Yore and Anthony were heading back to the camp to see if they could hide out instead of fighting a swarm of these monsters. Best case was that they could get away undetected and continue gorilla tactics. Not-so-bad case was that they had to fight off a small group or two. Worst case was a huge swarm had their location and were bearing down on them.
They were about half way back when Yore stopped in a clearing after seeing a lot of movement in the underbrush. He guessed about six of the Mantis creatures were heading in their direction. He didn’t see any up in the trees though. They may have been rushing too fast for them to climb and leap their way to them. This seemed more like the Mantises were in a mad dash for them. Out of the corner of Yore’s eye, he saw more movement that was still a ways out.
Anthony noticed that Yore had stopped. He turned and saw the inbound hostiles. Anthony came back and prepared his Mantis claw.
“If I go down,” Yore said, “leave me. Get out of here and get to safety.”
“No way. I caused this mess, I won’t leave…”
“Fucking do it!” Yore snapped. “We both don’t need to die.”
Anthony reluctantly nodded, respecting Yore’s wish and understanding the sentiment behind it, unaware of the difference in danger between the two men. If Yore died, Morrow would bring him back, but there was no guarantee for Anthony. Not unless he turned out to be like Yore and was hiding a familiar of his own.
With that, the first Mantises reached them. Yore opened by throwing daggers at the first two Mantises, which slowed them down. Yore then threw a few small darts that Anthony hadn’t seen before at the remaining four, not doing much to slow them down even though they found their marks.
“I’ve got these, focus on the next group to the left,” Yore said as he shot off toward the group.
Anthony turned and saw the group of three and moved to engage them.
With Anthony focused on his own group, Yore felt a bit more confident in using the blood mage fighting style that he had been developing. Yore threw his spear at the Mantis in the lead. It pierced its chest with a crack and a bloody morning star burst from its torso and was already retracting by the time Yore reached the spear shaft and was twirling around to swing at the next Mantis. Mid swing, the spear reformed itself into a warhammer. The hammer made contact with the second Mantis’ head and with a loud crunch splattered the once head. The splattered blood from the eviscerated head shot out and formed thin arrow shafts that all pierced a third Mantis.
Yore wasn’t holding back. He just found another survivor and he’d be damned if he was going to let him die and be all by himself again.
“I’ve never seen you fight like this Yore,” Morrow quipped. “I’m really impressed.”
“Not the time buddy,” Yore thought back at Morrow.
“Right!”
After disintegrating the Mantis head with the warhammer, Yore let go of the weapon and it flung off into the distance. He grabbed a leaping Mantis’ arms, right below the serrated parts and spartan kicked the mid-air Mantis square in the head while pulling on the arms. The head crunched, the arms cracked, popped, and detached. The fourth, armless Mantis fell to the ground and Yore, with a thick blood iron boot stomped once on its skull, caving it in with a loud crunch. Yore dropped the Mantis arms and kicked out his foot at the fifth Mantis, the blood iron boot melted and shot out, forming a sword sized javelin that punctured the Mantis’ head and morning starred as the hammer came swirling back in, now reshaped into a saw blade that bisected the sixth Mantis in one elegant movement and imbedded into a tree.
Yore recalled all of the blood weapons back into his cloak in the form of daggers and darts, and reshaped the saw blade back into a spear and grabbed it. Yore then turned to Anthony, who had already killed one of his Mantis’ and was in a standoff with the other two, each waiting for the other to make a move before pouncing into action.
Anthony knew he was in trouble as soon as the momentum died after cleaving the first of three Mantises. Pretty much, as soon as he moved to attack one of the remaining two, the other would leap on him and kill him.
Out of nowhere, a spear pierced one of the Mantises and pinned it to the tree behind where it was standing. The other Mantis leaped into action, but Anthony was ready and stepped to the side while swinging his Mantis claw like a bat, cleaving it in two at the stomach and it fell to the ground.
“Seriously?” Anthony said. “You’re already done with yours?”
Anthony turned to face Yore, who was painted in Mantis blood and saw the carnage behind him.
“What the fuck happened?!” Anthony exclaimed.
“Now isn’t the time. There are probably more on their way.”
That was when a roar sounded out. This one similar, but unlike the screeches they had heard before. This one was more guttural and deeper in tone.
Both Yore and Anthony looked where the noise came from, coming from the same direction as the original group that Yore massacred. They saw a seven foot Mantis, with four claw arms and a crowned shaped head come stomping their way. It was accompanied by four of the regular Mantises, all in a wedge formation.
“Well this doesn’t look good,” Yore said. “My safe word is chuckles.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Anthony turned to Yore as Yore took off. “That’s not funny.”
“It’ll be if we survive this!”
“No. I really don’t think it will,” Anthony said as he went after Yore.
“I’ll take the big one. Keep the small ones off me.”
“Got it.”
Yore threw daggers at the two Mantis on the big ones left and darts at the ones on its right. The daggers hit the two on its left right between the eyes and they went down immediately. The darts hit the other two, but they didn’t slow down. Yore thrust his spear at the big one, which caught and redirected the spear with its bottom two claws. It then swiped at him with the top two. Yore ducked beneath the swipes.
Yore reformed the spearhead into a scythe blade, but the monstrous Mantis snapped the spear shaft in the middle, flinging the scythe end off to the side.
Anthony started great with his Mantises. By the time he had reached them, they seemed sluggish and he had immediately cleaved the first one in half. The second one didn’t hesitate though and had pounced on him, pinning him to the ground. It proceeded to try to stab at Anthony’s face. He was using his claw weapon to deflect its stabs.
Yore had reformed his half of the spear shaft into a shortsword and he had tapped into his reserves to form a shield on his left arm.
The monstrous Mantis wasn’t leaving any openings for Yore. Between having four claws and having a larger stature, it kept Yore on the defensive, forcing him to have to block, parry, or dodge its many furious swings at him.
Yore managed to fire out some darts, however they couldn’t penetrate the Mantis’ carapace. Instead, Yore tried firing high velocity blood iron arrow sized needles at the creature. These actually succeeded in piercing it. The needles melting down and invading the Mantis’ blood stream, which also left open wounds for the Mantis to bleed from.
The large Mantis was infuriated by this tiny creature's ability to evade its claws and still fire projectiles at it. It swung wildly in anger.
Just then the black smoke began to rise from the three corpses surrounding them. One moved toward Anthony and his pocket that contained an empty gem. Noticing Anthony held his breath. Regretfully, the putrid odor of the smoke didn’t seem to have an affect on the Mantis on top of him.
Yore also noticed the two corpses worth of smoke wafting his way and thought to himself, “not now! I really wish this stuff would fill these gems instead of swarming me.”
Just then, to Yore’s surprise, the smoke moved toward his satchel instead of surrounding him.
However, this distracted Yore and the large Mantis took notice of the opening and it took a hard and fast swing at Yore’s shield. The shield dented inward and everyone could hear the snap of bone as Yore yelled out in agony. The Mantis capitalized further on the opening and swung its lower left claw in an uppercut, catching Yore in the gut, skewering him and lifting him off of the ground.
Panic set in. This time, not just the fear of death as Yore’s natural self preservation instincts took over, but also the fear of loss. Yore had hoped that he had just made a friend and now, without him to defend Anthony, he didn’t think Anthony would survive this encounter.
Yore looked over at the Mantis pinning Anthony down and focused on its blood. He had already infected its entire system with his blood poisoning and it was very sluggish, but Yore feared that wouldn’t be enough. He needed to give Anthony an out.
Yore focused on the blood flowing through the creature's veins. Pinpointing the blood flow to its brain, Yore gathered some of his claimed blood in its neck along the path and formed iron chunks, stopping the flow to its brain. The creature shook its head a bit, the toothy maw going a bit slack on its left side. It then went limp on its left side and collapsed.
Anthony capitalized on the creature's sudden weakness as it suffered an unexpected stroke, pushing it off of him and stabbing it with his claw weapon. He looked over to Yore, who was now suspended in the air by a claw through his gut. Anthony could also hear the sound of thudding footsteps getting closer.
Yore looked Anthony in the eyes and said “run!” as the large Mantis swiped with one of its upper arms, decapitating Yore.
Just then a crack of thunder boomed out as lightning struck the large Mantis in the side and it dropped Yore’s limp corpse to the ground.
Anthony, shook himself out of the daze he found himself in, fighting off the shell shock and hurried over to Yore’s headless body. He wrapped his arms under his armpits and started dragging the corpse back towards his cave.
As he did, three Giant knights appeared, two in copper plate armor and one in bronze. The large Mantis roared out as the bronze knight rushed it, while the two coppers moved to guard its flanks.
The Mantis furiously swiped at the knight, but in one motion it ducked under the Mantis’ swipes and cleaved its right leg off. As the Mantis fell to the ground on its side, the knight raised its huge sword above its head and brought it down, decapitating the Mantis. As the massive creature died, more deep roars rang out in the woods towards the Mantis’ portal.
Were there more of those hulking monstrosities out there? Anthony wasn’t sticking around to find out as he continued dragging Yore’s corpse away.
The bronze knight turned to the other two and said, “The Ant incursion must be nearby. Keep an eye out for more of their warriors. We need to enter and slay their queen to close the portal before they get out of hand.”
And with that the knights took off in the direction of the roars and toward the Mantis portal, not paying any attention to Anthony as he hauled off the corpse.
After a while, Anthony finally reached his cave with Yore’s headless body. He finally put it down, just outside of the cave and collapsed to his knees in sobs.
“It’s all my fault. I attracted them. I was so stupid. You were just trying to help.” Anthony sobbed. “I couldn’t save my friends and the first person I meet, I end up getting him killed. I guess the least that I can do for you now is to burn your body so that they can’t haul you off like the others. Then I’m out of here, there is no way I can fight those things.”
Anthony got to his feet and started scavenging for large sticks to start a fire.
Once Anthony left, Morrow emerged from Yore’s neck, where his head used to be. Blood began filling the hole in Yore’s gut as well as starting to form a new head, hair and all. Once his chest had finished filling in and his head regrowing, Yore sat up with a gasp.
Yore looked around frantically. Realizing he was back at Anthony’s camp, Yore turned to Morrow who was now fluttering nearby.
“Morrow, where is Anthony?” Yore asked. “What happened to him?”
“He dragged you all of the way back to his camp,” Morrow responded. “He just left to get wood to burn your body. I really didn’t want to revive you from cinders, so I brought you back as soon as he was out of sight.”
Just then Anthony, who had just returned with an arm full of large sticks, dropped his bundle as Yore made eye contact with him.
“What the fuck?!” Anthony got out.
“Hey there chuckles,” Yore awkwardly said to him.