Chapter 75. Shadows and Thunder
Thurga had never held a sword with the intention of killing anyone before a year ago.
He'd been a tanner. A good one, or at least a decent one, his father had been good, and Thurga had inherited enough of the craft to keep himself fed and his wife comfortable in their latest settlement. He'd worked leather his whole life, knew the smell of it better than the smell of his own skin, and the closest he'd ever come to violence was the time he'd punched his neighbor Rek over a property line dispute that, in hindsight, neither of them had been right about.
Then the Lord called his banners, and suddenly Thurga was holding a sword somebody had shoved into his hands and marching west with hundred others toward a cities that had never done anything to him personally.
And now, standing in the aftermath of whatever that had been—the dome, the light, the earth itself ripping free and vanishing with his lord and every warrior who mattered—Thurga was looking at a chicken.
... And the chicken was looking back.
It had just spoken. In common tongue, clearly, with diction better than half the orcs Thurga knew. It had told them to pick a god and pray.
Thurga's grip on his sword was so tight his knuckles ached. His breath came shallow and fast. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a very reasonable voice was telling him to drop the weapon, sit down, put his hands over his head and wait for this to be over, because whatever was happening had moved so far past anything he was equipped to deal with that continuing to stand here with a blade felt like a profound misunderstanding of the situation.
The man who had floated down from the sky had just teleported their strongest fighters, including the orc lord and all the other generals, to some place beyond the horizon. He'd done it the way Thurga might swat a fly. And this chicken had arrived with him.
Thunder rolled overhead, long and low, and the sky had turned the color of a bruise. The rain Thurga had been smelling for the last hour was close now, the air heavy and electric with it. Wind pressed against the backs of the remaining soldiers, pushing them toward the chicken, which felt like a joke.
Lightning suddenly split the sky, and for one instant the world went white, and in that instant Thurga saw the chicken's shadow thrown enormous across the dirt—fifty, sixty feet long, stretched and distorted by the angle of the light.
And the shadow was wrong. The wings were too wide, the neck too long, the body too massive. What fell across the ground in that flash was not the shadow of a bird that stood twenty centimeters tall. It was the shadow of something that could have blotted out the sun.
Thurga would have sworn on his mother's grave that he saw a dragon in that shadow.
The lightning passed. The shadow shrank back to the size of a chicken. The thunder that followed shook the ground under his boots, and Thurga felt his bladder make a very earnest case for evacuation.
He was going to address it, but sadly, the chicken began to walk toward them.
One deliberate step at a time, talons clicking against the hard-packed dirt, its head bobbing with each step the way chickens do, which should have been absurd and comical and was instead the most frightening thing Thurga had ever witnessed. Each step closed the distance, and with each step Thurga found himself leaning backward, his body making the decision to retreat before his brain had signed off on it.
He thought of Barek. Their lord, who had led them here, who had promised them reclamation and justice and a new beginning for the Jurha clans. Barek was gone, taken somewhere by magic so far above their understanding that trying to comprehend it was like trying to count the stars. The generals were gone. The elf was gone. There was no one left to give orders, no one whose level and strength could shelter the rest of them, until recently normal orcs, from what was coming.
Thurga took another step back when a hand caught his arm. Vorek, the warrior beside him, a butcher from the same settlement who'd been conscripted the same week. Vorek's eyes were wide but his jaw was set in that stubborn way he had.
"The lord will kill us if we run," Vorek hissed.
Thurga looked at him. "Have you see—"
A scream cut through the air.
Thurga's head snapped forward. The chicken was gone from where it had been. It was on Drukh's head—the big warrior three rows ahead who'd been holding his spear like it meant anything—and the chicken's talons were buried in his face. Drukh was thrashing, hands grabbing at the bird, his spear clattering to the ground. Blood ran between his fingers and down his chin, and when the chicken launched itself off him it took Drukh's left eye with it.
Drukh went down screaming, hands clamped over his face, and every orc in the remaining force did the same two things at once: they screamed, and they attacked.
The problem was that none of them could hit it.
The chicken moved through the press of bodies like water through fingers. Swords came down where it had been a half-second ago. Spears thrust into empty air. A warrior named Kolg, who Thurga had seen split logs with a single swing, brought his axe down so hard it buried itself three inches into the dirt, and the chicken was already behind him, raking its talons across the back of his knee. Kolg buckled, and the chicken was already somewhere else.
It was fast. Impossibly, sickeningly fast. Thurga had hunted birds before. He knew how they moved, the quick darting bursts, the way they could change direction in the space of a heartbeat. But this was that speed multiplied by a factor that had no business existing, combined with a viciousness no bird he'd ever encountered possessed. Its talons opened flesh like shears through silk. Its beak struck at eyes and the gaps between armor plates, with a precision that spoke of intelligence far beyond any animal.
Then it breathed fire.
A gout of flame erupted from its beak, blue-white and hot enough that Thurga felt it singe his eyebrows from fifteen feet away. Three warriors caught the blast full on and went down rolling, their leather armor smoking and their screams joining the chorus. The chicken cut off the flame, hopped sideways to avoid a sword stroke, and raked its talons across the swordsman's wrist. The sword fell, and so did two fingers.
Thurga hadn't moved. He was standing in the same spot, sword still raised, watching the carnage with disconnected clarity. Then Gar, the fastest of them—a scout who'd been running messages between the companies since before the march—got close. Really close. His hand came down in a grab that should have caught the chicken around its body, fingers closing around feathers but alas, an arrow struck Gar in the shoulder and spun him sideways.
It came from above. Straight down, or near enough, as though it had fallen from the clouds themselves. Gar hit the ground clutching at the shaft, and the chicken planted itself on his chest, craned its neck upward toward the sky, and screamed with a fury that made Thurga's ears ring.
"DON'T YOU DARE MEDDLE IN THIS, FOX!"
Then it went right back to the killing.
That was when the first group broke. About twenty warriors near the gate decided collectively and without discussion that whatever awaited them inside the city was better than this, and they ran. They sprinted through the gates, boots pounding on stone, weapons discarded behind them. Some were shouting about closing the gate, barring it, putting walls between themselves and the demon bird.
The chicken just watched them go.
"Don't run," it called after them, its voice carrying with a clarity that should have been impossible from a body that small. "You'll just die tired."
Then it turned back to the orcs who remained and continued.
Thurga took a step back. Then another. He was retreating slowly, sword still raised in a guard position that he knew would do absolutely nothing if the chicken decided he was next. Vorek was gone from beside him. Thurga didn't know when he'd left or where he'd gone and didn't look to find out.
He was about to flee when the world suddenly tilted.
Thurga didn't understand what happened at first. One moment he was upright, backing away, and then his feet weren't under him anymore and the sky was where the ground should have been. He hit the mud on his back, the impact driving the air from his lungs, and his sword was gone from his hand, knocked away by something he hadn't even seen.
The evil chicken was above him.
It stood on his chest, lighter than he'd expected, its talons pricking through his leather chestpiece. Rain ran down its feathers. Its beady eyes held his, and in them Thurga saw an intelligence so old and so contemptuous that it made his skin crawl.
"Mercy," Thurga said. "We— I— this was a mistake. I was a tanner. I didn't want to be here. Please."
The chicken tilted its head.
"I fear," it said, "this won't be a mistake you'll be learning from."
One talon moved, faster than Thurga could track, and struck the side of his head. He wasn't sure if the rain had finally come, but the world went liquid. Sound became muffled and strange, as though he'd been plunged beneath the surface of a deep river. He was on his side somehow, cheek pressed into the mud, and his vision was going dark at the edges but he could still see. He could see the warriors on the ground near him: bleeding, groaning, clutching their wounds.
But Bresht was breathing. The one-eyed Drukh was also breathing, his remaining eye blinking rapidly in the rain. Even Kolg, crumpled a few feet away with his ruined knee, was breathing.
They were all breathing.
.... Maybe he'd live? If the chicken had wanted them dead, they'd be dead. It was maiming them, humiliating them, dismantling them piece by piece, but it was leaving them alive.
Yes, maybe he'd live. He'd live, and never hold a sword again in his life. Maybe have children with his wife, work more leather, and die old, far away from battlefield.
Fire bloomed somewhere to his left, painting the rain orange. Screams followed, distant and warped through the water in his ears. The last thing Thurga saw before the darkness took him was the silhouette of the evil chicken walking through the flames, and the last thing he thought was that he really should have stayed a tanner.
***
Heavy rain was pouring now.
The sky had finally committed to the storm Sael's earlier anger had provoked, and fat droplets hammered down onto the barren wasteland three hundred kilometers from Enariel. Water streamed across the white-gold dome, running down its curved surface in sheets, and inside the barrier the air had grown thick with humidity and tension.
Sael found himself facing an army of about six hundred orcs, their four generals, the orc lord, and the very likely instigator of all this, Theranel.
Or rather, a more accurate term would be the opposite: the army was the one facing Sael.
... Though, most of them were on their knees, retching violently onto the displaced earth. The sound of vomiting filled the dome, a real chorus of bodies rejecting what had just been done to them. Warriors who'd stood firm seconds ago were doubled over, heaving up everything in their stomachs as their minds tried and failed to process the experience of being unmade and remade.
Some hadn't even made it to their knees. They'd collapsed the moment they'd rematerialized, their bodies simply giving up, unconscious before they hit the ground. Others staggered like drunkards, taking two steps and falling, trying to stand and falling again, their sense of balance completely destroyed.
The generals were barely better off, and even Barek, the orc lord himself, had staggered backward several steps, one hand braced against the shoulder of the general with the enchanted sword, who was also swaying, barely keeping his feet. The orc lord's face had gone pale beneath his green skin, a sheen of cold sweat visible on his forehead.
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The elf was on his hands and knees, his robes soaked with his own sick and his hair hanging in wet strings around his face. His hands trembled against the ground, fingers digging into the dirt as if anchoring himself to reality. Whatever spell he'd been preparing was completely forgotten.
The teleportation had done this to them. The method Sael had used was never meant for living beings who weren't prepared for it. Their bodies had been scattered into fundamental particles and reassembled in the span of a heartbeat. Their consciousness had experienced being nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. Every cell had been unmade and remade, every nerve ending had died and been reborn, every sense had been overloaded beyond the point of comprehension.
The dome finally dissipated, and the army of six hundred had been, one could reasonably conclude, dealt with for the time being. It would take them hours to recover for most, an—
Oh. One of the generals was glowing purple.
One [Blink] and Sael appeared in front of him. The general's eyes barely had time to widen before Sael's fist connected with his chest.
Then came the impact. It did not make a sound, really. One well placed punch, and the general simply folded, his armor caving inward like paper, ribs shattering, sternum collapsing. He flew backward and hit the ground twenty meters away, skidding through the mud. Blood poured from his mouth. His chest didn't rise.
"[Shadow Clone]."
Three figures emerged from Sael's shadow, identical copies stepping out of the darkness like they'd always been there. They moved in perfect synchronization.
The first clone reached the general with the massive pauldrons. One punch to the throat. The orc's neck snapped sideways with a wet crack and he dropped.
The second clone hit the scarred general in the solar plexus. The orc's eyes rolled back and he collapsed like a puppet with cut strings, blood leaking from his nose and ears.
The third clone drove a fist into the side of the general with the enchanted sword. The impact shattered the orc's spine. He fell sideways, limbs twitching uselessly.
Two seconds, four Corrupted generals down, and close enough to death. They would be treated soon enough.
Sael turned toward Barek.
The orc lord was still swaying and pale, but his eyes had focused now. He saw Sael approaching and what had just happened to his generals. His hand moved toward his weapon.
Sael took a step forward, raising his hand to touch and oh... the elf moved.
One moment he'd been on his hands and knees. The next he was beside Barek, one hand on the orc lord's arm. Then they were gone.
To the naked and untrained eye, it might as well have been some form of teleportation. But the elf was running. Sael could track the displacement of air, the spray of mud from their passage. The elf was carrying Barek, moving at speeds that should have torn a normal person apart.
Thirty meters away now. Fifty. Seventy.
"[Detainment]."
A sphere of yellow energy erupted around them seven meters from where they'd started. The elf slammed into the interior wall at full speed and bounced backward, tumbling with Barek in a tangle of limbs. They hit the ground hard, the orc lord's armor scraping against the inside of the sphere.
The elf tried to stand and run again, but there was nowhere to go. The prison held.
Sael dismissed his clones with a thought. They melted back into his shadow without ceremony.
Then his gaze drifted past the sphere and the army of incapacitated orcs, toward the horizon. Where Enariel would be, three hundred kilometers distant. A faint orange glow lit the edge of the sky in that direction. Fire, rising in columns that were visible even at this distance, even through the rain.
Sael had intended to bring the whole army with him. That had been the plan: teleport everyone at once, deal with them all together in a controlled environment where he could minimize casualties and keep the violence contained. It was a rather clean and efficient way of dealing with this, but after giving it more thought, he concluded Oz had perhaps needed this.
Sael had seen it building for days now. The frustration, the rage. The way the dragon's already minimal patience had worn down to nothing, ground away by the indignity of his transformation, and the helplessness of being trapped in a form so far beneath what he truly was. Oz had been a coiled spring, and every interaction, every moment spent as a chicken instead of a dragon, had wound that spring tighter.
He'd needed an outlet, Sael supposed. So he had... let him have it.
He hadn't said anything or even made the decision consciously. But when he'd activated the teleportation field, he'd been aware of its radius and known exactly how many warriors would be caught in it as well as how many would be left behind. He'd made the sphere exactly large enough to take Barek, the generals, the elf, and most of the army. Not all of it.
A calculated choice, made in the span of a heartbeat.
Was it the right one?
Sael watched the distant flames climb higher. The now level 1000 dragon was powerful even in that diminished form. More than powerful enough to kill a hundred unprepared warriors. And Oz was not known for his mercy.
Sael trusted him anyway. Perhaps the dragon wouldn't simply slaughter them all for sport, and would treat it as a fight, not a massacre. He hoped that trust wasn't misplaced.
The warriors here with him—vomiting, barely conscious, completely helpless—were probably the lucky ones. If he was being honest with himself, they really were.
Warriors were rising.
They were not that many, as masses of soldiers were still retching or unconscious. But about... thirty-four figures were pulling themselves to their feet with movements that looked wrong. It was jerky, uncoordinated, like... like puppets being yanked upright by invisible strings.
Sael's eyes narrowed as he focused on them.
Black and purple veins crawled across their exposed skin, spreading from their necks up to their faces, down their arms. The discoloration pulsed faintly in rhythm with their heartbeats, visible even through the rain. Their eyes had taken on a glassy quality, pupils dilated so wide the iris was barely visible.
Some of the early signs of Corruption.
These weren't ordinary soldiers either. Their armor was better crafted than the standard infantry, marked with insignias that suggested rank; lieutenants perhaps, or elite guards. He'd hoped the Corruption had only touched Barek and his four generals, but this made sense, he supposed. An orc lord would Corrupt his most trusted warriors first, the ones closest to him in both proximity and power.
They moved toward him in unison, walking with that same jerky, wrong gait. There were no weapons drawn nor battle cries, they seemed to be still heavily affected by the teleportation.
Sael raised both hands and swiftly cast [Lightning Bolt].
Twin arcs of electricity erupted from his palms, brilliant white-blue against the gray storm. The bolts didn't travel in straight lines, they twisted and forked, following the path of least resistance through the rain-saturated air. The first bolt hit the leading orc square in the chest. His body seized, back arching, muscles locking as raw energy coursed through him. The smell of burning flesh and ozone filled the air.
But Sael wasn't done.
The rain was still falling in sheets, heavy drops that soaked everything, that connected earth to sky in countless falling threads. Each droplet was a conductor. Each one was a path.
He pushed more mana into the spell, spreading it. The electricity didn't stop at the first orc. It leaped from his convulsing body to the nearest raindrop, following the water's natural conductivity. From that drop to the next. And the next.
The bolts splintered into dozens of smaller arcs, each one finding its own path through the falling rain. White-blue light spiderwebbed across the air, jumping from droplet to droplet in a cascading chain reaction. The pattern spread outward from Sael in an expanding web of electricity, each arc seeking the moisture on the Corrupted orcs' skin, their soaked armor, the puddles forming at their feet.
Soon, all thirty-four orcs seized simultaneously as the electricity found them. Their bodies went rigid, muscles contracting so violently that several warriors lifted off the ground for a split second. Backs arched at impossible angles. Jaws clenched tight enough that teeth cracked. Arms snapped to their sides, fingers splayed wide, every muscle fiber firing at once.
The lightning sustained for three full seconds, then Sael closed his fists and cut the flow of mana.
The electricity died instantly. The glowing web of energy vanished, leaving only the normal gray rain and the afterimages burned into the retinas of anyone who'd been watching.
The orcs hit the ground within moments of each other, crashing into mud and pooling water. None of them moved beyond the occasional involuntary twitch, residual nerve impulses firing randomly as their bodies tried to remember how to function. Steam rose from their prone forms, mixing with the rain.
They were alive, Sael could hear their heartbeats, erratic and weak but present. He lowered his hands, and looked at Barek, finally.
It wasn't working of course, but he kept trying anyway.
The elf had pulled himself upright. He'd wiped most of the vomit from his robes, though the stains remained. His hair was still plastered to his face with rain and sweat, but his eyes were clear now, and they were looking directly at Sael.
Sael walked toward the sphere. His boots splashed through puddles, the rain still hammering down around him. The unconscious warriors and the retching soldiers remained where they'd fallen. He paid them no mind.
When he was close enough that normal conversation would carry through the barrier, he stopped.
"Who are you?"
The elf's lips moved, but no sound came out. He touched the barrier from the inside, and purple veins immediately crawled across the yellow energy where his fingers made contact. The [Detainment] sphere flickered.
Then the elf began to change.
It started with his hands. The fingers elongated, joints popping audibly as bones shifted beneath skin. His palms widened, tendons standing out in sharp relief before sinking back down into flesh that was suddenly too thick.
His torso swelled. The robes stretched tight across his chest, then tore as his ribcage expanded outward with wet cracking sounds. His shoulders broadened, muscles bunching and reforming, growing denser and larger with each passing second.
The transformation spread upward. His neck thickened, veins bulging black and purple across the surface. His jaw extended forward, the bone restructuring with grinding pops. His eyes went wide, then wider, the pupils dilating until only thin rings of iris remained visible around pools of absolute black.
Purple-black corruption seeped from his pores like sweat. It gathered in the creases of his distorting skin, dripped from his fingertips, pooled at his feet inside the sphere. The air inside the prison became thick with it, visible as a dark haze.
Yet, the creature kept growing.
Two meters tall at first, then three. His level was going up from the 500s, to the 600s, and up, and higher still, while his back bent as he ran out of room, hunching over inside the sphere that had been more than adequate for a normal-sized person. Four meters now— no, five now. His spine curved at an unnatural angle, vertebrae pressing against skin that had taken on a mottled gray-purple color.
This was stage six and beyond.
Even further than Aldric Eryndor, who had been hours or days away from the same state had Sael not found and ended him. The elf's form continued to distort as extra joints appeared in his arms. His fingers split at the tips, bifurcating into clawed appendages and his face collapsed inward then rebuilt itself wrong, features sliding across bone like melting wax before solidifying into something that hurt to look at.
Sael was certain Aldric had not worked alone. The shadows that had come to rescue him from Oz's dungeons had been proof enough of that, and so, he thought perhaps he could further understand the scale of this potential cataclysm through this elf.
The creature that had been Theranel opened its mouth and screamed.
The sound was multiple voices layered over each other, pitches that didn't belong together, harmonics that could make a person's teeth ache. The scream built in intensity, and with it came power. Corrupted energy exploded outward from the creature's body in concentric waves of purple force.
The [Detainment] sphere held for three seconds, then it shattered.
The yellow barrier fractured like glass, shards of magical energy dissolving into nothing as they fell.
Barek had been thrown to the ground when the transformation started. Now he scrambled backward on his hands and knees, staring up at the thing towering over him. The orc lord's face had gone past pale into something approaching gray.
"What are you doing?" His voice cracked. "Theranel, what—"
The creature's head rotated toward him and when it spoke, the multiple voices layered into words.
"We need to escape him!" He said. "We cannot fight him!"
Even the voice was affected. The elf—or what remained of the elf's consciousness buried somewhere in that mass of corrupted flesh—was still in there. But he wasn't alone. Other presences spoke with him, through him, countless voices compressed into one distorted whole.
"We run, NOW!"
The creature lurched into motion. Despite its size and the way its body bent wrong, it moved. One hand grabbed Barek by the chest plate, lifting the orc lord like he weighed nothing. Then it ran.
The speed was similar to before, that same reality-defying acceleration that turned running into something closer to teleportation for anyone watching without the senses to track it. Mud rose fast from where its feet touched ground and the rain parted around its bulk like a bow wave.
They were already twenty meters away when Sael appeared thirty meters away in front of them.
The purple energy flared around Barek's hands and his face twisted with concentration, veins standing out on his temples as he channeled everything he had left. The esper abilities manifested as a crushing wave of telekinetic force, invisible but undeniable, aimed directly at Sael with enough pressure to flatten stone.
At the same instant, the creature's free hand swept forward. Corrupted mana gathered in its palm, condensing into a spell that formed in a fraction of a second. Magic erupted outward in a lance of concentrated force, the air screaming as it tore through the rain.
... But the spell dissolved three meters from Sael's position as he cancelled it and the telekinetic pressure hit him a heartbeat later.
It literally crashed against him like a wave against a cliff, and for a brief moment the rain around him parted, pushed aside by the sheer weight of Barek's power. The ground beneath Sael's feet cracked, spiderweb fissures spreading outward from where he stood.
But he himself remained exactly where he was, expression unchanged.
The creature's multiple voices screamed in frustration and desperation and, for some odd and rather stupid decision, ran straight at him.
Sael raised one hand, palm forward, and a barrier materialized in the air and the creature hit it at full speed.
The first thing that registered was the thunderous crack that rolled across the wasteland like an explosion, loud enough to drown out even the storm. Then came the shockwave. The ground bucked and heaved, mud fountaining upward in a spray that reached ten meters high. The barrier held, but the earth beneath it didn't. A crater formed around the point of impact, the terrain collapsing as kinetic energy had nowhere else to go.
The creature and Barek were thrown backward with equal violence. They tumbled through the air, limbs flailing, before crashing into the mud fifty meters away. The creature's massive body carved a trench through the ground as it skidded to a stop and Barek was thrown clear, rolling several times before coming to rest face-down in a puddle.
Sael lowered his hand and the barrier vanished.
He stood at the edge of the newly formed crater, completely dry beneath the personal ward that kept the rain from touching him. The ground around him was devastated, but he looked as though he hadn't moved at all.
Which, technically, he hadn't.
The creature struggled to rise. One of its arms bent at a new angle that hadn't been there before. Purple-black blood oozed from splits in its hide where the impact had torn flesh and its breathing came in ragged gasps.
Barek groaned and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. His armor was dented, his face bloody from where he'd hit the ground. He looked like he wanted to be anywhere else.
"You will not pass." Said Sael.
It began to tremble.