Mage Tank

Chapter 334: Deadly Orders

Chapter 334: Deadly Orders

Varrin gave me a look as the lightning mage, Alanor, continued his work. We could both sense the frustration building up in the Littans around us. It was rare that something could render so many Golds impotent to help, and being forced to watch their comrades dragged to a slow death was devastating morale.

“How long until Madel returns with Xim?” asked Varrin.

“She must go a thousand miles to reach Camp 3,” said Major Kai. “Madel is fast, but she must avoid more packs of the enraged mana monsters.”

“Can she fly above the canopy?”

“We have all been instructed not to fly above the canopy. The reason for this varies based on the region, but it is a risk anywhere at this depth. The canopy itself might attack. In other areas, there are giant predators among the highest branches, although we have never been able to identify them.”

“The air’s also filled with deadly, invisible bullshit,” I added. “Coordinated Thinker keeps nudging me, telling me the sky above is continuously changing its relative distance from me. I doubt flying through that sort of fluctuating spatial event would be healthy.”

“Is there no way for portals to help?” the big guy asked.

“We have two officers with the Gate spell in this company,” said Kai. “It is a long-range teleport, but requires the Delver to first travel to where they want to go. Also, beginning at a certain depth within the forest, it sometimes fails. Catastrophically. That depth happens to be exactly where we are.”

“That is no coincidence, I imagine.”

“And I don’t have any Checkpoints inside the Forest,” I added. “The best I can do is extract our camp, but that doesn’t give us a cure or help the others.”

“Can you create one of your Checkpoints here?” asked Kai. “Our camp is near the center of perimeter three. We plan to break into smaller groups and establish outposts between the main camps before the highest-level Golds and Platinums dive through the combat Dungeons and deeper in. This will be the best position for portal access, and it will help your cleric move around more quickly as well.”

“I’ll have to get rid of the one I have at Fort Ruiz,” I said.

Kai adjusted his grip on his lantern as he did another slow spin to check his fog wall and ensure we weren’t missing any weasels. “You have another outside of Eschangal, no? That is close enough to the fort if we need access.”

I nodded, then started the one-hour process of laying down a Checkpoint. Alanor spent a few minutes working to slow the invading tissue on the third victim, but it became clear that trying to save all three patients would result in none of them being saved. Major Kai made the hard choice, ordering Alanor to focus on the two light armor Littans.

The rampaging Grade 4s wouldn’t be nearly as much of an issue if the Littans weren’t trying to minimize their footprint. They didn’t want to destroy the Forest. It was full of valuable stuff, there was a good chance a cut-and-burn campaign would antagonize some big, mean things we had no reason to antagonize, and they weren’t maniacs who got off on annihilating vast swaths of typically harmless wildlife. When Tavio had called for Camp 3 to drop their skill restrictions, it let them bring out the flashy, area-devastating attacks that had previously been banned.

Our camp managed to defend itself without resorting to obliterating everything within a mile of us. Major Kai’s fog ran out after six minutes, revealing the withered humanoids hidden inside. The desiccated, translucent forms of long-dead Littans floated in the air, looking out of place in the sunlight, although they were surrounded by enough death that their presence wrapped back around to feeling appropriate. They were called Venom Wraiths and would stick around for as long as Kai was willing to keep his mana reserved to have them summoned.

I didn’t bother the man with any questions on whether this was true necromancy, since this was neither the time nor the place. What was more important was that any weasel that got close to one withered up and died in about a second. Everyone else supplemented the defense, rotating their contributions to keep resources high. Meanwhile, Grotto, Tomomaru, and the spearman whose name I’d never gotten handled the outer perimeter.

After an hour, the heavy armor user’s health stopped dropping. The healer, Polama, gasped shortly after when the man’s maximum health began going back up. Our audience of helpless Delvers gathered closer, their hopes rising. I pushed the feeling down, letting my skepticism drive for the moment and keeping a close eye on the man’s soul. Despite this, I was still taken by the fantasy that a miracle had occurred, and disheartened when the man’s soul dissipated over the next minute.

“He’s gone,” I said softly, trying not to disturb Alanor. The mage didn’t appear to notice my words. His focus was consumed by the work he was doing to keep the other two Littans alive.

The hope around me withered, but Polama looked confused. “Why would you say that?” she asked, tone scolding. “His heart still beats. I can see activity in his other organs. He looks healthier than he did a few moments ago.”

I frowned at that, but shook my head. “His soul’s gone. It doesn’t matter what his body’s doing, that’s as dead as it gets.”

Polama scowled, but before she could argue further, the dead man sat up.

“Edgard!” the healer said, spreading her arms wide in joy. For a horrifying moment, I thought she was going to embrace him, but she regained her wits in time to realize how foolish that was. The thing formerly known as Edgard reached out towards Polama with his ungauntleted hand, but I used Shortcut to interpose half of Gracorvus between them. The limb thunked against the floating shield hard enough to dislocate a finger.

Polama flinched at the shield’s sudden appearance, then spun on me. “Why?!” she shouted, but before she could say more, Major Kai grabbed her by the back of the collar and threw her away from her patient.

“Back!” he barked, and though a few moved hesitantly, everyone took a big step away. One man had to pull Alanor from his work while another levitated the two unconscious Delvers. We couldn’t go far because of the ongoing beast assault.

The armored figure held up his hand, his ring finger bent at a 45-degree angle at the second knuckle. He turned to slowly regard us as Polama recovered and looked around wildly, finally starting to understand what was happening.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

This wasn’t Edgard. This was the thing that had killed him.

The dark helm surveyed the crowd until it landed on me. The thing spoke with a croaking, dry voice. “Blasphemer. Vainglorious. Rejector.” Each word was delivered with greater venom than the last. He took a wheezing breath. “It’s lovely to see you here.”

I summoned Somncres to hand and adjusted my stance. “You’re sending me mixed signals, Charl.”

Looking for someone in Paris today

“Hearing my name upon your tongue is like maggots hatching in my ear canals,” zombie Edgard replied. “But why would I not rejoice at your presence? You are amongst the lost, the doomed, and the soon-to-be departed.”

“What the fuck?” hissed one of the Littans behind me. Major Kai held up a hand for silence.

“Whoever you are,” said the major, voice tight, “you have assaulted and murdered imperial legionnaires in the course of their lawful duties. Surrender and tell us at whose behest you act, lest we consider this aggression an act of war.”

The dark helm turned to Kai. “Ah, child of Litta,” the Edgard puppet said, rising to stand, “allow me to present you with my lord’s official position.” Everyone else tensed, weapons at the ready. The thing chuckled and waved his hand–finger still sticking out at an unnatural angle–at his crotch. “You may fellate my engorged and malignant manhood.”

There was a beat of silence as everyone took that in. Sergeant Guar leaned forward, golden eyes filling his helm with light. “Uh, what?”

“I said, suck my cancerous dick, you heretics.”

Then, the Charl-controlled Edgard exploded.

Guar was quick with his Shield Wall skill, and three planes of force appeared between our group and the exploding body, curving to create a seamless barrier protecting the ring of Delvers. I kept half of Gracorvus in front of Polama and activated Aura of Persistence to give everyone some Shielding. It wouldn’t stop the blood from touching them, but some blast protection was better than nothing.

While blood and viscera splattered against Guar’s translucent wall, several other Littans fired skills upward, annihilating anything that had careened towards the sky. Wide gouts of flame, bursts of frozen wind, atomized acid, and a brilliant flash of holy light took care of anything Guar’s rapid response might have missed.

Everything on the other side of Guar’s Shield Wall was still untouched by the attacks, and several of the Littans made noises of disgust as the exploded flesh began to squirm. I watched with morbid fascination as the gore formed into new limbs that began growing additional body mass from nowhere. The patch of land encircled by Guar’s skill was becoming a small horde of humanoid bodies, all twisted and deformed in the gruesome way Charl had been.

“Polama,” said Major Kai. “Circle of Judgment.”

The healer was practically crawling over Gracorvus to get a closer look at whatever was happening on the other side of the blue wall. At Kai’s order, shook off her wonder, and her hands lit up with divine radiance. She made a series of gestures as she said a soft prayer, and the ground beneath the cancerous bodies turned golden, growing in intensity until it was blindingly white. There was a surge of power, and everything that was Charl scattered into dust. All that was left of Edgard were bent and twisted fragments of his armor.

“Tomomaru: The weasels have stopped coming.” There was a brief moment of relief at that statement, but it was immediately dashed. “We’ve got about two hundred thousand corpses out here, and they’ve all started growing new body parts.”

I turned to look at the rear of the camp, where it backed up against the outermost edge of the Caving Tree. Corpses were piled up high enough to bury the wall of roots the weasels had been crawling out of. The entire thing began moving, and swollen hands burst out from within. The bodies didn’t tumble or move with the violent emergence of humanoid limbs. They bobbed and shifted like they’d all been sewn together.

Or like they’d all become part of a single organism.

“I think Charl’s been holding back,” I said as everyone turned to face down this new enemy.

“I hope that one doesn’t explode, too,” said Guar. “It’s pretty big.”

Before we found out what fresh horrors this version of Charl would bring, a pillar of crimson fire crashed down from the sky. Where it touched the mass of bodies, the mound of flesh sank in on itself and dissolved. It happened so fast, it was like watching a stream of water falling onto a pile of cotton candy. Ruby red flames tore out from the point of impact, engulfing the entire hill of corpses in just a few seconds. More beams fell from the sky outside of the walls before Madel swept in low overhead, and Xim jumped down from her back where she’d been riding the stoic woman like a pony.

Xim’s body was shrouded in the same fire that was spreading out to erase Charl from the camp. She was half transformed, covered in smoldering fur, and her clawed feet tore into the ground as she landed. Without warning, she breathed a mighty breath of flame across everyone present.

There were a couple of surprised shouts, but Major Kai barked a quick order, and nobody was dumb enough to attack. The fire was mostly harmless. To us, at least. Its comforting warmth stripped us of any afflictions, and anything Charl had infected us with was purged. Despite Nuralie’s claim that this new version of Xim’s cleansing powers stung, I didn’t feel much of anything. One of the unconscious Littans did wake up screaming.

Once we’d all had our infernal bath, Xim leapt away towards the wall where she repeated the move until every square inch of the camp and everyone in it had been engulfed. She finished her loop and came back, landing from another leap, having returned to her normal form. She pointed at Major Kai, a gesture that she then turned into a thumbs-up.

“We good here?” she asked.

Major Kai did a quick psychic roll call, ensuring that everyone had taken a turn under Xim’s Shower of Judgment. Once finished, he gave the cleric a nod. “You are clear to move to Camp 1,” he said.

Xim turned to me and held out a hand. I reached out and let her iron grip clamp down onto my wrist, and the woman jumped, dragging me along into the sky, where Madel intercepted and grabbed us. We then blasted off to the northeast on our way to where Baltae, Etja, and several others were still dealing with infected soldiers.

Madel held nothing back, and the trip to Camp 1 was a blur of whipping branches and exploding leaves. My armor was kept moderately clean from the sheer wind resistance, stripping me of any debris that wasn’t simply a stain, and even most of those were abraded away. We flew out of the treeline to find Camp 1 surrounded by a much larger and more desolate no-man’s land than our camp had been. All the trees within a quarter mile of the camp had been removed, along with everything else. The land had been stripped clean down to the dirt, and even the first few feet of topsoil looked like they were missing.

Madel’s speed was such that we cleared the distance to the camp’s walls in less than a second, but I caught a glimpse of Etja to our north. Her skin glinted with the multicolored hue of reflective Primatite while she fired out two massive waves of her Disintegrate spell. An acre of trees disappeared, making it obvious who was responsible for the recent clear-cutting. When Xim dropped to do her cleanse-from-above routine, I used Gracorvus to fly over and meet our party’s mage.

Etja moved slowly through the air, her body language grim and exhausted as she annihilated the next stretch of trees. Her modified Zng armor fully encased her. The mask that hid away in her large wizard hat was down, covering her face. She gave me a tired wave when I got close.

“Hey,” I said. “You okay?”

“No,” she said, letting her arms slump down to her sides. “They had ten of us working on this, but everyone else ran out of mana before I did.” She looked around at the purged area. “The stupid bears that were attacking us were really cute. Little, cuddly gremlins.” She waved an arm about. “I had to get rid of all the bodies, too. I didn’t think I’d feel sad about trees, but there are all the things inside the trees and living in the branches, but I had to do it.” She sniffed. “I had to,” she repeated in a whisper.

I floated closer and placed a hand on her shoulder. I started to say something, but distant shouting had both Etja and me turn toward the camp itself. Someone–a man–was screaming at Xim. We exchanged a glance, then shot off to see what had the guy sounding homicidal.