CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT—BATTERED ADVENTURERS
“SHIRO!” Debaku screamed, his heart hammering in his chest like it had fallen off a mountain into a rocky recess.
He lunged forward toward the thick mass of vines as the tongues went in to deliver the killing blow, and something hit him.
He screamed and everything around him shook.
Slamming into the ground, he rolled and grunted and his sword clanged across something hard—the dirt—he had landed in a patch of dirt.
Whirling, he said, “Shiro! Samira!”
She flicked her eyes up as she watched the mass of vines and the tongues go in at Shiro. He was about to me smashed and ground into a pulp. “Oh no.”
“Shiro!” cried the Mar’a Thulian. “Samira!”
The grunted, then slammed her arms back as the wind propelled her forward. Screaming she went in at the vines with her blades, cutting and dicing them like so many chopped vegetables, but the thicket was far too dense for her to get in to Shiro.
The tongues rose up, slithering up high as their deadly sharp and spiny points angled in to direct themselves at the strange swordsman with the jinni.
One of them darted in, and she heard the skirl of a blade against fleshy plant mass, then another tongue went in. It struck something and came back, green luminescent goo spurting and spraying.
Shiro screamed.
“Shiro!” Samira called, her use of his name strange in her mouth, when suddenly something grabbed her by both ankles and whipped her backward.
It stretched out and grabbed her wrist.
She still had one sword free, but otherwise she was—
Her free hand was taken as she was held suspended in the air from the vines. She screamed, struggling and writhing. In all her tome studying the Angor, she had never been caught, for had she been, she would not be here now.
And it looked like she would not be here later as all thoughts of Shiro and his friend Debaku left her mind. The Ashah princess struggled as hard as she could, sending whirling cyclones of wind this way and that.
They sprung her about, but to no avail.
The bright glowing plant goo burned Shiro’s skin. He had managed to slice one of the tongues, and it had sprayed all over him.
The next one that came in for the kill strike landed next to him, grazing him slightly as his hot and burning sword flashed through the darkness like a carnival performer’s light.
He cut it up, but he felt his wound, felt the blood seeping from his body. He ignored it as he fought the tongues darting in and out at him in this time space. He screamed, gritting his teeth.
Shiro was about to be over taken.
This was the end.
Then Jessamine appeared like a benevolent spirit, but instead of swirling to appear before him with a dancer’s grace, there was instead a sudden puff of the luminescent mist and, as if she had walked out of a door, she came to the physical realm, her hand outstretched and her sword alight in golden brilliance.
A fireball appeared in her hand as she flicked her blade about, keeping the vines away from her.
She flicked her hand forward and the fireball rolled out and sizzled across the ground. When it was a few paces away, it exploded and the vines suddenly retracted. “Shiro!” she said breathily. “Why did you not call me, you fool?”
“I—“
He cut at the vines when the tongue came in. It darted toward his chest with incredibly speed, but before it struck him it was cut, a spray of hot luminescent goo spurting at him.
Jessamine burnt it up in the air with a control breath of flame that Shiro was certain singed his eyebrows off as he howled in fear and fury.
His heart hammered in his chest, both out of terror, and love for this spectral spirit-like woman—this jinni who belonged to him.
Growling and gritting his teeth, Debaku lunged across the ground on his knees and free hand, then summoned as much of his magical aura as he could. In a rage, he lunged forward cutting stray vines that shot in at him.
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He could not cut into the mass before him that obscured Shiro from view, but from the luminescent plume of blue light and the sudden appearance of fire, he knew the venerable jinni, Jessamine, had appeared.
The Blade Dancer protected Shiro when neither the Black Cobra or the Dar Shaq hashashin could.
Instead of going to Shiro, he jumped into the air and as he came back down near the coiling tongues darting down at Shiro, he grunted, using the flat surface of the tendril to launch himself further yet again where he did a flip.
He landed in the grass, his sandaled feet sliding and crushing the benign plants under his feet.
The Black Cobra came directly under Samira, where she was writhing and howling. Vines darted in at him to prevent Debaku from rescuing her.
He cut them out of his path, the stocks spurting out plant liquids as they writhed and pressed in. He cut their stocks over and over, shortening them with every strike of his flashing blade.
As he did battle with the vines while Samira snarled and grunted above him, struggling to free herself, he realized the Angor was trying desperately to keep him from cutting her down.
The vines came in at him in the dozens, sacrificing themselves as a ponderous cry of the monster filled the air.
The big green tendrils did terrible work among the men, but the Node was mostly unprotected at this time.
“Move in!” Ali cried. He turned. “Wave that flag man! No—here—give it to me, you fool!” He took the flag in his hands and pushed through the bodies of the other officers.
“My lord!” Yasser cried. “Please, do not go out into the battle—stay here where it is safe!”
Ali kicked his legs forward as he shouldered through and sprinted across the open ground where the men did terrible battle with the Angor. “Shut up you coward!” he screamed, not bothering to look back. Then he called, “Ushtan!”
Captain Ushtan screamed and brought up his rear, and some of the other officers must have joined in, because half a dozen battle cries went up behind him. The flag Ali carried to the line of men who were fighting and dying and screaming among the tendrils was the “all forward attack” flag.
He made it to the lined and, holding the staff, he stuck it into the ground and pulled out his scimitar. “Yes!” he screamed, as images of Hafza flashed in his mind.
He was so thirty, and the mid-tier adventurer was tired, his heart pounding with fear and battle lust and excitement.
The green tendril swept among them, taking down five men with it as they screamed and howled.
Some of them surely died in that attack, but the others writhed and lurched to their feet. “Attack it!” Ali cried. “Attack it with your fire and your blades, men!”
The tendril came in above him and darted past his head. The force of its movement came into contact with the flag as smashed it out of his hand, where it curved down and killed someone behind him.
Ali screamed, and taking his scimitar in both hands, he whirled it up against the flat surface of the tendril and sunk his blade into it. It writhed and pulled back, and almost pulled him down into the dirt, but he put his shoulder behind his forearms and held his blade in place—simply to keep it from being pulled away from him.
The stupid tendril, in its attempt to pull away, split itself in half with the force of its recoiling retreat against his deadly-sharp blade.
Glowing plant liquid spurting and fell, some of it splashing Ali across the arm. He cried out, and yanked his turban off his head, whereupon he wiped at the goo that burnt his skin.
“ATACK!” he screamed, and when he looked up, he found a dozen Scorpions laying into the thick purple section as they cut into it with their blades.
The plates were loosening and something came writhing out of the top.
It arced down and touched a man, and he writhed to get away as he screamed. His feet came off the ground.
“NO!” Ali cried.
He jumped, grabbing for the Scorpion’s ankle, but he missed, snarling with anger at his failure to take hold of the man before he was lifted and then dropped into the Node.
There was a sickening sound, wet and muscular and wooden. If a giant plant monster could swallow like a man while quaffing down wine, that was the sound that erupted all around them, and it had a visible effect on the men, who bristled with fear and sudden indecision.
“Fight!” one called.
“Yes!” howled Ali. “Ushtan!” he turned, but did not find the captain. “Ushatan! Fight!” he cried, and he swung his sword at one of the shorter, thinner vines that whipped in at occasional managed to drag the men away, even though the little cordons of fire they had set up all around them.
The whole area smelled like blood and plant goo and fire smoke. Ali’s hands were soked in sweat or blood, or both, and he attacked the Angor node directly, sinking his blade in as he grunted and cried.
One of the thick tongue tendrils came down atop them, crushing one of the men into a mass of shattered limbs and pooling blood. All the men cried out, some of then snarled and lept in, cutting at the tendril where a hundred other sword gashes had been made.
Ali cut in with an overhanded strike and split the tongue down the middle, and like before, it rose and jerked away, doing the rest of the work for him.
A cheer of success went up and Ali let a smile hit his face even though the horror of battle was upon him.
Suddenly he was flipped and he landed on the ground. He lost hold of his sword as he glanced down and screamed, the vine around his ankle tightening enough to make him wince as it dragged him out from under the men.
A sword, silver and gleaming, cut into the dirt past his foot, severing the vine. The flat, gushing stock pulled away and Ali looked up.
He found Ushtan there holding out his hand. “Vizier!”
He grabbed that hand and was hauled up by the strong bearded man as Yasser, his face a mask of pure horror, came forward with his hands outstretched. He grabbed hold of Ali to heal him, but he pushed the fool away.
“Not me! Can you not see I am not in need!” he gestured to the men. “Go to them!”
“But—but!”
He pushed the coward. “Go!”
“High vizier!” called Ushtan. He turned back to the captain.
“What is it?”
“A sword.” He held up the blade. It was not his, but one of the blades taken from the many dead and wounded men about the ground. Many of them were being dragged away by the vines even then.
“Oh gods,” Ali moaned, and he lurched forward and cut a vine dragging off a wounded Scorpion who cried out and moaned in pain with a severely broken arm. “Go—get out of here!”
He helped the man up and pushed him toward the opposite direction of the Angor Node.
Turning around, he looked at the men, howling and swiping with their sword and spears. Some of the men were lighting their arrows afire and loosing them into the Angor Node, but it did little damage to the monster.
Taking a quick stock of their situation, it was clear that they had lost about a third of their men, either by death or wounds, and many were in fact missing.
I hope Abbaas is faring better than we are!
The high vizier did not know how much longer they could hold this position before he was forced to call a retreat.