Book 3 Chapter 47.5: The Bodyguard
Book 3 Chapter 47.5: The Bodyguard
++There was something about the Vornholts as a family that the Vorets of that time just couldn’t seem to grasp. It was nearly the end of us.++
- Commentary by Maria Voret. 1,938 A.E.
Sethira and I were more than half exhausted of our mana, and the sheer number of men still left on the enemy’s side, plus how deeply intertwined their ranks now were with those of my defenders, meant that the sort of indiscriminate bombardment needed to turn the tide would be of limited use anyway.
I shot a glare at Sethira, though she did not seem to notice. Her developing the ability of flight changed everything. If she had joined the fight against Voret a minute earlier, we may still be able to salvage victory this day. Her ridiculous attempt to gain an advantage over me may have cost us everything.
Cost me everything, I reminded myself. I was the one managing and profiting from this refinery, she still had her network of cultists, one which would not be even close to exhausted by this fighting.
But there was no time to dwell on the treachery and self-service of my ally. That would come later. Now I needed an immediate solution.
“Buy me time,” I ordered her. Even now I could see magicians peeling off from the enemy’s forces and heading over to ready spells aimed my way. They would not be able to hit me with their numbers, not if I lingered in the air, but they probably knew how exhausting flight was and aimed to keep me accelerating and changing directions, wearing my mana down. It was far harder to fly in combat than to sustain a roughly straight line between continents.
Sethira would have to use even more power, casting active spells as well as just darting from side to side, but right now I just needed time. She nodded, flew down to engage the magicians, and freed me up to attempt my last-ditch effort at salvaging the day.
I flew to the leyline.
The magic caressed me as I entered, diminished, I thought, since Sascithius had begun absorbing it to fuel his own powers, but there was still a mighty enough flow to obscure the strength of Lord Dread. It was so tempting to call on that power and step out, obliterating my attackers with the wave of one hand.
But I knew that would only worsen my situation. Word would get out, somehow. If I called on the power of Lord Dread outside the obscuring field of my leyline, people would hear about it, the residual mana I left behind would be studied and identified as nothing human or divine, and I would soon be facing down an army of Demigods where now I dealt only with magicians. I had fought that fight before, and it had ended with me being turned into a baby.
Instead, when Lord Dread emerged, I turned his power on the air before me and opened up a gap in space to my personal realm.
“What are you doing?” Sascithius asked me. I recognised a touch of fear in his voice. He had known me longer than perhaps any other extant creature, after all. It made sense that he could tell when I was looking forward to unleashing an experiment.
“EITHER DOOMING THE DAY OR SAVING IT,” I replied. “IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE WHICH IT TURNS OUT TO BE.”
Sascithius said nothing as I stepped through.
Here in my pocket realm, there was no distant gunfire and no pricking of far-off magic against my senses. It was still not peaceful though. I was barely a foot into it before something reared up in front of me, quivering and snarling, skin sloughing off and body falling in on itself.
It was the chimera from my laboratory, now weeks later and closer than ever to its death. The poor creature had simply never been slated to last. It was falling apart under the strain of its own magic.
But not for a while. It would last long enough for my purposes.
“You…you’re in a hurry,” Nu’chista called out deliriously from beside it. I was surprised he had the faculties left to even recognise that much. “What’s going on? My…my siblings, have they discovered what you really are?”
“YOU ARE PAINFULLY OPTIMISTIC,” I told him. “NO. I HAVE SIMPLY COME TO MAKE ANOTHER USE OF YOU.”
I was not done experimenting, I did not think I would ever be done, but I was close enough to a breakthrough now that I could afford to use him in…other ways.
The chimera was bound in stronger chains than Nu’chista, though it had lost much of its strength and I was no longer certain it would overpower him directly. I quickly resolved this by removing one of the Demigod’s legs and letting the creature eat it.
“SHUT UP,” I told him while he screamed, clearly just looking for attention. He did not even have the dignity to apologize or explain himself, simply kept crying like some hungry infant. I did my best to ignore him.
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The chimera was far more interesting in any case, and I watched as it devoured his leg and swelled in power.
Its skin had already been falling away in patches, but now it actually started to bubble. Divine energy was volatile and unstable in any hands but a Godtouched or Demigod’s, after all, and here was a creature mindlessly absorbing it without any idea of what it might do. I stared at the display and wondered for a moment whether it might explode.
It did not, but it felt like it was coming rather close to doing so.
I remained on guard, all too aware that the prison I had designed for this beast at its strongest may not hold at this new height of power, and only when it reached a new pinnacle and stopped growing did I activate the final step of my preparations.
When I had first encountered this chimera, it had been wild, virtually uncontrollable and mindlessly aggressive. It was still two, and maybe three, of those things now. But there are very few things Lord Dread cannot do with preparation.
Now I just needed to see if this was one of them. If it went wrong, my creation would be as aimless as ever and probably do more damage to the refinery than the Vorets could ever have even dreamed of. I released the prison, activated the control device built deep under its skin, and waited.
There was a sensation like mountains grinding together against my will. This chimera lacked the higher thoughts and determination of a truly intelligent being, but there was so much raw power behind it that what meagre will it did possess was magnified by orders of magnitude.
In fact, I suspected it may even have given trouble to someone able to maintain their sanity after a week in the Depths.
I quickly overpowered it, then watched as it folded down to lower itself before me, awaiting instruction. If I had a face, it would have twisted into a smile.
***
Dave found his magic gun lodged in some poor sod’s chest cavity, apparently sent flying by an explosion. It was useless. The barrel had warped, some of those glowy crystals were cracked and the whole thing was making noises best described as a ‘dying whinge’. It set his teeth on edge just to hear it, and the thought of actually trying to squeeze down that trigger and fire the thing…well, Dave knew how volatile magical weapons could be at the best of times. With the condition this one was in, whoever he aimed it at might actually have better odds of survival than him.
Unfortunately, now that he’d gotten used to a magic gun, the mundane weapons just didn’t feel the same. Sure, they were safer. More familiar too. And they had that authentic, physical recoil that told him they were shooting. They were like an old friend that shared a long history.
What they were not, however, was capable of melting a hole in someone the size of a carriage wheel, or punching through a magician’s shield with one good shot. Dave had managed to scrounge up a fallen rifle from one of the defenders, and he was shit-hot when it came to thumbing back the bolt, but it felt like pissing in the rain to use that against the attackers and their arcane defences.
Useless.
What wasn’t useless, what was in fact very useful, were the newcomers showing up from fuck-knew-where. Dave had no clue who they were or why they were appearing, he could only assume Vornholt had somehow arranged it, but he recognised that each was a tough man with a warrior’s physicality who stormed into the fighting with all the restraint of a large bull who’d been unexpectedly fisted. Bodies flew as they struck the mundane mercenaries on the enemy’s side, and even when they ran into the warriors there was more resistance than you might’ve thought.
They were weird-looking too. In archaic armour, some of it looking almost as old as the design Vornholt had wrapped around her younger brother. Qaigor Vornholt was fighting right alongside the men, that enchanted sword swinging around, up and down, rhythmic in its killing momentum as each new blow took another life. He seemed to have found a second wind with the newcomers.
But the boy was young and dumb and this was his first battle, he didn’t realise that being excited didn’t make him invulnerable. The opposite, if anything. He over-extended and within the span of a moment he went from fighting one enemy warrior to struggling against three. Their blades would’ve cut him to pieces in instants if it weren’t for the armour, but even if the scales covering him were close to indestructible, they didn’t provide total coverage. Qaigor Vornholt cut one of his enemies almost in half, grinned, then caught the tip of a sword right across his face in such a way as to miss the rim of his helm.
Dave heard a scream that sounded exactly like a twelve year old boy’s face being changed forever, then he was surging forwards without a thought for his own safety. At the end of the day, he was more impulsive than smart.
Fortunately, this surprised the fuck out of the remaining warriors.
By the time either of them turned to face him, Dave was already within ten feet and raising his rifle to fire right into the closest man’s gaping mouth. His head snapped back, throat gushing blood as he stumbled. Dead? Maybe, maybe not, either of these men were as far above Dave as Dave was above a normal human, warriors of the Second Order. He wouldn’t believe either of them was down for good until he started to see decomposition.
The other reinforced why this caution was such a good idea by lunging with a speed that surpassed the reflexes of common humanity. Dave himself barely had his rifle up in time to catch the sword.
Mundane, fortunately, not enchanted like the boy’s, but the sheer strength behind his enemy’s stab still drove the tip right through wood and steel and out the other side of the gun’s barrel. Dave twisted, feeling the edge glance along his shoulder and draw blood. It was more annoying than dangerous, he wagered.
He hoped.
Then he punched the man, brass knuckles slipped on in the moment he spent righting himself. Blakely surprised him, at least. And he also surprised himself with the jolt running up his wrist. Then the other warrior recovered and threw his own punch, catching Dave right in his cheek and just sort of caving it in.
He flew. Actually flew, like it’d been a bomb blast hitting him instead of a fist. He hit the ground and rolled, then scraped and rolled some more before sliding to a stop and groaning up as his enemy neared him. Dave drew his revolver—his backup-backup gun— and clumsily fanned the hammer. It was more luck than skill that saw all six rounds hitting his enemy in the head, and the warrior stumbled back swearing.
He was probably less hurt by six fucking point-four-five-five bullets than Dave was by one jab, and by the time Dave was standing the warrior was all recovered.