Koa did nothing for a few turbulent seconds, watching as the sea of eight-legged demons swept him away. It was dark out, a full moon beaming out in drifts of silver up above. It illuminated the arachnids with horrifying clarity, and, he worried, him too.
Head flickering back and forth, Koa failed to spot anyone. Yet, as the disguising silk from before had shown him, what the naked eye saw here mattered little. For all he knew, an entire camouflaged army could be lying in wake. Waiting for his slightest move to unleash a hundred nocked arrows.
At that thought, Koa chided himself. Stoking the flames of his fear was doing him no favours. He focused instead on any vantage points from which he could leap out of the tent. The trees were out of reach, and they were moving too fast for him to manipulate any of them closer in time. Where that attempt failed, Koa focused on the spider colony instead. Flashing his Mark to life, he tried to dominate their wills. Guiding the spiders to cease their transport.
But they would not listen. He sensed another rush of energy controlling the creatures completely, only their subject of power was far more closely related to controlling the pests than Koa’s was. Arachnid Sect energy, he identified by its slithery, silk-like quality.
With both plans of action foiled, Koa was at a loss. The last option was a little risky, but no more hazardous than remaining here would be. Probably to be used as seasoning in someone's stew.
Koa was about to jump, when he noticed who else was travelling with him.
Behind, entangled in their own webbing, were countless men and women. Moving along as if they were nothing more than a train’s cargo. All, beyond a shadow of a doubt, dead. Koa shut his eyes tight, feeling like the world was shattering right before him. He wasn’t on Descent anymore. This was a purgatory, a place of eternal night where the wicked be damned. Clearly, Koa and the score of corpses behind him had all been wrongly caught up in this mess. Everything was backwards. They shouldn’t be the ones being punished — whoever was pulling the strings behind all this were the truly sick and evil ones.
Allowing himself to relax, as best he could anyway, he crouched to leap off. There was a sizeable chance he’d hurt himself; the spiders were moving surprisingly fast, as if their food had been laced with steroids. Koa was willing to bite the bullet, when a sight somehow more ghastly than anything he’d yet seen confronted him.
Up ahead, finally coming into view, was what he presumed was their destination.
Koa may as well have seen the grim reaper’s scythe, for he saw no alternative to how this was all going to play out.
They had been travelling at a downwards slope, and like a hill emerging into view, a castle lay ahead. Yet it was so immersed in string, Koa couldn’t tell if it was entirely made out of the material. There may have been an actual building of brick and stone hidden beneath, but he doubted it. The place was gigantic, comparable to the Chaos Clan manor in size. At the very crest, above even the battlements in their own expansive webbing, settled a trio of spiders, larger than anything nature alone could have possibly created. Koa recognised them as Unbounded instantly, which was an epiphany that posed more questions than it answered.
A large balcony spread across the entire length of the castle, near the upper-middle. It was there that Koa could make out a person. An Arachnid Clansman, most definitely, which kind-of reduced their chances of a friendly meeting.
They were barreling along to the open mouth of a portcullis. His spider kidnappers seemed invigorated at the sight of the opening, moving along with more vigour than ever before. Koa wasn’t so keen.
With no incentive left to dawdle, Koa activated his Mark and leapt. Spruce armour covered across his body, absorbing most of the impact. Though not suffering nearly as much force as the squashed arachnids that cushioned his fall. Gunk covered him, though Koa paid it no mind, springing up the canopy-thick sides adjacent to their path. He commanded one tree to bend unnaturally. He rushed up it, ascending treetop after treetop in a tunnel-visioned rush.
A few of the more airborne breeds were at his back. One wooden fist to their heads quickly reduced them to a sticky mush.
He solemnly hoped that this new route he was taking wouldn’t lead to his downfall. Or that it would at least lead out of Territory Two relatively quickly. It was strange though, the Infinity suffusing the atmosphere was so dense here. He couldn’t pinpoint why.
Whatever it meant, Koa used it to his advantage. His body became a furnace, burning away resources that he would quickly shovel back in to keep the flame alight.
It didn’t take long to notice that he was being followed. By multiple people, he sensed, and not all of them were human.
Koa flipped around onto a branch, sending a wall of projectiles, from spears to jagged leaves, all to confront the group at his back.
During that instance, he saw the real extent of the group after him. The trio of Unbounded tarantulas, the size of a carriage each, were what caught his attention first. They shot out string to ensnare him. Koa unveiled the weapon Donovan had gifted him at the speed of light, the organic weaponry in its smallest size as a dagger. He expected to cut the string into twain, but was caught off guard, and off balance, when it made a metallic clanging sound. The kind indicative of Supreme Steel.
The string, instead of cut, was knocked aside. As Koa fell, he glimpsed the other attacker he hadn’t cared to notice before. They were one of the Arachnid clansmen he had previously spotted, a woman, he realised, who didn’t sport the friendliest of expressions.
She dived downwards after him, cold indifference in her eyes. Koa recaptured his footing, moving elaborately from borough to borough, relying on wild momentum alone not to slip.
When scorpions started raining from the skies, Koa was sure his day couldn’t possibly get any worse.
He was tackled by a tailed shadow, his back slamming full force into the log of a tree. The entire structure shook, fallen leaves following him as he fell all the way down to the muddy bottom. Koa had approximately one second to dive out of the way, something else falling after him. And it was a good thing he did, or else the scorpion-looking man would have impaled him through the stomach.
Koa launched upwards, extended his dagger into a spear, and clashed it against the new arrival’s whipping tail.
The man really was quite a sight. They had no visible weapon, fighting solely with their tail and the stinger at its end. A chitin exoskeleton enveloped their body, an orange, maroon red. Eight arms rushed out of their sides, but they were put to shame by the great pincers that grappled towards Koa, like the clapping hands of a crab.
They exchanged a series of rapid blows so fast, Koa only survived by instinct.
He was on the backfoot, the force of a Foot-Soldier bearing down on him with no sympathy. Koa could hear the others behind advancing, but couldn’t make any attempt to flee, or direct the brawl elsewhere. Any bold moves would mean those pincers, or that poisonous tail, reaching him. Infinity was flowing towards both attachments, he could tell, via a strange Vault. One he suspected was only used by other clansmen willing to alter their body to such extremities.
The man was smiling, piling on the pressure with enough force to shatter a mountain. Each swing sent trembles that shook the bones in Koa’s forearms.
The first of the spiders landed behind him. A burst of silk caught his side, tearing through his clothes and drawing Koa’s blood.
With a screech, he summoned a makeshift spear in his other hand, using the full extent of his Delicate Touch Mould to craft the finest weapon he could in a few seconds time-frame.
He spun, constantly. Koa had never trained to duel wield, and maybe the brink of death wasn’t a very auspicious chance to begin training, but there was no time like the present.
Spider tendrils, pincers, and one very nasty tail, each tried to pierce his flesh. As if Koa were some sweet fruit they were trying to pulp the nectar out of. His whizzing hands flew faster than he knew capable, joints and muscle fibres screaming.
Slowly but surely, more and more of the two’s blows struck him. Each strike caused him to seize up, leading to more and more impacts, more sections on his ruined body for the pain to rage.
The last two spiders dived down. He knew the Arachnid Clanwoman must have been watching from someplace not too far off, ready to join should things get dicey.
Alas, they wouldn’t. Koa was outnumbered, outpowered, and outwitted. He was screaming, the staff he had crafted crushed to splinters as he stabbed it into the freshly arriving spider’s eye. It must have pierced into their brain, for that creature at least, ceased to move.
The scorpion man stopped messing around. He dived to Koa. A fist to Koa’s nose elicited more blood than seemed reasonable. What was worse though, were the eight grappling hands that lobbed him to the ground. Hard.
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He felt like a ship was crashing down on him. Koa couldn’t breathe, the pressure on his chest was too great. He was being compressed. Minimised like some scrap in a junkyard. Then Koa felt something, something that somehow sent his mind spiralling to new levels of hysteria.
He felt their tail stab into his thigh. Poison was rushing into his bloodstream.
Koa focused on the ground, using up every resource in his body. The dirt below exploded, forming a crater metres wide. The clansman was tossed off him, groaning as his back was launched into the opposite end of the pit.
Already, as he rested along the dirt, Koa was hallucinating. A splurge of colours overlaid everything, incoherent memories spinning along the thread of his consciousness. Koa hoped he was only sedated, and that whatever the scorpion had the chance to emit into him wasn’t lethal.
Either way, the part of him that hadn’t yet succumbed to the toxin thought, they’ll kill me anyway.
Up above, he saw the Arachnid clanswoman walk into view, upside down from where he lay sprawled. His clothes were moist from his own Ichor. His mind had ceased to think coherently, and suddenly opening and closing his eyes was the most intriguing activity in the cosmos.
“Draven.” She scowled. “He told us to bring him alive.”
Draven growled, patting the dirt off his palms and spitting the ground at Koa’s feet. “Little rut got on my nerves.”
“Looks like he hurt you,” the end of her lips twitched.
“Didn’t leave a scratch.”
“Oh? Really? What about that crack across your-”
“Shut up!”
With that, Draven sauntered over, and Koa vaguely heard, above the ringing in his ears, the scuttling of the spiders left alive.
“Pity.”
Koa thought he saw sadness in the woman’s eyes, as she encircled him with a rapidly craft web. He couldn’t be certain however, especially with how addled his mind was.
Whoever was so determined to see him live wouldn't be very happy if he bled out to death. That wasn’t Koa’s intention, nor would he himself be content with that outcome. Alas, with whatever was rushing through him, and how much Ichor he was losing, it would be a miracle if the people gave Koa the care he needed to survive.
With that, Koa finally acquired some sleep for the night, but he glowered at the cost.
----------------------------------------
“Right this way Sir, right this way. Thank you for signing up for the military, your sacrifice will be mightily appreciated.”
Remus was ushered past the desk. The Scholar Clanswoman on shift today at the entrance had taken one look at the surviving group’s IDs, and rushed them through one by one. Violet had promised to meet up with him on the other side, sneaking in through her Mark and her Unbounded form.
Of course, many people had Marks capable of taking them over, even without extravagant disguises. Aquila, for example, could simply fly far overhead the barricades and dive into the nearest camp. There was one major problem with that approach that dismayed many clansmen: they wouldn’t be paid, or be able to pass through military camps. Not without being hurled over the second they were found with no identification, anyway.
Violet didn’t seem to care for the money, and neither was she inclined to actually fight in a proper military squadron. She didn’t have the monetary incentive Remus had, and could amply fulfil her mission of training with the Infinity here without bothering a soul.
He, on the other hand, was solely after getting filthy rich. The training too, of course, but a man can have priorities.
It was a surreal feeling, seeing that long stretch of camps and bunkers as he passed the barricades. It wasn’t unlikely that Andreas had played a hand in the creation of the fortifications. That thought put a wistful smile on his lips.
I’ll be with you soon, Grandad.
That soon sprang memories of the rest of his family, which only made his chest all the more tight. He stifled that discomfort, focusing on the present concerns he had to attend to.
Kyle had left shortly after guiding them over to where the newbie soldiers gathered. His temper had suddenly expired, like the ruined ash that remains after the exhaustion of a great fire. Nobody questioned Violet when she said she had to go somewhere, nor did they seem particularly interested.
Now an injured Aquila, Lamont, and . . . that was it. Only the three of them were here. The air beside them suddenly felt vacant, full of scattered dust in place of flesh and bone. Remus tore his eyes away, muttered a subdued farewell, and they all strolled to where a disheartened Kyle had pointed out.
The crowd of gathered Foot-Soldiers wasn’t the most comfortable of places. Not because it was hot and humid under the desert sun, though it was sweltering, but because of the aura they each emitted. Confident smiles, bold stances, and overall ease made Remus feel like a sheep amongst wolves. He was getting a severe case of deja vu. He would be hard pressed to beat any one of them in hand-to-hand combat. Remus imagined a group of two or more would have little trouble pulling him apart bone by bone.
Those thoughts never left him, though did quieten down in the face of a sweeping new arrival.
If the aura of the others had left Remus unnerved, the man standing arms crossed ahead of the group was a different beast entirely.
Swords floated at his back, pommels protruding over built shoulders like armies cresting mountains. His arms bulged exactly as fiercely, the kind that popped skulls open as easily as bottles. Whiskers of facial hair, the same variety of grey as the unkempt nest on his head, told of a man who was rather sick and tired. Of what, Remus couldn’t be sure, though the same jaded look pierced through his gaze.
“You’ll all be designated to different squadrons, based on factors like comparability, and what parts of the battlefield the generals think you'll excel at.” He spoke without introduction, nor excitement. “For now, follow me to the central barracks.”
Remus had heard tales from before, back when Unbounded were a threat on the horizon, and not the worldwide catastrophe they were today. Back then, sects fought through their alliances, attacking other sects in hopes of crushing them completely. That goal, of your clan’s god controlling every speck of Infinity, was almost forgotten nowadays. You could only divide your attention so many ways until everything was destroyed.
So, for now, wiping ‘Unbounded scum’ from the earth was the primary objective. And that meant fighting through this new system. A system where would-be enemies draw blades together. Maybe to stab each other in the back later, or maybe not.
Hey, Remus thought, a common enemy could be what we need to put an end to this war.
That was flawed, optimistic thinking, Remus knew. If humanity stopped fighting, their gods would have no incentive to keep them alive.
Any one of those beings could just as easily cast Descent into flames, were they not bound by a litany of Oaths and constitutions.
Existence, as they knew, it was war. One flaming battle broken up into tiny fragments of conflict. Humanity’s fight against the Unbounded was but one of those fragments. A fragment Remus was going to become well acquainted with, before he ever was to leave the front lines again.
He followed the man towards a large building, a bland mishmash of shapes no one had bothered to put any decorative thought into. Their escort elicited more than one awesome gasp, and staring into the man’s back, Remus could easily tell this figure was a Warlord. Of the Sword Clan, he suspected, which wasn’t a very hard guess. Held by the energy of a Mark the man didn’t bother to deactivate, or whatever divine structure they had formed at Splintered Rank, was an assembly of sharp weapons. Ranging from a kitchen knife to a machete.
There wasn't a speck of Ichor on any of them, and each looked as if they had been sharpened by a waterstone only minutes prior. They hurt the eyes to gaze too hard at, reflecting the sunlight as good as any crystal mirror.
Remus was a little in awe himself. The Sword Clan was one of the Three Pillars of the army, who were said to make up nearly a third of the front lines by themselves. The Sword, Archery, and Martial Arts Clan. The latter seemed to Remus like an incredibly valuable group to train with, though he doubted such an opportunity would ever arise.
The Warlord turned on his heels, after they reached the entrance to the building. This section was rectangular, didn't appear painted, and looked to Remus like it was made out of adobe.
“I suppose you’re all hungry.” The Warlord said, though it didn't sound like he particularly cared. “Go in. Someone else will sort you into squadrons later.”
With that, he walked off, probably to make use of his apathetic prowess elsewhere. Remus followed the group into the building, not entirely sure what to expect.
Inside was a pretty bland room — that was evidently a theme of the place’s design, and perhaps the entirety of the front lines. Clansmen mulled about through the antechamber, passing through a myriad of connected areas specialised for gods’ knew what.
Remus was about to make his way to what appeared to be a canteen, when he sensed someone behind him. Call him jumpy, but after Passings of skirting assassins, one became a little cautious. Overly cautious, quite possibly, though Remus found the instincts to do more good than they did bad. His feet jolted back, his body bracing in preparation for the withheld power of Tanish’s Mark to come flooding through.
He wasn’t fast enough. Whoever was here, either a bounty-hunter from the Frost Clan, or another Shadow clansman, they were way out of Remus’ league. Their speed alone told him that, and the great strength with which they hoisted him into the air was the only other indication he needed. Indication that he was about to face an untimely demise.
His Mark was teetering on guttering into action when he recognised the assaliant’s voice.
“Remus!” Hadrian boomed merrily. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“Hadrian?” Remus craned his neck to see the Flame Sect Mercenary, confronted by a boisterous grin. “What are you doing here?”
“I should be the one asking you that. What, last time we met, you were only Engorged? I’ve heard from Veida that since you departed the Flame Sect you’ve made it all the way to Embazed. To think you’re now a Foot-Soldier . . . that must be a world record or something.”
Remus scratched the back of his head sheepishly. “Yeah, about that — I’m still only Emblazed. I kind-of, may have, snuck in.”
The large man blinked. “Well, I can’t say I approve, but if you don’t tell anyone, I certainly won’t. Come with me.” He flickered a hand over to the canteen. “We can catch up over a warm meal.”
Remus nodded, letting the burly Mercenary lead the way. “Certainly.”
The entire interaction was so fast, Remus was still reeling when he saw him at a table. One of many that stretched through the food court wall-to-wall.
Tanguy.