Fucking DICKHEAD!
Nicola’s thoughts raged as she raced through the grass, no direction in mind. Shaking her head to try calm herself, she knew she had only one goal tonight. Find a Mini-Elite, and kill it.
She’d been planning on doing that in the next few days regardless, but Karl’s casual dismissal hurt because he’d voiced out her unspoken fears. She was getting left behind.
Unbidden, the image of her brother flashed through her mind.
No. Not now.
She still wasn’t completely sure why she’d chosen to open up to him, but what she’d told Mandla about her brother had been true. She just hadn’t said it all. She hadn’t told him about the bottomless, gnawing pit of worry in her stomach, worry at not knowing how or where Errol was. He was all she had.
Their father, their real father, had been a small-time gangster, who’d managed to sire two children on his junkie girlfriend between all the drugs, violence and numerous mistresses. Life in the Durban slums had been… hard. But they learned quickly. After the man died, their weak, addicted excuse of a mother had dumped the young children on her brother before going missing completely. She’d likely overdosed years ago.
Her brother, it turned out, had somehow married into one of the richest families in South Africa. While surprised, he knew he couldn’t just ditch them, and so had raised the pair.
Barely.
In reality, their adopted parents were rarely in the country, usually jetting off to do business in Dubai, London or Shanghai. The kids had been given every luxury, but, from squalor to wealth, all they knew was abandonment and neglect.
The two of them processed this very differently. Errol had withdrawn from the world, turning into a stoic, distant, silent type, shunning all vices and living according to strict discipline. Nicola had done the opposite, screaming back at the world in defiance. She was better than her mother. She could smoke, drink, whatever and it wouldn’t affect her grades, she excelled nonetheless. She could sleep with whomever and she wouldn’t end up pregnant on the streets, with a low-life baby daddy. Circumstances hadn’t forced her mother into anything. She was just weak.
Her uncle-turned-father, in his less sensitive moments, remarked that she was turning into a dead ringer for her mother in her youth. She was his sister so Nicola never said anything to him out loud, but she wanted to scream in his face. She was nothing like her mother. She was better.
It didn’t help that as a rich, attractive blonde, everyone expected her to be a bimbo. She was more than strong enough, more than smart enough to prove them all wrong.
But for all her strength, she couldn’t live without her brother. He’d been the only constant in her life, the only person she’d always been able to rely on and the only one she trusted implicitly. When he’d told her he was leaving for the military, she’d cried for a week straight. After he’d scolded her for it, she hadn’t genuinely cried ever since. While he was gone, she’d picked up her hefty weed habit. Without it, she was consumed by anxiety.
She’d hugely reduced her use when he finally came back, but could never quite kick it because her brother wasn’t the same. If before the military Errol had been a stony block, now, he was a headsman’s block, stained with old blood. Functionally the same, but one carried an aura, a subtle friction of danger rubbing against your senses.
He could never scare her, but he did scare many of their parents’ rich friends, and he had no patience for high society anyway, so he mostly did his own thing, barely able to see her between his own schedule and her school, society events, and extra curriculars like riding or archery.
After Mandla’s party, a lifetime ago now, she was supposed to meet up with Errol back in Durban and stay there with him until her flight to America. She’d had a whole plan. After she got her degree, the pair of them would go somewhere without all the baggage and constant reminders of their family issues. Maybe New Zealand. But no longer.
Regardless, on that very first day, she’d quietly sworn to do whatever it took to reach her brother. She meant it. Recognising the system as reminiscent of video games, she knew that she had to start levelling and stay levelling. Power was freedom. Stagnation was death.
And Karl had poked at the growing fear in the back of her mind that she’d started stagnating. That she was weak. So she was out here to rectify that, impulsive though it may be.
Her Ascendant eyes pierced the darkness, seeing small animals scurrying away from her path. As she ran through the night, her thoughts churned, evaluating her position within the burrow.
Her shaky truce with Mandla would hold in the face of the threat Karl posed, and Kavvy would always be on her side. Among the Ascendants, she was well-regarded enough, but the Legends? Her one bastion of support had been Jabulani and the [Heavy Chargers], and Karl had just smashed that pillar. Masterfully as well, which is what stung the most. She should’ve seen it coming.
The Cavalry Legends had complained to her about feeling useless, which honestly there was nothing much she could do about, despite promising she would. They hadn’t been granted shields by their new blue screen god, so direct combat outside of an all-hands-on-deck situation was a risk without Ascendant abilities, and the skills they did have were clearly meant to be used with a mount, mounts that none of them had.
She’d had the [Sappers] working on making wooden substitute shields, in the same vein as the meerkats’ crude armour, as a stopgap measure so she could take them out, get them some levels, then use the newly empowered group to back her up when she found a Mini-Elite. The [Sappers] had been swamped with tasks however, as the first thing Mandla had told them to do after getting enough levels from the slaughter of the pups was to use a new skill they’d unlocked, [Harden], to coat all the tunnels. None of them wanted a retaliatory attack through the walls.
They hadn’t even finished with that task when they’d been called to help make the pulley system for the corpse disposal and to go on the food run, where’d they’d lost one of their number, after which they almost all went on the second food run. Basically, there had been too much for them to do, stalling her own plans for the Cavalry, which gave Karl the opportunity to drive a wedge into the crack. They weren’t gone yet, but a few more of those “excursions” and the Cavalry would be as fully under his thumb as the Infantry.
She would have celebrated Mandla’s loss of influence if it didn’t mean that now, Karl was shaping up to be the clear leader. As more refugees had trickled in, the group had gained more knowledge about the way the system worked and it had only made this cold war more important. They now knew that once the Hegemon had been killed, all the highest Rung Ascendants would have to swear [Fealty] to one of their number, making her the Hegemon and giving her the ability to start an official Faction, which the Legends and Classless could then join.
It wasn’t negotiable. If you were on the same Rung as the Nascent Hegemon, you either swore or died. The refugees had made sure to stress that. Only then would the Partition walls become traversable. That fact had caused much bloodshed.
If everyone else in the burrow chose to back Karl, he would take the top spot. That could not happen, not before she got to Durban, at least. Until then, the group needed to be under her control.
Would you look at that.
Her unconscious steps had brought her to the highway.
Reaching the end of the grassland, Nicola stepped out onto the asphalt. Looking both ways out of habit, she crossed over and glanced back once more across the road, before turning her attention to the forest that loomed in front of her. The forest they knew the hyenas were in.
The image of an old classmate of hers getting dragged away, begging and screaming, by the maniacally giggling hyenas was seared into her memory. They’d been so unprepared. She’d told everyone they had a tutorial grace period while they figured out how their abilities worked and it had kept everyone calm while she organised them all, but then they’d taken it too far and started playing around instead of helping fortify the place.
When they’d heard the trees echo with those first demented laughs, they hadn’t even raised the alarm, assuming it was the boys returning from the ranger’s cabin. By the time they’d realised the truth, they were already under attack.
Nicola knew how walls worked. She knew that if everyone had actually pitched in like she tried to get them to, they would have been strong enough. But people never fucking listened.
Which is part of why she’d grown to respect Mandla, oddly enough. He was a soft, apathetic rich boy, born in the lap of luxury and feeling boredly entitled to power because of it. She’d only lived rough during her childhood, but the first time she’d met him, back in grade 8, she recognised his type. He wouldn’t last a minute out in the real Durban. His one redeeming quality was that he saw the world the same way she did. But unlike her, he had a strange compunction against lying.
He’d bend the truth like a contortionist, and intentionally omit certain facts, but never outright lie. Nicola didn’t see the point, lying and bending the truth so much it’s almost unrecognisable were basically the same thing in her mind. But despite this weird self-imposed limitation, despite people never making the right decisions, he was very nearly her equal at manipulating events to benefit him. If he had boobs he might even have been her superior.
And he was smart, thank Christ. She knew literal billionaires who struggled with basic arithmetic but helmed companies simply because they’d been born into the right family. She’d never admit it, but she enjoyed their verbal sparring. Most others either tried to suck up to her or fuck her.
It certainly didn’t hurt that reaching second Rung had made him gorgeously muscled, not blocky and bloated, but lean and ripped, like a-
Wait, what the fuck.
Was she…?
No, no, impossible.
She shook her head to dispel the ugly thought. She was just horny. He wasn’t even her type, she liked men taller than her, someone she could look up at as he closed his hand around her thr-
Yeah, I’m just horny.
Shaking her head again, she refocused on the task at hand. When she’d left the burrow, she hadn’t had any direction in mind, but here she was, back at the forest. She could only think of one possible Mini-Elite in here.
During the hyena attack, a hyena bigger than the others stayed just out of clear focus, never engaging, its form hidden by trees and other hyenas. After the seeing the Dominatrix and hearing about the Earthquaker Elephant, she was sure that was the hyena Mini-Elite. Her suspicions were deepened as she remembered the disorienting effect the laughter had at first. She and Karl had shaken it off easily, but non-Ascendants were more greatly affected. At the time, she’d attributed it to them all being spoiled brats freezing up at their first sight of violence, but now she realised she may have been too harsh. That must have been a skill!
Subconsciously, she knew that she had something to prove. She had to make a bigger splash than Karl, do something that made clear that she was just as much a contender as the boys.
The head of a Mini-Elite should do it.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled up her status for one last look.
Status.
Ascendant Status
Name: Nicola Steenkamp
Title: Ascendant
Ascendant Class: English Longbowman
Position: 7,347,108
Level: 1st Rung
Bloodline Avatar: N/A
Quintessence: Ascendant
Potency: A drop
Symbiosis: N/A
Faction: N/A
Skills (Bloodline):
N/A
Skills (Weapon):
Longbow:
· Broadhead
· Bodkin Point
· N/A
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
· N/A
Ultimate (Bloodline):
N/A
Rondel
1st Rung. Not for long.
Steeling herself, she passed into the treeline.
----------------------------------------
Of course, she wasn’t stupid. As an archer, especially a first Rung one, there was no way she could survive anything close to a melee fight. She couldn’t be where the hyenas were.
Instead she was above them.
Her back bulging with muscle, she drew back and fired off another [Bodkin Point], pulping another hyenas head. The final hyena started yipping in alarm, when a [Broadhead] sliced into its throat, silencing it permanently.
Nice.
Her [Broadheads] didn’t always manage to hit the vital organs they were aimed at, especially when the target was on the move, but it was always beautiful when they did.
She was getting close to the hyenas’ den; she could feel it. Spotted hyenas usually used abandoned warthog or jackal burrows as dens to keep their cubs safe, while the adult hyenas themselves were usually too big to fit inside so they nested around them. She was encountering more and more hunting groups as she leapt through the blessedly peaceful trees.
An enhanced troupe of baboons would probably be just as bad as the hyenas, maybe even worse, depending on if you preferred being eaten alive or just having your face ripped off.
Still, there was nothing of the sort, and Nicola continued unmolested as she hopped from tree to tree, sniping at any hyenas she encountered below. It was slow going however, as she didn’t know where the place actually was and she kept having to double back when she stopped seeing any hyenas on the ground beneath.
Sweeping her Ascendant eyes across the night-time forest, she struck gold.
Yes! This is it.
A cow-sized hyena was carrying a dead impala, hanging limp in its jaws, and it plodded along with purpose. Taking the kill back to the den.
Silently following the beast, she crept along thick boughs and swung off slender branches, using her empowered physique to the fullest. She felt untouchable. From what she’d heard, second Rung felt just like this, but on steroids.
Spying a small clearing through the trees, she gingerly stepped forward, afraid of alerting the hyenas with the creak of a branch. Reaching the clearing, she looked out over the hyenas’ den.
It was staggering. Nearly the size of a football pitch, there was a hilly network of aboveground tunnels smack dab in the centre of the clearing, where she could see dozens of hairless hyena cubs playing. Inhuman laughter filled the air, as around the complex lay at least eighty hyenas, eating, sleeping, fighting, doing all sorts of things. And directly at the foot of the communal den…
Identified: Mini-Elite – Spearback Clanmother
Lay a hulking quadrupedal form, its barrel-like chest rising and falling evenly. The beast looked as tall as her while it was lying on its stomach! Its signature quills, true to its name, were thicker, longer and sharper, like spearheads, and lay more heavily upon her back. Each one of them could impale a woman but all of them?
Note to self, never get behind it.
Now, what to do? She could try and tag it from her position in the trees, but there was no way she’d get more than one shot before it awoke and used whatever skills it had on her. A dumb idea without backup. Whittling down the hyenas faced the same problem. The big momma would wake up eventually, and Nicola couldn’t hop through trees faster than the Clanmother could turn her head.
Looking around for inspiration, she remembered a nugget of wisdom her brother had brought back from the army.
When in doubt, use fire.
He’d claimed the adage had a multitude of uses on the frontline. A whole mess of chilling implications had sprung up in Nicola’s mind, but he’d refused to elaborate.
She saw many piles of dried, fallen vegetation, like leaves, dead branches and withered brush. She still had her lucky lighter secured between her breasts. A rough plan sketched itself out in her mind. What if the hyenas couldn’t see or smell her?
A few nerve-wracking hours later, she was ready. She’d gone through the painstaking process of retracing her steps backwards, finding one of the corpses of the hyenas she’d dropped, butchering it, covering herself in its blood, a couple dozen handfuls of fur and most disgustingly, its clan territorial scent marker from the glands around its anus.
Whatever it takes.
She’d then slowly, carefully made her way down the trees near the den, and making sure to stay out of sight, she’d collected many piles of flammable forest material, placing them around one half of the circular clearing, in a massive u-shape. She was banking on them not just abandoning their young. Life was darkly ironic in that way.
Shaking her head, she refocused. Withdrawing the lighter from beneath her gambeson, she crouched. Flicking it twice, she stared into the singular flame for a second, before carefully igniting the little pile in front of her.
Jumping up, she immediately began climbing her way up a tree. Thanks to the general moisture in a plant, fires made using fuel that wasn’t completely dry gave off a lot of smoke. Exactly what she needed.
As the first hyenas began to perk their heads up, smelling the smoke, she reached the tree canopy, and fixing herself into a stable position, summoned her [Longbow] and started firing.
The first few yelps of struck hyenas were the only sign of her attack and the Clanmother lazily raised her head, probably assuming it was rough play that had gone too far.
A [Bodkin Point] flashed, smacking into her face as it sank into her left eye, bursting it, but not digging deep enough to kill.
Fuck!
That would have been a critical hit on anything else, but it seemed Mini-Elites had tougher internals than other creatures.
Ah well, this is why Nicola had phase two of the plan.
As the Clanmother was yelping and snarling, frantically searching around for the intruder, the expansive network of dried brush finally caught flame properly.
Going up with a whoosh, all of a sudden, arrows were coming from behind an impenetrable wall of smoke and fire that wrapped around half of the den.
The smoke obscured her vision as well, but her Ascendant gaze was better able to penetrate the haze so she just kept loosing arrows. The Clanmother, having figured out the general direction the arrows were coming from, tried to break her assailant’s line of sight by moving around the den, but [Broadheads] hunted her down mercilessly, unfortunately not able to pierce deep enough to cause significant wounds.
Still, it was a one sided engagement, with Nicola deftly controlling the flow of battle, until the Clanmother let out a laugh.
Her high-pitched, eerie giggle reverberated unnaturally through the trees, visibly energising the hyenas and disorienting the archer for a split-secon-
Thwack!
All of a sudden, she was falling. Something had completely shattered the branch she’d been standing on.
Thinking quickly, she summoned her [Rondel] and drove it into the trunk speeding past her. With a grunt, she arrested her fall, though the force nearly wrenched her arm out of its socket. Just in time too, as a thick, keratinous bolt blasted through her right foot, taking off the front half of the appendage. Had she fallen a bit longer, that would have taken her through the chest.
Wanting to scream, she instead gritted her teeth and, using her other foot, pulled herself around the trunk just as two more bolts slammed into her previous position. This was obviously not just blind-fire. The Clanmother had found her.
Peeking her head around the tree, she spied the Clanmother pacing back and forth in front of the wall of fire. It was… actively trying to tamp the fire down?
Is every animal now just a smarter, tougher version of itself?
The forest was too moist to really catch fire, so she was on a timer racing against the dying of the flame. The Clanmother somehow understood this.
Lashing behind her was a tail that Nicola hadn’t seen while the beast was laying down. Instead of a tuft of hair at its terminus, it had a series of six wicked spikes arrayed around the limb, with a few of them clearly missing.
What the fuck is this evolution? Why does a hyena have a thagomizer?
This new development didn’t change her plan however.
Painstakingly pulling herself back up into the branches, she sat heavily on the lowest one that could take her weight. Using her [Rondel], she cut a strip of cloth from the bottom of her gambeson and tied her foot off, stopping the blood flow. She tugged the knot tight with a sense of finality.
She wouldn’t be able to escape with this injury. It was win or die.
The Clanmother had managed to extinguish a section of the wall of flame, and a wave of hyenas rushed through, swarming around the tree she was in, snarling up at her legs. She snarled right back and started loosing arrows straight downwards, each shot dropping another of the madly giggling beasts.
She continued this until the tree she was in shook suddenly. Another thud sounded from the opposite side of the trunk. Peeking around once more, she saw the Clanmother physically ramming the tree, trying to shake her out.
That’s my cue.
Powering through the pain, Nicola stood up and hobbled across the canopy, wincing every time she put weight on her damaged foot. She kept telling herself the second Rung would heal her. It had to.
Moving from tree to tree, her and the Clanmother entered a game where she would move positions and start firing on hyenas from above. With the thick smoke in the air, it always took a while for the massive beast to find her new position, but whenever it did, it pounded her vantage point with spikes until she hobbled behind the trunk, at which point it would start bodily ramming the tree, trying to dislodge her with its bulk. Every so often it would let out a short giggle, attacking her balance and orientation.
Just staying up in the trees was testing the upper limits of her first Rung physique, moving and shooting at the same time fully stretched her capacity to the max.
Still, it was happening. The smaller hyenas were learning that there was nothing they could do to get her and they’d starting hanging back to let the Clanmother at her, since when they swarmed, Nicola would just take potshots at them, whittling down their numbers.
Eventually, they stopped engaging altogether, simply waiting for the Clanmother to shake her out.
This was when she enacted phase three.
Drawing the massive hyena all the way around to the other end of the clearing where there was less smoke, Nicola frantically limped through the canopy, dodging flying spikes and nearly falling to the ground a few times. However, she successfully baited it.
Each tail-spike regrew about five minutes after it was fired, so Nicola purposefully hid herself for that long, letting it grow a full complement. She then dangled tantalizingly from a branch, making the hyena waste all six of its shots before it rushed forward to try ram her off.
She grinned, despite her dire situation. Now she had five minutes.
Taking out another strip of cloth she’d cut, she set it alight, then dropped the fluttering incendiary onto another network of dried fuel piles she’d placed.
With a whump, it went up. She’d made sure to pack it with the driest and most substantial fuel she could find. She didn’t just want smoke. She wanted an arena.
Racing down either side of the hyena, the conflagration encircled the tree, isolating the two of them within the crackling orange-red enclosure.
Nicola saw the flickering light of the flames reflected in her opponent’s eyes and returned the unspoken challenge. Raising her [Longbow], she got to work.
Arrows rained down on the trapped beast, and with no way to respond, it quickly became a pincushion, but the elusive killing shot wouldn’t avail itself as it was just too fast.
With blood streaming out of several new holes in its body, the exhausted hyena changed the game. Rushing towards the tree once more, Nicola expected it to ram the tree again.
Stopping just shy of hitting the trunk, the hyena’s eyes flashed silver. Her own eyes widening, she desperately loosed arrow after arrow as an illusory set of massive silver teeth superimposed itself on the hyena’s jaw and it bit a huge chunk right out of the tree trunk.
Holy shiit!
Her tree, now unbalanced, started tipping forward, its remaining trunk unable to bear the strain. With deep, groaning symphony of cracks, what little support it had left gave way.
Frantic, Nicola jumped out of the canopy, freefalling for a second before she caught herself halfway down the trunk with her [Rondel]. Even having shortened her fall by so much, when the mighty tree crashed down onto the ground, it rattled her entire body. Her legs took the brunt of the damage, her right shin snapping like a brittle twig.
Fuck it, could barely use that leg anyway.
Refusing to concede, refusing even to consider fleeing, she willed herself to stand on her one good leg, bracing her position against the fallen trunk. The huge air displacement from the tree’s felling fanned the ring of flames immensely, the increased heat prickling Nicola’s skin with sweat.
The Clanmother appeared, looking in as bad a shape as she did. Arrows riddled its hide, blood dripping wetly from under its torso. Its jaw was damaged as well, as it bled from its gums and teeth were visibly missing or cracked within its mouth. Along with the soft illumination from the fire, the hyena looked like a demon from hell come to drag her back with it.
Still, she raised her [Longbow].
With a manic cackle, the beast rushed at her.
Firing [Bodkin Point] after [Bodkin Point], she just couldn’t stick them deep enough to get anything vital, and it twitched fast enough to avoid another blinding shot. It would probably bleed out eventually, but she’d be long eaten by then.
Reaching her with a gleeful light in its eyes, the beast loomed above her. Fuck, it was big. She could look the average quillback in the eye, but she had to crane her neck up at the Mini-Elite. It was as large as a heavy draught horse, thickly muscled under its rough hide. Its bleeding jaws opened to crush Nicola’s head within the dripping maw as it extended its neck.
Dropping her [Longbow], she quickly summoned her [Rondel] and plunged it diagonally into the hyena’s snout, the dagger’s point emerging through the roof of its mouth.
With a yelp, the hyena swatted her away with a front paw. Nicola went flying back, hitting the tree stump heavily and hearing a loud crack.
Looking down with dread, she poked at one of her legs. Nothing.
Her boundless determination had nearly reached a breaking point. This damn beast was just tanking everything she could throw at it and she had run out of tricks.
It was the end.
No.
Summoning her [Longbow] and shifting into a sitting position, she centred the whimpering hyena within her sights.
Win or die.
If she couldn’t prevail here, she was just too weak. And Nicola wasn’t fucking weak.
Her energy responding sluggishly, she nonetheless manifested another [Bodkin Point], now just aiming to keep the beast away from her.
Launching off like a bullet, the arrow thwacked into one of the Clanmother’s rear leg joints, taking the whole leg out of commision.
Two can play at this immobilisation game, bitch.
She chuckled internally. If she got out of this, she’d stop giving Kavvy grief about using the word. Sometimes, it got the exact right sentiment across.
The Clanmother seemed to realise what she was doing, and sprinted at her.
Thwack!
Another [Bodkin Point] took out the hyena’s other back leg, and with a squeal, it was brought to the ground.
Undeterred, the hyena started dragging itself towards her on its front paws.
Thwack!
Another arrow blurred into its left foreleg joint. Its massive chest rose and fell laboriously, lit by the orange flames, as it stared Nicola directly in the eyes, then snarled as it tried to pull itself forward on its sole working leg.
Nicola gave it a nod of respect.
Tough bitch.
With a final bolt, she put its last leg out of commission, halting the beast just shy of reaching her legs. It extended its neck futilely trying to bite her foot.
That wouldn’t help you.
Despite its aggression, seeing its relentless struggle over the course of their battle had given Nicola a newfound appreciation for hyenas. They were portrayed as cowardly and weak but they were far from either of those things. They were constantly underestimated, to the misfortune of anyone dumb enough to think that they were simple to handle.
Just like her.
Feeling a rare wave of empathy, she reached towards the snarling beast, seeing the fire reflected in the blood and saliva that dripped from its ruined mouth. Softly laying a hand on its head, she stroked the matted fur.
“I suddenly wish I didn’t have to kill you. What a time to become a damn animal lover.”
Still, she knew what she had to do. Her five minutes was almost up.
Manifesting her [Rondel] in a whirlwind of golden sparks, she gripped its handle tightly. The crackle of the fire drowned out all other sounds as she lined the blade up with the beast’s one working eye.
Drawing her hand back, she tensed, before…
Ding!
Symbiosis offered. Accept?
She hesitated.
Uhh… Sure?
Symbiote gained: Spearback Clanmother
Ding!
You have successfully challenged a Mini-Elite! You now qualify for the 2nd Rung of the Bloodline Ascent. Entering Trial…