Oaths a progression fant.., p.53
Oaths: A Progression Fantasy Epic, page 53
“What in all of Amitiyah’s wisdom?” Cristabel drew back as though scalded. “These devils change not only into wolves, but rats as well? Beast, why do you sully Wurhi’s blade? Tell us what you have done with her!”
Wurhi froze. By all demons and gods… she realised. I never told her I was a shapeshifter! No-no—
“No! No, Cristabel!” Kyembe gesticulated wildly. “That is Wurhi! The rat is Wurhi!”
A pause. The knight squinted.
“It is you! Glory of Amitiyah upon us—Why are you a rat?” Cristabel suddenly screamed. “What have these evil blackguards done to you! You are cursed by these vile wretches!”
The rat-woman squeaked and flailed her hands in protest. No! No! You’re wrong! she screamed in her mind.
“I will destroy them for this!” The Solidblade Knight whirled once again on the horde. “No daylight will come to you, blackguards! Embrace the light of the moon while you can, for the next light you shall witness will be the blaze of my wrath!”
The little thief slowly dropped her arms and adopted a pose of greatest dejection, nodding along with Cristabel’s conclusion. Yes! Yes! They cursed me! she thought. So you should kill them quickly! No wait, slowly—
“Enough!” Someone stomped the sand.
Footsteps pounded through the cluster of black-robed cultists.
Milos of Crotonia stalked from their ranks, his teeth grinding. Primal hate burned in his eyes as hoarse breathing hissed through lips trembling in rage. “I am beyond finished with all of this!” his voice cracked. “The rat is not cursed! It is she that carries curses! She spreads them like her filthy vermin kin spread plague!”
He cast his arms over the arena. “Look at what you have wrought! Our brothers dead! Our lair scarred! My pets ruined and destroyed!” The Sacred Alpha shook, drawing his gaze up toward the statue of Lycundar. Rising over the arena from its new perch, it watched them all silently with a sinister presence that was more than stone.
“And all wrought beneath the gaze of our god! Never! Never in some hundred years of walking under Lycundar’s fearsome guidance have I endured such humiliation! But no more! No more will I—”
Kyembe fired at him mid-speech.
Milos leapt back with an expletive.
The hellfire beam ploughed into the arena floor, melting sand and stone into the river below. Steam belched up, and the cult leader recoiled with a cry.
The floor cracked further.
The river grew louder.
“Kill him, you fools!” Milos roared.
The cult sprang toward the Sengezian. Wurhi gasped.
“Kyembe!” St. Cristabel cried as the cursing Spirit Killer disappeared in a tide of black robes and fur.
“Do not concern yourself with him, armoured one, for your own troubles will be greater,” the Sacred Alpha drew a breath. “You dare bring another god’s name into Lycundar’s sanctum… You dare desecrate the pack? Step away from us, children of Lycundar.”
He drew to his full height. “She is mine.”
Wurhi recoiled. Her primal fear upon first seeing him returned in full force. Animal instincts screamed at the coming of a predator—one both unnatural and at the apex of all around it.
She tried to scream a warning, but only a rat’s chitter emerged.
The change fell over Milos of Crotonia with the ease of rain. Human flesh washed away, unmasking a tide of beastly flesh and iron hide. Limbs lengthened effortlessly, and claws like daggers sprang from swelling fingers. His face extended into a lupine muzzle and lips parted to reveal row upon row of fangs.
The Zabyallan gaped. She thought Berard to be the largest of the wolfmen.
She had been wrong.
The Sacred Alpha loomed the size of an ogre: rising twice Cristabel’s height, and the saint was tall even for a man. Silver-grey fur coated his body and golden eyes radiated a cold savagery so ancient, it reached from a time before humanity had awoken to higher thought. His skin rippled. Something swam just beneath the surface.
“Amitiyah’s Tears!” Cristabel cried.
His hide tore open, splitting into a dozen human-like maws that erupted like pox across his skin. As he drew a breath through his muzzle, the many mouths hissed and swelled with their own unnatural inhalations.
They howled in unison.
Their voices blended, twisting into something more. Something which stabbed Wurhi’s breast with unfathomed dread. Escapees cried out and fled from him, while acolytes collapsed in awe so profound that it rent their senses. Even his tiger, filled with hatred as it was, could only cringe beneath its own terror.
“Abomination!” St. Cristabel levelled her blade toward her foe. “What are you?”
“He who is cursed. He who is blessed,” hissed a dozen voices in chorus from the human-like lips. Milos’ muzzle growled in an undertone to his words. “I am flesh. And I am water.”
His right arm rippled and flexed.
Red-drenched bone erupted from the skin and joined together into armoured plates. The flesh drew back from his digits while claws fused and lengthened. In heartbeats, his armoured forearm terminated in an immense, curving blade of aberrantly hardened bone.
His blood dripped from the edge.
“Come, interloper.” He ran a finger across the cleaver. A bead of red rose on his thumb, before being sucked back into the closing wound. “I will send you to your god.”
The knight struck pommel to shield. “I have already met him, abomination, and the time I see him again shall be by his edict, not yours. Now, have at you!”
The saint and the beast let loose twin roars of challenge.
They charged across the sand as a wave of metal racing toward a wave of unnatural flesh.
Bone-blade struck sapphire shield, sliding off the golden mammoth head. Cristabel drove her sword at Milos, sweeping to split his belly open. The massive werewolf took one glance at her vitriol-coated blade and leapt back.
It swept the air just before his torso. He gave ground and she followed. His bone-blade flashed at the closing knight with the speed of a whip.
Bone cracked against metal.
He struck the knight’s shield again and again, but only slowed the smaller juggernaut. Amitiyah’s Tears clung to the edge of his cleaver, eating into the bone. “You bear a mighty blessing!” Milos snarled. “I see that your god doles out favours like a common trollop!”
“Vile hypocrisy for one who bears his god’s corrupt favour so thoroughly!” Her blade swept out, but he slipped from its reach with supernatural celerity.
By act of will, he slammed part of his bone-sword to the sand, taking the vitriol with it. The blade shuddered as it regenerated, becoming whole in mere moments. Cristabel’s eyes narrowed.
Milos snorted. “I speak no hypocrisy. There is no true blessing under Lycundar. Only a curse made to bow to one’s strength of will!”
The cleaver dipped low, sweeping up sand to spray into the saint’s eyes. As she raised her shield to block it, he shot forth.
His bone-brand slipped through her guard.
Wurhi screamed.
The point drove into the sapphire-hued chain covering her armpit.
There was a dull ring of chainmail.
Lupine eyes went wide.
It had struck with enough force to fell a horse. Yet, while it made Cristabel stumble, the Valkyrie-forged armour held with a strength far beyond that of steel.
Her vermillion blade swept up.
Flesh tore.
Thirteen mouths howled in unison.
Cristabel’s bearing sword split the bone cleaver in twain, sending half clattering to the sand. It hissed as Amitiyah’s Tears ate it away. Even from a distance, Wurhi could smell the stink of vitriol. Milos drew back, willing the rest of his weapon to shed the remains of caustic ether.
“Such low tactics cannot fell me.” The saint stalked after him. “And such paltry strength cannot break my armour. Yield. You are swift, beast, but I shall catch you and cast your broken body to the sand.”
Milos’ voices grunted. “In my youth, I faced a lion whose hide resisted every blade and spear. It too thought itself invincible.” His limbs swelled, rippling, as bone grew upon itself in layers. His arms expanded into hulking, armoured cudgels as large as battering rams. “Until we beat it to death.”
With a snarl, he rushed her.
A bone-club struck the saint’s shield with force so terrific that she stumbled back.
Another blow struck.
And another.
Each bludgeoning echoed through her armour, jarring and shuddering her body to the bone. While his blows could not fell her, they shook her footing, and the devilishly swift werewolf struck so that she could not regain it. Suddenly, the invincible knight was on the defensive, retreating from his fury.
Wurhi’s heart froze. Oh shit, she thought. Shit! Shit!
“Dammit, behind you!” Merrick cried.
Wurhi ducked Berard’s maul as it swept the air where her head had been. She rolled and sprang to her feet, snarling at the towering lycanthrope. Merrick rushed to join her.
Once again, the two thieves faced the black-coated beast.
Men died around Kyembe like flies.
The Sengezian danced and leapt from their encirclement, but they swarmed over the seats like enraged bees. His sword-staff struck out in a blur, slaying or wounding with each cut, and the haft grew slick with gore.
And not only from the blood of his foes.
A score of cuts marked his body, inflicted by fortunate lupine claws or sword-blows. They stalked him, not giving him leave to draw forth his healing energies.
He growled, frustrated.
Wurhi and the small man struggled with the black-coated beast, the silver-coated monstrosity drove titanic blows into Cristabel, and he battled for his life with rabble. Below, more cultists swarmed the pit fighters throughout the blood-stained sands.
He cursed his choices. Were he to slip away and join Wurhi or Cristabel, he would bring this army down on them. Yet, he could not stand against this force alone forever. He glanced back to the sands. There was only one way for it.
With a roar, he charged the cult. His lips pulled back in a snarl as he raised his weapon above his head. The acolytes paused at his rush—none too eager to be the first to die to his blade—while the werewolves surged forward with claws extended.
They closed.
Kyembe’s sword-staff came down…
…But not on his foes.
The Sengezian drove the haft into the ground, ivory flexing as it caught his weight. The half-dark elf vaulted over the onrushing lycanthropes—their jaws snapping at his heels above—and soared down the slope of the arena seats. Startled, masked acolytes ducked.
As he flew, he shortened his blade and channeled his eldritch power.
His sword awakened in hellfire.
He struck the moment his feet touched stone.
Blazing heat fell among the acolytes.
Bodies erupted into boiling gore as his blade sheared through black-robed figures. Their comrades recoiled from scalding viscera as he swept his blade in arcs to drive them back. Forcing his way toward the arena floor, he cut a path of flaming ruin through the cult, and at last reached the edge of the stadium. He leapt down onto the sands with his lithe arms coated in burns, and a road of hellfire and broken bodies lying in his wake.
Channeling his healing magics, Kyembe jumped into the horde of acolytes attacking the pit fighters and slew cultists with every step. He had sheared through the line and made to join with the slaves when a young captive, spying his blood-soaked form, struck at him.
“Wait!” He parried the spear. “I am with you! Friend to Wurhi!”
“Then you’re a friend of ours!” A squat man stabbed down one of the cultists. “There’s no end to these bastards and we need all the help we can get!”
“Then we must make an end to them.” He shed golden witch-light to heal the burns across his arms. “Let us behead these snakes.”
“Less talking! More fighting for our lives!” a red-headed woman shrieked.
In the seats above, the tide that Kyembe had fought split into two groups. Some rushed for the captives. Others charged to support Berard. None would approach the terrible struggle between the Sacred Alpha and Solidblade Knight, yet Kyembe’s sharp eyes spied one who did.
Recovered from its earlier trepidation, the saber-toothed tiger circled the duel. The cat’s eyes watched for an opportunity to strike…
Only to be drawn by another sight.
Cristabel gritted her teeth.
A bone-mace smote her shield.
Agony stabbed through her forearm as it cracked, but the pain washed away as her god’s nimbus embraced her, healing as it did. Three times did one of his blows rupture a bone, but the knight held steadfast.
“Mangy cur!” she roared.
Her blade bit deep into one of the clubs, but the bone-weapon shuddered and split, shedding outer layers like a moth’s cocoon. In heartbeats, it was restored. She struck at him again, but he retreated, using superior reach to keep her at bay. Both ire and excitement grew within the knight. “You are indeed a mighty foe! The song of this battle will balm some of Amitiyah’s grief!”
“You will not be there to sing it. I see now it will take a great length of time for one of us to destroy the other… But can your friends survive that long? Even now Lycundar’s own swarms to slay the rat.”
Cristabel stiffened.
For an instant, her attention shifted.
Milos pounced.
He thrust through her guard to strike his bone-club against her helm and breastplate. The impact rocked through the saint’s skull, and she flew from her feet, landing with the force of a collapsing smithy.
He leapt upon her recumbent form with giant cudgels raised.
They fell in a flurry.
Monstrous blows crashed against her body, driving her into the sand. She warded them off with blade and shield, but her arms numbed from their force.
The stone began to crack beneath her.
“Rat! Behind us!” Merrick cried.
Wurhi chittered at him. Stop saying that! she screamed internally. She already knew what he spoke of. Claws rushed across stone and her nose had caught the scent of blood and lupine musk. The wolf-demons were coming to reinforce their brother.
And she and Merrick still could not bring this big bastard down.
They had flanked him, but Berard had taken to ignoring the Hawk, focusing only on Wurhi. Despite Merrick’s spear driving into him again and again, it did not pierce deeply, and the wounds healed in an instant. The lycanthrope’s primal celerity had nearly ended the Zabyallan half a dozen times. He was an unschooled brawler, but his experience, speed, and power kept the thief off-balance.
Her eyes narrowed on the monster that dragged her to this mountain, and he glared back at his bane, flicking his head as the blood ran from his brow…
Wait! The blood!
The Zabyallan dove low, her wounded hand scooping up a palm-full of stone dust. He brought his hammer down to catch her, but she halted at the edge of his reach.
His maul whished by, missing her.
She cast the debris in his face.
He yelped, staggering back, and Merrick jabbed his spear to tangle the beast’s hind legs. Berard stumbled, trying to rub the debris from his eyes as the blood running from his brow coated his hand, further spoiling his vision.
With the werewolf blinded, Wurhi dove into his reach.
An impact shook her arm as she drove the Wizard-King’s sword into his belly. Silver bit home, skewering his insides. A bestial scream ripped from Berard. He grimaced and clawed at his gut. Wurhi tore her blade free within a spray of red.
She stabbed him again.
And again.
The werewolf snarled, swiping blindly with his claws, and each time she dropped below his reach. Her blade whipped into his powerful thigh, shearing the great vessel in it. Crimson sprayed with every pump of his heart. Berard’s snarls withered to yelps of panic as he tried to staunch the wound.
He bent by instinct.
Blind as he was, he could not see Wurhi’s silver rising to meet him.
Her blade sank into his throat and burst out the other side, impaling the wolfman’s neck. He shuddered, choking on blood and metal as werewolf flesh rapidly transformed back into that of man. With lifeblood fountaining from sword wounds, the black-coated beast’s voice died in his throat, and his golden eyes dulled.
Wurhi the Rat rose, withdrawing her blade as Berard collapsed into a pool of spreading red. Her retribution was dispatched.
A deep, shuddering breath rasped from the large man’s chest.
It proved to be his last.
The massive wolfman stilled as Wurhi rushed away, for howls of remorse and anger had erupted at her back. These wolf-devils’ vengeance would be swift. Merrick had fled before she inflicted the second wound. She sprinted to join him.
“Bloody piss! We’re not going to make it!” He paled, glancing over his shoulder.
Wurhi grimaced and followed his gaze.
Five werewolves had broken ahead of the enraged acolytes. On all fours, the lycanthropes sheared away the distance between them and their quarry. The Rat and Hawk vaulted over the wall and rolled onto the sands, bounding to their feet, and breaking into a flat run. Her nostrils flared. The sound and scent of lycanthrope did not fade. She heard the dull impact of bodies landing on sand.
The sound of claws scratched the earth, growing in volume.
She glanced past the struggle between the saint and cult leader, her blood freezing at the dreadful blows being driven into her companion. Cristabel! she thought in horror. Beyond the duelling titans raged the battle of Lycundar’s cult and their captives.
Kyembe had joined the latter and stiffened their resistance with the violence of twenty slayers, but more of the cult surrounded them. The werewolves circled the escapees as a pack of wild dogs stalking a herd of gazelle. They avoided the mighty Spirit Killer and instead picked at the weaker captives, dragging them from the ranks and falling upon them with savage claws. As more fell, Wurhi knew they could not hold out, and the two thieves could not break through the encirclement to aid them.
