He and Stingy skulked, low to the ground, their weapons bared and in hand. Great Tomb wasn’t a large cult, but there was still a bit of a journey between the tomb entrance they had come from, and the storehouse where the water would be held. It gave Cobo more time to think than he would have preferred.
The last shipment came from the south, so that means Blackleaf wine. Probably. So we’ll have to grab at least three barrels, since it’s not going to be straight water. Doing this after a shipment from the north would have been better, but not better enough to wait. And Guardian Stone might get himself killed or replaced if we wait, so better to do it now.
They had chosen their target carefully; while the guard rotation wasn’t set in stone, people around here tended to settle into patterns. So it was basically guaranteed that after Return-to-the-Beginning took watch yesterday, Stone would be there tonight.
Guardian Stone was originally from some clan far to the south, and had a very distinctive appearance; he was red-skinned and thin-boned, with small eyes and extremely long ears. But in terms of technique, he wasn’t too different from a fairly standard Oldest Bones purist; resilience, both mental and physical, with some potent melee-enhancing techniques and one long range special attack in the form of an eye-beam. They weren’t sure what the beam did, but based on his other techniques something related to petrification or rapid aging would be a safe bet.
There were other guards that were weaker, but there weren’t any that had failed to keep so many of their techniques secret – hopefully they would kill him in the first moment and it wouldn’t matter, but if it did turn into a fight then knowing how he would act would be a massive advantage. We know he’ll try to close in if he’s got the upper hand, but back off if it seems like he’s losing. We know to avoid his direct line of sight if he starts building up. We know to hit him hard, right from the start.
And crucially, his Comprehension didn’t seem to incorporate rot at all. That meant that killing him wouldn’t release an explosion of built-up decay, and turn all the water to vinegar or poison. That would make the whole thing pointless. Ancestors, I hate having to be the brains of the operation. He was really missing Ded’s bland competence, the days when he just had to shoot whatever was in front of him while someone else handled the planning.
Not that he thought Stingy was dumb or anything, but… She definitely had a more carefree way of looking at things than he did.
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Stingy’s blood was pumping harder than it had in months, her muscles tensing like stretched cables, her breathing deep and fast. Sure the coming fight wouldn’t be too dangerous – the man Cobo had picked wasn’t strong at all, she didn’t think – but it would still be a real fight. She hadn’t had a lot of those, lately!
She had to restrain herself from bounding ahead. Patience! This is a stealth mission! The internal reprimand was only slightly effective, and it still took maximum effort to keep to Cobo’s slow pace. But one step at a time, they ate up all the distance between them and the storage building, a squat wide construction surrounded by a stockade of sharp-tipped stone pillars.
“Okay Stingy, I’m doing the thing.” Cobo’s voice was whispered, but there was a firmness to it. Good, good!
She hissed her reply. “Do it.” As they crept up to the ring of pillars, a strange sensation slithered over her; it was like there was a greasy film covering her skin, and she blinked rapidly beneath her blindfold to keep her eyes from watering. It was a technique Cobo had invented, something he called Chaotic Second Skin, and it would help them blend into the background, keep Guardian Stone from sensing their approach.
…Probably. He had only ever tested it against her, and her more esoteric senses were a lot worse than her physical ones. She held her breath as her right-hand sword carved through a pillar, the blade making a soft swoosh as it parted the stone. The Second Skin wobbled as she radiated off waste energy, but stabilised a moment later. She leaned forward, catching the collapsing pillar before it could topple over and make any more noise, Cobo joining her to set it carefully on the ground. She did most of the work; the pillars were solid rock, twice as tall as she was, and much too heavy for him to carry even a tenth their weight.
They were left with a gap in the stockade, just thin enough for her to squeeze through. After a silent nod Cobo went first; he was thin enough that he could just walk through, whereas she would have to drop her defenses while shimmying in sideways.
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The inner walled area of the storage wasn’t too different from the rest of the cult. The ground was bare windswept stone, with small dustings of multicoloured sand and salt from the surrounding wastes piled against the walls. The actual storehouse was scavenged cement, raised slightly off the ground to keep vermin away from the grain and other foodstuffs, thin windows shining from the light within. Damn, I was hoping I wouldn’t need the goggles. The surfacer obsession with setting fires whenever the ambient light dipped down anywhere below incandescent annoyed him to no end; although he was becoming more light resistant over time, he still needed his goggles during the day, or any time some dumbass shone a light right at his face.
He slipped on the protective eyewear, grimacing as the shadows deepened even as the light from the slits in the concrete became bearable. “All clear.”
Stingy began manoeuvring herself through the narrow-by-her-standards gap, and he wished, not for the first time, that he could squeeze enough power into Space Ripper to move them both. They could have slipped right through the walls, eliminating nearly all the evidence of what they were doing – but as usual, his stomach didn’t cooperate with what he thought it should do. After a certain point the technique just stopped accepting energy, meaning he could jump with maybe one other man, at most. Stingy, weighing at least five times as much, was far outside the bounds of that limit. I could maybe move her a handspan or so, or flip her around, but moving through a wall would take way too much.
He stood and kept his eyes on the windows, wincing every time his companion made so much as a whisper pulling herself inside. No movement I can see. As expected; he’s either napping, or keeping watch on the entrance exclusively. Hopefully the former, but more likely the latter.
“I’m done. Let’s go!” He spared her a glance, nodding in agreement, and they crept forward to repeat the cutting trick on the wall of the storehouse. It took a lot longer; every time Stingy made a cut, they would need to pause and wait for the Second Skin to settle down. It was pretty useful for something he had made on accident – he had been trying to make a disintegration technique – but using too much power would blow it open. It took a solid minute for them to cut a hole in the side of the building big enough to climb through, but they managed it without making too much noise.
They climbed in, and Cobo allowed himself a small sigh of relief. Then, a thin man with red skin turned the corner, his eyes widening in surprise as they alighted on the pair of infiltrators.
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Straight Thrust!
It was super, super important to kill the guy before he could activate any sort of alarm, so Stingy didn’t hold back at all. Chaotic Second Skin sloughed off like grimy water as she darted forward, a sword aimed at the man’s eye.
His reflexes weren’t bad; he raised his head, taking the sword on his mouth, sparks flying as the sharp steel cut into dense enamel, the tip skittering off to cut through his cheek instead of spearing him through the face. Oh no you don’t! Diagonal Thrust!
Her sword curved in a way that was completely unconnected to the motions of her body, but again the man managed to turn it into a glancing blow; it touched the backside of his skull, cutting a line through the meat just above his neck, but again failed to penetrate after striking bone.
She couldn’t stop herself from grinning. Finally, an actual martial artist! To survive two of her techniques, with surprise on her side, the man must be head and shoulders above the dabblers that had been challenging her these past weeks.
Cobo came in, his Junk pistol firing an oddly muted shot into his upper chest, even as the cultist danced away from her second sword.
“The woman?” It came out closer to ‘ta wa’m?’ His right cheek was completely cut through. His eyes were still confused, but as blood began spurting from his wounds his expression hardened. “So be it. Time grinds even the hardest stone to dust.”
Her next attack, a full-power Horizontal Cut with both arms, met two palms wreathed in an ancient-smelling energy. Her swords, immaculate blades of steel alloys that should have never corroded, even if dipped in the sea for a thousand years, turned to rust, the curse of time flowing up to bite at the handles, then her hands – she dropped the useless hunks of oxide, furious, but her face retained a savage grin. “Got you!” You should have bewared! Her tail came up through her legs, piercing her third sword – a thinner dueling blade – right through where his legs met his groin. That attack hit bone and bit deep, spearing him straight through.
Power built between the two of them, and a frantic dance ensued where he tried to grab her hands, her tail, to make contact with his melee technique while she did her best to keep away, while also grinding her sword through as many arteries as she could manage while it was pierced into his lower body. Gotta keep him from regenerating – come on Cobo, this is a perfect opening!
Her partner had dropped the pistol, the gun only capable of generating one shot at a time, and was building his own power; the Second Skin wafted away, all three of them now broadcasting themselves to whoever was around. While she slipped away from Guardian Stone’s glowing palms, he extended his hands forward.
“Reversal Spray!” A white mist congealed from his hands, blasting towards the cultist in a tight cone.
“HA!” With an exertion of muscle power he pulled himself off her sword, blood streaming down his legs from the terrible wound, and she let him retreat. Don’t follow him into the mist, Stingy! That would be really dumb! The edge of the attack caught the corner of his boot, and the leather turned to dust – then the flesh of his foot, disappearing up to the ankle as his now-exposed bones fell apart, the tendons and connective tissue failing.
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But Cobo’s attack didn’t stop; it hit the concrete wall, and just like the man had said, it was indeed ground to dust. Her jaw opened slightly as a big hole was opened in the building. “Oh wow! Cobo, that was really impressive!” That attack usually doesn’t do much at all when he uses it in our spars!
“Keep fighting!” Cobo, seemingly winded, fumbled with the rifle slung on his back while he circled around. But Guardian Stone seemed adamant not to give them any chance to keep their momentum.
She felt a huge expression of power, waste energy coming off the man in waves. Eye-beam! The man’s eyes flicked between the two of them, before settling on her as the bigger threat. Two lances of light erupted from his pupils, the beams of no colour she could name aimed straight at her chest.
“Good attack!” But not good enough! Her third sword swiped the beams, and it sheared through the attack, an edge of cutting power travelling up the stream, diverting it into the ground and ceiling even as it moved to take his head off at eye level.
Nearly simultaneously, three things happened. Guardian Stone leaned back, her Extended Cut grazing his chin as the beams impacted the ceiling to little effect. His mouth opened, his ravaged voice proclaiming “And yet, time compacts-“
And a bullet, fired from Cobo’s rifle, took him in the side of his head. It entered nearly perfectly aligned with his ear, and came out the other side along with a spatter of grey matter. The gore flew out into the night through the hole in the wall, painting the ground.
But the man, while weaker than her, was still powerful enough to hold onto life. “-That dust. Back into. Stone.” For long enough to get out the rest of his Secret, at least. The next moments were very confusing; things seemed to be going backwards, the bullet retreating back into his head along with the pulped brain, his skull sealing up as the shot raced back towards Cobo – but only some things. Cobo leapt to the side a fraction of a second before the bullet hit him, and she was forced to parry her own Extended Cut as it rematerialized coming back at her.
Oh wow, that’s a really good Secret. He straightened back upright, even as the deep wounds to his groin and lower entrails sealed up. It’s no replacement for a good sword, though. Even as his foot bones began reassembling themselves, she darted forward, holding her remaining sword with all three of her grasping limbs. A blast of mist came at her from a subtly different angle, trying to hit her even if it meant not conforming to the original path the attack had followed, but she was moving too fast; she caught the man under the ribs, and took her hands off her sword to grab him by the shoulders.
“RRRAH-!” The sound he made when she tore his arms from his sockets was loud and terrible, even as his cheek started to knit together. He didn’t live long enough for the process to complete; another bullet hit his ribs, he went still as the accumulated pain overloaded his mind, and she took the opportunity to lean in and crush his head between her jaws.
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“Fffuck, that could have gone better.” Cobo was sweating, his breathes laboured. Reversal Spray had taken a lot out of him. Note: mimicking big attacks takes more than simple ones. In hindsight that seemed obvious, but he had never thought about it before; Stingy’s sword techniques were straightforward and cheap, so he had never had trouble reversing them. And then the reflected Reversal Spray had forced him to use a Space Ripper while already running on fumes, so now his body was starting to eat itself to survive. He felt weak and jittery, like he had an overloaded battery where his heart should be.
Stingy shrugged, swallowing. “Could’ve gone worse. There wasn’t any alarm, and we didn’t die.”
He eyed the gaping hole in the wall, which absolutely would have let the sound of his rifle shots carry. “Not… Explicitly, no. But we should hurry.”
She grunted, and they ran through the halls towards the central room. He had brought in cargo before; shipments from down south would come in smaller wooden casks rather than proper metal barrels, so they would be kept in the carts until they could be drained. Then the Great Tomb would resell the wood. Doesn’t really matter right now, though it’s even more inconvenient for us; we don’t have time to drain the casks, so we’ll be stuck hauling the wood too.
His stomach hurt, worse than the usual sting of starvation. He grabbed a packet of meat from one of the numerous bags strapped to his body, and stuffed the whole thing – packaging and all – into his mouth.
He scarfed down meat as they ran, passing through storage rooms, stopping only briefly to fill his emptied pockets with grain. Stingy snagged a barrel of assorted weapons, but threw it away in disgust when she saw the low quality of the blades – they were bad iron, and must have been sitting unused for a few years at least.
After a short sprint, they reached their destination. His eyes scanned the room- there, in the corner, a big wooden cart. It was large, meant to be pulled by a team of four, and piled high with containers of all shapes and sizes. Damn. More bad luck; several smaller carts would have been better. One big one was, again, more dead weight.
They hurried over, and immediately he realised they wouldn’t be able to pull the entire thing. Stingy would collapse less than a klick out, if she could even get it to move. “Shit, we’ll have to unload some. Toss anything that doesn’t look like food or water, hurry!” They had maybe a minute if their unlucky streak held. Should’ve waited. A couple nice big water barrels and a little two-man cart, that would’ve been so easy,
Containers were thrown out of the cart haphazardly, the pair barely looking at the contents before chucking them to the ground. His body felt cold, and his anxiety continued to ratchet up; in the state he was in, trying to feed two Second Skins to hide them properly would put him on the ground. He grabbed more of their travel rations from his bags.
“Here.” Stingy nudged him in the shoulder, and he turned to see her brandishing the corpse – she had carried it all the way here in one hand. Raidboss meat. That’s a lot better than what I’ve got. He nodded, grateful.
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Grappa Blacksoil wasn’t sure why he was up this late. An acolyte had banged on his door, refusing to leave until he opened up and came out – and then he sprinted off without explaining anything. Grappa, irritated, had followed the kid up to the surface. Now he was standing out in the dark with a half-dozen of the other supervisors. Priestly Ghast had them lined up, and was giving a speech he was too tired to really listen to.
“…And the returning raiders heard gunshots from the direction of the storehouse.” He perked up. The storage? Ah fuck, and we just got a few barrels of the good stuff. “We’re assuming Viol, but it could be anything. This is an extermination force; don’t take prisoners. We can identify them from the bodies if we need to.”
He shook off the last dregs of sleep, pulsing vital energies to wake himself up. Around him other men were doing the same – or in some cases doing the exact opposite, meditating and settling into a sleeplike calm even as their bodies continued to move.
They headed off, the stronger warriors like himself taking the front line, making their way towards the fortified storage area. As they approached he tried to feel for the guard posted inside – but there were just dregs, the spent waste of a frantic battle. His lips curled away to bare his teeth. Who was on guard duty tonight? The waste smelled like age, like sharp metal, with hints of more esoteric things peeking through. One of the old guys. Guardian Stone? Damn, that guy wasn’t a pushover. Whoever took him out was probably legit.
Luckily, they had a full eight-man force, all supervisors or better. He managed to get a few attacks off. So whoever’s in there now, we can probably take them.
They reached the gate, finding it still locked. Ghast took out a key, and they all braced as the heavy door was pushed in – but nothing greeted them on the other side, just an empty courtyard.
“They must have fortified themselves inside the building. Extinction, Blacksoil, you take the front; keep moving, even if you run into something. Hope, with me. We’ll check the garage doors, cut off any escape route. The rest of you, split yourselves as you see fit.”
They all nodded. If they’re still inside, they must be pretty dumb. The internals are a lot less defensible than the front gate; we can just bust through the walls. Or they were doing something tricky; he would keep his guard up, just in case.
He and Extinction Beast plowed through the front door, barreling through with two more men right behind. They paused for the briefest moment to scent the air, then headed towards the smell of conflict. They passed where the fight must have happened, where the walls were torn up and there was blood all about the place, then headed further in, following the trail of their quarry.
Wait a sec, I recognise these scent trails… Sharp. Metallic. “Fellas, does any of this smell familiar to you?”
There was a beat of silence as they processed the question, before Extinction Beast spoke the name they were dreading. “Stinger-Tail.”
Their collective blood went cold. Ah fuck, that’s gonna be a fight and a half. Could they even beat a woman, with just eight guys? “Any chance this is a misunderstanding? Maybe she was, y’know, getting into it with Guardian Stone, and things went a little too far?” That wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence, as he understood it.
“Guard didn’t carry a gun. Didn’t ever see her carry, neither.”
He let out a low groan. “Well, it was nice knowin’ you guys.” His brothers echoed the sentiment, even as they continued to move forward.
To be a devotee of the Oldest Bones was to sleep in the shadow of death, to accept the inevitable as it came. Whether you ate or were eaten, you became closer to the One Thing all the same. I was really looking forward to that wine, though.
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When the doors blew off their hinges – all of them, both in front and back – Stingy was already hoisting the cart, the inner halves of the two yokes held under her arms. They rushed in, clouds of death flowing around them like smoke, and she pulled. The wooden cart, lightened but not light, began rolling forward. Wide treaded wheels made for travelling across sand skidded on the worn-smooth floor before catching and turning.
Techniques flew at her, but she had her sword held in her tail and cut each of them as they came. They were weak, likely deliberately weakened, to keep from destroying the precious water behind her. She took a step, then another, each one easier as she overcame inertia.
“Beware-Her-Stinger-Tail. It is not too late to join us; you could be the mother of a new clan, revered by all.” The speaker was one of the head priests, she didn’t remember his name. His skin was an unnatural white from his shoulders to his chest, bleached and scarified by sky pus.
One of the elites of the cult… And still, still, weaker than her.
“Eh. Pass!” She punctuated her refusal by pumping her legs, picking up speed.
The priest’s face showed no emotion. “As you desire. Men, hold nothing back.” The attacks falling on her intensified, the blade of her one remaining sword corroding despite the techniques she ran through it. Worse, they started aiming for the cart behind her, a much easier target.
Or so it seemed, until the myriad blasts aimed towards them seemed to suddenly reverse themselves one by one. Cobo stood up, cradling what was left of the corpse to his chest. He gurgled something that might have been ‘witness my ascension,’ before collapsing back to the floor of the cart. Oh, that’s probably a bad sign. Oh well, nothing to do but power through!
She strained all her muscles to the breaking point, her tail whirling to catch attacks as she pounded the stone with her feet, chips flying with every impact. The priest stood his ground, even as the men at his sides dove away from the deadly wheels.
“All things cease.” He held out a hand, and the swords in her stomach cut apart the abstract force that struck her before it could still the blood in her veins. But even as the portion of the Secret aimed at her failed, she could tell instinctively that the priest himself would be a solid, immovable wall. If I hit him, I’ll lose. So she wouldn’t hit him.
She went past the breaking point, muscles snapping as she went low, then bounded up, dragging the multi-ton cart with her into the air, over the priest’s head. “Cobo! Cobo, you need to keep the cart from breaking- Cobo? Are you asleep?!”
However conscious the man was, her words must have reached him on some level; after she hit the ground, but right before the wheels could follow and dash themselves to splinters, it was like all vertical momentum was halted just for an instant. The cart touched down feather-soft – and they were clear, flying out the broken doorway into the night. She cut through the stone pillars blocking the way and bashed through the pieces with her body, trusting her regeneration to handle the damage.
If anyone even attempted to follow, she didn’t notice; the Great Tomb Cult focused on defense, on grinding opponents down gradually and outlasting them through attrition. Speed wasn’t a concept they held any regard for.
They rolled on, Stingy dragging the cart into the appropriate easterly direction. “Cobo, that was really cool! Did you see- Cobo? Hello?” She cranked her neck backwards. Cobo was on the floor of the cart – but luckily she could see his chest rise and fall. “Man, you really need to work on your stamina! The fight was like, not even a minute!”