Tilly looped one hatchet and then the other, subtly attaching a little gift to the back of each one and hefting it a few times to acclimate to the change in balance. The horn calls and excited howling quieted as the Hunt entered into easy visual distance.
Dropping his hands to his weapons, Tilly looked up, schooling his emotions until all that was left on his face was an air of smug boredom. Seeing his two-leg’s nonchalance, Brokenridge, who obviously wasn’t about to be outdone, settled down into a lying position and pretended to fall asleep… At least Tilly hoped it was fake.
“Little much… don’t you think?” Tilly muttered out of the side of his mouth as the dragon continued to snore, ignoring Tilly completely as the procession of the Wild Hunt pulled up in an uncharacteristically cautious line and began to fan out in mindless uniformity.
Allowing himself a nice, deep sigh, Tilly turned and patiently watched as the Wild Hunt formed into a semi-circle surrounding their position about fifty yards out, with ranks two or three deep. In contrast to the almost perfect coordination of their movements, the breadth of creatures representing this one Faction was impressively diverse. He was no fairy mythology buff, but there were all kinds of things in the lines of creatures arrayed before him, some of whom he recognized and some that he couldn’t make heads or tales of. There were several varieties of huge furred creatures, and along with them were some twisted monstrous versions of animals you might expect to find in the forest. He also recognized a couple of the extremely old-looking women were hags, leaning on crooked walking sticks as they rode in on formations of bone and moss. There were also red caps, fairies, brownies, hairless dogs… The list continued, and not one of them looked like an easy opponent.
In fact, the only thing that unified the whole group in Tilly’s eyes was that they each looked much more gaunt than he had expected. They were all mechanically breathing in huge gulping breaths, as if exhausted, even though nothing but eager hunger showed on their faces. The final and most obvious unifying feature of the fey present was the black veins of Corruption diving in and out of the flesh of their bodies. It was almost more advanced than any case Tilly had ever seen.
At the center of their formation was Oberon, atop what looked like a rotting stag. Flanking him were the familiar forms of jack-o-lantern and big, nasty werewolf. The Fey king had raised his hand, stopping any further approach from any under his authority. The small signal was enough to hold all of them in place, despite their desperate, twitching eagerness to charge. Meanwhile, the wings of his formation continued to stretch around the sides, slowly surrounding them in a perfect circle.
This level of calculation was not at all fitting well with Tilly's plan, he needed to shake things up… Time to do a little goading.
“Master, these are the mice I told you about, chasing your tail as you did your great work. Shall I dispatch them for you?” Tilly called out theatrically to the sleeping dragon in his best butler voice. A few of the fey snarled, but they maintained their discipline continuing to encircle. Brokenridge, for his part, snored on.
“Understood, Master. It will be my pleasure.” Tilly answered a particularly loud snore, turning toward the hundreds of combatants surrounding him and drawing each weapon slowly, as if in no particular hurry.
Oberon’s eyes narrowed initially, but then a long slow smile formed on his face, “Please, thank your master for his generous guidance! It is so nice to finally see these famed peaks in person.” The king answered back, calling Tilly’s bluff and dropping his hand lazily to the pommel of his rapier.
As he finished speaking, the rest of the formation finished surrounding them, forming a double layer of concentric lines, made up of diverse and powerful opponents. They all drooled or frothed at the mouth, hunger naked in their shining, desperate eyes, “Now shall we get to business?” The king asked drolly.
“You know, all of these slack-jawed faces reminded me of something,” Tilly said, dropping his butler voice and turning in a slow circle to address the whole group. “I think I owe you something from our--- “ Tilly’s slow turn suddenly whipped into a flurry of motion as he let both of his hatchets fly in vicious, spinning throws, enflaming them at the last instant, “-last meeting.” He finished as he launched his weapons, watching them soar through the air, directly at the king.
The fey sneered in condescension. If he had chosen to use his insane Dexterity to dodge, then Tilly would have come off looking like an idiot, but thank his lucky stars, this guy was far too arrogant for that. To move would have admitted some level of concern on his part, and that would have been inexcusable.
So instead, just like Tilly had hoped, the king’s prized dragon glass rapier flashed free of his belt, batting away Tilly’s projectiles with ease. Perhaps for the average denizen of the plane, Tilly’s throws would have been impressive, zipping through the air, end over end at the speed of a major league baseball pitch, but for most of the creatures here, Tilly might as well have lobbed an underhanded toss.
They all followed the projectiles easily and watched impassively as their king disdainfully battled the hatchets to the right and left. Point one to Tilly…
The king’s weapon impacted the already catalyzed items tied to the weapons, setting both of the explosives off simultaneously, resulting in two car-sized explosions that flung densely packed iron fillings in all directions. The burning metal flashed and hissed, almost like fireworks as it impacted the line of fey to deadly effect.
The hungry faces immediately to Oberon’s right and left were eviscerated with flaming pieces of iron. They collapsed to the ground writhing in pain from a combination of his purifying flames and the imposition of the deadly shards of metal on their systems.
Unfortunately, Oberon himself was completely unharmed by the attack. A powerful gust of wind burst into being behind the fey as soon as the danger was evident, crashing into the portion of the blast headed toward him, and slowing it enough for the king to knock away each of the hundred pieces cutting through the air at him in an absolutely terrifying display of speed.
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His eyes narrowed dangerously, flicking to the still sleeping dragon on Tilly's left and then to the obvious bandolier of further explosives that Tilly was now suggestively patting with an eager smile, “Plenty more where that came from! Fey-back is a bitch. Isn’t it?” He called jovially.
Oberon gestured sharply at his subordinates and the pained screaming, along with the furious howling of the rest of the group was cut off. Then the king’s smile widened until it looked like his head was about to crack in half, “I see you have prepared for our arrival. It warms my heart to see another as considerate as I am. I hope you find my gifts equally amusing!” He cried, before snapping his fingers once.
Almost all of the more human-like creatures pulled out instruments and immediately started playing, releasing a haunting harmony of notes pregnant with interwoven magics. Tilly whipped his head in a circle, immediately counting too many of the creatures for him to fully interrupt the casting. That didn’t stop him from ripping free grenade after grenade, throwing them with dangerous accuracy at as many of the musicians as possible. But there were just too many, and the instrument players had been carefully positioned so that they were equally spaced around the circle, guarded by their more animalistic counterparts. In seconds, he had released his full payload of explosives, but the song went on, only fractionally diminished... He could feel it dragging at the edges of his consciousness. Maybe if he had activated his bracelets and switched to a Dexterity emphasis, he could have done it, but that would been more of a bandaid than actual solution.
A blanket of enchanted weariness settled heavily over the pair as Tilly’s last few attacks ripped through far too few of the surrounding forces. None of them dodged, in fact, none of them even moved. He could see their desire to attack, he could practically feel it, but they were held rigid in their master’s will.
Tilly’s hidden amulet grew intensely cold on his chest as it absorbed much of the mental influence. That didn’t keep him from swaying on his feet, as next to him, Brokenridge’s snoring deepened disturbingly, and one of the five remaining lights above his draconic brow dimmed.
“Ha, it seems my information holds true. Mighty on the battlefield, but weak where it matters most.” Oberon laughed, tapping his finger against his temple knowingly, before dismounting from his stag. Brokenrige’s snoring hitched slightly at the insult. Tilly probably would have missed it, if not for the dragon having laid his huge head on the ground right next to Tilly.
‘Oh, you sneaky bastard!” Tilly thought furiously, fighting down a smile as he collapsed to his knees, deciding to ham it up along with his companion. Not that he had to do much to mime the leaden weight in his limbs as the powerful fey glamor wove itself in knots around them.
“My children,” The fey king called, opening his arms wide, “it seems that this will be a disappointing end to a spirited chase after all,” Then he nodded, the smile disappearing from his face like a candle flickering out. At his gesture, many of the creatures surrounding them pulled out spears they had cleverly tucked away, all topped with a simmering translucent substance that practically glowed with magical potential. It was dragon glass… They had been the purchasers from the auction, crafting hasty, but powerful improvised spearheads.
Tilly’s stomach fell, as all the fey not holding instruments charged forward, released from whatever had been holding them back, howling and screaming in an eruption of fervor. All the while the King held back, eyes dark and calculating.
‘Shit! Not according to plan!’ Tilly screamed internally, shoving down his panic to make a split-second decision to shift strategies. Brokenridge may not actually be asleep, but even with his prowess, he was going to take some hits, and whatever enchantments these guys had managed to imbue the glass with would be sure to be geared toward taking him down, even with his natural protections. Not to mention what a single spear tip could probably do to Tilly… Endurance or not.
No, he could not let this turn into a straight-up melee. It no longer mattered if Oberon was close enough to get caught in the next step of the plan… but maybe that wasn’t as important as he had first thought…
He shot his hand in the air as the Corrupted fey charged in. Most were so fast that they covered the distance in a blink, and he barely had time to thrust his will into the world ring, demanding an instant withdrawal of two hundred platinum’s worth of iron filings, the preferred currency of the Ascendant Pulgasari Tribe.
He had done some testing during his time in Cog’s workshop and found that the fillings converted 100:1 to copper by weight, then that weight was multiplied by 100 when converting from silver, and then again at gold… The explosive pressure of the withdrawal magic when attempting to convert a single gold’s worth of the substance had been the thing to first give Tilly the reckless beginnings of his plan.
A river of razor-sharp bits of iron exploded out of his upraised hand, and he whipped it around, surrounding them with hundreds of thousands of pounds of the stuff in half a second. Howls of predatory glee broke into screams of frustration and then agony as the air became thick with the substance.
It was even better than Tilly had hoped. The high-pressured ejection from the world ring’s magic as it attempted to satisfy Tilly’s request in a timely manner meant that the fingernail-sized bits of metal were hitting each other in millions of micro collisions. This caused much of the material to break up into even smaller pieces until an iron dust cloud glittered in the air around Tilly, even as flowing rivers of the strange currency formed into a rolling wave around him.
A few Corrupted brownies had made it to within inches of stabbing Tilly in the eyes when his hasty plan exploded into action, shredding their little wings instantly. Hairless dogs blinked into existence attempting to snap at him, before practically melting as they attempted to reform in the iron-rich atmosphere. A berm twenty feet high formed in a wobbling circle around them as Tilly’s withdrawal from the ring continued to explode forth unabated.
Next to him, Brokenridge cracked an eye and then released a deep boom of explosive laughter at the wholesale slaughter of their attackers. Tilly even allowed himself a smile before a thought occurred to him, and his eyes shot to the bodies ripped to shreds all around him…
He hadn’t gotten a single level-up notification yet…
“ENOUGH!” Screamed an unhinged voice from beyond the metallic maelstrom. Then something that sounded like the world's largest blender began grinding through the wall of metal between them and the fey king.
“Shed your mortal coils! Embrace your destiny!” Oberon commanded his followers, in a voice that was choked with discordant layers of power.
The field of bodies now littering the landscape responded instantly, black tentacles covered in serrated barbs erupting from each one in an explosion of gore.