Alchemists were not warriors, nor casters. But they were not to be trifled with. Ensharia had read up on them well, during her training as a Paladin, for they were second only to rogue casters and conjurers as a source of Necromantic research or experimentation into the dark sorceries of Fleshcrafting. And they were dangerous, whatever others thought.
Things could be done with alchemy that even the magic of magi could not achieve, and never any more easily than on the alchemist themselves. Invariably, the best of them learned their own body on the most intimate level possible, studying every fibre of its substance and quantifying every facet of its existence. From there, it was all too easy to improve it. Drugs and concoctions, mutagens drip-dosed over the course of years, tweaks and improvements made by the inch all eventually creating an immune system and physiology able to withstand combinations of imbibement that would kill a warrior dozens of times their strength.
She’d heard the stories, and now she saw the truth of them. Kraika the Toxicologist was faster than any man of his frame and clear inexperience ought to have been.
He came at her like a fired arrow, almost, sidestepping one swing of her mace, then replying by emptying some vial at her face with the flick of a wrist.
Ensharia just barely turned away in time to feel the pungent liquid splash against the side of her helmet, rather than the front, and the sizzling of digesting steel reached her ears instantly. There came a great shiver in the air as winds buffeted the Toxicologist backward, then yet more hit the side of her helmt and halted the sizzling. She saw droplets of lilac fluid spatter the ground around them, eating it with frightening speed.
“We can take him.” The magus grinned, stepping in eagerly, fingers flexing. The corridor was long, and wide, a far more advantageous stage for him to unleash his powers than their ambush site. Ensharia found herself almost tempted to go along with the idea.
But she resisted it.
“We need to retreat.” She insisted. “He’s as powerful as your master, or close.”
For one, terrifying second Ensharia thought the magus might refuse. Then she saw a trickle of fear and caution colour his eyes. He nodded, seeming reluctant, but decided.
An instant later, the Toxicologist was on them again. This time he prioritised Falls as his target, clawing for him with fingers suddenly boasting curled talons like the limbs of a falcon. Ensharia saw the air ripple, then give as they bit through her ally’s shields, but the thickened atmosphere slowed them enough for her mace to come in for Kraika’s temple. The alchemist ducked, backing away, then leaping as another jet of wind shot for his belly.
Ensharia was ready for him when he came down, swinging just right to ensure that the mace was centred on his body from every direction. He moved left, lurching aside just the instant before impact, and moving too little to fully escape its path. His heels left the ground, then the wall became his ground as he struck it sidelong and devastatingly.
It had been Falls, of course. Ensharia’s arms lacked the strength to hurl a man so hard, and the magus demonstrated his own capacity a second time as he sent the alchemist sprawling far along the floor dozens of feet from them both. Turning back to her, his eyes were wide as he spoke with a growl.
“Run, now.”
She didn’t need telling even that once, Ensharia and Falls backed away together, making a hasty path for the nearest exit. In their case, a window. As she recalled it was a steep fall to the ground outside, a hundred feet perhaps. She’d hit the ground hard from a height like that, but not hard enough to be injured unless she was unlucky, and with Falls following suit the odds of harm would be slim indeed.
Footsteps shook the world behind them, and Ensharia risked a glance. The alchemist was in hot pursuit, body now coated with thick scales, legs now bulging with unnatural vascularity. It didn’t take more than a glance to know he was faster than either of them, and would be on them soon. She conveyed as much to Falls.
“Take a pause, we need to ready ourselves to fight him off again.” She advised. “He’ll be fighting quickly, his body can’t take his drugs forever, so if we buy time we win.”
Falls glared at her, face twisting, but nodded. They both stopped, turned, and readied themselves to fight the man back.
Four times they succeeded in turning him back. Falls kept Ensharia warded with thick walls of air, while she focused on attacking and taking the brunt of their enemy’s attacks. An alchemist could not match the physical potence of a true warrior, not on average, and so despite the exceptional difference in experience and power between them, her physicality was not so far inferior to his. With magic and might combined, they had a chance. Of escaping if nothing else.
But it was Falls again who ruined their rhythm and broke their cycle. On the fifth attack, Ensharia ordered him to ward her whilst she went straight for a swing. The magus refused with a snarl.
“Enough of this, I’m not following some fucking woman’s orders, sit back and let me take care of it.” Her ears popped from the atmospheric distortion as Falls called on every scrap of his magic, the kind of power she’d been trained not to fight against with anything less than a dozen other Paladins helping. It might have been comforting, but Ensharia had seen too much of Kraika the Toxicologist to feel anything but dread as Falls reared his magic up to meet the man ahead of her.
Wind came down like a guillotine, and Kraika dodged. It shifted to a horizontal attack, which he leapt over, then continued into a roll as rubble that had been broken from the walls during the previous misses was accelerated at his back. Obviously there had been some sensory enhancement to the man, for he seemed impossible to surprise.
Falls backed off, and Ensharia closed to support him, but there was no stopping what came next. The magus’ barriers were smashed apart, his body caught almost directly by a vicious punch, and even from feet back Ensharia could hear the sound of his ribs breaking clear as day.
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Silenos’ cannon blew a visceral hole in the swarm of enemies closing in, and allowed him to lunge through it to escape their ranks. By the clear lack of anticipation, they’d not heard about his weapon. That told him that they hadn’t had any further surveillance in Magira to gather word of his battle with Walriq, and that they’d not been informed by either of his companions. It was not, however, particularly useful in the moment.
He resisted the urge to scan the surrounding area for the Necromancer, knowing he’d not catch sight of her until he was near to death. Wielders of death magic were less suited for direct combat than even Fleshcrafters, it was always better for them to construct others for their fighting.
This one had done a good job of that, for still fifty undead pursued Silenos too quickly to be avoided for long. He managed a single more shot, aimed at one of the stronger but missing and splitting a lesser foe in half, before they closed.
Axes, polearms, clubs. Dozens of crude weapons came down on him from dozens of shifting directions. Silenos did his best to cover himself, letting his composited plate weather the impacts, while he sent a tendril of nervous tissue shooting out, probing around until it found what was left of the mangled corpse he’d made moments earlier. Then he extended his magic to it.
Despite their superhuman strength and heavy weaponry, these enemies were not so deadly as to quickly hurt him. Only the mightiest of them could even scratch his newly armoured body, which meant Silenos could afford to work slowly and carefully.
Within reason. The Necromancer herself could use shadestuff, no doubt she’d do so if he remained unalert and stationary. Even in an amateur’s hands, nothing but his warform could withstand such destructive magic for long.
He drew the mass in, converted it to his nitrous blend quickly. Undead were animated by magic, but that magic required certain anchors, most typically internal organs. Silenos had heard of a people to the north-east of House Shaiagrazni’s land who removed the organs before reanimation, storing them in enchanted pots and thus creating a servitor which could not be killed with mere injury. These enemies were not made with such measures.
Sixty kilograms of biological matter was more than enough for him to produce an explosion of his requirements, and Silenos used the excess to form a shield around himself. The blast went off like the largest of any he’d ever seen before, and as he let his keratinous cocoon fall away, Silenos looked around at the results.
Everything within ten metres had been, more or less, completely destroyed. The strongest of the undead might have withstood the blast near the edge of that perimeter, which had barely been sufficient to break stone, but both of them had been stood directly beside Silenos when it occurred. In all likelihood, considering the inverse-square law, each had been subjected to overpressure in the range of megapascals or more. He saw traces of them scattered about; an arm here, a scrap of armour there, all ruined beyond repair. There was no sight of the weaker ones, but he would have wagered that they were constituents of the reddish-grey mist swirling around the area on rapid currents of disturbed wind.
Silenos took a step, finding himself weary. He was in the centre of a crater, easily four or five metres at its deepest, his cocoon clearly having been driven directly downwards. The incline was not easy to traverse with his sudden fatigue.
Forty kilograms of nitrous explosives were, apparently, approaching his limit. The chemical formula was complex, and Silenos had been rushed in assembling it. He wasn’t at the end of his mana, not even close, but if forced to do that more than once it would be a risk he’d have to consider. Reaching the crater’s edge, he glanced around again to find that every building within dozens of metres was no more, primitive mud and wooden construction surrendering easily to his glorious power.
It was this fact that made it so easy for Silenos to sight the Necromancer.
“How old are you?” He called out, not truly expecting an answer, but receiving one.
“Twenty.” The woman replied. He examined her. She certainly looked that old, but that hardly proved much. It was uncommon for those of House Shaiagrazni not to perpetuate their own youth well into their centuries. Her black skin made it difficult to make out the slight gradations that might come from natural ageing, but her green eyes and sharp features were aligned into the sort of conceited grin that was rather rare among those accustomed with adulthood.
Twenty, fascinating.
“Your talent is impressive.” Silenos told her. “I’ve only encountered ten, perhaps a dozen, who are its equal. One of which is myself. How would you care to be taken on as my apprentice?”
A stab caught his guts, and he buried it. Apparently the memories of Adonis still stung, whatever had happened since.
What stung more, somehow, was the look of derision plastering itself across the Necromancer’s face.
“I don’t need the tutorship of a petty conjurer.” She snorted. “I was trained by the Dark Lord himself, your powers are nothing to his.”
His eye twitched, something Silenos was beginning to learn tended to happen when his regrown emotions were pricked.
“And what basis do you have for that? If you’d prefer a demonstration, I can give you one with just a few moments and a corpse.”
The woman smiled, more smug than amused.
“I think not, you’ve already fallen right where I wanted you.”
Silenos heard the scraping of metal against stone, and risked a glance to one side. He saw more undead, of course. Larger, better armoured, shambling towards him with a near-human dexterity and glowing with more magic than any of the ones he’d just bested.
“Knights.” He noted, recalling what he’d read of the new world’s martial elite. And the great battle just one month in the past.
“Quick, aren’t you.” The Necromancer noted. “Yes, Knights. No battle of that scale can have all its corpses found and cremated, when you’re dealing with armies in the hundreds of thousands…Some will slip through the cracks. Double when both sides were eviscerated so completely.”
It would not have been hard to find corpses littered about too far and inconveniently for retrieval, and simply on a statistical level, with tens of thousands dead, no small number would have been elites.
Silenos counted ten Knights, no, eleven. Each one humming with more power even than their living counterparts bore. Their armour was crusted with dirt and buckled, looking very much as if it had been pushed through a vicious fight already, and the wearers moved around as if its weight was nothing at all. He had no doubt they would have an easier time harming him.
His options were few. Standing and fighting once more was a losing proposition, no doubt the initial assault had simply been a means of finding out what powers he possessed. Trying to flee entirely was better, but Silenos wasn’t certain of his ability to outrun creatures as powerful as these unless he took the time to Fleshcraft himself a body better suited for escape.
He could buy time by running, however. And time was a commodity he had precious little of. Silenos turned and broke out into a sprint while the enemy were still some ten metres away.
It was not so far to the castle, a kilometre or slightly less. Silenos was quite confident his new body could cover such distances in under a minute. He was also confident that the enemy would match or exceed that pace, and they seemed unwilling to simply wait their own catching him up. Projectiles began to whip by him quickly and jaggedly, taking chunks out of walls and trees where they missed him.
Arrows, made of solid metal. Silenos wasn’t certain what propelled them, and was not left to ponder it long before one caught his shoulder. It bounced harmlessly from the composited plates, but left him stumbling nonetheless, allowed the gap to shorten between him and the enemy. Made their next shots easier to land.