Auntie Ta had cautioned them before leaving that her ‘Sandstorm Veil’ would only last about ten minutes, and that it would vanish completely if they lost contact with the sand for any reason. Even so, it was a powerful effect. Sean couldn’t tell where Warabe had gone, despite pushing his hunting instincts to do so and following right after him. It was like a swift wind was wiping his footprints clean off the surface and a broom was erasing even those marks, leaving only ‘undisturbed’ ground in his wake.
The giant guards were clearly on alert, keeping a sharp eye out at the dunes surrounding their territory. They were not, however, watching the sands near their own feet. Sean and Gel passed between two of the armed patrols without incident. He had been worried the sandwurms might have some kind of sense for tremors, but the impossibly toothy creatures didn’t so much as twitch in their direction.
“That was… way easier than I was expecting it to be.” Sean mentally confided to Gel as he began scaling the encampment’s heavily inclined side.
The going was easier than it should have been. If it weren’t for the sandstorm veil helping to steady the sands under foot from sliding somehow, he would be taking two steps for the progress of one. As it was, he shot up the side faster than ever before. He glanced at his mana countdown HUD, checking it against the time they had taken the potion.
“Six minutes left.” Sean reported, trying to get the hang of the new stability Auntie Ta’s ability offered him in his ascent.
“Think you can make it to the top before it runs out?” Gel asked, the slime currently working on preparing his favorite part of their plan. “Imagine the surprise on their faces! Some of them might never even know, their meat will be so tender.”
“We’re about to find out.” Sean said, sprint-scrambling up the hill’s steep incline at what felt like top speed. As he finally managed to stand and run halfway-vertically, he couldn’t help but shout out to Gel: “Maximum… effort!”
“You weren’t giving that already?”
“Hrraannnnghhh!”
They cleared the top of the hill with just under two minutes left on the veil-clock. Just under two minutes to scan their surroundings, compare them against what Gel had seen previously, and take the first action… before someone else did. Sean crawled over the edge at the top of the encampment, landing in a forward roll before popping up, burning orbs rapidly surveying the scene. Next to him, half a dozen of his former eyes peered in every direction from inside liquid crimson whips.
There were at least two dozen dune giants at the top of the hill, armed with various massive, oversized weapons and all wearing the same stitched-hide armor as before. The kind that appeared to be entire skins, jaws, paws, and all. Sean was curious as to the point behind it. Was it just simple convenience? Some kind of ability? A new type of armor-smithing unique to this world?
Questions for later.
As Sean gripped the inmortu’s midnight-black blade, he counted the number of those closest to him. Seven were loading up enormous sleds hitched to those many-toothed wurm monstrosities, nine were carrying various loads of supplies around camp or taking down fortification pieces and setting them aside for later use. Five were conferring amongst themselves in what probably passed for hushed tones amongst their kind, deep rumbling voices shaking the pebbles around them. Three stood on a raised stone platform above the rest, issuing orders whenever they saw slacking. All of that, they could handle. Maybe.
But the one Sean and Gel were after, stood high above even those three. Arms crossed and glaring down from atop a boulder that was quite literally the size of most restaurants back home, was the new chief of their clan. Big Smash. An almost comically muscular humanoid with impossibly bushy dark-brown brows and a stone-hewn club that would have rivaled a Las Vegas billboard in size. There was an unrecognizable skull set in the end of it, like the team logo one might find on a major league bat. Sean felt irrational anger seep into him at the sight of it, and the gelaton wasn’t entirely sure why. He squashed it down, replacing it with incredulity.
“How is that the rock you were talking about?” Sean demanded, gesturing at the stone Big Smash was sitting on, one that dwarfed the Stonehenge stones by what geologists might refer to as a ‘categorical difference’. “You didn’t tell me their ‘rock was the size of a freaking building!”
“What else did you expect giants to fight over?” Gel shot back, matching him tone-for-tone. “They can’t just trade pebbles back and forth, they’re all huge! Huge people means huge rocks!”
Sean let out an exasperated mental sigh before giving up on option A, and dashing towards the plethora of targets option B opened up. He kept his bone-shield in a ready-guard position, just in case the veil dropped early.
“We’ll never make it up that thing in time.” Sean said, talking as quickly as his burning orbs were spinning. “Chief Big Smashed over there lives for now. Plan B!”
“Plan Butcher!” Gel cheered happily, using a name they hadn’t agreed upon beforehand but Sean couldn’t deny was entirely accurate. His right crimson-whip flashed out ahead of them, piercing the sandstorm veil for only the briefest of instants.
“I love this plan, now let’s get in close and mow. Them. DOWN!”
Without hesitation, Sean did.
The bulk of their initial shock-and-awe plan revolved around two crucial, if limited advantages they had right now, though it was mainly one: unlike every type of invisibility Sean had ever dealt with in video games, Auntie Ta’s sandstorm veil did not stop working if he/when they attacked something while under its effect. She had been confused at the very concept when he had asked, and Warabe had actually laughed at the idea… even if the action had pained him.
Their second advantage was the one hurtling towards the center of camp at this very moment. To Sean’s amusement, one of the giants carrying an enormous sack of mystery-lumps kicked it out of the air on reflex as it came close to his leg, perhaps thinking it a large bug. Either way, it was a decision the gelaton imagined he immediately regretted, because as with every potion they had ‘liberated’ from Bancroft, this one did not disappoint.
A pitch-black whirlpool of what Sean could only describe as the void itself just opened up in the middle of the air where the potion had shattered. It stretched out for more than a dozen meters in every direction, drawing in everything that wasn’t nailed down with the force of a sucking maelstrom. Notably, nothing was nailed down in the dune giant’s encampment. Everything within the whirlpool’s range was drawn in… and that’s where it died.
All of it.
The briefly-startled dune giant, the sack of mystery-lumps he was carrying, several of his nearby clanmates and the wurms they were escorting, and every ounce of flesh, bone, sand and other materials sucked in – all of it was blackened in an instant, transforming into heaps of semi-solid ash. Ash that swirled to the base of the whirlpool’s vortex, chambering into it like a round in a rifle before the whirlpool spun mid-air on an axis of its own, aiming itself at the only death creature in the area… and firing.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
At a skeletal creature currently grinning like a madman.
—--------------------
“A ‘death plume’ potion?” Sean asked, as Auntie Ta handed the vial back before turning to work on Warabe’s injuries some more.
“I feel like I’m supposed to know what that does.” Gel said, . “But I don’t. Let me ask.”
“Two things. Two you’ll care about anyway.” The druid said off-handedly after Gel transmitted the question over, a bit of her normal playfulness creeping its way back into her voice. “The first, you’ll want to watch out for.”
“... why?”
“Because it’s going to explode.” Auntie Ta said, again sounding far too casual for this description given Sean’s prior experience with potions that ‘explode’. “Sort of. Each one is different in its manifestation, but whatever it is– don’t get caught in it. It won’t be very large, but it will likely be lethal to creatures not wholly composed of death mana. Since you two are half-and-half, you might be alright… but then you might not.”
Sean stared down at the olive-skinned woman, disbelief etched across his bone-white features.
“You’ll want to be close for the second, so don’t back up too far.” Auntie Ta continued, as if that suggestion wasn’t pure lunacy. “Because the plume will attempt to transfer the transmuted essence of those it has slain into the closest compatible entity or entities.”
The druid looked over her shoulder at them, a bit of the wild-glee that battle had induced on her earlier shining through her eyes. “Which would be you, dear. The effect will be temporary, too. So try not to waste it.”
—--------------------
Sean stretched his black reaper’s hand out past the sandstorm veil just as the secondary effect of the ‘death plume’ erupted. This was the most dangerous part of their plan. The point where their position was the most visible, and the pair of them were the most vulnerable. Luckily, it appeared most of the dune giants on the hilltop were too stunned by what had just happened to react. Sean could hardly blame them, but he was determined not to waste the moment.
A pillar of grey ash shot directly into the palm of his left hand, and a prompt appeared in the gelaton’s vision. Its borders were blackened petals, its interior that of drifting volcanic ash, and the letters a bold, bright white. The sound of swiftly rushing water filled Sean’s mind as he read.
You have been struck by a Death Plume! As a death creature compatible with the blessing it offers, you are entitled to the full benefits it offers. Your health and mana have temporarily been raised by half of the sum total value of those sacrificed.
Sean’s jaw dropped open in shock as he watched his health and mana rise in his HUD. Power flooded into his skeletal frame as somehow-frigid, swirling ash adhered directly onto his bones. It crawled along his left arm in a wave, gliding over the rest of his body – though the gelaton noticed it avoided the slime’s crimson liquid wherever possible.
Is it because I’m the death half? Sean didn’t have the answer to that question, and he didn’t have time to ponder it. All around them, the aftermath of silence caused by the death plume potion was shattering. Dune giants were roaring in anger and confusion, and the ones on the raised platform were pointing his way, shouting orders Sean couldn’t understand.
Inside his chest, almost inaudible amidst the cacophony, Gel roared a challenge of his own… and the battle at the hilltop began in earnest. Far below, underground and away from the main encampment, a turtle in the shape of a man began a pitched, desperate battle of his own.
—--------------------
At first, the near-invisibility granted by the sandstorm veil reminded Sean of when they had fought slaver ants who had been blinded to their presence. They blurred across the battlefield, carving open calves and the backs of knees, hamstringing opponents where they could and severing ankle tendons where they couldn’t. True to their earlier plan, the two of them never stopped to down any single opponent. Instead, they focused on causing as much chaos as possible before their biggest advantage ran out.
Gel was forced to be judicious with where he struck, since the crimson whips were highly visible indicators of their position. But as the battle drew closer and more frenzied, the giants’ own difference in mass worked against them. They were physically incapable of crowding around one another without getting in each other’s way, a fact that Sean’s instincts were constantly directing him to make the most efficient use of. A changed direction here, a tumble there, and even occasionally nudging him to change targets at the last second.
The gelaton listened to all of it. He pushed himself and Gel to their individual limits, grateful for their ability to combine attributes. Yet even as the danger around them continued to grow, and the odds stacked against them continued to do the same… Sean felt his rising joy match or even outpace them. Battle fever, furvor, or whatever you would call it – whatever counted as his blood these days was thundering in his chest even as grey giant-blood sprayed across the sands.
You have used the ability ‘Slash’ on Dune Giant for 34 points of damage (34 total, 19 base of physical and weapon damage plus 15 from using the ‘Slash’ ability with a weapon of compatible type and aspect).
It was startling to see just how effective having a proper weapon in hand could be. Combined with his truly ridiculous, and thoroughly temporary, mana reserves – Sean wasn’t holding anything back. Every giant unlucky enough to get within reach got his full might, and Gel’s crimson axe flashed out at the end of his whip like a third arm.
For the first time in his unlife, Sean spent mana like it was water. Even more so than underground at the colony. Between the bone shields he couldn’t stop breaking, to the slashes he couldn’t stop making, the gelaton was spamming his abilities more frequently than even he could believe. He was a machine. A beast. An unstoppable creature of death and chaos! An invincible–
– the sandstorm veil dropped.
It could not have picked a worse moment. Sean had just dashed between the legs of a hamstring foe, and found himself caught between a quartet of furious opponents – all of whom he had personally maimed in one way or another just seconds prior. His instincts screamed at him, demanding he move in a dozen competing directions at once. Trying to force him to evade the blows he was sure was coming…
… but the gelaton didn’t move.
Instead, he raised his blood-splattered skull towards the chief glowering down at the suddenly-visible invader to his realm with eyes full of hate. As the dune giants gathered all around him raised their massive weapons, murder gleaming bright in their hearts, Sean did the only thing he could do.
He had Gel issue a challenge to their chief.
“Big Smash! I challenge you for tribe!” Gel roared, as Sean pointed the inmortu’s black blade at their opponent with perfect timing. The pair of them studiously ignoring the imminent death-by-club swings being prepared in no fewer than four adjacent directions. “That is my rock!”
Surprising the gelaton to the absolute core of his being, the still-bleeding giants intent on smashing him to pieces all turned as one, staring up at their leader with confusion in their eyes… then a wild, dark glee. Big Smash jerked his chin in a dismissive gesture, dark eyes filled with hate under his enormous eyebrows, and the four surrounding them backed off a step. The rest of the clan, or tribe, or whatever it was… did the same.
“I can’t believe that worked.” Sean told Gel, as Big Smash made the multi-versal “bring it” gesture before stepping back from the rock’s ledge to give them room. “I may never believe that worked, actually.”
“I told you it would!” Gel said, sounding both exhausted and proud of himself. “Now, there is one tiny little detail you may want to know that I may not have remembered until just now.”
Sean wished he could close his orbs as he strode over to the rock. He stared up at the relatively sheer surface, likely weathered so smooth over time by a combination of wind and weather. Thank the gods we have spider climb, or this would be incredibly embarrassing… and probably fatal. Is climbing up the rock part of the test?
“What is it?” Sean asked, though he didn’t want to.
“The chief can uh, bring friends.”
Sean turned his head to look over at where the three dune giants who had been dishing out orders this entire time were now clambering up the building-sized boulder as well.
“Oh...”
“Yeah…”
“Well, shit.”