Interlude Eight: Salvation

Emm Crofter was horrified. Absolutely, utterly horrified.

She had waited in the ranks of the Spiran Idealists, kept in reserve for the true threat, this Cauter who was so powerful.

They had all heard the stories of the Plague, the man that ran rampant through entire armies at the Corlan Empire’s behest. They had thought them tall tales, and even so they had been worried.

Nothing had prepared them for the truth.

Emm had grown up a farmer’s daughter. Their family had a mean little farm on a mean little spur of rock with bugger all land and lots of mean little goats.

She was no stranger to death. Though the goats were surefooted, the storms along this coast were sudden and vicious. She had seen more than a few cast down to sharp rocks, meat and bones spread among boulders and crags.

It was a pale thing, a pebble compared to a mountain, against the slaughter the Empire had brought to her people.

The Spirans had found a method that worked. Governors were fairly elected by the people, and the people reaped a fair share of the rewards for their labour. They still had problems, sure, but which city didn’t? They lived happily, and in peace.

Their growing population began to put a strain on them. They had enough land to house everyone, but not enough land to support them. So they had begun to expand, settling new villages nearby, up and down the coast, and into the plains.

It was hard work, but Emm was no stranger to that either. She had manifested Harvest, when she was fifteen. They had been digging up potatoes from their meagre fields. It had been the single time in her life she had ever seen her father express happiness.

That hadn’t lasted long, when it became apparent her skills were no use for farming.

Her father got worse. Much worse. She was an Idealist, but he was a fully grown man, born and bred to backbreaking labour on rocky land. A year later, she had manifested Violence. She had been surprised she had not manifested it earlier.

She was no stranger to violence either. She joined the small Spiran army. She figured she may as well be useful, and the pay was decent.

Five years later, they had begun the arduous task of clearing the nearby landscape of monsters. A decade after that, and six new villages had been settled, and were thriving.

It felt good. There was violence, of course. That was a good thing, when clearing out monsters. You needed to be acquainted with it. There was death, too. It was for a good cause, though. Thousands would die of starvation, if not for their sacrifice. It was hard work, but it was honest work. Emm was proud of it.

It was surprising then, how shocking she found the Empire’s violence. They had their own brand of it, she reckoned. It was sudden, it was utter, and it was merciless. She had seen the villages after they were done by them. Had travelled to a few of them with the army to see if there were any survivors. There were none.

The Empire had taken affront to them trying to better their citizens’ way of life, out here on this forgotten little stretch of coast with nothing on it. Six villages they had settled, and in as many years, they had been wiped out again.

Somewhere along the way, Emm had manifested her last Ideal: Dominion. It had seemed odd to her at first, but she soon understood.

This was her city. Her land, and her people. Her life. The idea of someone dictating how she lived went against everything the Spiran’s stood for, everything she stood for. The casual extermination of entire villages over ideological differences was criminal beyond comprehension.

She had lived her entire childhood cringing under someone’s bootheel, afraid of what they might do to her, how they might punish her, restrict her, and the worst of all: how they might change her.

No more. She would accept no authority over her but that she chose. She would allow no one to punish her lest she deserved it. She was sovereign over herself, a dominion unto herself.

The Empire was here to ruin everything. She would not allow it.

Still, she found herself shocked.

Growing up as she had. Culling monsters for the army. Witnessing the extermination of villages. They had all been but a prelude. This man, this monster, was a one man massacre.

He had carved through their army like a knife, killing hundreds in mere minutes. He didn’t even use a weapon. He represented everything that was wrong with the Empire.

They were callous. They were brutal. They imposed. They assumed supremacy.

It stopped here.

Emm watched as Crofter jumped about, ruining soldiers with a casual touch. He was a whirlwind of indiscriminate killing. It sickened her.

What was worse was that he suborned a Healer’s talents for nefarious ends. No one had put much stock in the tales, believing it merely Imperial propaganda. Now they were confronted by the ugly truth.

Cauter jumped among the Idealists. They bound him, just as they’d practised. They may not have believed the stories of a rampaging healer, but they would be fools to believe the Empire had no Flawless Ideals it could throw at them. The tactics they’d all drilled in would work as well for him as it would for any other Flawless Idealist.

Except, they didn’t. He lashed out, and killed Mac, a Supreme Idealist of the Gale, with a single punch. A punch that didn’t even connect. It wasn’t even close.

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Emm was staggered by the sheer strength, the power, in the simple attack. She quickly reevaluated her assumptions on the man. Less active skills than she’d thought. He was unorthodox, simply stacking buffs until he became an unstoppable force.

Cauter flitted forward, so fast it almost seemed he had teleported. If Emm hadn’t reached Flawless herself, and gained the body temperings that came with it, she was sure she would have been unable to follow the movement.

He struck out once more. Spiran Idealists, people she’d known for years, people she had fought with, people that had saved her countless times, that she had saved in return, died instantly. It was effortless, for him. He just reached out and culled them.

She felt one of her skills trigger, and realised she had been caught in the shockwave of his attack, that she was the only one left standing in a wide area.

It was just the two of them. He looked at her, and in his eyes she saw the worst thing she could have hoped for. Not madness, though that would have been bad. No, just pure calculating intelligence.

Things seemed to happen very slowly, then. She saw minute adjustments in his muscles, in the expression on his face, in the depths of his eyes, and knew that he would attack her, and how. She read him like a book.

She twisted to the side, stepping as she did. He was in front of her, fist extended through the space her chest had occupied.

She read the next line, stepped backwards, and ducked. A kick swept over her head. She felt her hair ruffle in its passing.

She twisted as she rose, reading, twirled, stepped and straightened. A pair of punches blew past her, by her head, under her arm. Both harmless. She read on.

More kicks, more punches, an elbow, all missing her by inches. She had read them, knew them. They were violent actions, and she was no stranger to violence. She was an Idealist of it.

She waited, and waited, turning and twisting, and judged her moment. She activated a skill, and struck.

Skill activated: Savage Strike (Active).

Mana cost: Low.

Cooldown: Low.

Range: N/A.

Caster gains high buff to damage on the caster’s next attack. Damage is typeless. Attack causes moderate bleed damage.

She hit him in the ribs, and he was staggered. She allowed him to recover, and saw shock written on his face. It was sweet as nectar. In the back of her mind, two more skills activated.

Skill activated: Law of the Jungle (Passive).

Caster’s attacks can bypass defensive skills, armour and toughness to an extent. The percentage bypassed increases the stronger the defensive skill, armour, or toughness.

Skill activated: Ruthless (Passive).

Any damage the caster deals to an enemy resists healing. Every time the caster damages an enemy, the caster is granted a moderate buff to damage against that enemy for a moderate duration.

She didn’t grin or gloat at him. He was unworthy of it. She didn’t enjoy this. The shock on the man’s face resolved into fury, and he launched himself at her again.

She had read that too.

Skill activated: Written in Blood (Passive (Sensory)).

Caster can extrapolate potential for violence from body language. Caster can extrapolate future movement from violent enemies.

Once more, they danced, and once more, Cauter came up short. She was where he was not. He violence was written, and she was the spacing between his lines. Then she became his punctuation.

He attacked, missed, and she drove her knee into his ribs. She stepped, twisted and slammed her hand into his chest. He left his feet, flying backwards. She misjudged his buffs, though. They must have accumulated more as she hit him. He grazed her arm with a finger as he tumbled away from her punch. She felt mana pour into her.

And it was rebuffed.

Skill activated: Empire of One (Passive).

Caster is immune to all invasive enemy mana effects. Caster is immune to poisons and diseases. Caster ages more slowly. All damage to caster is reduced by a low amount.

Cauter slammed into the earth, ripping a great furrow into the ground as he impacted and tumbled. Sod went flying everywhere. He was on his feet a second later.

That second was all the breathing space it took. Emm was done with this man, this filth. He might be so arrogant, so assured of his supremacy, that he fought without a weapon, but she was not. She summoned her ritual weapon.

Skill One (Flawless): Culling Scythe (Ritual (Weapon)).

Mana cost: Extreme.

Cooldown: Extreme.

Requirements: One hundred life essence, fifty metal essence, thirty blood essence, ten bone essence, two sharp essence, two space essence, and one death essence.

When summoned: Weapon can extend the area of its strikes by a high amount and reach of its strikes to a moderate amount. Damage dealt with this weapon heals the caster by the same amount. If the caster is at full health, extra health is stored indefinitely in this weapon, up to an extreme amount. Current health stored: Extreme.

When subsumed: Caster’s physical attacks deal damage in a low area of effect. Caster’s physical attacks have a trivial reach.

Her Scythe manifested. It was long and elegant, unlike anything she had seen used to harvest grain. It was made from a single piece of matte black metal. Tiny whorls of soft yellow, so soft you almost couldn’t see them, ran up the handle and along the rib of the blade. The blade was thin, almost delicate looking, but she knew from experience how sharp it was.

Cauter tensed, and she read him. She swiped, and he was cut in two at the waist. She brought her scythe up high, and down again, pinning his head to the earth. It was a workmanlike action. But she was no stranger to hard work.

She kept her blade there until she saw his regeneration gutter out and stop. He was dead.

Good riddance, she thought.

The crashing of the battle all around her snapped her attention back to the wider picture. They were losing. Badly.

Cauter had broken their lines, completely disrupted their cohesion. The Spiran army was fragmenting, and soon, it would shatter completely.

But not if Emm had anything to do with it. She raised her scythe, and tried to judge where she was needed most. There was a lot of work in front of her, but she was no stranger to it.

She was going to have to do a lot more killing today, but she was no stranger to violence. Not when it was forced on her. Not when it was needful.

She scanned the thousands of enemy troops, killing her countrymen. She thought back to the massacred villages. Children killed indiscriminately. Hope for a new life burned and tossed to the wind. She looked upon the misshapen, mutated forms of her former Idealist friends and comrades.

The Empire had spent a long time sowing seeds, and she was here to reap them in return. It was lucky, really.

She was no stranger to a harvest, either.