We were perhaps three hours into our journey when Liora brought us to a halt. The Gnoll woman dropped out of the treetops in front of Venix, landing in a crouch and locking eyes with the point man. “Stop,” She said suddenly, sounding out of breath.

He did, and the rest our procession followed. “What is it?” Venix asked her seriously.

Standing up from her crouch, Liora took a moment to take a swig of water from her canteen. “Monsters ahead,” She breathed.

The tension in the group ratcheted upwards, and I frowned, tightening my grip on the bow in my hands.

“Bout damn time,” I heard Bella mutter in front of me.

Guess she’d been itching for a fight. I suppose it was a change of pace from monkeys watching us from tall branches, squealing hogs, and silent, stalking cats.

Not to mention the damn bugs trying to drain me of blood.

Venix nodded sharply. “Composition?”

Liora straightened up at his tone, nearly coming to attention. I guess old habits died hard when you’d spent most of your life as part of a paramilitary organization. “About a dozen strange, snakelike creatures that I’m unfamiliar with,” She summarized. “I stumbled upon them on my path and had to retreat rapidly, so I was unable to Observe them. As soon as I laid eyes on the beasts, they reacted as they could sense me and began to search.”

Venix sheathed his clearing blade and frowned in thought. “Tell me, did they possess four legs and wispy white hair?”

Snakes with legs? Next, you’re going to tell me about fish with wings.

Wait.

Wasn’t that a thing? Nevermind.

Liora nodded. “Yes, they did. I take it you’re familiar with them?”

Venix sighed and responded in a manner that was common with him.

“Wyrm’s breath, twisted spawn,

Crawling beasts in dragon’s guise,

Howl to false heavens.”

Nobody even flinched at the sudden Haiku. We were all used to Venix’s peculiarities by now.

“Yes, consider them the spawn of Tatsugan,” He said patiently. “Proto-Revenants, if you will.”

That caught my attention. I stepped forward, my demeanor intensifying. “Like Rhazal’s?” I asked sharply, drawing Venix’s gaze.

I don’t think I would ever forget the strange monsters that had laid siege to Elderwyck upon Rhazal’s coming. The strange bat-dinosaurs had spawned both from thin air, and the corpses of those they had slain. The result had been an unending tide of them rolling over both of the twin cities and nearly scourging them of all life. They would have, too, if it hadn’t been for the last-minute save from a source I’m sure the cities hadn’t been expecting.

The Lich living under their feet. If it hadn’t been for Tlazo and his ‘assistants’, I’m not sure there would have been cities to save when I killed Rhazal.

And now apparently Tatsugan had some of his own.

Venix was unfazed by my regard. “Not exactly,” He said evenly. “The Calamity you slayed must have been specialized towards army creation, during the War in Heaven.”

I furrowed my brow. Yes, I supposed Rhazal had referred to himself as ‘the father of monstrosity’. It was…possible that he’d had a specialty, for all of his otherwise impossible might.

“Tatsugan is different,” Venix continued. “The specifics of the process elude me, but his creations are entirely independent of him. He does not control them. They are merely monsters whose birth is influenced by his Aether that encompasses the range he calls home. They mingle with the Oni, flowing down from Mt. Gorenzan and forming packs. They act as hounds at their beck and call. The Wyrmkin are, in essence, scavengers following at the heels of the Oni hordes.”

“What are they doing here, then?” Renauld asked with a frown, before gesturing out into the distance. “We’re a long ass ways away from the mountains.”

He was right. Despite trekking through the jungle for hours, the distant peak of the mountains didn’t even seem like it had grown any closer. I don’t even know if one of those mountains was the one we sought. Mt. Gorenzan could be farther in than even those rocky crowns. It was going to take days and days of hiking for us to reach them.

“The Wyrmkin infest the whole of the island,” Venix said, shaking his head and causing his antennae to sway. “This is unlikely to be the first time we encounter them. This shall be a good introduction to their peculiarities. Ready yourselves.”

I stepped back, satisfied.

I was totally fine with that. I’m not sure I would ever have problems with putting down Calamity spawn.

As Venix drew all four of his swords, the rest of my companions did as he’d said. Azarus drew his hammer and shield, while Bella did the same with her cutlass. Meanwhile, Renauld just tightened his grip on the Healers staff he’d already been using as a walking stick, and Liora…did nothing. The other Gnoll fought with her fists and claws, and was already limbered up from her sprint back to us.

I merely drew an arrow and laid it along the string. I was still guarding Renauld as far as I was concerned, so I would just provide ranged support for the rest of my melee-focused companions.

Seeing we were ready, Venix advanced through the brush.

It didn’t take us long to encounter the Wyrmkin. They were…pretty odd, I have to say.

I threw out an Observe at the first one I saw.

Name Devout Wyrmkin Level

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174 Age 3 months, 12 days Species Monster Abilities

Plea to the Father, ???

Strong. Just barely in the range I was capable of seeing with Observe. I wasn’t really worried, though. Instead I was just…looking at the beasts, in the moments before they noticed us.

Liora had been half-right to call them snake-like. The Wyrmkin possessed long, thin, sinuous bodies covered in electric blue scales from snout to tail. What made them even more snake-like was the rattle they possessed at the end of it, which occasionally flicked out and emitted a clicking noise. That was where the serpentine resemblance ended.

As Venix had said, they each had four limbs, not too dissimilar to what you might find on something like a regular lizard. Each of these legs terminated in four-toed feet that possessed a single prominent claw, akin to the raptors I’d seen in films from my youth. But it was their heads that diverged the farthest from that of a snake.

Their skull was almost like that of a dog. They had long, wide muzzles that terminated in prominent nostrils that scented the air constantly. Enormous, nearly bulbous front-facing yellow eyes gazed out at the world hungrily from underneath a shaggy mane of dirty white hair. Jutting out of that wispy mass from their extended brow were two stubby-looking, dull horns.

They still had at least one thing similar to snakes, though.

Forked tongues constantly flicked out of their open, panting mouths, tasting the air. And if I knew anything about snakes…

The moment we saw the Wyrmkin, they saw us. I don’t know if it was the tongues, or the nose, or hell, it could have even been the rattle that zeroed them in on us. But when they saw us, the pack of eleven Wyrmkin threw back their heads and howled. At the same time, an entire pack's worth of rattles began to clatter from the tip of their tails, almost eagerly. It was a strange call, not at all like the comforting howls of my absent lupine companion. They warbled and hissed and rattled, all at once, in a distinctly monstrous manner.

Well, at least until I shut them up.

I’d taken the chance they presented to infuse my arrow with Grinding Crimson Sunder and loose it into the throat of a crying Wyrmkin. His call cut out, and he crumbled onto this wide snout, almost immediately dead.

Ten left.

When his howl died, his brethren ceased their caterwauling and charged our position as one, bounding hungrily over the fallen brush of the jungle floor.

Venix and Bella stepped forward to meet them.

Three of the Wyrmkin tried to converge on Venix, only for him to almost contemptuously halt their charge with his whirling blades. One serpentine hound was bisected neatly at the waist with the Antium’s upper left blade, while another was skewered by both the left and the right lower. The third beast thought to capitalize on Venix’s distraction by lunging for his chitinous throat, only to be slapped out of the air by the flat of his upper right blade. The monster loosed a hissing yelp as it flew through the air.

Right at Bella.

The Pirate Captain had already dispatched one of the Wyrmkin that had charged her by that point, but she didn’t waste the chance Venix had given her. With a shout of effort, her cutlass sprouted a swirling haze of pure storm. Crackling clouds that emanated wind, rain, and lightning ran all up and down its length.

Bella cleaved upwards with her chaotic blade, right in the oncoming path of the falling Wyrmkin. The razor-sharp edge of her sword left behind a brilliantly crackling echo of bright blue lightning in its wake as it ripped right through the shoulder of the monster. As the Wyrmkin fell into two pieces around Bella, her arm shot upwards through the clouds of dissolving Miasma, picking out the beast’s Core. She grinned and pocketed the jewel, and then got back to her slaughter.

Six left.

Renauld and I were providing ranged support for the frontline, and hadn’t stopped casting and loosing since the battle had started. My Gnoll friend and Healer was casting quick bolts of butter yellow Mana out from the head of his staff, and where they impacted, they sizzled and burned at the scales of the Wyrmkin. They didn’t often kill any of the monsters, but they sure distracted them. Meanwhile, I hadn’t stopped with my own barrage. Since I’d gained General Weapons Proficiency upon maxing out my weapon Talents, I’d found it easier to wield a bow in open combat. My arrows were more likely to hit their target these days, and enhanced as they were with my Skills, they were deadly.

Together, Renauld and I killed another three of the Wyrmkin.

Three left.

Two of the remaining serpent hounds reached our position, only to promptly meet Azarus and Liora. My dwarven friend didn’t bother with fancy Skills or Arts to slay his quarry. Instead, as the Wyrmkin lunged at his throat with a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs, his simply blocked the monster with his shield and repelled it. The Wyrmkin fell to the jungle floor below, stunned, and before it could react, Azarus brought down his hammer.

And crushed its skull.

Two left.

Meanwhile, Liora was locked in a dance with another one of the creatures. This one was more canny than its fellows and was spamming what must have been the other Skill their kind possessed.

Some kind of projectile of poison.

Every couple of seconds, the Wyrmkin’s cheeks would bulge and fill with a disgusting purple liquid. Once they were full, the monster spat that wad of corrosive junk at the former Nocturne Division member.

She dodged every one of them.

The foul wads of loosed poison missed her every time, to land upon the bark of the trees around us. It only took seconds for their wooden surface to begin to corrode, a testament to the strength of these thing’s poison. Not that it mattered.

It honestly looked like Liora was playing with the thing, it was so outmatched. But the look in her eye wasn’t playful.

It was calculating.

She was taking its measure, and she found it wanting.

Eventually, the Gnollish woman grew tired of the near dance and vanished forward in a haze of black wind. Instantly, she appeared in front of the Wyrmkin that was far too slow to react, and using claws coated with the same darkness of her Skill, simply ripped its head clean from its serpentine shoulders. Almost contemptuously, she tossed it over her shoulder to thump onto the jungle floor, where it dissipated into a cloud of Miasma moments later.

One left.

At least, there should be. I’d counted eleven of the Wyrmkin when the battle started, and I’d kept track of everything that had been killed in the moments since the exchange had begun. I didn’t see the last one, though, nor its corpse. I must have lost track of it, though.

Oh no, whatever will I do? Surely I’ll never be able to react in time to the beast that must even now be stalking Renauld and I, as the backline of our little trouple. Our unprotected backs were surely wide-open!

My core ring told me to stop being a stupid sarcastic asshole and deal with the movement we’d both spotted out of the corner of our eye.

Man, don’t be such a downer. Let me have my fun.

Oh, whatever.

I activated Might of the Wyrdwood at fifteen percent, and with my newly enhanced strength and reflexes, dropped my bow and drew Terractus in one smooth motion. I promptly pivoted on one heel to my left and lunged forward.

Directly meeting the pounce of the Wyrmkin that had thought to circle around the fight and attack our rear flank. In the seconds before my blade met the scales of the rabid beast, I let The Scintillant Blade flash into being over the length of my Oninite sword.

Just in case.

The brilliant burning blade sheered through the scales of the monster effortlessly, meeting no resistance at all. The entire serpentine mass was bisected horizontally down the trunk of its body. Briefly, before the monster burst into Miasma upon its death, I saw a perfect cross-section of the innards of a Devout Wyrmkin.

Very…ribby, I have to say.

I burst through the crowd of Miasma, landing in a crouch. Luckily, I had long since grown used to the pure stench of the mist, so I didn’t immediately vomit.

I did make a face, though. Still, that was the last of them. I stood up and sheathed Terractus, meeting the startled gaze of Renauld.

The Gnoll blinked at me. “Damn, I didn’t even see it. Thanks, man.”

I shrugged. “Eh.”

“No problem.”