Nathaniel
Open air and soaring across the street, the landscape down below us is already turning into one of chaos, filled to the brim with fire and swarming Goblins.
Like killing a single ant, we have apparently pissed off the entire colony. From all over this stretch of the city, where everything slowly transitions into downtown and its skyscrapers, Goblins are pouring down the streets from the west or emerging from holes in the ground until they are absolutely coving the streets with their little green bodies.
Around us, several buildings, mostly those that we have already moved through, are now on fire or have collapsed into a trailing sinkhole of a ravine that traces the path that we had been fleeing in. It zigzags across the cityscape like an open wound, dust still pluming out of the fissure as hundreds of thousands of pounds of rubble settles into the ground after tumbling into some unseen depths of old sewers.
As we hit the next building, I can physically feel it as Lain’s Field leaves us. It is sudden and almost jarring, like stepping out of a pressurizes chamber and out to some chaotic hellscape. The comfortable feeling of her Field, a feeling of a protective void and a quiet night, suddenly getting replaced by freezing winds clashing with burning fires.
I can still feel her Field as it moves away from us, slamming down and into the earth like a bird into a lake after a fish. It only takes but a moment for her presence to almost completely vanish from the battlefield, smothered by the ground inside of the Earth Mages Field. If it weren’t for our connection still coming back to me strongly, telling me that she is alright, I would have panicked at how quickly her presence had simply vanished.
Instead, we have other things to worry about as we head towards our target.
With Lain having vanished, the Field of this other Hobgoblin she sent us after is now searching. Spreading out like an amoeba with questing extensions in every direction. When it finally hits us, it is like the air is suddenly filled with heat, embers dancing across our skin and smoke getting blown in our faces.
We aren’t welcome in this place. We are outsiders, intruding into another’s personal space.
I can feel it as the entirety of the Field’s attention moves towards us, the feeling of heat pushing down on us like gravity had just doubled.
But we don’t let this stop us. Lain made us strong. Lain changed us to become strength incarnate. We can bench press literal tanks for Christ’s sake! It will take more than a bit of pressure to stop us from moving.
And we don’t stop moving. Even as the air gets hotter and the pressure increases, demanding that we kneel, we keep moving. Plowing through walls, vaulting over obstacles, leaping from building to building; we get closer.
With their Field focused on us so completely, it also makes it clear where the enemy is, their presence feeling like the core of this burning Field, a little star giving off energy and pulling in everything around it.
One more jump and we arrive on the roof of some old coffee shop that had been grown over, frozen, and then burned black. The entire thing is already swarming with Goblins as they are sent at us, having climbed the ruined walls of broken brick and burnt vines and trees.
Landing feet first, the roof and any Goblin that got in our way quickly become broken and crushed. Crashing through the roof like four wrecking balls, we break into the café in a rain of rubble and screaming Goblins, the entire roof collapsing around us and sending up plumbs of smoke and dust. Those that were already inside are either crushed by the falling debris or are blinded and choking on the dust.
With our visors down, our eyes and lungs stay clear, though visibility is lost. Regardless, we don’t let this stop us from moving forward, charging straight for the core of this Field. Even as a piece of roof falls on top of me, I simple shrug it off and charge for the wall shoulder first, plowing through it in a spray of brick and mortar.
Sam and I exit first, with Sam right behind me and then Frank and Xander taking up the rear. They have the radio packs and need to protect them, and Sam has an ungodly amount of explosives on her back right now, so I have to take the vanguard and push forward.
There is more screaming as we break through to the other side. Goblins get taken out by the spray of rubble, with some simply getting crushed by a collapsing section of wall, flattened into the pavement like flies under a magazine. Behind us, the café collapses in on itself, no longer able to take the abuse and finally giving up on standing.
Arriving onto a scene of thousands of screaming, swarming Goblins filling the streets, I find our target standing atop the turned over body of some rusted out car. He is a lanky looking guy of lean muscles and long limbs, dressed in a rough shirt made of hide with his lower half wrapped in a kilt of furs, he has pale, snow white skin and blood red hair and eyes. If I had been told that he was a vampire, I would have probably believed it.
He snarls at us with sharp and crooked teeth, pointing at us as he calls out orders in the Goblin’s strange language. A ball of fire is already forming at the tip of his metal pipe that he wields like a staff, its end glowing red hot and visibly radiating heat into the biting cold winter air.
Frank calls out behind us. “Open fire!”
Four LMGs point out and open up in a continues spay of lead and death, belts of ammunition feeding into our guns as they are pulled from extra-large box magazines. I can hardly feel the recoil against my shoulder as I hold down the trigger, the machine gun spitting out rounds and mowing through swaths of Goblins as I draw the line of fire towards the Mage.
All around us, the little Goblins get reduced to pink mist and flying limbs or broken parts of some shredded organ expelled from the freshly made corpses.
As I direct my line of fire towards the Mage, the others crouch low and sweep their fire through the hordes, scything through the screaming little things that are caught between trying to attack us and running for their lives from the sudden ultra-violence.
The Fire Mage launces his fire ball at us as he hastily erects a barrier of flame, melting my bullets into slag before they can reach him, the molten lead dripping into puddles at his feet.
“Incoming! Move!” I yell out as the fire ball flies towards us. If it is anything like that other one, then it will probably explode when it hits, and I am in no hurry to experience what it is like to be on fire. The sight of Lain with her face burned off is still fresh in my mind, and even if it didn’t seem to bother her much, it still looked incredibly painful.
We all leap off the ground, our powerful legs making it to where even a casual jump can send us a couple of meters in the air.
Jumping over the hordes of screaming Goblins, I go right with Xander as Sam and Frank go left. We land hard on the street amid broken bodies and panicking Goblins, the barrel of my gun having not left the Fire Mage even as I moved through the air and landed, forcing him to turn and continue blocking as I unload on him.
All around us, the Goblins quickly pull themselves together and try to swarm us, rushing for our legs and jumping for us with desperation and suicidal abandon.
Kicking aside some of them, Xander tosses aside his LMG and draws his sword, cutting two of the Goblins in half as he lets out an excited, “Come at me!”
Laughing, he swings the sword around and cuts though any Goblin that gets too close, moving the sword around in vertical arcs of swinging slashes to cut down the much smaller foes, transitioning into horizontal swings to swat aside any Goblins that try to jump at him. And the Goblins are surprisingly good jumpers. Despite how they look, they can clear a surprising distance with their little legs.
Leaving Xander to have his fun, I move forward, stalking towards the Hobgoblin. My finger has yet to let go of the trigger, and if I was still human, I would have lost control of the weapon a while ago. It takes quite a bit of practice to be able to shoulder fire an LMG for an extended period, especially while moving, and not even to mention while jumping through the air like some super soldier in a video game. Internally, I can only laugh at the absurdity of it all. I don’t even stop moving as the little Goblin latch onto me and try to stab me with their shaped bone weapons or looted implements of rusty kitchen knives and screwdrivers. Most of them don’t even have the strength to get through my armor, and those who manage are mostly stopped by my body.
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The Hobgoblin curses under the unceasing flow of bullets and tries to shoot flames towards me as I draw near, but takes a bullet to the shoulder from the side, Sam or Frank having taken the chance to pepper his shield while he was distracted.
My LMG finally runs dry after the sustained fire, and I don’t bother trying to reload, it’s faster to just switch to my sidearm. Dropping the gun to the ground without a care, I swing my arm down and smack a few clinging Goblins off of my leg. I can hear a few bones breaking from the hit, the little things getting thrown aside from the casual smack of my hand.
Drawing my Dessert Eagle from my hip, I move into a dead sprint, charging straight for the Hobgoblin, plowing through and trampling over anything that gets in my way as I unload on the flaming barrier.
I risk a look off to the side as the Fire Mage is forced to continue defending. Frank has stopped firing as well and is now dragging an old pickup truck across the street from side to side, leaving bloody streaks painting the road as he crushes dozens of Goblins with every pass. Sam has switched over to her grenade launcher and is firing it into the crowd while laughing like the absolute maniac that she is. Each grenade that leaves her weapon is fired with a ‘thwoonk’ noise before landing amongst clusters of the little Goblins, exploding into blooming flowers of death.
Even as she is having her fun, she doesn’t forget the mission and turns to send a round towards the Hobgoblin. The grenade hits the body of the car he is standing on and explodes, sending the entire thing flipping over backwards and launching the Mage into the air.
He is surprisingly able to maintain his shield even as he is flailing through the air and lands hard on the floor some distance away.
As he is landing hard on the floor, I am still quickly closing the distance, this entire confrontation since we left the café having only lasted a handful of seconds so far.
Moving at a dead sprint towards his prone body, he slowly picks himself up and goes goggled-eyed at the sight of me charging at him. He raises his pipe towards me, a ball of flame building at its tip.
He launches it at me, and I dodge hard to the side, kicking up concrete as I break the road to suddenly change direction. As the ball of fire moves past me, I unload my pistol at him, hitting him in chest twice and clipping his shoulder. He coughs up some blood but doesn’t drop. Instead, he swings his pipe staff down, pushing through the pain as he glares at me with fear and rage in his eyes.
Beside me, the fire ball suddenly changes course and veers into the ground, exploding with the force of a grenade going off right next to me.
I have barely enough time to shield my head from the explosion, mostly moving on instinct as the flames wash over the left side of my body and catch onto my clothes.
Digging my feet into the ground to keep from getting blown away, I can’t help but scream as the pain washes over me. My left eardrum bursts from the shockwave, suddenly cutting off half of my hearing as my other ear starts to ring. My entire left-hand side feels like it is on fire as the magically fed flames eat into my armor and burn my skin.
I can’t help but cry out as memories of being burned by the Doppelganger’s acid are forcibly dragged to the forefront of my mind. An experience that still continues to haunt me in my dreams almost every night that I don’t spend sleeping with Hope, her presence up against my body helping me to have a restful night’s sleep.
I want to panic. I want to flail around and call for help. The flames covering half of my body sending my mind into a frenzy as pain assaults me.
But my thoughts are drawn to one image. Not of the Doppelganger looming over me as I almost died. Not of anything else, but Lain, standing there on the snowy tarmac of the airport as she held Gov’es in her arms. Her hand stabbed through his chest and standing there, not screaming despite being ablaze, but instead mournfully gazing down at her dead opponent.
It’s just fire. Fire can’t kill a Demon! Even if I burn, I. Won’t. Die!!!
“Rrrraaaaaaaaaooougghhhh!!!!”
My screams turn into a roar of rage that has my entire being behind it, the pain of my skin burning away only serving to fuel the rage further.
Though I staggered from the explosion, I quickly recover and move forward, stomping forward and kicking aside every Goblin in my path, crushing them underfoot like the eight-foot-tall Demon that I am.
The Hobgoblin looks up at me in abject terror as I loom over him, his hands holding his chest where he bleeds horribly from his bullet wounds. He screams something at me through bloody teeth, and I can feel as the entirety of his Field is focused on me and me alone, the entire weight of his presence pushing down on my shoulders, trying to force me to my knees, to force me to kneel to him.
The Demon blood flowing through my veins rages at the audacity of this. The voice in the back of my mind, the very thing that Lain had locked away to keep me from becoming a slave, screams in outrage at the idea. The idea that I would possibly kneel to ANYONE else.
I kneel for her alone! Only the Demon Queen can make me bend the knee!
I growl out through gritted teeth as the flames on my body intensify, “Weak. Too weak!”
I’ve felt Lain’s Field when she is angry. When she is serious. Forget that my nature as one of her Demons compels me to want to do it, if she was serious, she could force me to my knees with nothing but her will. Even if my new body, as a Fiend, makes me physically stronger than her, it doesn’t change the fact that she is more powerful than all of us combined. Her presence isn’t something that can be overcome with something as simple as physical might. It requires more.
And this, in comparison, is nothing.
“Weak!” I roar as I lift my flaming leg and stomp down on the Hobgoblin with everything I have.
He lets out a scream as my boot impacts his chest, slamming him down into the hard floor and continuing to move through, caving in his chest with the loud crack of his breaking ribcage being reduced to shards. My boot crushes everything, pulping organs and smashing through his spine with an audible snap, only to end up cratering the road, folding up sheets of concrete and shaking the ground with a shockwave.
With my leg buried through his chest and into the ground, he coughs up a mouthful of blood, his eyes practically bulging out of his face as he looks up at me in horror, as if some monster had crawled out of his nightmares and just murdered him.
He goes limp, his lifeless eyes staring up at me as some last words are lost on his blood-stained lips.
I’m not weak anymore. I’m not the same soldier that couldn’t do anything as his friend died. I’m not the same weak little man that couldn’t even fight off a single monster. I’m not the same person that wasn’t there when every single person I ever cared about died and I could save them! I am more now! I am strong now! Lain made me Strong!
“Shhheeeeeeeeeeeehhh” Letting out a long breath through clenched teeth, I move my hands and wipe the flames off of my body, tearing off some of the still burning fabric and tossing it aside.
With the Hobgoblin dead, his Field has evaporated like smoke in the wind, the magic fueling his flames and pushing them to burn, draining away and making them as weak as a little campfire fed with twigs.
My body comes away blackened and charred on my left side from the flames, my arm and leg having gotten the worst of it, but I don’t let myself cry or scream from the pain. If Lain, a girl half my size and not even a soldier, can deal with having her face burned off, then I can deal with this. I’ll heal. Even now, I can feel the pain dulling as my skin slowly heals and layers of charred skin starts to fall away in black patches, exposing fresh pink flesh underneath.
Letting out another breath, I finally look up from the corpse and find that all of the Goblins are running away in fear, screaming bloody murder as they sprint as fast as their little legs can carry them.
Sam is still joyfully sending grenades into the fleeing crowds, and Frank is working his way over towards me. Xander is fussing over his sword and trying to clean it, but seems distracted as he is looking towards me, his eyes going to my burn wounds.
“Fire Mage is dead. Kill confirmed! We need to move and go help Lain, she is still fighting the -“
My words get cut off as a new presence slams down onto the area, just as the first was finally fading, catching us all by surprise and tripping us up.
The Field is one of chilling winds and eternal ice. A chill running down all our backs as the sudden cold hits us and every fire in the area is suddenly extinguished.
I turn and look towards where I feel the source of this new Field to be and find a Hobgoblin woman of ice-blue skin and white hair, a single small horn growing from the center of her forehead, and her eyes like icy globes. She is standing just down the street, glaring at us from under thick layers of hide clothing and hanging furs that adorn her body like a mage’s cloak or thick winter gear. A single yellow flower adorns her hair, tucked in behind her ear.
Sam turns towards her, the closest one to her, and while she is surprised by her sudden appearance, she is still quick to act. She is still a soldier.
Sam snaps the end of the grenade launcher towards her and pulls the trigger, the ‘thwoonk’ of the grenade getting launched sounding out over the noise of screaming and running Goblins.
The female Hobgoblin simply turns her gaze towards Sam and waves her hand like she is splashing water. A wave of ice forms at her feet and moves forward, catching the grenade in the air and freezing it solid within a crystal of ice.
The wave continues to move forward, sweeping down the street and heading straight for Sam. Before she can move to jump away, she suddenly looks down in shock at her feet, her legs refusing to move as a layer of ice had formed over her boots.
“Shit!!!” She cries out as she tosses aside her grenade launcher and throws a desperate punch at the oncoming wave of ice.
Her fist collides with it, smashing the oncoming wall of ice with a shattering blow that shakes the world, but it doesn’t stop the advancing ice. The wave continues to move unabated, covering her legs and lower half all the way up to her hips, her left fist that had punched the ice getting caught as well, frozen up to the elbow. Icy spears continue to expand towards Sam’s body, but she pulls herself back, twisting out of their way and avoids their needle like tips, the icy wave stopping just short of swallowing her whole, half her body now coated in ice and unable to move.
Frank calls out, “Sam!”
“Fucking hell! God damn it! This shit is fucking cold!!!” She curses as she moves to repeatedly punch at the ice that is covering her.
Frank quickly snaps out orders. “Nathaniel, get her out of there! Move, move, now! Xander, help me with this one!”
“Got it!”
A new enemy before us, we all move, rushing forward as the icy Hobgoblin creates a dozen meter long spikes of ice floating above her head with a simple gesture, her eyes following our every move like some lazy predator just woken from a nap.