High War - Chapter 15.3
Deviation Actions
Literature Text
Surrounding the two now are a large squad of Beast-men, twenty in all. The hirsute creatures stand or hunch or crouch in various stances, but their bone armor plates are translucent and half formed and below that their body-covering fur looks slick and bedraggled. The ground is covered in a thick layer of ooze like the wet slime of birth, as if the Beast-men all hatched fully formed but still weak from the fragmented orb which is turning to dust on the ground. Low growls can be heard from within their mob but the sound is thin and mewling. Their shoulders are slumped, and as they break off bone daggers the cracking sounds brittle.
Teal turns to her companion, “The smoke has cleared Zarah, you can - .”
“No shit.” Zarah uncovers her eyes and takes Scarfenstein in one hand as she grabs her Cleaver in the other. She readies both in front of her, watching the Beast-men, “Scarfen told me.”
“Scarfen? – never mind.” Teal turns her back on Zarah and lifts her shield arm, “We should fight back to back, with defense in mind for a possible long battle.”
Zarah laughs and darts away, raising her sword up in preparation to slice through a Beast-man leaning against a column for support, “As if! These guys look - !”
“Lambs.” He remains high away atop the stone column, but both women freeze when Kem's voice rings out above them, light and sweet like golden honey. “You must not harm your fellow living creatures my sweet lambs, not under my benevolent eye.” His left eye is indeed open and shining with a warm light, a match to his gleaming smile. When Zarah swings her sword, her movements are slower than usual and the Beast-man dodges out of the way with plenty of time. “Thus will you reach paradise.”
The Beast-men stumble and stagger in to action, swarming forward to surround Teal and Zarah. They slash and stab with their bone daggers; Zarah twists away from or uses her wide sword to block each attack, but Teal is too slow in positioning her shield and several bone daggers shatter against her armor. One comes in through a gap between her shoulder plates, and Teal grunts in pain as the lucky Beast-man pulls back a bloody knife with a howl.
Zarah swings her Cleaver in a circle, scattering Beast-men like fleeing birds and giving her room to step toward the column she nearly hit before, “Who said anything about harming your pathetic soldiers? I'm here to break things!” Zarah plants her feet firm on the ground and performs a two-handed horizontal slash against the column. A red skein of magical armor around the column shatters and her sword goes through in the blink of an eye. The column wobbles, turns and then topples to crush a slow pair of Beast-men. “For mom!”
“If you won't fight with me, you can at least help.” Teal thrusts the head of her earth maul against the stomach plate of the nearest Beast-man, causing the creature to double over in pain. After a follow-up strike with her arm shield to the head of the same Beast-man it collapses on the ground. Teal adds as an afterthought, “Use non-lethal attacks if possible. I want to see what happens if - .”
Kem mutters, “No, no, no!” His black pit of a right eye is open now, and with each 'no' from his mouth a wave of darkness bursts somewhere below him. The waves send Teal and Zarah and plenty of the Beast-men flying in random directions. “Your blood will flow from a thousand cuts! My thirst will be quenched one way or another!” On hitting the ground Zarah rolls and jumps to her feet, as Teal stands up with a warding swing of her earth maul.
Most of the Beast-men turn and crouch down, bunching the muscles in their legs before leaping up atop the three remaining and unoccupied columns. With three or four hairy creatures on each one, some clinging to the side by an arm and others perched on the top, this leaves the six Beast-men that were closest to Teal and Zarah remaining on the ground; they surround the two women and begin spinning around them like wolves encircling a meal. Meanwhile the Beast-men above pull back their bone daggers and throw, sending a flurry of the knives down all at once.
Dropping her Cleaver and flipping Scarfenstein at the face of a Beast-man in front of her, Zarah vanishes. She reappears several helms away, a bone knife held between each finger. Two bone daggers clatter harmless against Teal's armor, and one hits the leg of a Beast-man sniffing around for Zarah. The injured creature cries out and falls over, holding its leg, as the Beast-man with Scarfenstein wrapped around its face collapses next to it. Zarah grins and flexes her arms, “Who wants a spike to the face? Come and get it!”
Teal stomps her boot against the ooze-covered ground and a small bump of crystal pops up below the foot of a Beast-men circling around her. The creature stumbles back and gets tangled with the Beast-man behind, and Teal swings her earth maul to strike the third Beast-man in the center of its chest. The bone-plated creature falls over holding its midsection, reacting as though her strike cracked several internal ribs. Teal meanwhile brings her hand up to shade her eyes and mutters, “Reinforcements?” In the far distance of the plaza, a Beast-man wearing a giant backpack and carrying a heavy crossbow is running towards them.
With a wry chuckle Kem stands on his high perch, “You lambs really are too much for these young ones.” His glowing left eye is open as he faces the palm of his right hand toward the ground, “Rise my kin. Wake and greet the day, feed on these lambs and grow strong.” The ooze covering the ground bubbles and then begins to swirl around.
At a distance of some twenty helms away, the Beast-man with the crossbow aims and fires. The heavy bolt splits in the air, one shaft a cherry red and the other a plum purple. The red half hits Teal's shield and the purple half hits the third Beast-man that was circling Zarah, bowling the creature over. The two shafts glow and a red aura covers Teal, and the Beast-man with the crossbow hollers in grunting words, “Did it work?” Its voice is thick and gravelly but just understandable.
The herd of Beast-men atop the columns roar their anger and break off new bone daggers, then leap as one toward Teal and Zarah like a murder of descending crows. The half-human still holding their daggers from before smiles, her arms moving in a flurry as she throws each dagger with quick flicks of her wrists. The eight bone knives each find a home in the skull of a leaping Beast-man, and so eight of the creatures fall to the ground. The other three leaping Beast-men were going for Teal and she readies her shield in an attempt to catch the strike of at least one of them. Her red-aura covered arm moves up in a blur, perhaps faster than she was ready for because she stops halfway.
Firing its crossbow again, the distant Beast-man hits Teal with a bolt that transfers a crackling lightning field to her armor. The descending Beast-men and their bone daggers bounce off the electric field, the energy causing their fur to stand on end. All three fall prone, so that Teal is now surrounded by the last five enemy Beast-men, all tangled together or on the ground. She shouts a command to the earth, “Skewer!” and strikes the nearest prone Beast-man with her earth maul. A spike of stone juts up from the ground and through the Beast-man's chest, and then all around her more spikes pop up within a growing circle. The last five Beast-men, except the strange distant one, all end up impaled on the earth spikes.
Checking around herself, Zarah smiles to find no more Beast-men. Most of them have changed back into animals by now, but a few remain as Beast-men. Zarah runs and picks up Scarfenstein and her Cleaver along the way to the next column, slashing up at it with another heavy strike, “For Jorg!” The column slides back toward her and falls; Zarah leaps out of the way and the column hits the center of the swirling ooze with a dull thud. Then the column rises up a little before rolling away, as the ooze flows toward the center and collects in a growing mound.
With high-pitched maniacal laughter and his dark eye open, Kem throws his arms up to the sky, “Rise my kin! Rise and feed! Rise and conquer!” More dark explosions burst below him, this time after each 'rise' and with more precision than before, throwing Teal and Zarah and the Beast-man bodies back away from the quivering hill of translucent goo. A single white orb of an eye forms in the center as the smooth-skinned monster grows to double the size of a tall human, its base contracting to match its growth. Kem crows, “Do you not tremble at the sight of it lambs? I call them Magic Enhanced Killers! Fall to your knees in awe of my magnificent MEKs!”
All across the monstrous MEK's body, small swirls appear and solidify to become flat rings with empty holes in their middles. Segmented and rope-like chains then emerge from each aperture, formed from small sections of hard goo ranging in size from a human finger to a whole hand and connected by soft flexible joints. These long tentacles wave about in all directions, some hanging low like drooping hair while others feel their way up and away to a maximum length of about fourteen helms.
Teal is climbing to her feet again and the MEK's central eye focuses on her. As if she can tell she is being watched, Teal looks up just before two of the long tentacles reach out toward her, twirling around each other before they press together and pound against her armor. She almost falls backwards, but now the tentacles are reaching up for her throat; they latch around her neck and pull tight, holding her upright but also dragging her closer. Teal fights against the pull, her shield arm trying to loosen the hold but the other arm holding her earth maul hanging at her side.
“Miss Teal!” The Beast-man's voice is still gravelly when it calls out again, but then its form shifts to become Rolf in his human form and traveling cloak. The Shape-shifter aims his crossbow at her back and shouts, “This will help!” He whispers something unheard to his crossbow and pulls the trigger; the crossbow twangs with its usual recoil but nothing comes out. Teal also jerks forward as if hit, but then raises her maul with revitalized strength and bashes against the tentacles holding her. One comes loose and retracts, but the other remains.
Zarah laughs and holds up a psyhic knife, “Those big eyeball inside things? I know how to kill those dumb things!” She throws the spectral blue knife and it flies true, passing through the ooze skin to pierce the MEK's eye. The many tentacles twitch and quiver, then swirl about in a storm of whipping appendages. Zarah, who was about to run closer, backs away as she considers her next move. Scarfenstein wraps closer to her neck, almost hiding itself under her black cloak.
Ignoring the appearance of Rolf, the MEK and even the tentacle still wrapped around her, Teal looks up at Kem and shouts, “So you admit it! You are the one who did this to my children!” She swings her maul in his direction with all her might, and when the maul head reaches the right point the earthen head detaches and flies through the air toward Kem like a small boulder, but her aim is off and the boulder is only on course to go by his right side. His left arm becomes a sword again, splitting the boulder in two as it passes him.
His hand is back to normal even before he replies, “Silly lamb, you asked if I was responsible for their abduction! I gave that task to the Green Chief, but it was my White branch which transformed your children into my lovely MEKs.” His black eye closes and his light eye opens, with his voice changing to match, “Now sweet kin of mine, you are stronger than this! Become strong I say, take strength from my voice!”
The MEK calms down and an aura of silvery light covers its skin and tentacles. The long arm grabbing Teal pulls taut again, trying to drag her closer as its joints flex and bulge. And even as she is pulled one helm's length toward the MEK and then another, the sections wrapped around her neck extrude many tiny fibers that dig in around her armor to pierce her skin like mosquito needles. Teal slumps again as strength is sapped from her. Rolf fires his crossbow and this time a bolt emerges, which thunks down in the ground a few steps behind Teal; a line of red energy springs from the back end of the bolt and attaches to Teal's armor, holding her from being brought closer to the MEK.
And even with this going on, the MEK's eye has turned to focus on Zarah. A swarm of tentacles reach out for her, some lifting high before they crash down, others combining for a direct blow. Zarah dances around the attacks, striking the tentacles with her sword a few times and cutting them with ease, but more tentacles emerge from the solid rings. Zarah spins around a combined attack and brings her in Cleaver with the same spin, striking the MEK's side. Her sword slows down traveling through the thick gooey body, but does reach the central eye and crack it.
As Zarah struggles to pull her Cleaver out, Rolf feeds a long chain of bolts to his crossbow, “Let me help Miss Teal! I will end this creature threatening ye!” He points the crossbow at his other hand and squeezes the trigger; bolt after bolt emerges, but pass through a small rift that opens in the palm of his hand. A cloud of similar rifts open around the MEK and bolts fire at it from every direction, passing through many of the solid rings and jamming up the tentacle holes.
The MEK quivers and shakes again, its tentacles swinging around in a frenzy of pain, but then it calms down and with one giant heave contracts to slam its innards against the ground. Cracks and fissures open all around as a countless number of the MEK's grasping tentacles surge up from below the group's feet. They completely blanket Teal and Zarah with their numbers, along with the many animal Beast-men corpses, and even reach Rolf to wrap around his legs. Rolf holds out a hand, his eyes wide, “Miss Teal!” The strength-sapping fibers emerge again and drink from the trapped party, leaving the MEK looking fully revitalized as the cracks in its eye disappear.
Grasping for the sky, Teal's arms emerge from confinement and then push down the tentacles wrapped around her, freeing her upper body. She turns and shakes her maul handle at Rolf, “I do not need your help Rolf!” His human-like face falls and her expression softens in response, “But – thank your for returning. I did not think you would after you left at the Temple.”
Rolf shrugs, smiling despite their predicament, “Of course I returned. Why would I not Miss Teal?”
Kem cackles above, “You should not have my lovestruck lamb!” His black eye is open and he points a finger at each of the party in turn, “You will die at the arms of my viscious MEK!” A black wave bursts behind Rolf, knocking him over. “Your blood will flow in the gutter!” Another black wave buffets against Teal. “Your life will cease and I will ferry you to the afterlife!” This wave strikes Zarah, but she is too restrained to be thrown.
The tentacles flex and bulge again, dragging Teal and Rolf closer to the MEK by a few helms. Zarah and Scarfenstein are close enough to be pulled inside its transluscent skin, where frost and then solid ice begins to creep across Zarah's body even as her cloak forms up as black armor. The MEK ejects her sword and it thuds against the ground.
Rolf points his crossbow toward the MEK and sighs, “I do not think I can kill this thing Miss Teal.” He fires and the bolt strikes against the monster's rubbery skin; the bolt flashes yellow but does nothing more. “But I will keep ye from being swallowed for as long as I have bolts. Each will push the monster backwards when hit by the next, and so - .”
“That's not a good plan Rolf.” Teal sighs and points at Kem with her red crystal arm, who is chortling as he floats above them, “I have little doubt that he will stop – wait.” Teal stares at her crystal hand, then looks at Rolf, “You said you recognized this arm. What did you say it belonged to?”
“I did recognize it Miss Teal, a fire elemental.” Rolf frowns, “A strange species native to the inhospitable plane of Fire. Why?” Teal only grins back at him as her crystal hand glows. A skin of fire flares up around the hand, then spreads along her arm and covers her entire body. Rolf's eyes go wide as the flames burn away the tentacles surrounding Teal, and she stands as a humanoid creature formed entirely of the red crystal. “Miss Teal? How did ye do that?”
Teal laughs, her voice coming out thin and breathless, “I don't fully know!” A sphere of flame covers her hand, and without pause she charges the MEK. Her footsteps burn away the tentacles carpeting the ground and she punches the MEK, her crystal fist puncturing its side with a blaze of fire. Inside she opens her hand, no longer burning now, and grabs the ice-covered Zarah, just as the yellow flashing bolt glows bright. A red and yellow explosion slams the MEK and throws it backwards, releasing Zarah as Teal keeps a hold on the half-human. Holding Zarah close, Teal melts the ice around her. The thawed Zarah drops to her knees, but then grabs her Cleaver from where it lays.
“So you can wild shape lamb?” Kem spins in the air to lay on his stomach, bringing his hands up to support his chin as his glowing eye glimmers down at her, “But such a form! And I sense the work of He Who Damns somehow entwined. The poison will do its work if I do not.” His voice rings out, all honey and sweetness, “Rejoice my kin! You are healed of your illness!” And even as an inky black substance had begun to spread inside the MEK from where Teal struck it, the infection disappears without a trace.
The MEK shakes and tosses its tentacles around, quivering with anger. The tentacles shoot out like a wide volley of arrows, raining down upon Teal as one giant slam. She raises her left arm and a shield of white-hot flame appears, burning the tentacles to cinders before they can touch her. The MEK quivers and shakes again, but now starts backing away from Teal as if frightened.
The black armor becomes a cloak again and Zarah stands unflinching beside Teal under the rain of ash, “That ice-box thing is mine Teal. It signed for its own death.” Her voice is cold and she hefts her Cleaver resolutely. “I call it, so back off now.”
Teal nods and, turning to Rolf, points up at Kem, “Is there a way you can help my hit him at range Rolf?”
“That is a matter of pure simplicity Miss Teal.” Rolf aims his crossbow up at Kem, the many sights and dials spinning to lock on. He pulls the trigger and another yellow bolt fires; Kem smiles and slips to the side, but the bolt snags on his trailing cloak. A yellow bubble expands outward and encloses Kem, causing his eyebrows to raise in surprise.
Zarah vanishes. A second later she leaps up from behind the MEK, coming out of its shadow, and on the downward fall she brings her Cleaver through the MEK's body from top to bottom. With a sigh she turns around and sits, “Nothing gets to eat me.” Zarah spits as the MEK flops into two pieces behind her, the central eye cracking down the middle as it rolls away. Scarfenstein slips out from within her cloak to shiver in her lap, and Zarah adds, “And you hurt Scarfenstein.”
A ball of fire grows within Teal's upward facing palm, fluctuating wildly as it grows brighter and larger. She hefts it and shouts to Kem, “Any last words, Demigod of the White?” He only smiles, both eyes closed as he sits cross-legged in the air. “No? In the name of the Queen's Paladins, I enact justice.” Teal throws the fireball and it bulges outward as it flies toward Kem, exploding in a brilliant firestorm around him.
The storm above sends down another tunnel of wind, roiling a section of sky as the heavy winds battle against the raging flames. When both are gone Kem remains, smiling down at Teal, “I will allow you to have your small justice pretty lamb.” He pinches out a small spark smoking in his white cloak and then shrugs, “Next time I will not be so considerate. Farewell lambs.” And without any words or gestures he fades away like a white mist.
Rolf turns to Teal, “Um. Did we win Miss Teal?” Zarah gives him a thumbs up as she flops down on her back, and Teal returns to her normal form before picking up her maul handle. Standing over the white MEK core, it cracks open to reveal a young girl with cold blue flowers growing in her hair.
Teal picks up Tress and carries the child against her chest away from the Rift Circle, “It's enough of a win for me.” Behind her Zarah is slicing through the remaining columns, bringing the Circle to complete ruin. Animal corpses litter the ground, though one Beast-man body remains.
As Rolf follows Teal and Zarah runs to catch up, the largest War Vine yet grows from the center of the city behind them and blooms with a immense flower that covers the sky. More fog rains down and surges behind as they escape the city.
Now that was a chapter I had to work for! This is actually how far one campaign got before ending due to outside circumstances (although the next chapter or two is based on events from the other attempt and so I'll still be in re-telling mode) which means pretty soon I'll be venturing in to completely new territory, telling the story that I wanted to get out but found myself frustrated in achieving. It only gets crazier from here, and one of my reasons for writing this story was the hope that those people I played with will read it. And yes, crab monsters are boys and tentacle monsters are girls.
Also, today's Type-B O-MEK is something I had some help designing, and so I'd like to thank for that help. He designs and draws mecha and so I asked him for some mecha design advice, and he even made some very cool illustrations of the O series which I will share if anyone wants to see them. Once again thank you and everybody go check out his page!
This is a part of my High War project, a story about people in a D&D-inspired world that I have tried very hard to make my own. I really don't want to step on anyone's copyright toes here, which to some degree is not easy at all. I have no idea where the background of my preview image comes from, as far as I know it came from a free image site; if you know otherwise then please tell me so I can take it down, although I would be happier to use it with the permission of its creator. This will be a story for somewhat mature audiences, there will be occasional violence, language and adult themes. Thanks for understanding, and if you don't then I would be happy to discuss with you my thoughts on the issue.
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