with all of her fighters still alive. He held a pair of minotaur horns, silver and gleaming with power, one in each hand. The team she had sent with him looked at him with a mix of awe and fear. His clothes were little more than blood soaked rags that hung off of him, offering little shielding from roaming eyes.

“Alan? Do you want some clothes?”

“Hmmm, oh yes, that’d be helpful. Seems it’s a bit drafty.” He looked around expectantly, a small smile on his face.

“That was terrible. Leave the horns with Aida and get some fresh clothes. We’re going to burn the bodies and get a move on.”

“Damn, how many did we lose?” Alan asked. He looked at the corpses with a hint of sadness in his gaze. The dead had been gathered and pulled onto hastily built pyres of broken apart wood and soaked in gasoline.

“Seven dead. Mostly from support staff, but Benny died saving Conrad and Bethany.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” Their conversation was interrupted as the system alert of the pillars flashed before Naomi’s eyes. Columns of fire entered the atmosphere, the sonic booms of the shattering sound barrier a constant crash against their ears as people fell to the ground, covering their ears and yelling as the Pillar of Civilization’s arrival acted as an assault upon the world.

Naomi stood her ground, weathering out the assault as everyone else collapsed to the ground. She had the highest physical stats of everyone and even this was a war upon her senses that she struggled to withstand. As fast as it came, it ended.

Echoes of the entrance still rumbled across the world, but the painful attack was over. Naomi scanned the area, looking hard for any sign of a close-by pillar. She had been waiting for this before their expedition had set off, finally giving in to Alan’s requests when they hadn’t arrived soon enough.

Now they had landed in her lap while she was away from her base of power and lacking the man power needed to hold one. She looked around at the others clustered about, read the looks on their faces as they slowly got to their feet. Alan looked about, a mix of irritation and concern on his face.

“We’re going to have to get one of those, Alan,” Naomi said. She wasn’t going to yield the possibility of gathering the resources of a single pillar if she could avoid it.

“There’s a plume of smoke coming from the direction of home. Two birds, one stone,” Alan offered the suggestion.

“It will slow us down. Might take us longer to find your son.”

“He’s survived this long, he’ll last a few more days. You say we need it, then we need it.”