Reality is going to war...
The griffon came swooping in from overhead. Given the speed I was moving at, I was definitely something to catch the attention of fliers, so he picked me out fairly easily.
I looked up at his call as he swooped in, and Mikle, who was again riding on my back, promptly hid under my hair again.
“Really? That way?” I pointed, and the griffon gliding along ten yards above and to my right nodded. “I’m on it!” I altered course, and the griffon beat his wings for altitude. It wasn’t so much that he was faster than me, than he didn’t have to divert around terrain or go up and down hills and other stuff. He stayed low to the trees, so I lost sight of him rather quickly, but it was only five miles, I’d be there in a few minutes.
Mikle had reported that Warp warbands were rampaging around everywhere, looking for enemies, expanding the influence of their masters on their surroundings, and generally making unwanted nuisances of themselves. They slaughtered whoever they ran across, or recruited them if they were impressed enough and easily swayed. More than a few ogres, trolls, and hill giants had happily signed on for funsies, and even some Unseelie Fey like spriggans and redcaps were happy to join in on the mess, not giving a hoot for the consequences of allying with such powers.
They’d also been digging out old monsters and dark powers, probably seeded by their masters here over time, and bringing them into their warbands.
One of said warbands was in the hill country to the north, pursuing or fighting something there, so why couldn’t I just drop in and say hi?
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The griffons were already there, looking over the forces below. Being sapient and predators, they were oddly good at watching without being seen, balanced in trees with the trunks and leaves shielding them as they looked over the forces below.
This was rolling hill country, and they were attacking a series of cave dwellings halfway up the side of a cliff. The only access points seemed to be hand and footholds carved into the side of the cliff, which unfortunately were in hollowed tubes that were incredibly vulnerable to having rocks dropped on the heads of those eager satyr-types willing to try it.
The giants, however, were a different story. They were fully capable of hurling rocks like catapults and keeping the defenders under cover, as well as pounding out their own grips into the stones to the cliffs forty feet above the ground.
As one of the twelve-foot brutes clawed his way up the side of the cliff, gauntleted hands pounding out stone and foot-holds for himself, he heaved himself up to the top with a shout of victory… and there was a flash, and a crack so loud I heard it a quarter-mile away.
Hill giants were the smallest of the true Jotuns, but still, 12 Hit Dice of Jotun was nothing to sneeze at, with the required overly tough bones and hide, and plenty of strength to spare.
My Mask keyed up, my eyes leapt forwards to see those gauntleted hands trembling on the stone.
There was another crunch, and the giant was smashed back off the side of the cliff, as if he’d been hit by a truck. I could see his skull now, the side of it caved in from some colossal impact, and his face was now a crater from a massive impact. A couple tons of potbellied hillbilly cannibal plummeted from the cliffside, revealing his killer standing there.
Ho, they were Ancients...
Neanderthals, we’d call them. Primitives, if you were rude. Simple people desiring only to live simple lives, close to nature, and unconcerned about civilization or its advancements. They were, of course, bigger and tougher than normal humans, between our size and that of ogres, the latter of whom found their women extremely attractive, tough enough to endure rampant rape, and not strong enough to really fight back.
And the one who’d done the damage was a kid!
He was taller than me by a head, because, you know, caveman, with arms proportionately longer than human, and already banded with muscle and thick body hair.
That Hammer was no stone toy, either. Just a glance was enough to confirm it was Dwarven make, heavier than human design, with a thicker handle and heft to it. That kid wasn’t having any problem wielding it, and as I watched, he spun it around by its thong like a master, and let it fly at the jeering crowd down below who’d been momentarily silenced by the fall and crushing impact of the giant.
It flashed down, and there was another really loud crack as a gape-jawed ogre’s skull exploded from the hit. My eyebrows rose in astonishment, despite myself. That… wow, that was a massive one-hit, to do that to an ogre with one toss. And he’d two-hit a giant with that thing?
It whirled back to his hand, nearly as fast as he threw it, and he spun it around his hand and resettled, before sliding back away from the lip to avoid some hurled spears and rocks from below. Head-sized boulders crashed against the cliff behind and above him, but none found a target.
Man, he looked both heroic and cute.
Nobody else tried a climb quite yet, either. Instead, they indicated that the thirty-foot bulk of another horned cyclops, gripping another one of those rune-rocks, should start throwing.
“Drop me on it! Come in silent! Come down on the wolves and shred them! If you target one of the bipeds, grab them, fly them up, and drop them on top of the others!” A griffon launched up, I grabbed onto his front eagle talons, and the whole crown exploded into the air, quickly diving down onto the warband below and swooping down in total silence towards the wolves, led by their black-plumed leader.
My ride went a bit further. Even as the griffons were smashing down onto the startled wolves, he was soaring past the rearmost troops, and I let go as the horned cyclops lifted his throwing Runestone.
Tremble stabbed deep into his over-muscled throwing arm, severing tendons and sinews, and I could feel muscles snapping as they lost their anchors. His arm wobbled, the Rock fell down with a heavy thud (which I totally planned, ahem!) that crushed a satyr standing there, and as his head turned to see what was going on, I was leaping into his eye.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
There was a wet splurch as I blinded him, rolling past his nose to his opposite shoulder. As his reactive bellow bullhorned out, I came back underneath his chin, hacking at the presented opening as he instinctively jerked his head up and away, politely presenting his throat to me.
Firehoses of blood geysered out behind me, and the bellow gurgled to a stop from liquid interference as I almost decapitated him, hawser-like tendons notwithstanding.
The horned cyclops began to stumble, clutching at his throat, and I decided to hop off into the gaping troops below and have me some fun.
The dire wolves had been shredded and were fleeing in terror from a bigger predator, while the griffons were taking advantage of the surprise to leap and rake the nearest beastmen who didn’t understand what was going on.
I made my way to the warped centaurs, the horse-faced bastards being the only ones who had actual bows. In this canyon, there wasn’t really room to maneuver, the slopes weren’t friendly to hooves, and I, of course, was not something they could run from or surround easily. Really, I stayed right in the thick of them, and if they wanted to shoot at me, they had to hit their own and make my job easier.
Heads flew, and I began to reap.
Naturally, the heads of the warband’s members began to turn from the end of the valley and the Ancients’ caves, back to where Stormcrest’s griffons were taking flight again before suddenly swooping down in cycle charges, grabbing kicking and bleating beastmen in their talons and then surging up for height, beyond the range of hastily thrown javelins and spears. A few moments later, the still-shrieking tagalongs came plummeting back to earth in the middle of their fellows, which did all sorts of wonders for morale.
I watched the griffons break left and right to vanish behind the hilltops to either side… and then saw a glint of movement up there.
Eh? Had a company managed to get up top? That wasn’t good, they’d be able to fire down on the landing there from above-
A whole line of short, very broad forms stepped forwards, compact crossbows snapped to shoulders, aimed down, and thrummed with some impressive tension released.
The beastmen screamed as the bolts found some homes, and then on the other side of the valley, another line of shorties came into view, shouldered their crossbows, and repeated the process.
“And the Rockborn are here!” I crowed in demonic, just so they could hear me. Tremble immediately segued into a thumpy, bass-heavy, drumming beat that sounded a lot like a forge-chant, and we went all freeform verse on death from above, beards, vengeance of the mountains, and added to the rapidly increasing panic of the beastmen.
Griffon screams came from above, and I laughed harder when I heard them saying a dense troop of dwarven infantry was coming down the valley at a trot.
Oh, these bastards were in for it. According to the lore I knew, Ancients and Dwarves got along extremely well, especially on the basis of ogre-killing. There was a reason that kid had a dwarf-made Hammer, and with giants here, that meant the dwarves came equipped for giant-killing.
Contrary to ignorant folklore, that meant longspears in a very compact pike square, able to outreach a giant and punch into and through them for custom hatrack designs. Sure, adventurers might use something dumb like an axe and shield, but in numbers?
I just chortled at the thought of these bastards trying to fight their way through a line of dwarven longspears. That was going to be hilarious!
The centaurs were trying to run from me, which wasn’t working too well, but was certainly causing a lot of chaos as I chased them all over the place and killed anything I skated past.
With attention down below fully diverted from the caves up above, the Ancients started peeking out to see what was going on, and hooted and called out in deep voices at the sight of the dwarves raining death down on the beastmen from above.
The minotaur boss of the warband was riding a big demonic four-horned bull, and bellowed out orders to run back the way they’d come. I couldn’t be everywhere at once, but I could be in the densest place that currently wasn’t being rained on with murderous volleys of thumb-thick crossbow bolts. The area around me exploded with gore as chopped-apart satyrs, centaurs, four ogres, a hill giant, and a couple minotaurs came apart around me, and started to burn vivic.
Then I heard the horns, deep and somber and reverberating in the stones, and the fleeing warband began to slow, just as the screams started again right in front of them.
The arbalesters above shifted position with professional discipline and coordination, concentrating on the biggest targets and leaving dead ogres and hill giants strewn across the valley floor.
I also noticed the Ancients were boiling out of their caves, with axes, spears, clubs, and hammers in hand that were not at all crude, heading down the valley to hit them from the rear and cut off any thoughts of them retreating from the dwarven shishkebobbing that was going on ahead.
I laughed to myself as I led them in.
The oversized minotaur on the warbull didn’t look too pleased to see what was coming at them from behind, given the wall of steel thorns ahead that was driving into the writhing mass of bodies and dropping them relentlessly. More flashes of light descended from above, and taurens dropped with bolts in inconvenient places.
The boss bullman didn’t even get to turn around all the way before I was on him. I skidded past low, under the waiting horns of his bull, and hacked off its front leg, which it didn’t much like. It lowed and collapsed to the front as I kicked aside and a really long poleaxe completely missed me, burying itself all the way in the stony ground with a thrum.
“LUNCH!” Tremble announced, and I was pretty sure that Axe dimmed right then. It was still being drawn back when I chopped Tremble down on its haft, cut the ironwood right through, and the cow-face with the oversized horns pulled back a six-foot length of useless wood.
I chopped off the rear leg of the bull, putting an end to its frantic movements as it fell over, forcing the commander to dismount angrily. He snarled at me as I got to my feet, snatching up an ogre-sized spear, and I admired the canines in that cow-face of his as he raised it towards me. “
I spread my arms extravagantly, gestured to my chest. “Who, me?” I mocked him. “I’d really like to see you try.”
He snarled and started to charge.
The Hammer came in, hit his back knee, and dumped him right there. He crashed down to the side, but had good fighting instincts, rolling over and starting to raise his spear to defend himself from the attack from behind.
His eye turned in slow motion to me, who was stepping on the head of his spear, shaking my head at his naughty plans.
The Hammer howled past, back to the hand of the kid who was six feet in the air, catching it without looking, primed back, and coming down as the minotaur chief screamed...
Crunch. Yep, that skull couldn’t take the Hammer, either.
The ground trembled under my feet.
I blinked, eyes snapping over to his, who looked at me at exactly the same moment.
Well, holy shit!
A footstep came down, both our heads turned on the big hill giant stepping up with his spiked club, aiming to put a hurting on us.
The Ancient kid hopped aside so deftly it was plain he’d done this a lot, while I shot forward and around, cutting back and severing the hamstrings at the back of the knees. At the same time, a crushing Hammer blow destroyed a kneecap and kicked a massive leg sideways. Physics did its weight thing, and the hill giant’s leg gave way, sending him down hard.
He bellowed in surprise, moreso when he saw that spinning Hammer waiting for him, precisely where he was going to hit as his hand reached out to catch his fall.
CRUNCH. Damn, that was a hard hit! It was louder than the multiton corpse hitting the ground, its face all caved in.
“Betcha I kill more than you!” I shouted at him.
In English.
“You’ve got a Zeks Sword! No bet!” he replied in a voice very deep for his age and size, and took off after me with rather more speed than was totally natural. Every step thrummed with a pure, strong ki of Stone and Thunder… Heaven’s Mountain practitioner!
Crystal Stand Heavyfoot. Crystal Splitter hammerwork. Tremblesense. Weapon spec Hammer master, hitting harder than a Jotun at his age. Knew English.
He was from Terra!