Hunh.
Viceroy can Hold, somewhat against the Choir…
Albeit by focusing on one thing or another, apparently…
Which does rather seem like a mixed blessing.
Yes he can withstand it, potentially indefinitely if his focus can hold long enough for him to acclimate to it but…
If he cannot…
And of course while in theory his voice joining the Choir would reinforce the humanity of Ari and the Master…
Language barrier.
But I suppose some things I can puzzle out.
The voices got louder when he had the sword because the Spirits didn't care for him being armed for obvious reasons. They were getting agitated.
As for his men they might have been exposed to the drugs. Which will be a most unpleasant surprise…
I feel like I might have lost track of some of the politics but my basic guess is that he had a choice between accepting that declaration against the throne or rejecting it in favor of maintaining his 'both sides' stance but uhh…
Between the Preistess and the Royal inspector, and the implications of the timing…
Yeah I can see him being peeved about that.
Murky depths beckoned as I sank down to the impenetrable, all-encompassing darkness below, while the shimmering, alluring light of the water surface above grew ever so distant, lazy waves moving almost as in slow motion, without care for me.
I tried to stop my descent, paddle the water, reach up for something, anything, to save myself.
There was nothing I could do.
I couldn't even yank the heavy chains that dragged me down to the depths.
Alone, abandoned, buried in the waves.
Completely paralyzed, robbed of any agency, I could only watch as everything went dim, and I couldn't hold my breath anymore…
I wanted to scream.
There was no sound under the water.
I wasn't sure if I did scream when I woke up in our bed, gasping for breath, with Tama leaning over me, a concerned look in her enchantingly golden eyes. My heart was pounding, threatening to jump from my chest.
It was that nightmare again.
"Master?"
Vixen asked, her head tilted, fox ears twitched slightly.
"Master? Master?" Narita was over me, and soon Miwah, and others did, but they couldn't fight the visions that assaulted me in my sleep, only to soothe me afterwards I woke up with fright.
"It's nothing." I said, looking at the ceiling, and then into Tama's eyes as she leaned above me and I pulled her down to embrace. The soft, silky fur and the soothing bodily warmth against my skin calmed me down fast, and I breathed out with relief.
The vixen's body wasn't as heavy as the crushing weight of the sea in my dreams. I could be buried in her fur, or Miwah's, or Narita's, for hours, feeling that it was how I should have spent my time.
"It was just a nightmare again." I said, even if they already likely knew, sharing a kiss with Tama. Her rough tongue explored my mouth, and for the moment I forgot how it even worked, considering her anthropomorphic fox shape. I did the same for Miwah and Narita.
No level of intimacy felt out of place for them now, even if they were the anthropomorphic wolf and the rat with horns, respectively. They were mine, and that's how a female of my kind looked, a treacherous part of my memory recalling the Earth suggesting otherwise.
I was always meant to be with them. They were part of me, and I was part of them. They were mine as I was theirs; I thought as the telepathic connection we shared flared up, and I could start sensing their mind atop their plushy furred, voluptuous bodies.
This reminded me of my dreams. They threatened to take them away.
They tried to separate us, me from my furry menagerie, threatening me with the suffocating loneliness in the dark water's grave. It made me shudder.
I looked away, enjoying my mates' body heat, but thinking of different, less pleasant things.
Nightmares, in themselves, were quite understandable following the stressful events of the day, even ones considerably more mundane than those of the previous few days had been, and I came to understand that dreams were - in my case - something more than the method for a brain to rehearse the emotion in some vague preparation for some future struggle.
Link. Connection. Network. I didn't have a proper network. They connected me to the host, the nebulous link that all of my girls shared, allowing me to see through their eyes as I slept, and observe the various broods as they worked together in the chaotic yet beautiful symphony.
I never understood the purpose of the visions, if there were any, and never thought I would be distressed if they went away.
Yet they did.
The recurring dreams that plagued my sleep tonight were the exact opposite.
A forceful disconnect.
An absence of something meaningful, a missing piece that struggled to rejoin to the greater whole.
They were filled with emptiness, loneliness, silence, drowning, the same sequence playing again and again each time I closed my eyes.
Three times I fell asleep, lulled to rest because my precious girls were at my side. Three times I woke up from the night terrors, where the connection was lost, and they were gone.
They were there each time I awoke.
Yet, something in those dreams, buried in the depths, returned when I drifted out to sleep, mysterious and foreboding. It made me wonder if this was what my 'Eviscerators' felt whilst under the effect of the sealing spell, and why they had been so overjoyed to be linked with us again.
"We provide you more…distractions, Master?" Tama teased me before I kissed her again, which she eagerly welcomed. I did too, though I couldn't help myself but to think about the recurring night terrors, and the reason behind them.
Considering one of the mystical scrolls has been, quite literally, buried in the water grave, thrown into the ocean, it wasn't hard to imagine the certain thematic connection, but otherwise, it felt completely random.
Why would I get the dreams now?
What was the purpose of this madness?
Why did the visions decide to chase me when I decided to rest?
Back in our bedroom inside the fortress, with all the mates present, with Miwah, Narita, Mai and Ekaterina, there was more than enough temptation present. There was something reassuring about the full room, and the bed crowded with the bodies to snuggle to. It felt right, somehow, even more so now than even the night before.
I, however, still extracted myself from the tumble, and sat on the bed, looking at my pale white bear lady.
Ekaterina was the one who didn't sleep on the bed. It wasn't large enough for all of us, so she laid down spread on the wooden floor, snoozing, uncaring about the world. The large ursine lady didn't care if I slept lying on her for the warmth it provided, and Mai used the opportunity to snuggle atop of her, but I opted. Not only could it be demeaning for her, she could easily crush me if she rolled in her sleep, even though Mai didn't have such concerns.
"I'll have to make you something to ease your sleep, Master." my scaly companion remarked, drowsily, laid atop of Ekaterina as she was the large teddy-bear. In a way, she was.
"You could always keep close to us, Master." The bear-lady mumbled. Obviously she didn't mind curling up with Mai when she wasn't cuddling with me.
They seem comfortable with each other; I thought.
"Master?" Tama purred in her husky, come-hither voice of deep desire. Temptress, she was, but I couldn't take on the offer.
"I don't think it's the right time now," I decided, fighting the exhaustion of the restless night. "Work first, pleasure after."
If the accursed nightmares were somewhere linked to the relic scroll, calling to me like some magical beacon, demanding to be retrieved, then I wouldn't get much rest, even if I did manage to fall asleep, and I felt tired from the other, carnal pleasures.
My head throbbed, making me reconsider whether I would take up the offer of the life-energy transfusion from Narita, but decided to postpone it, for now.
It was already morning, noon even, considering how bright the light that slipped through the grating of the window was, and I couldn't allow myself to laze around in the bed while the rest of the horde toiled away.
I wondered what they were up to while I was out, though.
My furry menagerie could be quite noisy, for the species that communicate telepathically, they weren't exactly quiet to begin with, not to mention that even thinking about our shared link had immediately filled my head with the vague, distant chitchat, as the hundreds of my girls went through their day. The link broadened. It wasn't the simple presence of the closest ones, but the full fury of the host, one that would normally threaten me with the splitting headaches.
I still didn't know how to control, shut-down, or otherwise utilise this ability - it came and went as it pleased - but it became something paradoxically more assuring than threatening after this night.
Now they were welcomed. Thousands of whispers were preferred to the icy darkness of the soundless sea from the visions - the reminder of it made me shudder even now that I was awake.
I could sense their eagerness, even now, from the distance, and I was nearly certain some of those voices rambling on and on were calling on just to show what they did.
My current headache, and heavy eyelids, came more from the poor sleep, rather from the sudden bursts of soundless communication buzzing through my mind, like a mental radio chatter.
I listened to them, ignoring Tama for a while, even though I couldn't escape the silvery vixen's thoughts, even if I didn't listen to her spoken words. She was, once again, being herself.
We should prepare for the next day, the next challenge.
Paradoxically, hearing voices in my head made me feel a little more sane, in contrast to the terrifying silence and emptiness in those dreams. It made me wonder whether the rest of the host, a thousand minds constantly yelling at each other in the ceaseless cacophony of the mental communication, fear being alone the most.
Was the madness the point when you hear the voices, or the point when you dream they come away? Did such a concept even apply to the massive network of minds used to the constant, uninterrupted link to every member of their horde?
I stood out of the bed, couldn't help myself but to give a kiss to each of my girls. We were together again, and that was what mattered right now.
Mai looked sleek and slim as ever, her scales soft to touch. I wasn't sure what the hassle about the eggs was. Her, dispatching her sisters to look for the location of the nest seemed rather a waste of resources, but I wasn't going to question her instincts.
What the rest of the horde was even doing right now?
I considered asking, but before I had a chance, more girls burst into the room - it was quite common that Tama, and others, made their little kin from the respective breeds into their personal handmaidens exactly for the opportunities like this one. There were two of each - 'Purifiers, Eviscerators, Corruptors' and 'Defilers' - eager to bring clothes, brush Tama's fluffy tails, even wash us, or bring us food. Only 'Ravagers' weren't present. Their hulking stature wasn't quite fit for this, though it doesn't seem to matter, as the other kins have no issue with tending to Ekaterina, who just mumbled when I smooched her.
When I was wondering about the service, I got my personal 'Displacer' instead.
The little blueish cat-girl was all over me, which, unlike my other, more sensible followers, decided to come through the window, blinding me with the sudden light as the shutters were thrown aside.
The 'Displacers' were felines. They could climb atop of their quite powerful teleportation, but it doesn't mean they shouldn't use doors. At least she didn't decide to drag me through the rift.
She still knocked me down on the bed.
While the others were dragging the wooden tub in, as a collective endeavour, the unnamed 'Displacer' being the anthropomorphic cat, bathing wasn't her favourite pastime either, I suppose.
Grooming me, however, seemed to be fair game, and though she was handed the rag and the water, the feline did consider using her tongue on my face, or neck, a valid choice. I didn't fight it.
"She might need special treatment, Master. I couldn't fill this world with your progeny alone…" Tama suggested, whispering in my ear, while the 'Displacer' - still unnamed to this point - had decided I needed help to dress, and crawled on my lap.
She seemed to obtain the new outfit for herself, perhaps to not distract me far too much, and perhaps to do so, and I wasn't asking where they got the new tunic and trousers for me.
At least, it was a fabric. Locally produced, and likely stolen, but still very conventional for the native standard, even though the new one seemed to be silk, rather than linen or hemp cloth, and thus, likely more expensive than the previous one.
It was going to be embarrassing, if it was borrowed from the Viceroy's own wardrobe, but our version seems to be considerably worse, appearance wise.
I wasn't quite certain what to think about what the flesh-shaping bats considered normal.
Sparing Narita a glance as her two kin helped her with the morning grooming, and the suit of armour that prepared for her once she was clean - a biological outfit crafted for her by the 'Fleshspeakers' was a construct of the flesh, and chitin, bone and skin came with two extra scythe-shaped limbs, which weren't there before. An upgrade.
My rat-girls were gorgeous, big ones or small, and the armour was made to copy her body, but it was perhaps a little creepy. It could even stand and move, ready to accept the wearer, with small, nearly inconspicuous twitches that confirmed it was still alive.
Was this getting out of hand?
Perhaps I should check with Kirke - she was much better in shaping the plants than the 'Corruptors' ever were - and wouldn't have this Hawaiian dancer mock-up costume that most of her scaly cousins wore, complete with the wreaths of flowers that matched their florist-inspired names.
"Master." The voice of Arke disturbed my thoughts - it was far too clear for the muffled speech of the telepathic host network that was nothing but a hum - and I looked around.
When the 'Fleshspeakers' absorbed the fruit of the arcane and became 'Overseers', they grew considerably, with their massive wings that allowed them to fly. As far I could tell, their flight was natural, but their crafts…
"....we finished the translation of the agreement we signed to confirm"
My eyes scanned the room, failing to see the oversized chiropteran girl where I expected it, lurking on the balcony behind the window. Instead, her voice came from the bug - or rough appropriation of one - resembling more of a brain mounted on a chassis of insectoid legs, with far too many glowing eyes skittering around the mini-balcony and the room.
It was getting out of hand.
"Is there a problem?" I asked, watching the strange brain-creature on spider legs swinging up and down in the impatient motion, while its numerous eyes twitched and blinked. Some of those eyes were borrowed from the humans, I could tell, but not all.
"Our new translator should be able to be sent with our cousins, Masters. They would speak and read for them." It - or she, since it was Arke leading it as the puppet from a distance, I couldn't quite certain - said, and the little abomination made the circle, hopping around on its pointed, insectoid legs:
"See, Master! We could control these better than our normal carriers! And they have 360 degree vision, with the ability to…"
Arke introduced her newest crime against biology with the enthusiasm of a sales agent, introducing the newest marketing toy, while her creation, which I was certain was once a part of the human fused together with magic, jumped around. It was creepy.
I couldn't quite feel it as I felt the presence of my girls, even if I knew it had an intellect of its own, subsumed by the 'Fleshspeakers'.
"No, I meant the document, Arke." I said, trying to focus back.
The Viceroy was quite upset by the document made without his approval, or even knowledge, and was, as I later found out, already legally binding when he regained consciousness. There was no way for us to know that stamps did, in fact, act like a signature, making the entire decree official, even if it was obvious in hindsight.
The Viceroy's anger about this seemed justified, but made his subsequent agreement with the terms suspicious. I have been, however, tired, and the waning light yesterday hastened my decision. Until my girls figured out artificial lighting, we would have to operate on the sunrise to sundown basic.
"Well?"
"I don't think so, Master." She said, "If I understand it correctly, we, the Spirits, are the absolute authority in this province, their government no longer has a say, and he pledged his assistance, and the resources of the province, to our campaign, as long as he lives."
It doesn't seem to be an agreement he should be excited about.
"You are their god, Master." Tama teased as she sprawled on the bed, half-dressed now. She wasn't making it easy for her little sisters, but the ordinary, small 'Purifiers' were playful enough.
"For Master!" giggled the foxes.
"For Master!" The little kitty seconded, in her girlish tone, and adjusted by the new outfit, uncertain if she wanted to put in on, or away.
"We are not gods, Tama." I said and directed the rest of the questions towards the brain-bug, which now served as the equivalent of the radio, able to reproduce Arke's nice, youthful, feminine voice perfectly, to the point it somehow hit the uncanny valley since the 'drone' wasn't even remotely her.
"Spirits? What do you mean by spirits?"
"This is how the humans call us, Master." Arke said, by her proxy.
"Spirits." I repeated. It wasn't quite a term I liked - I didn't certainly feel like a ghost despite the exhaustion of the night. "Really?"
"Yes, Master."
I would have to accept it, even though the implication was we would have to officially name ourselves a kingdom, a tribe, an empire, for the sake of similar documents, made me rather uneasy, more than the newest designer-beast by the 'Fleshspeaker'.
What was the proper name for our horde? A tribe? A clan? We were more than family than anything else, I thought, and the whispers within my mind confirmed. I shook my head, and asked instead,
"And the city?"
"Situation is under our control, Master." Arke said, "We captured most of the humans, and returned the docile humans to their homes. San Hyun-Ki would inform them of our takeover."
Oh, the Sage name. The scribe we made mayor.
"Brave still wanted to show you how she improves the mining village, Master. She successfully made humans more docile." Miwah reminded me. It was rather unfortunate to send Brave, and Helmy, back to their tasks yesterday, but I needed them out there, rather than keep me company. As far as I could tell, there wasn't any more killing out in the mountains, and the villagers continued. It was just this city.
"Inspection? Visit, perhaps?"
Not a bad idea, though not at the top of my priorities, assuming the more trouble would keep cropping up. It, however, reminded me of something else. They told me about feeding the mining town earlier.
"Does this city have some food supplies?"
"Yes, Master. We already extracted the information where granaries are."
"Fine. Make sure humans are fed." I said, "I don't want the humans to starve out."
"Lily took over the food distribution, Master."
Good, I thought. We could grow food faster than humans would. The 'Corruptors' magic skipped the many growing processes with their magic, but I suspected we would have to start refilling the granaries we were emptying with the fruits we grow.
"Excellent. Assure them we won't take more from them right now…"
Which would be a problem since some of my girls already helped themselves to some items or clothes.
After all, I had one, a silky bright blue one, light, multilayered, but without the excessive embroidery. The sleeves were far too big for my liking, but aside from the bright colour, it doesn't feel exorbitant, with material most likely making up most of its price.
Perhaps I should ask Viceroy. I didn't want to wear anything that had their national colour, or their coat of arms, or symbols of their rulers, for obvious reasons, but the current problem was not this.
"If they complain about what was …" I blurted out, I didn't want to say looted "...procured from their houses, you could offer them money as compensation. We still have a chest of coins…"
Bloody money that used to be some bandit hoard, and the content of some looted shrine - they never leave our possession, like the curse. A fairy's gold, or rather spirit's.
"... we could try to pay for goods, commission crafting." I mused, "And since we extracted the language, we know how much things cost, don't we?"
"Yes, Master."
I didn't let myself be distracted from my current train of thoughts, even if I felt distracted by the glances at my girls, some of them in various states of undress as their respective 'handmaidens' dressed them up.
An organic outfit 'Fleshspeakers' fashioned for Narita enclosed her sleek, soft, white-furred body. She must be terrifying for humans to behold. After all, she took this fortress almost herself, and could power the biological monstrosity that the bat-girls shaped with her own power.
She was also gorgeous, and mine.
I hesitated to call them 'my brides', though, even though it was what the stupid, gamified interface called them. Brides. Except for Tama, my new 'Broodmother'. I still wasn't certain what to think about the title itself, as only change seem to be a generous fluffy tail, and a voluptuous figure
"Yes-yes, Master." Narita whispered enthusiastically, even though it was rather a reply to the thought of 'bride' rather than reply to anything I said. Her mind touched mine.
I tried to focus on something professional.
"...then query Hyun-Ki about how the city supplied itself." I said, "Any way we could contact the surrounding villages and restore shipments to the city?"
While I wasn't exactly familiarised with the entire logistic chain, if there was any, I knew for sure that the cities were always trading hubs, or later industry hubs, rather than producers of the necessities.
All those fields we had seen in the distance were not serviced by the city. There were hamlets or homesteads taking care of it.
Arke spaced out - I could tell, because her 'drone' froze - and then continued:
"I could speak with a human the same I speak with you right now, Master." "We will inform them."
"No. Not like this." I decided, "Ask Hyun-Ki if he could travel there personally…"
I was certain that humans would not appreciate the invention, it was worse than the usual 'zombie' version the 'Fleshspeakers' controlled to translate. However, then I realised, I couldn't just throw the Sage - or rather new Magistrate - to the portal.
We killed the merchant that way, and we weren't any closer to understanding what makes certain people immune to the side effect.
"Belay that." I said, "We could teleport only Ari. And Lady's priests, but they aren't very good messengers, or collected enough. Let Hyun-Ki write a letter to them and ask her to deliver it."
"Yes, Master."
There was probably only so much we could do right now. I knew I would be over-tasking Ari to the face of all, or at least most, human, but I didn't have any choice. I couldn't afford to experiment with the 'Displacer' rifts and their effect on natives, and naturally reasonable humans were rare and far between.
What was the Lady doing, anyway?
I could almost expect the self-professed dragon goddess to jump-scare me by materialising her dragon's head into my bedroom. Alas, she did not. She did not even reply.
"Lady?" I asked, tentatively, then followed by: "Lady is still out, isn't she?"
"Yes, Master."
I wonder whether the celestial dragon dreamed about the murky depths.
Be as it may, we might be forced to reach the relic without her, and find our answers the hard way, possibly even use its powers to wake the 'Lady' if it was even possible. I wasn't entirely certain how those artefacts even worked. The 'Oskar' - as I dubbed their creator - didn't leave any user manual behind.
For a while, I stared out of the window, to the clear sky behind.
I didn't sense the Serpent even, Ari's parasitic passenger wasn't focusing on us either.
A 'Mutator' buzzed around. I could catch the glimpse of her as I stared through the window.
Yet, I could not see through the eyes of my other girls, something 'Alphas' or even 'Brides' probably could routinely, or was not sure how to trigger. Better not know, it may be distracting.
"Any success in reaching the buried scroll?" I asked, turning my attention towards the brain-bug.
"Rye is ready to present you with some designs of their own, Master."
"Didn't she try without me?"
"She did, Master." was the answer, "But we reached the deep chasm underwater, and couldn't find a way to reliably lift things up."
"Oh…" I said, "It doesn't matter, I can check."
I wouldn't be able to design a submarine, I wasn't quite sure how, and the very simple design like the diving bells probably didn't work that well under the circumstances.
An idea of the scuba-tank, albeit not too outlandish, considering the 'Fleshspeakers' could make living armour, and the thought of the human brain on the spider legs as radio, would not help us go up after we go down.
The entire idea of going down made me uncomfortable - the dream, albeit seen perhaps four times, was giving me flashbacks. Just like in my nightmare, sinking was easy. Going up was going to be a problem.
"I'll visit her on the beach." I decided and looked at the rest of my companions, who would be hopefully ready to depart. Some were, even though some didn't put much effort into it.
As I stepped to the door, I had only Miwah and Narita on my side, while others were on the rather slow and lazy morning. It was almost comical to watch Ekaterina, to pick Mai and put her on the bed.
My stomach growled.
"A breakfast on the beach?" I offered,
"A love-making on the beach after, Master?" Tama proposed as the counteroffer
"I…" I was ready to refuse her. Afterall,l there were far too many serious things to worry about, but it seems that Tama's needs seem to be endless in this regard.
"I'll think about it, Tama." I replied, resigned, and looked at Miwah and Narita next to me.
They didn't say anything, but considering our nights together, they didn't seem to mind at all. With a nod, and a smile, I was about to simply stand up and head towards the door, but I didn't get far without the 'Displacer' hanging close.
"For! Master!" She insisted, hugging me, holding me down. Miwah, fully dressed up, ready to go, doesn't seem to mind the extra attention.
Tama was about to say something, but this time, it was ordinary 'Purifiers' that let out rather immature giggles, while handling the 'Broodmother' as the lady, probably for their own amusement as well as Tama's.
Even though Ekaterina was ready quite quickly, her dressing up was a matter of willing the armour into existence, Mai and Tama weren't. In fact, Mai looked like she was half-asleep.
I was not in a rush, but there was no reason to be followed by the 'court' everywhere.
"For Master!" The 'Displacer' offered - I should really name this one.
"Fine." I decided, "Portal me to the beach where I can see Rye."
The moment after, I was falling through the ever-shifting void towards the destination, accompanied by the little feline. It wasn't as dizzying as it used to be, even if the very ideas of up, down, left, right, far or close, ceased to exist the moment the crack in the space swallowed us, but it still forced me to close my eyes.
When I opened them, I was almost worried I would end up on some cliff, or worse, up in the air, but no.
Miwah, who was pulled through the rift, steadied me, while the little kitten proudly announced our arrival with the usual meow:
"For Master!"
She was proud she could pull multiple people through. I could sense it, but my attention was captured by something else.
A crab.
The crab, perhaps, considering the creature wasn't a small crustacean one would find on the coast, but a massive monster as large as an eight-wheeler truck, barely hidden within the mass of the otherworldly greenery that struggled to deserve the title of 'hiding spot'. Pastel green wines barely worked as the camouflage nets for the orange-brown abomination.
It scrambled on its eight massive legs, rising up as much as its legs sank into the sand under the prodigious mass, lifting its pincer, the design of which was purposefully changed to a more threatening shape as the oversized chitinous, three-pronged manipulators.
I was almost certain that no matter of natural evolution could make a crustacean so large, but I considered zombified-humans, biological armour, roach-hounds, spider-horse, and, most recently, the brain on legs, it was quite obvious that 'Fleshspeakers' and their powers considered a law of nature nothing more than an offensive suggestion easily ignored.
The plants, equally outlandish, with their toxic colours, shook as the mega-crab made a few hulking steps forward, wading through the sand with impressive speed, considering its weight.
So this was what Rye was making.
There was some rhyme and reason to it: The crabs could breathe underwater. Her mutated version had a manipulator, an armoured exoskeleton for deep-diving, strange multiple eyes for a dark environment, and probably a few other features I couldn't recognize.
How much biomass it must have consumed to grow so much over a single night, I had to wonder.
It was probably getting out of hand, indeed.
The clapping of wings flapping above me heralded the arrival of Rye, the new 'Overseer' in question. She landed atop of the absurdly oversized crab. The creature's upper shell was shaped a little like a throne, and the bat-girl, spreading her wings as she sat on its back-rest, tried to give the best impression of the imperial eagle.
"For Master!" She announced as the behemoth stopped.
I paused, wondering about what she had said.
Sometimes I had to wonder if my recently gained ability to understand their telepathic messages even worked properly. I blinked.
"What do you mean by that? You made more than one?"
…
Hunh.
Giant Crabs.
Okay then.
That should work assuming the scroll doesn't get crushed or torn assuming that's a problem/won't cause the scroll to warp or whatever they do when something tries to damage or destroy them.
There weren't many land-based animals that could challenge her pet mutant crab in the sheer size, mass and weight, perhaps except for an elephant, and the long extinct megafauna of the Mesozoic era when dinosaurs walked the Earth.
But even then, I doubted there were ever crustaceans this massive.
I was uncertain whether it was even biologically possible.
Yet Rye's creation lived, and walked, not only to the sides as the normal crab would but also forward and backward, subject to my bat-girl's every whim and wish, restricted only by the most difficult terrain the 'Corruptors' selected as their home away from home, to discourage the humans to even approach their dwellings hidden among the overgrown vegetation.
The natural obstacles, to hamper the advance of even the human supernaturally gifted 'elites', didn't work that well with giant Rye created.
The 'Overseer', however, doesn't seem to mind.
Her kin had previously shown the inexplicable tendency to turn humans into the mobile biological perch to carry them when they were tired or bored, but they soon realised it simply wasn't viable should the bat-girl get bigger and heavier.
The humanoids also weren't good at maintaining balance when something pressed down on their shoulders, no matter how much the magic twisted them.
I also tried to discourage the raids against the human settlement to capture the new future thralls. It was a horrible practice that would open its own can of worms, but our attempt to pacify the city made that point rather moot. The effect of 'Fleshspeaker' magic was irreversible, and there were now more 'drones' than ever before.
A mutant crab was a solution, in that regard.
Creating it, hopefully, harmed no human - at least, I hope it didn't - while the girls received a personal thrall they could control to carry them around.
I got the dubious privilege of the first ride, on Rye's insistence, seated on the appropriately reshaped part of the shell, while the former 'Fleshspeaker' - now 'Overseer' - sat behind me still giving a best impression of an imperial eagle insignia, albeit alive, and anthropomorphic bat shaped one.
It didn't matter that she could only vocalise 'For Master'. Her mind absolutely sang with the options the new species found here on the coast offered them in terms of material to reshape, soon to eclipse, the 'roach-hounds' Angela had created before.
I didn't have the heart to discourage her from further destroying the local ecosystem by introducing the new invasive species to it, but the damage was already done. The 'Corruptors' have only one night to turn a small secluded bay into the fairyland of thorns, unnatural leaves and impossible flowers.
The few 'roach-hounds' did lurk in the canopies, too.
There were 'Corruptors' too. They greeted me, unbothered by the twisted landscape they had their own part in creating.
Birds, however, disappeared. Not even a single seagull dared to croak.
Maybe the 'Purifiers' already ate all of them.
It was a strange feeling.
Eventually, we discovered that climbing wasn't the crab's forte, and the 'Warpstalker' had to be called to teleport us to a better vantage point, so the rest of the abominations against nature could be inspected.
In the end, it was I, and my 'personal Displacer' who got the ride, along with Rye herself, while the rest had to follow on foot.
There was a sizable contingent of 'Corruptors' and 'Purifiers' along with the odd 'Defiler' mixed among them, which was soon joined by Miwah, Narita and Tama, to be transported where the rest of the girls currently were - the human village.
Surprisingly, Tama didn't complain that she didn't get to sit up there with me.
At least, I thought she didn't, as we had moved closer to the village, and with it, closer to the relic burial spot beneath the sea, which distracted my senses. There was something out there.
The relic beneath the sea continued to call to me, and I wondered whether the disturbing dreams were indeed the result of the powerful aura it emitted, or was it the work of something or someone else?
I would never find out - only the 'Lady' knew better, and she didn't respond.
But maybe I was right in my assumption it worked as a signal, a beacon, which refused to go away once I was attuned to it.
I could only hope I could tune to a different frequency, as it was radio, but so joy so far - a strange sensation echoing within my head had no button to press, or knob to turn, to tune in and out. There was no shut down switch either.
The more I tried to turn the indescribable hum of the scroll's presence, the more I had to lean towards the never-ending choir of voices that compromised the host.
They had a lot to say, even before they got me to the place they wanted me to see. A thousand minds working together as one drowned even the sinister pulse of the long-forgotten artefact, and I listened.
To all of them.
It was preferable to the indescribable feeling that reminded me of the nightmares that plagued me tonight.
From the top of the hill overlooking the coastal terrace fields, I could see that all 'Fleshspeakers' I felt behind followed Rye's guidance and managed to tinker with the sea crustacean biology, creating their own version of the pincer menaces, even though theirs were considerably smaller.
Whether it was a sign that the flesh-shaping magic of the 'Overseer' was greatly enhanced by the regular 'Fleshspeakers', or it was a sign of rank, standing, power, or perhaps even ego, I couldn't tell. Maybe they just wanted to experiment which design was superior, considering the variation in colours and shapes.
The smallest of the mutant crabs, if one could call them that, were still larger than a dog, moss-coloured, and lurked within the harvested sections of the rice fields to terrify the human villagers to no end.
Some grew larger, some smaller, but all looked inherently unnatural.
The humans took them better than I would imagine, too.
The village down on the coast was intact, as far I could tell, and its inhabitants were out in the field, working to bring the harvest in. If they had any schedule, any plan, to start the gathering immediately after the blessings were given, they followed it without a hitch, seemingly unperturbed that anthropomorphic moths descended from the sky to bestow said blessings.
While giving both the girls and their pet abominations a wide berth, there was a distinctive lack of panicked scream and fire - whatever the original ritual was supposed to be, it certainly didn't involve my 'Mutators' - this settlement took our presence far better than was usual.
I must remember to commend Ari and the others for accomplishing their tasks so peacefully.
The carts were out on the dirt road, with piles of the rice plants to be later threshed and work continued, even if the crops were taller, more laden with seeds, than they had any right to naturally be.
I watched from a distance.
Normally, the natives were far more belligerent, far too defiant towards us, sometimes suicidally so, but those simply carried out their work without the need to be whipped to submission, even though I assumed the 'Fleshspeaker' could catch up to anyone who would try to flee.
Not that I necessarily wanted them to.
I was glad about it. None of all that rice was meant for us, anyway, and was no reason to levy them for the job.
Still, it made me even wonder whether the 'Fleshspeaker' were puppeteering the humans to do the work, but the fact some villagers jumped in surprise when they found the anthropomorphic moth inspecting the plants they brought in suggested they were still holding to their senses.
They did a lot of labour in the fields since yesterday as well.
Humans did, at least, while the 'Mutators' fed the crab-things with the strange, almost radioactive looking, algae forcibly grown inside the already cleared paddies for the sake of feeding the crab-things.
The stubs of the once-rice danced under the magic of my anthropomorphic moths, sparking a new, twisted life under the strange glow of verdant green, and sunny yellow, only to crystalize into the unnatural light blue plant colonies on the water that the abomination devoured.
What didn't go to the humans was processed in some other way, apparently?
It had a profound effect on the crustaceans, the algae they cultivated. There were some mutagenic properties to it, it seemed. A trick with the abnormal growth was interplay between the two breeds, applying their power to respective parts of the life they governed over. It was quite ingenious, even though I didn't quite understand how it worked, besides it was something inherently supernatural, magical in nature.
At least, my girls fed the things plants, not humans - the natural crabs were, as far I knew, scavenger carnivores - while those affected by the 'Fleshspeaker' magic were no longer subject to anything beyond the whims of my bat-girls.
I could even see one of my pretties reshaping it, forcing the flesh to dance at her will, causing abnormal growth when she decided that her creation needed some tweaking. A contact with the 'Fleshspeaker' clawed legs was enough.
Humans were, as far as I could tell, very careful to not get close, as the convulsing creature suddenly sprouted new limbs.
The only one unperturbed by the whole thing was Ari, seated in the shade of the oddly misshapen leafless tree that wasn't there one day before, and working on some embroidery.
She cared little about what the humans did, or whether the nearby 'Purifier' was perhaps a little too curious.
I was rather curious about the quite peculiar tree, massive, yet lacking the strange, obnoxious colours the 'Corruptors' gave to all the plants their magic touched.
It was dark and ominous, long branches catching the shadows upon the settlement beneath it as the sun remained high on the still clear skies
Did they make another tree of arcane? Was this one all used up? Was it the cost to make the mega-crab the precious glowing fruit?
Upon checking the 'overview', I found that the number of 'resources' hadn't dropped since yesterday, and I struggled to remember whether it wasn't even higher by one?
Maybe it was my imagination, and poor memory.
The number of 'drones' did rise, though whether my bat-girls used their magic to enthral more humans, or were counting their animal experiments, I didn't know.
I was about to ask Rye, but then I noticed Ari handing her handiwork - a bundle of cloth - to Kirke, and bowed. The moth girl took the item and unfolded her wings, buzzing towards us.
Another 'Mutator' joined her.
Two moth girls gently landed in front of us, or rather, before the mobile-crab-throne, and unfolded the cloth.
"My Master!" Kirke announced, "Ari prepared the flag for you!"
'A flag?" I asked, thoughtfully.
An idea of some legal identity for our group crossed my mind earlier, along with the flag and other fitting identifiers, but the constant fight for survival, along with the inability to meaningfully communicate with the natives, made the point rather moot, and even plan to design the flag, and commission it, simply didn't crystalize.
Perhaps I should be ashamed that someone else took the initiative.
The flag they had created was a black and white, patched together from the clean sheet of the cloth, and the embodied rather than painted or pressed image.
Instead of my symbols in the native language, one I couldn't read anyway, it was a stylized shadow play of the leafless, black tree, the intricate pattern of roots below reflected on the hollow branches above, some of which ended in some monster's head, like a mythical hydra.
I raised my gaze up from it to the black tree that now dominated the coastal village.
The actual tree didn't have the heads, but an intricate web of branches that almost resembled the root network upside down was unmistakably done there, in the three dimensions. A statue, albeit one that has been grown, rather than carved.
"It matches, Master." Kirke pointed out what I already noticed
We got the symbol then.
Ari was among the precious few friendly humans we had encountered so far, if not only a friendly one, and I consider it would be fitting for her to design the emblem that would symbolise our host from now on, in front of her countrymen. After all, it was they who we tried to impress with it.
Seated on my mobile throne, I stroke my chin, considering the image. The Serpent, the mysterious entity plaguing Ari's mind, was also there, was there, one tendril among the many roots spreading over, one of many heads of the proverbial hydra.
Strange.
"Master?" Kirke asked when I went silent for the moment, overthinking the symbolism,
"Thank you." I said, "We will use it from now on."
"Yes, Master."
"Were there any problems with humans?" I asked, re-focusing on the village, still blissfully ignorant of our presence, dodging the 'Fleshspeakers' abominable creations, along with the attempts to re-utilize what they left behind.
"No, Master. They will follow your light." Kirke replied. She, as the 'Mutator' - anthropomorphic moth - seemed to be obsessed with the concept of following the light, but I dismissed the concerns. All of my girls had their quirks.
"Any resistance? Did you kill anybody?"
I asked, watching as the little 'Mutator' folded the cloth of the flag with an unparalleled coordination of her four arms, while her 'Alpha' turned to me.
"...other than that one at our arrival."
"No, Master." The moth-girl explained, "Aside from only that single foot, they all welcomed your return."
"My return?"
This was weird. I wasn't there before. However, since our entire interaction with this specific village was the product of the dragoness' meddling, and my girls technically acted on her behalf, I attributed to the whole cult charade we were supposed to put up to wake her up.
"And the Lady still hasn't woken up?"
"No, Master." Kirke said, "Ari held the ceremony in her name for the dead man, but didn't have any effect we would sense."
I nodded - I, too, couldn't feel any notable change.
It annoyed me.
The 'Lady' was still, somehow, connected for us, a foreign presence among the host, but subdued, slumbering, dreaming, nearly lifeless. It made me wonder whether the strange nightmares were my own, or ones of the celestial dragoness.
"And the priest?"
If anyone knew how to feed the energy - or faith, or whatever made the 'Lady' into what it was - it was him.
"He was not of much use, Master." Narita said, joining the conversation. "I demonstrated we could heal the wounded instead."
There was a shortage of miracles, I suppose, a main reason why the 'Lady' even insisted I send my 'Mutators' here. Now, the 'Defilers' had to assist.
We could, and we would, have to find our own solutions. However, the gaps in knowledge were difficult to fill, and there were certain things the dragons hid from their followers.
It made me think of the throbbing sensation of the relic.
"I suppose attempts to recover the scroll from the sea failed as well?"
"For Master!" Rye, still proudly sitting behind me, said, her large wings now half wrapped around me.
Her mind touched mine - images, words, flowed. It was, surprisingly, less bothersome than enduring the relic signal.
They scouted the sea floor, apparently, using their mind-controlled puppet as the remote controlled drones, exactly as I originally intended, but their efforts were hampered by the unusual topography as the shallow waters were cut out by a deep ravine.
"Explain that, please." I asked, half-turning to look at the chiropteran girl's face, curious what they found down there. I started to assume that the scroll - if it was one - wasn't just thrown into the sea as it was. The memory of the chain within my dreams came back.
"For Master." The 'Overseer' assured me, her wings hidden me, the clingy 'Displacer' drew herself closer, to assure me I wasn't about to sink down, even if I was on solid ground right now. Or rather, my mount was.
Apparently, the mysterious object that radiated this strange was currently at the bottom of said ravine, half-buried under the sand and coral. A chest perhaps.
"For Master!" Rye continued, her girlish voice high pitched.
In their attempts to dislodge the box - one that I assumed was the container for the scroll itself - they sent down a human. He drowned in the attempt.
That was a problem.
Rye, the 'Overseer' in charge of the 'Fleshspeaker' present, felt justified in her pursuit to create the perfect amphibious organism that could continue with the underwater excavation, explaining her obsession with crabs and reshaping their claws for both manipulation with object, digging, and, on an unrelated note, for snapping unruly humans in half…
They - the humans - were useless, except for the spare parts, as she put it.
I was, however, horrified by the fact they drowned the human in an attempt to get to the box.
We weren't even certain that the scroll was in there, even if it was a logical conclusion to our current understanding.
"One from the village?" I asked, alarmed.
"For Master!" The bat-girl was, however, unphased. Rye didn't think she did anything wrong.
I didn't quite understand how it was Irene's human, but judging from the frantic explanation that flooded my mind, they were attempting to use the human we had captured earlier and sent to mine for ore. Then repurposed it.
"No, not that. Don't use humans." I decided. Shook my head, too. The bat girls thought of the concepts that were slightly alien in their nature.
Even though the effect of the 'Fleshspeaker' magic was irreversible, there was no reason for throwing the lives away.
"For Master." Rye luckily agreed, even though not for the reason I thought them to be. After all, she bypassed the magical barrier. The humans were nothing more than faulty tools for the job.
"Yes, crabs it is, once you find something better to lift something from the sea floor." I said.
At least I understood why they have an issue with getting something up from the sea floor.
We presumably needed either a lifting bag or a boat with a crane, along with the means to remove all the coral and sand down there. Nothing that could be sourced immediately.
I could let the locals finish their harvest before we borrow their fishing boats, even though they were likely not enough to fit an improvised crane. A wooden chest may not be that heavy, but we couldn't rule out they opted to sink a stone sarcophagus to make the recovery harder, and a casing that didn't rust.
"Rye, you will still oversee this village, and our attempts to recover the scroll." I decided and waited until she lifted her leathery wings from her protective embrace.
I had no desire to watch the humans work - I had no ambition to become the plantation owner.
"For Master!"
"Let's return then." I decided, standing up from my rather awkward sitting position atop Rye's mutant crab, then jumping down. Luckily enough, I didn't sprain my ankle doing so, even if Miwah had to catch me.
"No special time on the beach, Master?" Tama said, disappointed.
"No, Tama." I sighed. "I suppose we could retreat for some rest after we check on Brave's town, though, unless something else crops up."
All tasks, from letters to the other settlements, to the excavation of the artefact, couldn't be done immediately. We didn't have powers that could be transferred directly to underwater work.
The 'Corruptor' could make the crawling plants as strong as the cables, and cobble together a floating raft, but that was about it,
Their idea with the human drone made me convinced I have to check on the other settlement before anything else. The 'Fleshspeakers' didn't quite concern themselves with the humans they used, and maybe I should even ask them to try reversing the process.
"...you Kirke, come with me, please." I decided - I needed to know the moth a little better. She was chased around the various tasks too much after her summoning.
"Yes, Master."
"A little one?" I beckoned my 'personal Displacer' closer: "To the mining town."
The little feline dragged me through their spatial rift, reminding me I should give the little, clingy cat-girl a name, instead of referring to her simply as a small one, or similar, but the thoughts on the matter drowned in the shifting space of the void beyond.
My worries were directed to the mining town.
Should I inspect the other villages too?
The moments after, I was on that paved road that snaked through the hills, a path we walked already, in front of what once has been the mountainous settlement with all its terraced fields, where our only mine was located. Only the general layout, unique in its own right, suggested it was the place we had once visited.
I paused, steadying myself using the little 'Displacer' for support as the incomprehensible angles of the void did still cause some vertigo, but even the space beyond space was more acceptable than the dead silence of my nightmares, as I could hear the whispers of the host out there.
The mining town was …
Present, but the surrounding area was completely unrecognisable since our last visit.
The terraced fields still existed, with original crops untouched, but the houses gradually overran with the aggressive creep my 'Mutators' created, resting in the shadow of the watchtowers my girls have erected in the meantime.
They worked fast.
Perhaps too fast.
The surrounding treeline was gone.
The original vegetation either fell victim to the excessive deforestation to create the fortified camp with the palisade and another set of watchtowers, or was converted into the twisted, otherworldly bramble that resembled a more organic barbed wire than anything else.
A few 'roach-hounds' - an oversized mutant insect the 'Fleshspeakers' created - patrolled the perimeter. They must be making those now, en masse, somehow.
Behind it laid the madness of the alien forest with the toxic colours half-obscured in the slight haze. Some of it moved, and glowed, as the 'Corruptors' even now worked on their plants, unsatisfied with their creations, seeking a new perfection.
I looked around once more. Nothing around was the way I left it, some days ago.
If anyone managed to cross the pass that led to the valley, they would find themselves in another world. Nothing was as it had been, and worse yet, it happened on my orders.
As the 'Warpstalker' rifts opened, bringing my other companions in, the rest of my girls in the town were already headed towards us.
"For Master! Master! Master!" cheered the 'Purifiers' on the watchtowers, while the 'Fleshspeakers' took flight. The several dozens of 'Eviscerator' poured close, dropping their invisibility, with Brave in their middle, all around me.
Were my little -or not so little as their smaller versions could look me into eyes without looking up- werewolves scary to humans, I had to wonder.
No humans were around, though, at first.
Did they hide?
To me, my girls, they were all beautiful.
I walked forward through the little tide of canine monster girls to meet their leader.
"Brave." I said, giving her a hug. She was back in her armour, a quite ordinary one, salvaged from local armouries, though her evolution gave her much more grace than ever before. She absolutely did evoke status in her smooth-furred jackal form.
Her little sisters did the same, and I was almost suffocated under the few dozen 'Eviscerators' and the uncounted voices at the back of my head sang in unison.
"Master…" Brave replied, "Do you like what we did to the place? We are fortifying it as you ordered."
I had to give a hug to a few nearby girls, while others simply socialised with ones like Miwah, Tama, and Narita, before I turned to Brave.
Kirke flew overhead. The 'Mutator' may be curious what the 'Corruptors' did here, on a professional level, too. They had similar powers.
"Yes. You did well." I said, turning my attention back to Brave, "I wanted to check what you did with humans?"
"Yes, Master." She said, gesturing towards the town, "We kept them in line for you."
The sea of 'Eviscerators' split - and I realised that the crowd here was merely a hundred of them. Our horde consisted of a few thousand, and I never visited all of them. Most of them were scattered around, in different places.
I walked towards the town up the soft slope. Brave next to me, along with Miwah, on the one side, and Narita with Tama on the other. Of course, the little 'Displacer' needed to keep close. There were 'Warpstalkers'- her bigger, more panther-like sisters, now too, but it seems they accepted their smaller sister was the one to accompany me.
The larger felines were about to get some snacks from her 'Corruptor' cousins, whom also came forth. The town was practically overrun by my girls, and I still didn't catch a glimpse of any humans yet.
"I asked Mai and then Lily for something to calm them down. We kept them fed, and now they are behaving." Brave gestured, "We didn't have to kill any of them, Master"
"Did the Fleshspeakers convert any of them? I don't want them to be zombified."
"No, no, Master." Brave assured me, "Those brought to work in the mines were ones that attacked you elsewhere."
Only when we reached the centre of the town, where most of the houses were located, did I start noticing its original human inhabitants, some of them piling up or sorting the rocks from the mine, some apparently containing ore, others being a waste rock.
The humans didn't seem to be under the 'Fleshspeaker' magic. There weren't any abnormal growths on their muscle, no blackened veins, or deformation, but they didn't seem right in their mind either.
They just shuffled the rocks, back and forth, for the 'Ravagers' to inspect them. With my ursine followers around, smelting was not strictly necessary. It was just a matter of sorting the ore from the gangue, letting them absorb the metal directly through their magic, then dumping all the slag to the earthworks.
The locals didn't even do the heavy lifting.
They just sorted the rocks, with the 'Ravager' pushing the cart away.
Some did the crafting, huddled around, stitching the cloth instead, or did the minor crafts weaving and trying the wooden slats together, to create a shoddy, improvised variant of the local lamellar armour .
"We don't force them to work the mine as you instructed, Master." Brave pointed out, "And their fields aren't ripe for harvest yet, I think."
It seems true. They didn't seem to be forced to do anything.
A lot of them didn't. There wasn't any child labour, either.
Some natives just sat on the rocks, rocked back and forth, restless, shaking, sweating, and looking overall much worse, while others stared into some piece of rock, or wood, spacing out, while others worked diligently.
All of them, however, barely noticed us. They went on and on, some of them suddenly stopping, staring into space. Some even tried to calm down the visible tremors in their hands. It was eerie..
I was wondering whether they were under the 'Fleshspeaker' magic effect, but then, Lily, along with a few new tag-along 'Corruptors', arrived among the crowd of my girls, dragging in a few baskets.
The spoils from the city, or a trade with the natives, must be plentiful if some of my scaly cuties went from their Hawaiian dancer-esque outfits to the nice local clothes the humans wore.
Lily hasn't received her Fruit of Arcane yet, the only 'Alpha' overlooked in the entire process if I didn't count Kirke who created them.
The townsfolk, previously apathetic to our presence, came alive and rushed towards the 'Corruptor Alpha' and her assistants, forming a queue, even though it took a few 'Eviscerators' to direct them.
Entire basket of various fruits was widely distributed among the crowd, but the natives didn't seem too hungry, even if they took the fruits and carried them away to their huts, disappointed.
None of them, however, fought my girls. If anything, the natives acted rather obedient and submissive at the moment, which was a polar opposite to the belligerent settlement that tried to stone Ari to death.
"We feed them regularly and often." Brave commented, in the tone of the person who took diligent care of your pet in your absence: "Your humans aren't starved, Master."
I think I couldn't, and shouldn't, think of the natives this way.
There was something inherently weird about what was happening.
Then it came to odd berries in the separate basket, and everything changed.
Every single human wanted those. They pushed and shoved each other aside, so they could get merely a few of those berries, gulping their portion as soon as they could, while my girls struggled to distribute them equally among the now roused crowd.
Some humans were satisfied, rushing to their work, with enthusiasm they never had before, continuing the craft, or sorting rocks, while others fought over the share of berries only to be separated by my 'Eviscerators'. Or the other humans, even, as those too aggressive towards the comparatively diminutive 'Corruptors' were met by protest from the other townsfolk.
One human, a man, tried to grab the lizard-girl's arm, and the human female hit him on the head with the piece of wooden slat she was making, which immediately escalated to a full out brawl.
There was shouting, in the native language, I didn't understand. Even some punches were thrown, not against my girls, but the locals fighting each other.
I was puzzled.
When one man pushed the other to the ground and tried to strangle him, the 'Ravager' had to step in. The ursine girl easily lifted the aggressive man and put him aside like a petulant child. Both received their respective shares of strange, colourful berries and retreated to each corner of the town.
"They really love those berries, Master." Brave commended, matter of handedly, "Normally, they are tame, but there is a little scuffle when we feed them. We make sure everyone gets a share, and they don't hurt each other."
I watched, bewildered, the entire scene. I even saw the 'Eviscerator' petting the human.
What do they put in those berries?
"You couldn't…"
I was about to object, about the treatment of humans, but I never got the chance to finish that sentence as all of the sudden, a massive, disturbing sense of loss swept over me.
Dizziness soon followed, and then the dreaded notification invaded my view. The 'Purifiers' nearby growled, uncharacteristically annoyed now compared to their usual giggly selves.
One I hoped to never see again.
It was wildly, wildly, unpleasant.
I shook my head in an attempt to shake away the feeling, but the message lingered, as a curse.
5 units sealed until the caster is dead.
The 'caster' - another one. But where? Why now?
"Master?"
"What happened?" I demanded.
"Master. They sealed Helmy."
I took a few steps away from the town, and suddenly was less worried about my girls feeding the humans strange fruits with intoxicating effects. There was tangible danger once again, and it was the one that endangered us the most. Hurt us the most.
Worries about what was happening to humans were pushed back.
Nice timing Dragon…
Okay soo that Priestess must have a plan to not get immeadiately murdered for that, which makes me wonder if the dreaded Elite/Priestess combo has been formed with sufficient knowledge on what they're facing in the Root's Horde to beat it-
Priestess to whittle them away, and Elites who can slay the excess looks the Priestess can't seal.
I strode out of the town, no longer interested in it, or the humans that inhabited it.
They didn't matter, not at the moment.
My goal now was to rescue Helmy, to strike against the 'sealing' magic. .
Problem was, I didn't have any idea where she was at the time she had been sealed away.
She could be anywhere.
Not only did she have a horse - or rather a close equivalent of one as the 'Fleshspeakers' reimagined it - the 'Displacer' teleport range was truly massive, limited more by their knowledge of the destination rather than the distance they would have to cross.
South, I recalled. I sent her south to scout the coast near the fishing village.
Did the enemy attack us there?
Getting answers was as easy as asking. However, the feedback the 'sealing' magic fed to my link made me momentarily too distraught with anger to do the obvious, and my girls took it upon themselves to solve the issue themselves. My racing thoughts were soon interrupted by the puff of the red fog from which a 'Purifier' materialised, then another, then a 'Displacer'...
"For Master!" They cried in unison, my brain assaulted by the barrage of thoughts, concepts, and images as their minds touched mine.
I didn't know how 'Alphas' could manage the constant flood of information they surely receive in times like this.
They could even see through other eyes.
I couldn't.
A shaky vision in the eye blink. My girls were rushing headlong into certain death at the blades of an 'elite' warrior, dark robe, two swords. No ordinary human could mow them this fast, dashing forward through the field of flames even as my 'Purifiers' lobbed the fireball after fireball against him.
With a flash of the blade, the vision ended, and I collapsed down on my knees.
The ruby fog spat out more of my 'Purifiers' slain in some distant battle, one after another. Their voices rang in my ears, and in my brain.
"For Master!"
They were fearless, but this wasn't right…
If they didn't get the 'caster' fast enough, they would run into one of those barriers, or the priestess would prepare another spell. We didn't have any clear idea how fast they could sling their spells, or perform any ritual, and what was the upper limit of their abilities.
It occurred to me, a good question I could have asked the 'Lady' when she was still awake, but it was too late now.
The fight went on without my input.
Only voices, and the fog, spitting out my beautiful foxies into their next life.
"For Master!" They cried, interrupting my mind going on the tangent in the middle of chaos where the seconds lasted eternity.
The host - all the 'Purifiers' were furious.
Burn!
Then, suddenly, there came pain. Strong, piercing, sudden spike of pure agony drove through my mind as the nail.
It hurt.
All of them.
Raging for gave me my girls back, but they, too, have collapsed, paralysed by pain and exhaustion after the re-spawn, and cried together with me in anguish.
No!
A barrier!
The surrounding greenery began to fade away, as Narita drained the life force to feed those stricken by the respawn sickness. The energy flooded into me, into us, but it was barely enough.
I grabbed the first 'Purifier' nearby without thinking, not even certain why.
The little fox girl squealed as I gave my order, glancing back at Tama, giving off her amber glowing eyes fixated on the horizon, as the voices at the back of my head heaved in rage. A warm fluff helped me to focus.
"For Master?"
Don't worry about me, my mind flashed, as I yelled:
"Order them to scatter and retreat! We will regroup and get Helmy back!"
My order came just in time, as the few more respawns were soon followed by the crushing feeling of loss, and the most accursed notification of all, announcing to my face that more of my girls were taken away from me. It hurt, as much as it did the first time.
4 units sealed until the caster is dead.
Only four were four too many. My girls!
"For Master!"
The 'Purifier' whined, but rather than trying to free herself from my grasp, she pulled herself closer to support me as I struggled under the suffering the shared link inflicted .
Soon, my personal 'Displacer' caught up to me, doing the same, while the other notification, accompanied by an even greater, more crushing sensation of loss, gripped my heart:
"Don't transport me. It isn't here…" I protested quietly, as the unfeeling window announced another loss.
6 units sealed until the caster is dead.
"For Master!" The catgirl hissed.
They were targeting our 'Displacers'!
"No, stop!" I yelled at the 'Warpstalkers' who gathered the power to open the portals. A memory of the flying sword flashed through my mind. The swirling rift in the space was opened, and a hail of flaming arrows burst through, some finding their mark, others hitting the ground, huts, a field or crops, releasing the fire, soot, and loud, deafening bangs.
Sulfurous, metallic smoke hit my nostrils.
Gunpowder.
Impossible! The natives didn't have gunpowder, and neither did we! They would have used it already!
A 'Ravager' wanted to grab me, carry me away, but there was no point in seeking cover anymore - the attack was already over.
Portals closed again, and the red fog returned the 'Warpstalkers' to me, their black, tall form rising above the countless 'Purifiers' around.
I looked around, half confused, half in shock. The smoke and the occasional fire were, by far, the worst natives managed with their attack, but it was a shock, nevertheless.
They caught us off guard.
Without the 'Warpstalker' keeping their rifts open, however, our enemies didn't have the means to continue the attack at our location, and I could only watch as more of my girls materialised from the typical, ruby red smoke that usually accompanied their arrival. A dozen or more felt victim to some attack, and then, the accursed message I hated with the blaze of thousands of suns struck for the last time:
1 unit sealed until the caster is dead.
It stung, as I mentally swore revenge on the accursed 'caster who caused it, and then…
Then it was over.
I silently watched as my girls put down the fires, and quickly recovered from the weakness caused by the death-by-barrier, and now cared more about my well being than anything else.
The little 'Purifier' I had grabbed earlier still clung to me, as did the little 'Displacer' that followed me around for the last day, while Narita checked on me.
"For Master."
My head was spinning at the moment, and there was a budding headache to be had, with disorienting flashes to be seen even as I closed my eyes, refusing to go away. I found solace that my girls, out there on the distant battlefield, reached safety.
Was it what the little one said?
"Master?" Narita checked again, as I didn't answer, burdened by thoughts now rushing in.
We were caught off-guard.
"Master!" Master!" echoed the others, but I still remained silent.
Narita was attentive, distracted by my silence, but I ignored her.
The lingering aftereffects of the feedback loop inflicted upon me in such a short order, I was more concerned about my monster girls and their fate. There weren't that many abilities we knew about that could strike us back through the link, except those strange, magical shields - barriers, whatever it was - invisible, yet still dangerous.
I realised we didn't have any experience with them.
They weren't used creatively.
During the first siege, merely a single 'Eviscerator' ran into this invisible boundary, and it still stung, but wasn't a case for serious panic. The little wolf was unharmed, recovered quickly, the 'Displacer' was able to detect it from a distance, and it wasn't mobile.
I used to be concerned about the more places covered by those very same magical bubbles, but never considered the possibility that the thing could unexpectedly come up when the larger group was in the area, sending hundreds back to the ruby fog.
Now I knew what would happen if the larger group was caught within the barrier - it hit like a bullet train, and could paralyse a lot of us in the process.
Idiot. I was an idiot.
They could have brought one up during the battle in the city, if they still had any priestess there, hiding.
Jolts of energy followed, the infusion of the life force pushed away both the headache, and the artificial exhaustion that came in the shock's wake, or even the upset stomach from missing today's meal. It, however, didn't remove the problem.
"Master?!" Narita insisted. "Do you feel well?"
"Yes, I do." I said, opening my eyes, gently touching my rat-girls face, caressing her. "Thank you."
I felt sad, depressed even. The backlash from the 'sealing' hit me hard, even if it was ultimately a miniscule part of the horde that was violently taken away from me. It was a dreadful spell, I thought, even though I couldn't be sure if that sense of loss was caused by the hit on the 'Alpha' rather than the rank-and-file of the breed.
Perhaps it was even the 'evolution' that strengthened the link of the telepathic network …
I was stuck in my head
My guilt took its course now.
"We got away, Master." Miwah reported, "We retreated from the vicinity of the barrier, and the humans aren't pursuing."
"We could extract them now, Master." Sora said
Sora? I didn't notice her arrival among all that chaos, but she was there, in her elegant, panther-like splendour that made her beautiful, and the flesh-shaped armour that made her terrifying.
Where have you been, I wanted to say, since she has been out, roaming who knows where since yesterday, leaving only her adjutant - or how she referred to her sister who got the short straw babysitting me - behind.
"I am sorry, Master." Sora responded, as it was to my thoughts, "We were mapping the area."
"Please, bring everyone back. We will go back once we know …" I replied, with attempted calm: "I am sorry."
I would not yell at my girls.
"Don't be sorry, Master." She said, "We are there for you."
I would have to convince myself I was worthy of them.
But they were all there now, yes, the little 'Displacer' so obsessively holding me so the 'Ravager' had to pick us together, while the random 'Purifier' rode up on the ursine monster girl's shoulders.
Miwah and Tama had to push their little kin away.
It would be funny if I was in the mood.
I was not. Instead, I could describe myself between furious and morbidly sad. They carried me away from the mining town, towards the separate camp with the palisade and the guard towers.
"Sora, speak to me. What exactly is out there?"
"There are three barriers, with overlapping areas of effect." Sora reported, "Like overlapping circles, all three covering something in the centre."
"An overlapping circle, like a Venn diagram?" I asked, before I realised she had no way of knowing what it was. She was an anthropomorphic cat brought to the middle of his madness, she never saw….
However, she paused only for a split second before they perked up with the sudden understanding, even without the explanation.
"Yes, Master." The feline said, "The overlapping area of the circles, like the commonalities part…where barriers are concentrated, it feels… disturbing, pushes us away."
"Did…" I asked, "Did the barrier come up in the middle of the attack? I think it did."
"Yes, Master." Tama confirmed, solemnly. The vixen looked atypically serious, without the playful tone in her voice. While our mind was touching, I could catch the glimpse of the fact that she didn't take the disappearance of Helmy well.
Helmy was the second 'Purifier' that was born, or rather spawned, into the world, and her first action was shielding me with her own body against the barrage of arrows.
She wasn't dead - only 'sealed' - but to me, I still felt a part of me was missing, yearning to be reconnected to the greater whole.
I sighed, trying to release the mental pressure, exhaling.
It didn't help.
"Where exactly did it happen?"
"Helmy was hit when she was scouting the area to the south." Tama said, "Arke is reporting the loss of all riding drones Helmy took with her."
"Nine of my sisters were sealed when we tried to move in, Master." Sora added, "So we tried a portal remotely…"
I figured as much.
"So they shot through the portal?" I completed the sentence.
"Yes, Master."
Using gunpowder. While fire arrows were nothing more than the fireworks tied to the projectile, meant to scare us with noise or smoke, far away from bullets and bombs, they still represented an unexpected out of context problem.
The arrow attack didn't cause any significant damage.
The townsfolk preoccupied with the 'special berries' didn't seem to care too much, so trying to scare off the populace which was - voluntarily or involuntarily on our side - wasn't working either, but the fact they did figure out that they could, in fact, shoot through rifts, was disconcerting.
They even knew that they couldn't aim at the dizzying portals of swirling space and hold it, so they used the fire arrows which didn't need to hit, only pass through.
Add in the more creative use of their spells, along with the better tactics, out of nowhere, and I had to wonder who was feeding them information.
Dragons would, I suppose, but without the 'Lady' we didn't have means to confirm what the humans knew.
It was going too far.
I considered shocking the 'Lady' awake with the Scroll power once I got it. They were powerful magic, after all, but we didn't have it yet, and we didn't even know if we could even use them.
Issues, issues, issues.
The issue with Lily's idea of feeding the clearly addictive substances to the humans doesn't seem all that pressing in comparison. I would put a stop to it. Later. Once Helmy was free, I dreaded to think so, but we might need humans to kill the priestess that cast both the barrier and the 'sealing'.
The 'Ravager' seemed to like to carry me just for the heck of it, while we entered the fortified part of the village. I didn't protest, even if it was awkward.
It was starting to swarm with my girls - the 'Purifiers' and the 'Eviscerators' and 'Defilers' and 'Corruptors' - dozens of them.
Kuma and Ekaterina arrived too, and the new 'Ravagers' had to be brought in. The rifts were opened, though it was outside the incomplete ring of the outer walls, seemingly aware of the fact that someone could shoot through the rift. Earthworks and wooden logs were still effective if resisting blast from a small pouch of gunpowder tied to an arrow were involved, though I wasn't sure if the enchanted, magical weapons were so easily deterred.
Still, it was smart.
The camp, separate from the mining town, even had their set of gates, the palisade, the log houses. Brave was building her own castle, albeit from logs, and far from finished. It would work as the staging area, I thought
It made me think.
"How is it there are so many barriers out there?"
"We don't know, Master." Miwah admitted.
The priestesses we encountered didn't cast those by default, and only the castle had one. If this was appropriate for the Viceroy's stronghold, and if they cost money, I would imagine someone bled the money through the ears paying for three.
Although this was magic, mysticism, it may not be paid for in gold, but still.
"A castle?" I guessed, "Did we discover another noble's stronghold.."
"No, Master. If so, it is smaller." Miwah answered, "It doesn't have a castle as large as the one we have here. It seems to be only a small port town with a wooden fort."
Wooden fort, like the one we were building, was hardly meant for the important people. Too ordinary. Though magic barriers killed us, perhaps saving money on all the masonry to pay for all the sorcery was worth it.
I had no idea how it worked.
"For Master!" The nameless 'Purifier' snickered, filled with the excitement of torching down the human's flammable wooden fort, even if it was better built, and soon others in the vicinity joined in the excitement for mass arson in revenge. Even non 'Purifiers'.
"For Master, Master, Master!"
We haven't descended so far as to engage in wanton destruction. I would have to think about the situation more rationally, even if that lingering sense of loss was still out there, gnawing on the recesses of my consciousness, demanding action against those who took my Helmy.
I was brought into the log structure that they erected here in the couple of days, realising how fast my girls had worked, from nowhere to starting their own small fortified camp just for there.
Now, however, it was time to stop and think.
The room, quite spacious for what was a structure built over a few days, filled with the various members of our horde, and I was seated, surrounded by my closest girls, and I realised I did like the crowded space, with an unfinished roof to let that currently allow the light inside.
I never liked crowded spaces. But now, there was something soothing about having the larger host so close, and even sitting enclosed within Ekaterina's bear hug, while Tama pressed herself closer while the 'personal Displacer' insisted on remaining on my lap. The random 'Purifier' did too. No one questioned it. Miwah waited, as did Narita, while Kuma stood guard as the giant made of steel. Sora was uneasy, shifting her stance, while Lily and Mai pushed through the crowd.
Only Arke didn't show up, but Kirke somehow found the 'brain bug' the 'Fleshspeakers' had created and brought the abomination in.
The rest remained at a distance only because they had their gear on, while Ekaterina had to literally dissolve the armour to accommodate me in her tight embrace. I should do this more often.
"Overview…" I whispered under my breath,
The window appeared into existence.
The Master
<The Root of All Evil, level 8>
<Divinity, level. 1>
Skills <8/8>
<Scorched Earth lvl.33>
<Slayer of Men lvl.33>
<Great Devourer lvl.71>
<Green Hell lvl. 41>
<Slayer of Champions lvl. 20>
<Stalker on the Boundary lvl. 10>
<Messengers of the Ever-Living Horde Lvl.17>
<Viridian Dominions Unbound lvl.4>
<Unlock in 2>
Resource: 317
Mates
Miwah, The Bride of Shadows
Tama, The Broodmother of Purging Flame
Narita, The Bride of Essence
Mai, The Bride of Forest
Ekaterina, The Bride of Soul Steel
Progeny
<N/A * Germinal Stage>
<N/A - Egg Fertilised>
Units (Active)
<n/a - command delegated to Broodmother>
<Evolved Alpha>
<Commands>
<2,932/3,308>
27 Named Purifiers
2,905 Purifiers
Brave, The Eradicator Alpha
<Evolved Alpha>
<Commands>
<3,127/3,119>
61 Named Eviscerators
3,127 Eviscerators
Mia, The Devourer Alpha
<Evolved Alpha>
<Commands>
<1,320/1,304>
4* Named Devourers
1,312 Defilers
Lily, The Corruptor Alpha
<Commands>
<2,848/3,160>
14 Named Corruptors
2,834 Corruptors
Kuma, The First Obliterator
<Evolved Alpha>
<Commands>
<332/812>
4 Named Ravagers
327 Ravagers
1 Obliterator
Sora, The Warpstalker Alpha
<Evolved Alpha>
<Commands>
<198/758>
3 Named Warpstalker
185 Displacers
Arke, The Overseer Alpha
<Evolved Commands>
<187/698>
7 Named Overseers
140 Fleshspeakers
40 Overseers
Kirke, The Mutator Alpha
<Commands>
<24/640>
1 Named Mutator
23 Mutators
Auxillary
Ari, The Herald of Root and Serpent
84* Acolytes
531* Flesh Drones
Units (In queue)
None
None
None
None
Sealed units
Helmy, the Purger Alpha
4*Named Devourers
9* Displacers
1* Named Warpstalker
I immediately focused on the bottom of the unsightly, monochromatic list, confirming which of my girls had been sealed off. Helmy was there, as well as the four 'Devourers' and nine 'Displacers', along with even a 'Warpstalker'.
It wasn't a lot in our growing horde, many thousands heads strong, but it was far too many for me to accept. Strange, considering my girls have been sealed before, but still, something deep inside me screamed I would have to remedy the offence in blood.
I could be thankful that the barrier was more pain-inducing rather than seal-on-contact, but that was foolish luck.
However, if only so few were sealed, why did it sting so much?
Was it all because they were named ones? Was it because of Helmy?
Even when Tama was sealed, it didn't hit with such an intensity, but …
But we had killed the offending caster soon afterwards, so I didn't know how I would react if it lasted longer.
Or was it because the 'system' was 'routing' the command to Tama in the meantime?
Nevermind, I wasn't going to find out. The system could keep its secrets: I had more important issues to tackle.
I waved the overview away.
There was a small hole in the part of my soul now, and I was going to fix it, never allowing the accursed humans to strike us like this, ever again. I tried to put myself in more problem solving and asked:
"So, where did it happen?"
Sora stepped close, and my other monster girls made space, presenting the map with the few other random pieces of papers scattered around it. My little 'Displacers' reshuffled it, likely in her mental order.
Everyone gathered around.
There was a map, a professional one, we acquired in the city. A scroll of mundane sorts, paper or parchment, with all of its descriptions written in the local unintelligible script, was familiar. But now there were now more sheets of paper, ones of terrible quality, added to it, with the various doodles on it made in both ink and coals, or whatever was available.
I blinked.
Not a random doodle.
Sora did it.
The feline wasn't lazing around all that time. When she was away, seemingly indisposed, she was drawing all of this.
She made the larger map! Of lands beyond this valley, this province.
Provided, it was still horrible, compared to what the Viceroy had for his holdings, likely commissioned from the professional cartographer, but it was an actual map, a window to the world we still had yet to see. I couldn't make out which lines were rivers, or if they were intended to represent the rivers, but I could guess what was the coastline, and the mountain range.
How far did she have to teleport?
"So, where is the enemy? Where was Helmy when she was attacked?" I asked,
"A human seaside settlement, roughly ninety kilometres south from our current position, Master."
"Ninety?!" I gasped.
This was quite a trek.
Even though 'Displacers' made the question of distance rather moot - for them, it was just a few moments away through the shifting void they travelled through - I didn't think it was a good idea to provoke multiple human factions, or attract more powerful foes to our location. That way courted death.
While mundane humans were still mostly belligerent, even suicidally so, their super-powered 'elites' posed an entirely different form of threat, further exacerbated by the fact they wised up to our own powers and abilities.
The map, even though made with probably the worst writing supplies imagined, and sketched on the run, did confirm that we went to a new province under the rule of a different lord than the local viceroy.
I knew because, simply; it wasn't on his map.
"Why?" I asked, confused, why to draw the other province into the conflict even if our control here was tedious at best, and I couldn't afford to draw many 'elites' there should they embark on any quest to find our base of operations.
The different provinces must have had their own soldiers, too.
There was no telling how many of them were, and how well supplied they were.
"Humans are nothing but trouble, Master." Kuma yawned, interrupting my thoughts. "We should kill them all."
I hesitated to agree. I never wanted this, but Helmy … my vixen was taken from us. The human spells hit us where it hurt, and the host wanted to retaliate. I wanted to retaliate.
"They would see the light, eventually." Kirke suggested, her cute mandibles twitching as she spoke. "We made them understand, Master, as we did with the other village."
The moth-girl didn't seem to be as misanthropic as the rest of the host, but I suspect her solution to 'taming' the human was similar to Lily's. Feed them addictive substances.
The morality of it wasn't an issue right now. Later.
What possessed Helmy to travel the ninety kilometres to pick the fight with another town?
We had enough trouble here as it was. Even this valley wasn't under our de facto control, though the Viceroy's decree made it so de jure as far as we could tell, although the other hamlets, villages and towns in the valley didn't even know we existed.
Or did they?
Some coastal town ninety kilometres away knew, somehow.
"Yes, but ..."
It made me realise something as Sora re-shuffled her makeshift map.
"This is close to the dig site, isn't it?"
"Ten, perhaps twenty kilometres."
"And it is the closest settlement humans have?"
"Yes, Master." Tama said, "Helmy followed the coastline to the south, then south-east."
So, it wasn't that my 'Alpha' went on a random raid into enemy territory. Instead, she followed my orders, and I was at fault.
My already abysmal mood sank, but I forced myself to focus, to think about practical matters.
I didn't know the lay of the land, and couldn't estimate the shape of the coastline from the bird's view, so to say, or higher. In a way, I didn't want to. I was terrified of heights. The smudge on Sora's version must be a bay, with the cross that marked the city. Town. Settlement.
"How large is the town?" I asked.
"About the size of South Maiville."
"Hmmm." I murmured. I didn't know how large the so-called South Maiville was, despite I so graciously delegated it to my mate, and even re-named it after her, but it wasn't a small hamlet, that was for certain.
That settlement may not have a fort, but it certainly had a temple and, with more than one priestess staffing it. We also found a magical artefact there. And angered the celestial dragons that the natives apparently worshipped…
I was seeing a pattern.
"Number of soldiers?"
"Less than here. Less than a hundred."
Not a lot. Viceroy had more men before our clash, but I suspected that numbers
were deceiving, and wouldn't reflect on the threat they would pose to our host, especially if they used their abilities more competently than we did ours.
"I hope all of them aren't elites." I remarked bitterly. I didn't want to send my girls against them in waves, hoping to score a hit.
However, if there weren't, it didn't matter.
They were there to protect the priestesses, allowing them to 'seal away' my girls while the humans hid behind those shields.
And there were, at least, three of them, since this was how many barriers were reported, although I wasn't quite certain if there was a limit of spells per caster, or priestesses per settlement.
I wonder if the natives had any laws, any rules about this.
"Were there any of those temples?"
Those were hard to miss. They looked expensive, and if they didn't involve towering pagodas, they certainly did have massive dragon statues.
"Don't know, Master." Sora replied, "If it is, it is located in the centre where the bubbles intersect."
"Their fort isn't in the centre, then?"
"It blocks access from the direction Helmy approached." Tama said
"So we don't know about the entire town, do we?"
"We could jump above the barriers, Master." Sora suggested.
They could. We could, in fact, rain the rocks from the sky above assuming the magical shields didn't deflect them too, but I dismissed the idea once I remembered the arrows, and worse even, magical sword we still didn't have any defence against.
Worse still, the enemy knew they could fire through portals and tried to target our 'Displacer'.
Firing a bow vertically may be difficult, if not impossible, but now I had a reason to fear that the locals didn't run out of tricks up their sleeve, and I was to be cautious. Magic was involved after all.
I would have to learn to expect the unexpected.
They knew we could teleport.
Putting the question of 'how' aside, I didn't know if they could sense incoming portals, not to mention we would be going in blind.
"Bring me, Master." Kirke proposed.
I considered it. She could fly above the barrier, and the moth-girls did affect all the flora, even fungus, within the area of effect. The 'Mutators' could turn every plant in the town toxic.
They could also be sealed or shot down, and her collision with the barrier would give all of us quite a headache should the feedback flare back up.
I am not endangering my cute moth girls, either.
"No. I didn't want to risk you or your sisters. Not for fly-bys." I ordered. There was no point.
"Did the barrier kill our horses?"
"No, Master. I am already thinking of improvements..." the disembodied voice of Arke said, and Kirke, still holding the abomination of a brain-bug as if it was a strange puppy, but now she had put the flesh-construct down on the ground. It skittered across the room, between and under the legs of the girls without them being disturbed by it very much.
"So they didn't?"
"…I didn't make the riding drones combat capable. They were butchered once our cousins were sealed away."
But there wasn't any 'Fleshspeaker' among the girls. I thought they had only limited range, restricted to a certain distance, or perhaps to visual contact. I didn't know.
The 'Overseers' did not have a limit. Arke was, very likely, still inside the city, and spoke to me through her newest creation, without her having to move even an inch.
"But your link to them? Was it there?"
"Yes, Master." She said, through her proxy, "We could see the woman that sealed us, along with the group of human soldiers. We counted thirty. We sent the riding drones forward, and we could be almost sure there would be at least a hundred of soldiers in their fort."
This was how they knew. They saw it through the eyes of their puppets. It didn't matter how much she lamented that their mutated animals weren't ready for combat, she already gave them multiple eyes so they could see the surroundings wherever they went!
This was brilliant!
"Wait." I ordered,
"Master?"
"Arke! Get me the roach-hounds. And the crabs. All the crabs. Prepare them for transport by Sora!"
My girls answered immediately. I was trying to sound decisive, but their devotion was something else.
"Yes, Master!"
I could assault the barrier with the flesh-crafted drones, but the town had to be cut off from the rest of the world first. Maybe they could contact each other through magic - I didn't know - but the messengers and supply wagons couldn't go through, even though the sea was still beyond our grasp.
Even that may not be for long.
"Miwah, Brave?" I spoke up, "Ask which of your sisters were willing to go. They might be sealed, too, so be careful. I don't want to risk you either, but we need this…"
"We are ready, Master." She said, "All of us."
"Sweep the forests and fields around the town." I ordered, "Some could see you even if you are invisible."
I didn't know what made humans capable of seeing through the 'Eviscerator' cloak, but I was certain that only a handful of natives developed the ability. I just didn't know which of them did.
Both Miwah and Brave shot her gaze towards the unseen horizon, and there was a sudden heave in the countless whispers lurking just beyond my notice.
They were willing to take a risk, but I was hesitant.
"Don't go by yourself, Brave."
"Master?"
The fruit of the arcane made 'Eviscerators' or rather, Brave herself, completely invisible, without the shifting air flaw her sisters had, not to mention she could now be even more deadly combatant than even before, considering the additional element, but it was not worth the risk testing her against the very specific spell that was meant to put us down.
"I won't lose you, Brave."
I assumed the 'sealing' spell hitting her would be as painful as the one that hit Helmy.
"Master." the 'Alpha' acknowledged, sounding rather charmed. I, however, continued:
"Once we know there aren't more magical traps in the fields and forests, we close the area in and start planning an assault..."
"Yes, Master."
As much as I was dedicated to avoiding confrontation and killing, a previous mention of what was now South Maiville reminded me of something.
I warned the Red Dragon, whatever his fancy title was: Mess with my people, and I would torch down all those shrines. Time to make good on my promise, and earn a reputation. If I couldn't get respect, then I would teach them fear.
"Girls. We will go to war."
The fact there was no objection still terrified me inside.
Hooo boy…
So that was unfortunate.
Annoying bit is the way the emotional 'reassurance' of the Root just gets to gnaw it's way deeper and deeper every time this sort of bumble happens.
And in turn, the natives probably think the Master's actions are intentional when he sends Helmy out and she attacks a place, rather then the spirits having enough free will to get into trouble and are all too happy to pick a fight.
It's how Angela nearly got the Master smote by the Dragons…
I almost think that the Spirits are almost like toddlers/babies, not much sense of reasoning beyond their wants and little to no social understanding of how to interact with the natives…
And the Master being blocked by the language barrier and the aura tipping the scales…
*Frowns*
The problem is the answer to all of this is the Master getting time and space to civilize the girls and explain things but the desperation of his situation leaves him unable to really deal with that, too busy putting out fires…
Ari's not likely to be much help, she's too busy reveling in her boons to be of much use. Viceroy is too hung up on his political power and the Priest is mentally screaming about the whole 'voices in the back of my head.' thing.
…It almost feels like the better the power the more problems that come with it.
Unless I miss my mark, the Purifiers rarely get to cause problems…
The humans, and the dragon they served, shouldn't be allowed to do this to my people, but this, this felt like a trap.
As adamant as I was in my decision to rescue Helmy and the rest of the girls that humans 'sealed' away, there was something inherently wrong, or at least suspicious, about this attack or the place where it occurred. I just couldn't tell what it was.
Maybe it was the devotion the girls had, not questioning the decision I made, or maybe it was the fact that the town wasn't suspiciously under defended for the level of belligerence they had shown. The natives were always slightly suicidal - villagers throwing rocks even if it would put them in the harm's way - but this, this was a premeditated strike.
Nothing suggested we randomly stumbled upon a hidden fortress of sorts.
Judging from the reports I was given, a coastal town may be in better shape than some hamlets have been, but nothing I've heard suggested there was something out of the ordinary. They weren't completely poor, but not exactly rich either, bringing some doubt to the assumption that excessive magical warding was paid for in money.
They had a considerably large, and well-kept pier. Not the ill-kept, rickety one of the villages we blessed, barely safe and unworthy to secure even the poor fisherman's tiny boat. Their wharf was, I was told, visible from a distance, likely fit for larger, more seaworthy vessels, which suggested they might once have seen some coastal - or even overseas - traffic, but that was about it.
Judging from the knee-jerk reaction locals had, I would expect more of them.
It was mostly rice fields and farmlands, and, of course, the forest, seemingly undefended, with the town proper, likely meant to service the dock in the prosperous times, lodged between the low cliffs.
There was supposedly a wooden fort that guarded the road in and out, which would suggest there would be a garrison present even without our violent clash with the locals, but at a glance, it was where their military capabilities ended.
Our previous adversary, the Viceroy, not only had considerably more men, his castle was more heavily fortified, with the tall walls of solid masonry, and even the provincial city had been completely closed off.
This coastal town didn't have any of it. It was open from all sides.
They, however, oozed magic.
There was something wrong with this.
A mere coincidence, or an elaborate trap that Helmy accidentally sprung, or was it some spiritual centre, with a higher-than-average number of casters lurking within, a sign of even greater problems ahead?
Ultimately, I had no way of knowing.
Worse even, they had no way of knowing Helmy would travel south. How could they possibly have prepared!?
There was something off, something suspicious, prickling at my instincts as surely as the chorus of minds sung to me, which I hoped the 'Eviscerators' would unravel simply by lurking about the woods around the town's magical perimeter, so at least some of my questions and worries would be answered. It wouldn't harm to be careful. Although I had my doubts about finding hidden ninja villages, I realised I couldn't rule them out.
As much as I swore to avenge Helmy's sealing, and deliver on the threats issued to the Red dragon, I wasn't quite comfortable walking into his prepared trap, if it was the case.
My indecisiveness was soon punished by the throbbing, head-splitting pain, followed by the sense of loss. A few of my girls re-formed from the red mist that once gave them life, but others were cut out, as the humans' spells took the toll on my people.
It hurt.
Again.
And it made me curse as the feedback from the 'sealing' travelled back to our network, upsetting the host in the process, moments before the 'Displacer' portal swallowed me and threw me through the ever shifting void between or beyond.
The host's choir seethed with rage.
I, too, was upset, angered even, a thought of retaliation - revenge even - flashed my mind
The thousands of voices kept heaving up, equally agitated, and I was forced to once again endure the dreaded sensation that some small, but important, part of me has been violently separated to me, demanding action to rectify this offence.
Burn! Here, in the ever-changing where space has no meaning, I could sense the 'Purifiers' minds and their pyromania even stronger. I could hear the silent howl of the 'Eviscerators', as I could perceive other breeds - 'Corruptors' and 'Fleshspeakers' and 'Mutators' - and their desire to correct, to tame creation itself.
Wouldn't the world be beautiful if there were more of us?
Then, normal space resumed, and I was left with that monochromatic dull window invading my view, visually unappealing, but still a grave reminder of yet another mistake.
7 units sealed until the caster is dead.
I shook it off, and tried to focus back, the faithful yet unnamed 'Displacer' still tugging me in. Then there was a distant blast, the fireball exploding, smoke and fire, and disappointment - it wasn't supposed to be combat recon, or whatever was the proper military term.
The host took the solution into their own claws.
My arrival at the coastal town, or rather its far outskirts, has been welcomed by the smell of burnt wood, a normally scentless ruby fog that spawned more of my monster girls, and the notification that always accompanied it. They appeared moments after I was spat out of the other-place all 'Displacers' moved through, to the point there was no need for others to cover me.
The ruby mist gave me more of my girls.
"For Master!"
It alone made me pause, but this time, there wasn't a crushing sensation of loss to accompany it. .
Skill "Scorched Earth lvl.34" gained.
Skill "Slayer of Men lvl. 34" gained.
Our host was growing, and it felt right. It felt good. Proper. Safe.
There was safety in numbers, power, companionship, love. The treacherous part of my brain was pleased we had grown, against all the adversity, and the tingling sensation of the fresh voices joining the choir of joined minds was now very alluring in and of itself.
I had to be careful.
There was something worrying about it, and I tried to push it away, trying to not think of the cost.
The new batch of the 'Eviscerators' and 'Purifiers' rushed to me, greeting me, checking whether I felt well now I was out of the rift. I could even notice my 'Displacer' companion hugging the new 'Eviscerator' - the feline and canines living and loving together.
Why couldn't humans understand?
"For Master! Master… Master…"
My beauties. More than ten anthropomorphic canines and vulpine girls swarmed over, all fresh additions judging from the notification that accompanied their birth to this world, eager to touch me, to show themselves. To feel my welcome. My love.
I hugged or smooched a few of them, briefly forgetting we were close to the future battlefield, and let myself be caressed by their smooth fur. It distracted me, ever so briefly, from the guilt that yet more has been sealed away.
The still throbbing sense of loss made me want to check all of them personally, even if they, as all of my followers, always formed in perfect health.
I would free their sisters and cousins and make more of my adorable monster girls.
Miwah, emerging from another rift, stood watch, and was soon joined by Tama and Narita.
More of my lovely monster girls arrived on foot this time. The group of the 'Purifiers' - one dressed in the combination of either clothing or armour pieces, waved to me, and then loitered around the larger, silvery vixen. She, with her multiple tails, and the silvery fluff, looked regal among them. It was still weird that the system referred to her as 'brood mother' - I wasn't used to the term 'bride' either, but the strange notifications were odd like that.
A pang of pain followed as the 'Purifier' materialised from the red fog, and collapsed on the ground, but was healed soon after.
The 'Devourer' - an anthropomorphic rat girl, a grown-up version - accompanied by her smaller 'Defilers' - joined us, one using her power to treat the harmed 'Purifier' back to consciousness. This one, she was hit by the barrier.
The barrier allowed respawn, but left my people drained, exhausted and suffering, requiring treatment. The 'sealing' - the 'sealing' was worse than death, at least the host felt. Even if new monster girls were recently summoned, the 'sealing' was an offence we couldn't forgive.
"For Master!" They agreed
A loud bang sounded somewhere far away, then a few more, and I looked up from the unlikely welcoming committee.
I was far away from the action, but close enough I could catch a glimpse of the event.
There, in the distance, just beyond the thinning woods, a homestead burned, and its fields, and beyond them, in a haze of smoke and fire, was the fort. The wall of fire danced between them and us, obscuring some of the view, but still allowing me to see the overall shape of it.
There appear to be watchtowers, so it was supposed to be a fort, I presumed. It wasn't a magnificent piece of architecture, no tall walls, no solid masonry. I couldn't see it properly, but it could just have a one story building equivalent to a palisade wall with some watchtowers rising above, but no proper battlements and so on.
Somewhere beyond it was something that made me sick through - an intersection of the barriers. Maybe, I didn't know, but it was the local magic, must be one that was inherently inimical to us. Like the magical wards, and 'sealing' magic and …
There was an itching, strange, irritation, except not on my skin, but almost irrationally, inside my brain. I still scratched my hair, agitated, but to no relief.
Was it the proximity to that accursed shield?
"Do you feel that too?" I asked, almost absentmindedly.
"For Master…" One of the little ones remarked. They didn't see the barrier, and neither could I. Its edges obscured to anyone but the 'Displacers' who perceived it as the strict no-go zone.
A sudden sting of energy, the ordinary 'Eviscerator' appearing from the little burst of the ruby mist, collapsing down, to be tended by the 'Defilers' at the cost of small plants.
Kirke, the moth girl, arrived by the next rift, her magic affecting the plants in the vicinity, accompanied by the soft glow of the changing gold to green to gold aura, leaving the soft haze behind. The 'Mutators' fine control was as fast as the 'Corruptors' work, but twice more elegant. It made me forget, at least, for a split second, there was a fight going on.
A few loud explosions interrupted my thought, but they seem to have come from elsewhere.
I joined the three of my mates, though the crowd of their smaller kin lingered nearby. Sora now also gated herself in, but she kept her distance, her sight dancing from place to place, tracking the targets I couldn't see.
"What happened?"
"We are testing the barrier, Master."
"My sisters were sealed, Master." Miwah informed it, sadness in her voice. "We didn't manage to even approach the caster.."
"...so we had to create a distraction." Tama continued Miwah's sentence, nudging towards the still burning house. Another group of the 'Purifiers' made it through the woods, those one dressed in the mismatched equipment salvaged from the natives.
The smoke made me cough slightly. Were all the fields on fire?
"The farmland is not covered by the shield, and they couldn't see us through the resulting smoke and flames to hit us." She added - the blazing remnants of the house did obstruct vision. That much was true. I could even see a lone foxy adding to the fire before running away.
Starting to burn the countryside wasn't my plan by any measure, but we managed to suffer a few more losses from even scouting. It was painful to think about - the forced feedback from the spell made it so.
1 unit sealed until the caster is dead.
Another hit. Another tiny, but still precious piece of us, torn away from its place within the choir of others, a disruption that could not, should not, be forgiven.
Nevertheless, I held myself back from barking out orders, demanding the death of the caster that did it.
"We couldn't say where the barrier is without Sora…" she explained. There was a hint of sadness in her voice as well: "...and if we got close enough, the woman could hit us with her magic."
"...and they know we would transport our cousins in." The feline added, once again finishing the sentence for someone else.
"They are targeting us now."
2 units sealed until the caster is dead.
Miwah's words, failing to describe a rather chaotic situation, were punctured by yet another message, announcing that another loss to the unceasing attrition caused by the natives' accursed magic, it was as infuriating as it was depressive.
Even though I did know that some humans could see through the invisibility the 'Eviscerators' used to cloak themselves from sight, I still thought they would be safe outside the direct engagement.
I was wrong.
"I am sorry, Miwah." I said, approaching her. I reached for her face, and she looked at me with her azure blue eyes with devotion, and without a hint of blame, even if I personally felt that sending them to scout was the risk.
"Don't be, Master." Miwah answered, "Fifteen of my sisters had been sealed when we encountered the first caster and all had been returned to you. We will not fail you. We will fight back."
I wanted to say something in response, but the touching moment was interrupted by a burst of the familiar blood red fog that formed into the new 'Eviscerators'.
Skill "Slayer of Men lvl. 35" gained.
"For Master!" They cheered, while I shook my head to bring the offending floating windows away from my view. It obeyed, fortunately.
I decided to leave the touching moment with my pale furred mate for later and turned towards the fort in the distance. I coughed again - damn smoke.
"We were clearing the woods of humans," Miwah said. "But they expected us to come, but the priestess ran towards the barrier. This one could cast the fastest. A line of sight, the wave of her staff…"
"There is a human male that protects her." Tama continued, her voice annoyed, "He could deflect or block my sisters' fireballs. I am certain I could burn through his defences, and then…"
"Are you certain there is only one? Priestesses? Elites?"
"No, Master." Miwah confirmed as they take turns answering my question, "A warrior, there could be one. But the casters, there are multiple, we could see their flashy clothes from a distance, but they kept away…"
There was something about the situation which irked her. She was uncharacteristically serious and didn't show a single trace of her usual flirting, and the loss of Helmy seemed to have a strange effect on the host as a whole. Risking Tama seems far too dangerous now, considering she was technically in charge of all the 'Purifiers'.
She was bringing order into chaos, for better or worse.
If only I could get more 'Alphas' …
"Don't go." I decided, "Don't risk yourself."
"Master?"
"You are harassing each other now? Is that why the fields are burning?"
"Yes, Master,"
"They might be trying to draw you out…" I mused. "I have no idea how they know, though."
"I am certain they do, Master. But we could do the same. We will draw them out."
The new set of explosions sounded in the distance, and the vulpine grin appeared on the silver vixen's face, and the outburst of fog gave birth to her smaller kin, eight more of the little yellow and red fox-girls came to existence giggling.
"For Master!" They jumped around, and I had another notification to dismiss.
Skill "Scorched Earth lvl.35" gained.
"We will see this world burn, Master." Tama said, with all seriousness, and the slight growl undertone to it, "No human would threaten your progeny when they are born…"
They managed to get Tama angry. Muffled screams pierced the distance, a background to the moment..
"They will come, you will see."
"What are you trying to do?" I asked, looking around, "Where are Arke's drones?"
"My sisters are wiping out humans in the area, Master." she answered, "The priestess would have to come out eventually to face us. Arke's drones are helping, but the larger ones are too slow and the fast ones are too small."
More explosions.
Did she torch half of the forest?
I still couldn't see what they were targeting, but the fields, the ones I saw before must be entirely aflame now. Then, the other most dreaded sensation grounded me, and the system dryly announced the loss that felt like another tiny portion of my soul chipping away.
My girls … my girls…
2 units sealed until the caster is dead.
More pain, more loss.
Two anthropomorphic rats - a little 'Defiler' and tall 'Devourer' caught me before my weakening legs would drop me to my knees. The infusion of power and vitality soon returned my strength. I caught sight of the 'Devourer' draining a small, veiny, organic sack, attached to her equally fleshy-armour, for the life force.
Kirke walked forward. The canopy of leaves above didn't allow her to fly, but her wings buzzed with restlessness. The pace of the changes she made was, however, slowing down, even if the direct line of sight between us and the fort was disappearing through the smoke and flames.
I wanted to step forward.
"Wait, Master! Arke. Lost thirty. Scout drones." Narita narrated, speaking in her usual strange speech with a lot of pauses, but even she looked somehow agitated: "It is. Not safe! The sealing works on the line of sight, I think!"
She stepped forward, gesturing to me to stay behind with one hand, while raising the other towards the general direction of the town. Her additional two scythed arms, the 'Fleshspeakers' added to her organic grafted suit, were raised.
A series of loud noises, the explosions, sounded, then the few more. The breeze carried a sulphuric smell.
Then a few more 'Purifiers' birthed from the ruby mist appeared, still sounding joyous despite all the mayhem, and the distant blasts.
More screams carried in the wind.
"We could fire inside the shield as much as they could fire outside!" The vixen suddenly observed
This time, it was Tama who laughed, along with her smaller kin, while the ruby fog gave birth to more of fluffy, giggling menaces, along with more subdued scaly kind, and I …
I knew their birth meant the death of more humans, but something within me tried to burst with the undisguised satisfaction at our growing numbers, as the recent addition to our host clustered closer.
"Master! Master! Master!"
"We must have cut off the escape routes, Master." Miwah reported, "Except for the sea, we think there aren't any ships in the harbour. Humans couldn't escape."
"Arke lost more. Of her hound drones." Narita suddenly warned.
A ruby fog returned suddenly, with the new more respawns, the 'Purifiers' and the 'Eviscerators' and, surprisingly, the 'Corruptors'. One 'Ravager' even. Then there were more explosions, dust, smoke, falling leaves falling down along with the soot ….
"They know we are here."
"This place is not safe," Sora, to this point silent, spoke up: "Relocate, Master!"
I was thrown through the currents of the void, only to be welcomed by another of those accursed windows, informing me of the worst once the material world restored itself.
2 units sealed until the caster is dead.
The 'Displacer' steadied me when I landed, and I looked around.
In one direction, the still green trees were licked by the flames, with the smoke rising up to the sky, dissipating before it could reach the clouds.
In the other, there wasn't much life left.
We were at the very edge of the dead, decaying forest. A blackened husk of trees completely devoid of life dotted the landscape, not even a single plant unaffected . A column of mutated crabs advanced forward on the muddy country road, their chitinous frames grossly misshapen under the layers of chitin and spikes, their pincers transformed into the rough, slashing and cutting three-pronged claws.
A number of small, but still dog-sized roach-hounds skittered around, followed by the mindless hulks of what once had been human, while the 'Defilers' and 'Ravagers' along with the occasional 'Mutator' were rushing the entire procession forwards.
I could catch glimpses of the 'Fleshspeakers' - creators of all this - but they hopped on the ground, their wings folded and slightly droopy with exhaustion, only a couple of them riding atop the ludicrously oversized crustaceans. None of them flew.
Then the bat-girl, seated atop of the leading mega-crab, noticed me, and I could sense her surprise, along with the command to stop the abominable cavalcade, and fell over with a flustered squeak, only saved from crashing to the ground far below by how tightly her talons were latched into the shell. After a moment of awkward scrambling and flapping, she was upright again. The one behind her wasn't so quick to react, her tumbled impact announced by the cloud of black dust from the crumbling plants, which cushioned her fall.
"For Master! Master!"
The group of 'Defilers' rushed forward, so did the 'Ravagers' and the bat-girl - an 'Overseer' rather than 'Fleshspeaker' jumped down her perch while the other one got back from her drop.
"For Master!"
I was rather uninterested in her explanation of why they couldn't grow into their pet monstrosities any faster.
My girls were in danger!
"For Master?"
She caught on to my thought, arguing that this part was, in fact, mainly offensive - the siege-crabs were, according to her, a solution more effective than sending their roach-hounds to reach the town centre, but it was not important right now. They were supposed to be there already!
"What happened?" I demanded. However, the words soon froze in my throat as another spell struck and the unfeeling system announced a loss.
3 units sealed until the caster is dead.
A blast. Then another, and I looked back, and saw the burst of bright blue flames sweeping the untouched section of the forest. Then the unbelievable agony struck as something - someone - has torn out a closest piece of my very soul from me, flinging me in rage.
16 units sealed until the caster is dead.
One of my companions, my mates, was hit. I knew it. The damn system didn't tell me so, but I could feel it.
This was unforgivable.
I couldn't contain the hate flowing through me as the idiotic window announced another loss, and then, on the horizon, the sinister glow ate away the trees where they still cling to life, only to be snuffed out in an instant.
A ruby mist rose up, spitting the girls out as they fought and fell against the unseen foe.
"For Master!"
The bat-girl grabbed me, shielding me with her wings, and her body, while the 'Ravagers' charged forward, and I could hear the ring of metal against metal, as the blades clashed, but I still didn't see what was going on. I was expecting the 'Displacer' to draw me through the rift once again, but it didn't happen.
Then, suddenly, out of the blue, I was washed with a sense of relief, unexplained, and unexpected, indescribable, and a new notification invaded my view even as I faced away from the action.
Major Enemy was killed. One more to advance the General level.
Skill "Great Devourer lvl. 72" gained.
Skill "Great Devourer lvl. 73" gained.
"For Master!"
They cried.
"I want to see."
Finally, I freed myself from the embrace of the leathery wings. I was surrounded not only by the force that escorted the 'Fleshspeakers' and their crab-pets, but countless of my other girls, all freshly spawned, naked and without their equipment.
Miwah was among them. And Sora. It was who they hit; I realised.
"What happened?"
No answer.
The human was flung out of the woods into the open. A robed figure, swordman from my vision. He crashed into the dusty dirt road, his body rolling over, yet still somehow managed to regain his footing in the most impressive display of their superhuman level of martial arts.
The robed figure's eyes zeroed in on me.
He even dodged a few more fireballs thrown in his direction, dodge dancing away the several 'Eviscerators', even recovering his lost sword in the process to cut a few of my girls down in the process. My blood boiled, and I wanted to scream, demanding for that bastard to be put down, but Ekaterina and Kuma charged off the woods, from the direction of the blast and draining magic thrown around.
A few blows connected.
The swordsman tried to dance between the slashes from Kuma and Ekaterina, blocking a few blows that could dismember a lesser man. His flying kick sent both of the bear girls staggering backward and even shrugged off the psychic scream of the 'Overseer' off.
Arrows fell around us. His comrades were coming. The blasts were deafening, but the swordsman didn't get the due he wanted.
The fireballs were thrown, and Ekaterina found her opening when she caught his sword in her gauntlet.
His blade melted.
The warrior still tried to roll away, dodging Ekaterina's blow, only to be hit by Kuma's sword.
Blood splashed, and more of the 'Ravagers' descended on him like a shark feeding frenzy
I didn't see it, but the effect was undeniable, and it felt glorious.
Major Enemy killed. Level 9 achieved. Unit cap doubles.
The ruby mist descended on the dead lands around us, and voices without number sang in unison as the hundreds, even thousands, of my girls were released upon this world, all crying in unison, with cheer and with purpose:
"For Master"
I loved them.
"For Master!"
The unbridled euphoria didn't last long.
"Is it over? Where is Helmy?!"
At this very moment, the pain returned, and the system laughed at my confidence when it announced.
32 units sealed until the caster is dead.
16 units sealed until the caster is dead.
…
The agony was beyond understanding, but I understood - they were hitting the crowd! More girls in the area, the more they could seal!
"Fall back and scatter!"
I ordered, and the sea of claws and fur and scales got into motion.
"Crabs and thralls forward. Rest back!" I screamed, even if I didn't have to, caught Miwah and demanded.
"Miwah! What happened?"
"Tama drew some of them out."
"There are more?"
"Yes, Master."
"Barriers?"
"One down, two remain."
"Damn it."
If I only knew what made this accursed town so special!
The 'Lady' had chosen the worst moment to have her beauty sleep!
I cursed and turned away from Miwah, then yelled once again, this time to open air, feeling quite mad.
"Stupid system, give me water. Give me something useful. Select skill…"
I must do something before it gives me something entirely random!
The screen came out, a floating window in front of my eyes, heedless of the surrounding chaos.
Select your ninth element
Skill: "Slayer of the Blessed"
Element: Air / Poison
Skill: "Chaos In the Depths"
Element: Fire / Water
Skill "Terror From the Abyss"
Element: Force / Water
Skill "Powder That Hates"
Element: Force / Gunpowder
Skill: "Tyrant of the Realm Beneath"
Element: Steel / Stone
My eyes darted on the monochromatic window, the unnecessarily cryptic skill names, all of them a matter of interpretation, and then on the moving horde.
…Tyrant of the Realm Beneath.
I have a suspicion this might allow the Master to hide under the earth and finally achieve isolation from the humans when not actively campaigning, like right now.
As for this town being a notch or two better than anywhere else? Hrrrm.
Possibly…
Priestesses in the fields, get warned to spirit attack. Because Dragon is actively intervening, he tells them about the barrier techniques to really stymie the Horde.
But the dealing attacks grow to be too much, the Horde commits a massive attack, and now…
Well. Good fight but unfortunately the Master is now Berserk himself and if he starts doing clever things…
…Tyrant of the Realm Beneath.
I have a suspicion this might allow the Master to hide under the earth and finally achieve isolation from the humans when not actively campaigning, like right now.
Tyrant-
Underground sapping is very useful against fortified positions and the ability to create underground havens might help the Master be more able to keep the Horde away from contact with the locals.
At least until the Lady is awake enough to demand a new scroll be secured…
It was said that the gods had woven the threads of one's fate a long time ago.
Ye Kang-Dae, a former captain of the royal guard, had always thought he was going to die in the battle.
Yet the gods had different plans for him. Though his position wasn't devoid of struggle or violence, he had lived in the times of unprecedented peace under the rule of the most enlightened monarch.
The battle he had expected had never arrived, and the old captain had retired to the countryside in good health, to live the rest of his life in the town of Seoju, away from the capital. His liege has been most generous to the captain of the guard, gifting the man with the land and the house, along with the fund to live on. A reward that was not unheard of, but certainly unusual.
Honoured he was, yet his greatest unspoken regret was that of his firstborn son, Chul-Moo, a warrior, an Adept even, exceeding his father in every way, hadn't become the next captain of the royal guard, but such a position has been one of greatest honour and Ye Kang-Dae hadn't had the audacity to complain. His service, and his duty to the throne, had ended, and he obeyed the last order.
He had shown his liege an utmost respect and gratitude, as it was fitting to show to His Majesty the King, and then, the old captain left the capital.
It has been a peaceful life, one he had never expected or planned for.
Kang-Dae didn't seek death, but he was a soldier - it was the only life he had ever known - and couldn't imagine it would be any other way than by the sword, or arrow, or spear. He wouldn't drink himself to death on the town's liquor.
Then, in the strange twist of fate, understood only by the gods that weaved it, he was given the chance to serve in battle once again.
Everything had changed when the Jin barbarians attacked, and the war he expected happened when the ageing warrior had already retired away from any posts of power of influence.
Chaos, and soon panic, followed, spreading through the countryside, reaching the far corners of the kingdom, and even he couldn't escape it.
The southern provinces started to levy all of their able bodied men to fight off the invasion.
There was a rumour that the capital had already fallen.
Yet Kang-Dae, though old and spared of it all, decided he would go with the younger men, especially when he had heard that the fort in Seoju had to be abandoned.
He was old, but he could still fight!
He used to be a captain of the royal guard!
If his kingdom, and his liege, and his people, were in danger, he would face the enemies on the battlefield along with his two sons.
The gods, once again, hadn't granted the old soldier the death of the battlefield.
He has been turned away, alongside both of his sons.
Ye Kang-Dae had never expected it would happen, considering the rumours that spread, both at the villages they had passed, and the military camp they had reported to.
The situation has been dire; they said.
The army might not have any use for him, an old, retired captain, but his sons?
His second son was an alchemist, not a soldier, an unusual profession for the son of the captain, but he wouldn't disgrace his father by running away!
And his firstborn, he was an Adept! A warrior of considerable skill and power!
Yet, they were all rejected for reasons the former captain couldn't understand, ordered to return to man the previously abandoned garrison with the five randomly selected soldiers, in order to protect it against the pirate raids.
The coast hadn't seen even a single pirate ship for years!
Worse yet, if the enemy did show up, he wouldn't be able to hold the fort with just five men, selected at random, without the regards for their abilities.
An Adept, especially one as talented as his first son, Ye Chul-Moo, was more than a match for the two dozen of men, let alone the ragtag group of the hungry raiders, but wouldn't a warrior of such prowess be direly needed out on the battlefield, especially if the dire situation was as dire as they were made to believe?
However, the old soldier never questioned the order he had been given, even if he didn't comprehend his purpose, and neither did his sons.
The former captain taught them well.
Nevertheless, even he couldn't forget the stare of the townsfolk when he returned with both of his sons, where others gave their sons, their brothers, their husbands, while none of his family had to bear the weight of loss.
For two long months he had held the fort, only with his two sons, and five more men, practically strangers, yet no enemies had come.
There weren't any pirate attacks, as it has been for years. Not even a single ship had appeared on the horizon, an occasional fisher boat notwithstanding, but the news from the other parts of the kingdom was equally sparse, if not non existing. Armies of neither the Jin, or Hanulbeol-guk, had appeared.
He tried to keep someone on lookout, often taking the guard duty himself, to keep away from the icy stares of the townsfolk, but for a long time, there weren't any scouts, any messengers, not even vagrants, or wandering peddlers. Only empty fields and woods.
The orders to defend the small fort in Seoju appeared more nonsensical than ever.
Then some of the town's men had returned.
Hungry and dirty, they brought news of the terrible defeat up north.
The war was lost; they said.
The barbarians were coming; they said.
Now, there were about a hundred men in the town's small fort, some locals, others scared and confused boys from the other provinces that couldn't or didn't find their way back home after they routed after the one chaotic melee.
Some were disloyal, tried their luck on the road, but others stayed, and would fight, protect the town. The garrison - despite its laughable size - was likely safer than anywhere else, after all no further supplies and food had been taken away since they left.
Ye Kang-Dae, a former captain of the royal guard, did the best to prepare them, but it seemed futile.
He couldn't fight the war with a mere hundred of men, especially ones which had already deserted their army once, but the old captain needed to prove to both the town, and himself, he wasn't the coward.
There was but one trick in his sleeve.
He still had the plan to terrify and scatter the Jin cavalry with the fire medicine, Ye Suk, his second son, could make, and spend two long months preparing for the inevitable clash with the Jin.
The rice fields didn't open much space for cavalry charge or manoeuvre, and the town's fort, albeit small, could provide some miniscule amount of protection.
The Jin barbarians they expected never showed up.
Instead, a few days ago, a lone priestess had stumbled from into the town. Ye Kang-Dae didn't recognize her personally, but she ought to be from the one of the surrounding villagers with a shrine of their own.
However, she didn't bring the news he had expected.
The Jin didn't sack the nearby village, as they had thought.
The horrors of the ancient world had awakened, she said, rambling on and on about the terrifying visions and nightmares that plagued all night and day. A prophecy of the town's impending demise didn't improve the mood in the slightest.
However, it wasn't up to the old captain to question the voice of the divine, and left the raving priestess under the care of the local shrine. He had paid his respects here, too, and left.
Back in that moment, the old captain still thought the Jin army was coming.
That the mortal men would fight other mortal men, that perhaps it would come to some duel between his talented son and Jin's adept, or perhaps, perhaps the barbarians would focus on the larger city down in the gulf.
He failed to convince the townsfolk to dig the trenches, which would be useful in breaking the cavalry manoeuvres among the paddies, roads and cliffs, as he thought he would.
Next day, the entire town talked about the bad omens, while the new, perhaps slightly mad priestess preached about the unspeakable evil that awakened from the deepest slumber, about the betrayal among gods, about the end times. It was said that the gods weaved the fate of each man before he had been born, but the captain never met the fabled seer capable of peering into the future. He ignored it.
The townsfolk listened, and the sacrifices burned in the local shrine for the night.
The captain, however, expected a more mundane enemy, against which the pikes, bows, and fire medicine had to work.
Ye Kang-Dae, mindful of the customs, did wander to the shine, offering respects to Iron Khagan, a great warrior god, and the Red King, the patron of humanity, more than the sign of struggle within the community than expecting the calamity foretold by the mad priestess.
He didn't understand back then what was coming.
Yesterday, the Red King descended from the Heavens.
Witnessing the celestial dragon god convinced even the most doubtful of the townsfolk that the unspeakable terror was indeed approaching, and the old captain - one didn't question his superiors, and Ye Kang-Dae wouldn't dare to question the god. No one did.
They were all called to the Red King's service.
A handful of Evil Spirits to be sealed away before their presence corrupts the mortal realm. It was what was expected of them. His priestesses would conduct the ritual, bestow the blessing in the heavenly dragon's name, consecrate the grounds, and perform the sealing.
They would have to just keep them safe. Guarding the four priestesses, two of them mere apprentices, was easier than fighting an army, he thought, and it was a work which carried the blessing of the Heavens.
How could he refuse such an order?
The captain, still recalling the accusatory glares of the women that lost their sons and husbands to the dreaded draft, saw it as the moment of his redemption for both him and his two sons. He would earn forgiveness through his actions, Ye Kang-Dae swore.
The Evil Spirits were coming, and everyone was going to face them. A few creatures, nothing more: they were nothing like the regiment of Jin's heavy cavalry.
The rituals were performed, sacrifices made, the magical wards made in preparation.
The former captain decided to not rely on the holy powers of the priestesses alone.
He convinced his men to prepare as many fire arrows as they could.
It was a tactic that ought to work.
The fire medicine, a miraculous powder that exploded with the fire and smoke, would certainly terrify the Evil Spirits as much as the divine powers bestowed upon the priestesses, and Suk, his second son, would finally be useful!
He has been making the powder for two months now!
The glorious battle approached, and the tension rose within every heartbeat.
As the small group of Evil Spirits fell to dust, felled by the holy powers, he started to see the signs that this wasn't going to be a fight he had been called upon by the Red King.
The armour of the Evil Spirits left behind moved, crawled, and bled, on its own, even after its wearers turned into the dust! The horses they rode weren't normal animals, but unspeakable abominations with many eyes that didn't fear the pike aimed at them, but ran forward without the concern for their life, or safety, to be impaled during their insane dash to reach the town.
It didn't end here, in blood and pain. More were coming.
The shifting air of pure malice that made lesser man's cry birthed more Evil Spirits, rushing his men, as one priestess danced to finish the ritual to ward off the area from the malicious magical influence, and others tried to seal away the rampaging beasts.
His first son, Chul-Moo, brave and mighty, had killed many spirits, the inexhaustible flow of bodies scattering into the wind, blood and all, but there was always more.
The other priestess screamed something about the cats that could slide in the holes in the world, but he was far too busy to keep the order among his pikemen, all of them slowly retreating back as the Adept handled all the fighting.
The Evil Spirits did try to flank them, but so would try the hungry wolves the spirits resembled, mockery in the woman's shape.
The former captain managed to fight off the black wolf-thing dressed in a defaced army cuirass that jumped him from nowhere, but more still appeared, rushing the formation around the priestess from all sides.
It occurred to him, in a moment of brilliance, that fire medicine would disperse the shifting air that bred more spirits. The priestess would consecrate the ground, and this would be over here, and now.
He didn't know if the fire medicine tied to arrows, originally made to terrify the horses of the Jin, would be any help against the malicious magic, but did. His archers, barely coherent and confused, on the verge of panic, managed. The lit fire arrows released into the cursed mirage disappeared without a trace, without the thunderous booms, without the fire and smoke, but the endless tide of the beast spirits faltered.
Did it work?
The priestess finished with her ritual, and evil was held at bay. The monster disappeared, and silence fell on the land.
For the moment, he thought they had won, but soon he realised they merely fought off the first of many waves of attacks, one they weren't advised off.
Then came invisible monsters, ones only priestesses could see, lurking at the edge of the barrier, and she ran after them.
At first, he thought it was the battle exhaustion on the woman that made her chase shadows. Only after her magic sealed them away did he find out they were, indeed, there.
His unseen enemy was something the captain struggled to come to terms with.
Only the blessed, capable of seeing the world beyond the mortal limits, could see the shadow creatures. Ye Kang-Dae found out only after the unseen spectres reduced to the same red dust as others, leaving behind the defaced armour of Hanulbeol-guk almost as they wanted to taunt the old captain.
However, before he could act, or drown in the memories of the old days when he was the trusted sword of the royal throne, the spirits had launched yet another attack.
The fires had erupted on the other side of the town, swallowing the outlying fields and houses alike in the massive conflagration, and their attempt to put down the spreading flames had only encouraged the very same happening at the other, more remote locations.
His men ran back, no time to move in the orderly fashion, but fires spread too quickly and too violently. He wasn't told this would happen.
The magical wards held, preventing the spirits from wandering too close in seems, and his men, still filled with zeal, tried to face the attackers, but the flashes of new fires set further away spoke of the trouble.
A ball of fire thrown at them was deflected by Chul-Moo, but even the best Adept couldn't be everywhere and anywhere at once. The defenders were being spread too thin, and the Evil Spirits were everywhere.
"Fall back to the fort!" He ordered, trying to stop the men charging the figures lurking at the edge of the forest, lobbing the balls of magical fire into the fields of crops and grass, as well as any unfortunate soul to come close. The priestess refused to listen.
The mission placed upon them by the Heavens was seemingly the only thing the holy woman had on her mind, and tried to seal away the rampaging creatures the moment they revealed themselves, but it only sparked the attacks at other places.
Every field, every rice paddy, every patch of grass, every building, not warded by magic, was to be set ablaze. The spreading fires advanced on the town. People attempted to put them down, but it only created more chaos.
The Evil Spirits didn't fight like the Jin.
They did not fight as the mindless animals either.
They harassed his men like the skirmishers would, armed with the terrible magic instead of bows and arrows, ran from cover to cover, lobbing the balls of fire into the fray once the opportunity presented itself, only to retreat to cover once again.
Burn and retreat, and return to burn again. And laugh. They kept giggling with their otherworldly voices, with each fire, with each spark, with each death they caused.
The outlying huts and houses were razed, inhabitants burned to death if they didn't flee to safety fast enough, while the forest itself changed before his very eyes. A canopy of leaves was changed to protect against arrows, while the cruel fire spirits laughed and laughed with each victim they set ablaze.
Some of the townsfolk did try to flee, against all odds, against all reason, but he refused to think what would await those who made it into the now cursed forest.
Disgusting insects, as large as hunting hounds, swarmed his men, heedless of the priestess' spells. They need to be stopped by muscle and steel.
A doubt about all the sacrifices, all the rituals, all the holy wards, crept in: were they useless?
His men cut and impaled the bugs, yet it didn't end the battle.
"Hold!" He screamed, as his panting men stopped one attack, only for another to present itself.
The spirits were relentless.
The air was smoke and fire, blood and hate.
Some of the townsfolk tried to flee, desperate and scared, towards the forest, to their doom.
He saw the fire spirits catch a woman and burn her in front of others. The laughter of malevolent creatures echoed over the screams of the wounded.
His soldiers, most of them still relatively fresh recruits, rushed in to help, to avenge the dying.
"No!" he screamed, trying to stop them, but it was too late
His words "It is a trap!" died among the screams.
The spirits now used arrows and fired both.
The captain then did what he forbade his own men to do, and tried to rescue a few of the fallen, attempting to drag away a whimpering soldier with the crossbow bolt lodged in his leg. Save one soul among this slaughter.
The barely adult boy would live, the old captain convinced himself as he strained his ageing body to carry the man away. Yet Kang-Dae doesn't fear death, but he wouldn't, he couldn't, let everyone meet the same fate.
The wounded boy died before he could be brought back to safety, mouth foamed, bleeding from eyes and ears, the skin pale, the veins blackened, the body harmed beyond what the single blow could make.
Poison, but not one Kang-Dae had seen ever before.
Another wave of the hound sized insects came, and he could only remind the exhausted men to stay. They would scatter, help with combating the fires, or even flee, but they have to make a stand before the Evil Spirits gather for the charge. Now the old captain was certain there would be a next wave.
"Keep formation!"
The other spirits, however, did not come out, satisfied to lurk within the cursed greenery.
He glimpsed one of those accursed red and yellow furred red ones, turning into the same blood-red mist as the others, yet no arrow, no blade, had struck them.
When another furry monster threw their ball of fire, and ran away before the archer could hit him, the captain finally realised.
They couldn't enter the consecrated areas! The wards indeed worked, exactly as they were told they would, preventing the Evil Spirits from entering. Only the terrifying, skittering bugs could, and they were the weakest, easily fought away once they fell behind the fort's palisade.
There was still hope.
Another man strayed away and met his untimely end, burning, falling into the paddy that was also set on fire.
"Stay back!" He yelled. "They can't get close! They can't harm you here."
Kang-Dae caught the glimpse of the priestess running towards the woods. Foolish or suicidal, he didn't care. She screamed something he couldn't quite discern among the chaos of the battle and its roar, but perhaps she saw something he could not.
She couldn't fight that something alone!
If the priestess' blessing could drive the Spirits away, what would happen if she died?
"Bring her back!" He ordered his son, then turned towards his men. The Adept would make it, after all. If there was something out there, in the woods, they would have to figure the way to kill later.
"Archers form the line here. They can't reach us here." He repeated, resisting to cough from all the fire and smoke. No commander had to explain the orders on the battlefield, but here - here nothing he had learned no longer made any sense!
He couldn't be sure if his words were heard, his voice hoarse with yelling and all the smoke, and his age started to show as well.
Then he noticed there was a movement in the distance, where more of the forest fell under the curse. The enemies gathered for another charge! More of those disgusting bugs came, making a beeline for the archers.
"Every second, light the fire arrow. Draw and fire, then retreat!"
Too late, he noticed his son, Chul-Moo, was heading in the direction where the captain assumed most of the spirits were assembling in order to catch up to the erratic priestess, and the rain of arrows almost hit him.
They hit a few of those bugs, too, but he was also concerned with the possibility of something hidden among the charging bugs.
The Adept wouldn't be hit so easily, regardless of which archer released the arrow.
Yet he couldn't risk the archers hitting his son, even by accident, no matter how capable of dodging the shots he was.
"Hold."
His men barely fought off another wave of the dog-sized insects.
It was just a few bugs, but some of his men had been bitten…
There was no time to check whether the bugs were venomous.
Blast!
The portion of the forest where the priestess disappeared, along with the Adept, caught fire in the most massive conflagration yet, with brilliant blue fire, burning with the power of other realms, but the destruction didn't end with a mere scorching there.
Death followed.
The forest was dying in front of their very eyes, the previously green, vibrant leaves rotted in the eye blink and faded away, leaving nothing but the blackened husks behind. Then there was only dust. A few figures stood there. One of them was cursing the forest. Death and decay spread from her like the plague.
Then the forest sprouted around again, in a new sickly glow. Things that couldn't be even called trees sprang to life, covering the Spirits once more in the foliage.
Someone tried to shoot an arrow in that direction, without his order, but it didn't pass through. The greenery closed over protectively.
The priestess was gone.
The captain's son was not.
Chul-Moo was fleeing the destruction, but instead of retreating to their position, he headed down the road, away from them, towards the danger. This was beyond reckless.
What got into him?
"Chul-Moo! Chul-Moo, come back!"
Ye Kang-Dae shouted, but his son couldn't hear him. Or wouldn't.
Painfully aware this has been a trick, to lure them away from the protective wards, he refused to let his son die.
The captain lifted his sword to the air and shouted,
"Men, with me"
He didn't look back to check whether his soldiers followed the order, conflicting with his previous ones to keep within the safe, protected ideas, but he still pressed forward, among all the smoke and vapour, momentarily unsure whether the figure he followed was indeed Chul-Moo.
The dark robe his son wore flew, and his two swords gleamed…
It was him.
When Kang-Dae closed the distance, the old captain and the ordinary men he commanded were slower than the Adept at the height of his strength - he was already too late.
He saw his son fighting with two hulking figures, both dressed from head to toe in steel plates, unimpeded by the blows that would break or puncture a normal suit of armour, while more beast of a similar ilk headed for the scene of the fight. The Evil Spirits would not face him in honourable single combat.
A scream pierced the air. There weren't merely a handful of monsters, there were hundreds of them gathering for a charge!
His son was surrounded and…
When his son fell, and with him, the old captain's heart had fallen too. More spirits were coming. Much, much more.
"No!"
He has been deceived!
He wasn't fighting all of the Evil Spirits plaguing this land, but merely skirmishers of their entire army! What he saw wasn't a "handful" of them.
The captain took a step back.
"Archers! Archers, prepare all the fire arrows…." he shouted, for a brief moment thinking he was left alone in the field, but few of the men did follow him, against all reason, and against all odds, only to witness the gathering horde.
Some of them ran. Others, however, tried with shaking hands, reaching for the torch to set alight the cords of the fire arrows.
A mere two dozen bowmen.
Their eyes betrayed their terror. Yet they stood.
With the trails of fire and smoke, the first volley of fire arrows flew towards the enemy.
When his gaze wandered back, the battlefield was swept by the thick crimson fog, like the blood of the fallen, and from that fog, more spirits appeared. Not hundreds, but thousands, rushed forward, the loud boom of the fire medicine dying in the roar of the incoming horde.
"Shoot and run back!"
Twenty fire arrows, barely lit in time, made no change in the oncoming tide.
However, then a lot of charging monsters turned to dust, and they once again started to flee as the priestess swung her staff in wide motions, screaming hoarse the ritual chant.
For the briefest moment hope gleamed, the old captain thought the enemy had routed, and he snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, but then he realised the monsters were merely regrouping.
Hundreds of winged creatures took flight, their piercing shrieks tore the air, as the forest around began to heave almost as if all the plants were placed under some evil curse at once.
More hideous creatures charged forward. Gargantuan, a hulking beast larger than anything he had ever seen. Larger than his house!
The twisted, gargantuan crab-like abomination, large as a merchant's warehouse, covered with spikes, advanced forward, while smaller creatures scuttled around it.
A few humanoids, bloated mockeries of humanity, shambled forward, then pointed their arms at them, releasing a shower of spikes against Kang-Dae's tiny force.
The confused pikemen nearby stumbled, a gruesome bone-spike lodged in his eye, while the priestess collapsed down with a projectile stuck in shoulder.
The captain grabbed the priestess, dragging her away, and yelled with all the voice he had left:
"Retreat!"
He ran. Shrieks followed, and some men fell.
Most of his soldiers were huddled around the fort's gate by the time he reached it.
Those who disobeyed his order to follow his most foolish charge and chase after his fallen son survived, but the number of defenders dwindled in merely a moment, and those who were left behind considered fleeing, as they did in the battle that brought them here a few months ago. They watched Kang-Dae with wide eyes.
The old captain couldn't blame them.
They had been deceived - there wasn't a small group of spirits polluting the land with their presence, but a veritable horde, an army of them, and the town had no chance standing up against such a force. Perhaps a human conqueror would have mercy, but would the creatures beyond the ken of men act similarly?
They were never told the scale of the enemy.
By the time they reached the fort, the group of the twelve gargantuan crabs had spread, advancing slowly towards the fortress. Those weren't small, pathetic, tiny things that scuttled in the sand, but living battering rams whose pointed legs dug thick holes in the ground like fence-posts, while their heavy carapace shrug away the rain of arrows, heedless of the dying embers of the conflagration the fire spirits released earlier.
Three even carried siege crossbows, a bolt of which just hit the palisade.
More disgusting things advanced in their wake.
Everything was wrong!
They swore to the heavenly dragon they would seal away the lingering evil, not to stop the endless tide, knowledge of whose existence was kept from them.
The prophecy of the end of times felt suddenly much more accurate than anything else.
A loud explosion shook the fort as he left the wounded, bleeding priestess in the courtyard.
The captain rushed to ascend the watchtower.
The alchemist workshop was on fire, and the part of the town with it. The winged things circled above, as the fire spirits threw the balls of fire from the cliff to feed the spreading inferno. One side of the town was wide open!
But the wards! The consecration!
But, they couldn't enter just moments ago!
The town grounds were warded against the Evil Spirits until suddenly.
Then the realisation hit him - the power would fail without the medium.
He leaned over the railing towards the wooden fort's courtyard, where two of his recruits tried to stop the bleeding of the wounded priestess. The woman had already lost consciousness, and the men didn't know what to do.
"Don't let the priestess die!"
The captain commanded, but it was quite pointless. He didn't have a proper surgeon to tend to the wounded priestess. She still clung to life, the captain hoped.
"Go and bring one of her apprentices!"
Then his eyes wandered towards the huge lumbering creatures, still trying to find their way through the burning grass and rice paddies.
Kang-Dae then sheathed the sword and ran down the guard tower, grabbing the bundle of the fire arrows that remained, as much as he could carry, along with the torch, then, with all of his waning strength, ran outside, and charged the largest of the advancing abominations.
The fire arrows caught fire, and he prepared to toss it inside the abominable "crab's" large maw, and as the fire medicine detonated, a thought shot through the old warrior's mind.
This chapter is the result of the poll ran under the Chapter 84 on the Scribble Hub in which most of the readers called for the interlude from the perspective of the besieged down.
Following chapter would be a result of the poll ran under the Chapter 85 on the Scribble Hub in which most of the readers selected the power for the next chapter.
Missed those? Don't have Scribble Hub account?
Not to worry. There are going to be more. Remember to follow, and like, and leave a comment - I read all of the comments and take them into consideration, even including their ideas!
The earth hummed under the thousands of assorted feet,paws, and claws, as the furry horde spilled into the countryside.
The giggles of the excited 'Purifiers' mixed with all the noise, as well as the screams of mortals in the distance, as the giant, mutated crustaceans waded forward through the crowd, accompanied by dozens of deformed fleshy hulks of zombified former humans.
"For Master! For Master!" The furry flood shrieked, cried, and chanted.
A loose arrow landed harmlessly near me, only to splinter as it hit the unnaturally thick carapace of the crab-like creation.
More voices, echoing inside and outside of my mind as the chaos reigned all around.
"For Master!"
A 'Corruptor' fell from the back of the oversized crustacean while attempting to load the ballista, which they somehow lodged onto the beast's unrealistically large carapace.
I looked around, dazzled, preoccupied with the necessity of making a choice.
The endless cacophony agreed on one thing - fire!
I stuck my head, trying to shake off the feeling. Not fire, water!
The host continued on its course. I sensed the 'Fleshspeaker' excitement to test the spike spitters, whatever those were, and my ability to sense their racing, alien minds when my own wandered off made me distraught and confused. For the moment, the things had played in slow motion, compared to the raging network of joined minds, almost urging me to contribute to their insane ideas.
More screams of the wounded in the distance brought me back to reality, audible even among all the chaos. It was only a matter of time until…
Water!
That's what we went there for!
Choose, now!
"Select skill Terror from the Abyss…"
I barked out with little thought, hasty to make my choice, to give purpose to all that violence and bloodshed, and with the words spoken, it felt like a significant burden fell from my shoulders.
A split second decision, fueled by the fear that the system would have made a selection for me the way it did the first time, which led to the first 'Eviscerators' being summoned. Although I wouldn't trade my beloved Miwah for anything, my firm, ever present support among the madness, selfless and faithful, I still dreaded the loss of agency to the system's fickle nature.
Perhaps it would even congratulate me on the attempt to cause greater destruction, while none of it was my intent, and for the brief time I had the thought whether the 'earth' option wouldn't be a better choice to hide ourselves from all that hostility.
It was not to be - I made the choice, and the system accepted it.
The red mist, the one that gave birth to all of my girls, erupted around me, but this time, it wasn't just an 'Alpha' of the new breed that appeared, but nine 'Fleshspeakers' as well, spreading their wide leathery wings and raising their girlish voices in the cry "For Master!"
I blinked, confused. I didn't ask for them. Did the system play me again?
Among them, a new figure formed from the same red mist, but unlike others, fell to the ground while the others did not, the large leathery wings of the 'Fleshspeaker' blocking all views like the living curtain, even if it would take the Fruit of Arcane to make them my size.
"Did something go wrong?" I asked.
"Master! Master!" The bat-girls chirped as I focused on the notification, providing the answer I sought.
Skill "Terror From the Abyss lvl.1" gained.
Skill "Messengers of the Ever-Living Horde Lvl.18" gained.
I waved it away, as I understood the very moment I spoke my will. Some of the 'Fleshspeakers' or 'Overseers' scored a kill, satisfying the system's even growing thirst for blood.
There was a sense of relief that the system - one I only tentatively understood - didn't cheat on me this time.
"Master! Master!" My new bat-girls were particularly giddy, jumping up and down as her older sisters circled above, and their shrieks, both as a means of expression and method of attack, filled the air.
I raised my hand.
"Where are the other priestesses?"
One of them, one that briefly sealed Miwah and Sora away, was dead, but her compatriots were still around, and posed a threat.
More shrieks, more chants.
"For Master! Master! Master!" insisted the cohort of chiropteran monster girls.
They tried to drive the priestess away. Supposedly, they wounded one, but she disappeared.
"For Master!"
It's dangerous, they repeated, but I was not going to run into the battle.
"Then find her!"
First, I need to check on my newest girl, the only one which didn't move or speak yet, covered even from my eyes by the considerable wingspan of the massed anthropomorphic bats, who also demanded their share of attention. Or perhaps they wanted to shield me from the enemy's arrows. Ordinarily, 'the Fleshspeakers' were mindful of where their wings were.
Perhaps I confused them, I didn't know. Normally I was other breeds that lurked nearby, rather than the bats. Now, even my 'personal Displacer' was missing, and there was a wall of a few dozen representatives of the chiropteran monster girls.
I was ensconced by a veritable flurry of bat wings. The sky was only visible for the briefest of glimpses.
A deafening earthshaking detonation shook the ground, and with the usual "For Master!" a group of the 'Purifiers' formed, forcing me to pause and reconsider my increasingly crowded position. I looked around through the whirlwind of skin and fur, only to see the massed 'Corruptors' influence on the forest around.
More explosions made me jerk away, and the ruby fog had returned to form the entire batch of the 'Purifiers' while their winged cousins simply refused to move, and when the familiar red smoke once again receded into nothingness, I swam in bats and foxes.
"For Master!"
They didn't need to remind me.
Skill "Scorched Earth lvl.37" gained.
Waving away the notification, my vision already obstructed as it was even without it, I demanded the explanation. I almost fell down, but the nearest little fox girl tried to keep me up.
"For Master!"
"Go scatter! Now!" I hushed them to disperse the crowd and discourage humans from concentrating fire, especially if I wasn't sure we weren't in range after the disorienting teleports. Perhaps humans just fired a few arrows and ran, but I couldn't be sure.
"For Master!"
Better to trust my girls with it. They knew.
"The volleys and barrages being fired at large concentrations are the biggest threats. And spells!! The sooner the humans are gone, the sooner I'll give you some greetings."
While I didn't have any education on battle tactics, my scattered brain did remind me that soldiers kept their distance to minimise the effect of artillery, so I was told.
"For Master!"
The nimble 'Purifiers' were first to leave, heading in all directions. Their small frames made it easy for them to hide and seek cover among the forest if the 'Corruptors' kept the overgrowth to maximum. They were also more likely to return as quickly, demanding attention, and I could sense their enthusiasm to sweep the humans under the fiery bombardment before the humans could do the same.
Concepts involving burning came to them easily.
They spread the mood around all 'Purifiers' I could sense as much. Perhaps they were excited how effective their concentration of fire would be, I didn't know.
The 'Fleshspeakers', being not so agile on the ground, and an easy target on the open sky, merely hopped away, deciding to keep considerably closer. I could sense them considering using their wings as the cover for me, and experience pain rather than suffer the 'sealing', but the need never arose.
I found my nearest 'Alpha' - or rather 'Bride'. Miwah seemed rather preoccupied. Now there were a lot of new 'Eviscerators; in the wood, and she herself was freshly recovering from the 'sealing' magic's impact.
The fire raged in the distance, and the familiar blasts of the fireball impacts mixed with screams, and road, and the excited giggle of the little furry pyromaniacs.
New notification, new 'Purifiers' forming from the ruby fog, with another of the fire foxes ready to join the fray, with the excited laughter on their vulpine faces.
Skill "Scorched Earth lvl.38" gained.
I dismissed it with a gesture, more for the sake of the 'Purifiers' than the system itself.
"Miwah? Speak to me!"
"Yes, Master!" She was, in fact, more focused than I ever was, and announced: "We were capturing those who broke to flee."
"Good. The explosion? What the hell happened?"
The 'Purifiers' could throw fireballs - it was their primary method of attack - but the booms they created weren't as deafening from a distance. Smoke rising to the sky explained nothing, and the sulphur smell wasn't a surprise anymore.
"A building exploded after it caught fire, Master." Miwah answered, her beautiful voice still audible among the confusion of the battle, and more detonations somewhere far away.
"What? Tama did it?"
"No. The Purifiers are attacking the town from the other direction where the barrier fell. The building exploded, however, and the town was burning. Tama is leading her sisters from the side where their barrier fell, and humans are fleeing."
The gunpowder, I realised - the locals were using gunpowder, and we just hit their powder storage, hence the detonation, and more of my girls charged in afterwards. I wasn't certain that was safe.
"And other magic barriers? Did we get all the priestesses?"
There weren't any notifications, were there?
"Still up, Master." Sora said, with the annoyed growl in their voice as more explosions blasted into the background. She, and Miwah, were only 'Alphas' present, with Kuma and Ekaterina were somewhere down the road, with rest tied up who knew where, with the accursed priestesses still on the loose.
I couldn't risk more of them being sealed.
The priestess who sealed most of my precious girls still lived, and with her, did her magical wards and shields.
A trap. It could be a trap! A nagging sensation that whoever hit the largest number of my girls had persisted, tugged on my brain, demanding the corrective measure to be taken, but I gathered myself.
"Don't get close." I decided. "The Purifiers must have hit their magazine and there could be a chain of explosions…"
The notification, along with the stinging, aggravating sensation of the mental feedback from the host's telepathic link, had disrupted my speech, and made me stagger.
1 units sealed until the caster is dead.
"Bitch!" I cursed - even one more of my girls being 'sealed' was one girl too many.
I wasn't going to let them hurt the host any more.
"Let the town burn and fall back. If they have more gunpowder, it may detonate soon. I don't want anyone near that damn fort! Or even town." I ordered, pointing, rather uselessly, at Sora: "Especially not Tama!"
I didn't know where the volatile vixen was, and whether she could get herself in harm's way, whether it was near the human priestesses or their exploding gunpowder storage. Hopefully, the human's new weapon would kill some of their own, especially the 'casters'.
The loss inflicted by the last spell hitting the large gathering of my girls still throbbed within my heart and soul, and I wasn't going to accept the spell slowly chipping away at the parts of our collective being.
I could only hope that Arke's control of the drones - as she called them - was unaffected.
"The Fleshspeaker and Overseers handle this with their drones!"
Another explosion made me jolt and quiver. It differed from blasts of the 'Purifier' fireball, even though I wasn't sure how I could tell.
"Arke is working on it, Master." Miwah assured me, however, before I could respond, the promise was somehow fulfilled.
When the ruby mist erupted once again, the crowd of the bat-girls grew even larger, and the familiar floating window already announced the success of whatever effort the 'Fleshspeaker' put into pacifying this accursed settlement.
Skill "Messengers of the Ever-Living Horde Lvl.19" gained.
Major Enemy killed. Eight more to advance the General level
I dismissed it. Right now, I didn't care who fell victim to the 'Fleshspeakers' or their drones. There were far too many priestesses within this human city, and they all represented a threat in equal measure through their magic, or through the dragon they represented. Eventually, they would get to the one that sealed Helmy and made her pay for harming the host.
However, it was one step closer to freeing the captive members of our host.
"I wish we sometimes went somewhere peaceful." I sighed, and there was a hint of desperation in my voice, almost wanting to laugh along with the manic 'Purifiers' lobbying their fireballs at the enemy. I didn't. It was tempting, though.
"We are making it peaceful, Master." Miwah said, coming closer.
"For Master!" cried a voice somewhere from behind, an 'Overseer' for certain, but I was completely uninterested in their supposed success of the siege crab designs,
"The new girl…" I said, suddenly realising that I completely forgot something - someone - very important - and looked around, then rushed towards the new 'Alpha', still laying sprained on the ground, currently surrounded by the few 'Corruptors' that took interest, or pity, over her new cousin.
When they finally parted, I could lay my eyes on the newest addition to our little family.
Her appearance has been even more wild than it has been usual, even considering the four-armed moth-like 'Mutators', or the lizard-like 'Corruptors' that ringed her.
It was because of the new girl … she had tentacles.
Even knowing the power that created my girls was taking increasingly more liberties in notions of biology, the half-humanoid, half-octopus body shape felt somehow over the top.
The upper section of her body, including the head, was relatively human-like, albeit with the skin in the different shades of blue and yellow over the firm, modest breasts and sleek, hydrodynamic curves,of her swimmer's build with the relatively normal hands distinguished only by their unnatural shade and claw-tipped fingers, stayed relatively within the reason of what has been usual for the rest of the horde.
The lower section of her body was a mass of octopus tentacles currently writhing like they were desperately trying to grab on something, explaining why she couldn't stand up as the others. While 'Fleshspeakers' imitated bats in their shape, they have muscular legs, very easily capable of standing, or propelling them in the air. The 'Mutators' too could walk and fly.
My new girl, on the other hand, could not, it seems, and merely wiggled her appendages.
One of my 'Corruptors' supported the new girl's head.
I kneeled next to her.
"Do we need to get you water?" I asked the obvious. Whether she was asleep, or unconscious, or merely in deep focus, I didn't know.
"Master!" she rasped, opening her eyes, almost as I interrupted her deep concentration. They were azure, too, even in the different shade than Miwah's, but with the oddly shaped slit pupils, not to mention the odd glow.
The girl smiled, revealing her pointy, sharp teeth, reminiscing me more of a shark than anything else. When I thought of it, she did have the oddly shaped face mildly resembling one of the notorious sea predators, with two nares, although she was considerably more cute than the fish would ever be. She even had fins resembling the pointy ears, giving her appearance an unusual, hybrid-like feel.
"Do we need to carry you to the water?" I queried a second time, quite dumbfounded, coughing a little with all that smoke and the drying air, without realising that my hesitation could cost her life if she wasn't amphibious as my brain simply couldn't grasp my followers being unable to live on land.
The flash-thought of worry was, however, over.
"No need. I was just gathering…" she continued, her voice feminine, but notably grating and quickly improving. As I touched her face, I realised that what I thought to be hair was in fact a tiny wet feeler too, reacting to contact with the gentle, almost affectionate grip suggesting conscious control. Her skin was also unnaturally smooth, soft, and, more notably, wet.
Then the octopus girl lifted herself from the ground. Literally. She could fly, or rather levitate, and floated herself into the air, her tentacle parts wiggling in what I thought to be excitement. She propelled herself up and down, the same way as her animal counterpart would swim, except she did the same in air. It, however, wasn't her element.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, "Just a little … wetness."
I coughed, my throat sore from the arid air around us, and then blinked in the sudden realisation - I think I could guess how this worked.
"You levitate as long as there is moisture in the air?"
"Yes, Master." She stated proudly and repeated the swimming motion to pirouette, allowing me to inspect her figure, then lowered herself to my eye level. Although her tentacles, resembling somewhat a strange, flowing skirt, remained motionless, touching the ground, but she might not stand on the firm ground without the active support of her magic - I must get her to the sea.
I reached for her, which she accepted, and pushed herself closer.
She doesn't seem to mind if I touched her sides. They, too, felt moist to the touch, almost as though fresh from the bath - and in a way, she was.
"Master?"
"Could you swim in both regular and salt water?"
Despite it being rather stupid in hindsight, I never realised that some of my people would have preferences for the environments they lived in until I met her, as even the lizard-like 'Corruptors' weren't amphibians. They were climbers, hiding among the trees they reshaped.
"Yes, Master. All the oceans would split before you."
"But you could breathe air and water?" I verified, even if it too was lame when I thought of it. I looked at her, trying to find out whether she had gills, though her being an anthropomorphic octopus complicated a few things: her anatomy played by its own rules.
"Yes…" she breathed out when I found slits on her neck, but didn't seem to mind being touched at all. Finally, she answered fully.
"Yes, Master. I don't need to leave your side, as long as there is just a little …" she said, then paused, "...wetness."
She did have a certain playfulness in her, too.
"Not that. I'll need you to recover something for me, but first…" I decided, "First I give you a name."
"Yes, Master."
It was easier said than done, though. The entire process of naming was rather strange, and possibly dangerous, but I've come already too far to worry about why it would, without flaw, give me more girls for the sake of something so mundane. Eventually, the worry of tripping over the power I didn't understand became less worrying than simply calling my girls something silly.
"Master?" she asked, as I absentmindedly touched her face, and her bottom tentacles coiled herself around me.
I didn't want to call her 'Scylla' - even if she technically was one - which made me hesitate.
Something Greek, I thought, was desperate to find patterns I could remember later.
"Nereida." I said, "I'll call you Nereida."
While I wondered whether it was, indeed, a Greek name, the system took my decision as final, interrupting the moment with yet another of its announcements, while the red mist once again bursted out of the thin air and formed the nine little anthropomorphic octopi into existence. They, too, collapsed to the ground, even if the other girls, always mindful, caught them.
They might need their personal 'Displacer' too to drop them into the water, or bring the water to them, maybe just a bucket to splash over them so they could speak in liquid they required, but right now, I wasn't going to chase the kittens that didn't want the bath.
I shoot notifications at a glance before once again dismissing it.
The naming conviction was, as always, equally unhelpful as it was ominous
.
Unit named! Nereida, The Tidereaver Alpha!
Skill "Terror From the Abyss lvl.2" gained.
"Nereida? Nereida?" The freshly named girl tasted the name on her tongue, then reaffirmed: "Nereida!"
"You don't like it?"
This was a problem. I never thought about what would happen if the monster girl refused the overly silly name. This one wasn't as ridiculous. Helmy got it worse, but I didn't want to offend.
"I think it's a Greek name for the sea nymph." I explained, however, before I could explain my reasoning, her eyes lit with understanding.
"Oh, I would try to sing and dance for you, Master." she offered, almost as the new concepts flow into her mind. Although I could sense her mind, the inexplicable form of enlightenment was something else.
I would ponder about it later. I think it wasn't the first time it happened, but her smaller sister brought me out of it with her melodious but throaty, rather girlish voice, protesting.
"For Master!"
If they had singer's voices, they were ones that were desperately in need of a drink. I should probably get them to water.
"Oh!" I said, turning away from freshly named Nereida, and to Sora. The catgirl was about to get herself armoured back, and considering she was one of my people who abandoned the traditional clothes in favour of the 'Fleshspeaker' construct, it was a strange thing to behold.
"Sora, bring the little ones here to the sea." I ordered,
"Yes, Master."
She replied, her face betraying the expression of the cat experiencing the unwelcomed bath, and waved her hand.
Unlike the little 'Displacer', the 'Warpstalkers' could open their rifts with the flick of their fingers, without the necessity to drag someone through, and soon the anthropomorphic octopuses fell through the swirling vortex, dragging a few new 'Corruptors' with them. Whether the scaly ones wanted their trip to the sea, I didn't know, but I wasn't going to risk it.
"Don't let my Corruptors drown." I ordered.
"Yes, Master." Nereida confirmed, while Sora looked rather unconcerned, even though she did very clearly send a few of her little sisters to recover them, since her ordinary 'Displacer' attendants disappeared into the spatial rifts of their own.
"Aside from that, I am afraid you will be on fishing duty after the battle is over…"
I said, tentatively, realising that it would be increasingly difficult to feed our growing number and seafood may end up our future method of sustenance now that all the plants were being converted. Unless the sunk caches of magical artefacts were a norm, rather than an exception, then our 'Tidereavers' would be prime treasure hunters.
However, my further worries were soon discarded, as another notification had appeared, and with it a new group of bat-girls.
Skill "Messengers of the Ever-Living Horde Lvl.20" gained.
They, once again, crowded along while the battle I momentarily forgot about continued. The explosions were not heard anymore, and things quiet down
"You…" I said, "Just get into the air and circle around the village, keeping out of their sight. Stun everything that moves. Animals. Humans. What comes in sight, what comes in sight."
"For Master!" They paused, and then backed away, taking their time to take off one by one, more by necessity as their assembly hardly allowed for free space, rather than hesitation to obey.
Their shrieks became more numerous as more and more 'Fleshspeakers' took flight, and the prospect of silence falling upon the fields was soon interrupted by the countless shrieks of my bats.
"I want the priestess dead." I demanded as the other bat-girl backed off to launch herself to the air. "Rest we capture, if we can. We need to find their gunpowder maker. Nothing enters. Nothing leaves. We overrun this town today!"
I could release them later, but now, no one would get away with them harbouring our enemies.
"For Master! For Master!"
Their voices echoed through the air - perhaps the prospect of capturing all the humans brought some life, and inspiration, into my bat girls. Now, we only need to take care of the last problem.
It seems to resolve itself the moment I think of it.
"I think we know where the last priestess is." Nereida said, quickly setting to the role even if it was the minutes of her presence in this world. I, similarly, become too comfortable being close to her. Tentacles or not, she was one of mine.
"Tell me. Where? Get them. Can you see the portal above them?"
I wanted to end it quickly.
"No. They are trying to get on the boat. They are under the barrier now." Sora interjected, "We couldn't get close."
I looked at the new octopus girl. She blinked at me and smiled with her pointy, shark–like teeth.
"How they could have a boat… we never saw one…"
They could have boats left. Only vessels I could notice from the distance, I saw that wretched town would be large sea-going ships, like galleons, or the local equivalents, not the fisher's rowing boats.
No, I decided, it doesn't matter if they sail, make rafts, or swim - the priestess that sealed my girls wasn't going to leave the town alive. We could also try the range of the water-controlling octopi on them.
It was the risk, I considered, but the dig site had its own barrier too. They need to learn to bypass that, somehow.
"Go." I pushed her away, gently, "Take your sisters, and try to sweep their docks with the tidal waves. Sink everything that tries to leave."
It was what their name implied they could do. Nereida, the octopus, floated herself to the portal Sora had opened for her. It was much more graceful than the first attempt.
"Be careful, please." I said, but didn't get the response, and once the swirling portal closed, I could only wait for results with bated breath.
"We will see…"
They came sooner than I expected, and it wasn't Nereida's work.
Skill "Messengers of the Ever-Living Horde Lvl.21" gained.
Major Enemy killed. Seven more to advance the General level
The ruby fog once again came into existence, enveloping me as it did when the horde has doubled in number, quickly dissipating to form into the individual bodies of the future monster girl, but this time, this time it wasn't another batch of the restless bat-girls despite what the notification have said. It was all the breeds, the 'Purifiers' and 'Eviscerators' and 'Defilers' and even the evolved 'Devourers', and with them came the unbelievable sense of relief.
A doubt still nibbled on my mind for the quick moment until they landed on the fiery, curvy vixen among them, her fur brighter than other, her eyes of much shinier citrine.
Helmy was back.
"For Master! For Master!" They cheered, and more than a few tried to meet me in the group hug, but first, I had to embrace the one vixen that started this.
Helmy didn't protest when I hugged and kissed her, and my short, but eventful stay did give me an appreciation for my anthropomorphic fox girls. In fact, I barely could tell there should be any difference - they were part of me as I was part of them.
A lot of them, freshly released, joined together in the group hug, the 'Purifiers' giggling as always, while others expressed themselves similarly, with sniffling or even silent chants, and all of them wanted to share the moment.
I took a glimpse of Miwah, but she didn't object to me being drowned in fur, and she even gestured to the few of the ordinary 'Eviscerators' to welcome me properly, as always not showing any sign of jealousy. If anything, I was supposed to show affection to as many of my girls as possible.
What Tama thought about it, I didn't know. She and many of her 'Purifiers' rampaged elsewhere, but the designated 'Alpha' did have something to say.
"Master." Helmy said, first her voice soft, but then suddenly enraged once the topic changed: "Those humans! I would…"
I didn't let her finish, nuzzling her a little just the way my girls often did. Her revenge for her sealing wasn't required. I got her back, and that mattered.
"No need, Helmy," I said, as the new notification interrupted our moment and the fog came back, giving me the very new octopi breed as well as announcing the demise of the last priestess. There was no need to send Helmy to danger, not anymore.
Skill "Terror From the Abyss lvl.3" gained.
Major Enemy killed. Six more to advance the General level
I blinked the window away. It doesn't bother me much longer.
The previous one wasn't the last, I realised - how many 'casters' could a single town possibly have?
"Was it really the last one?" I asked, still holding Helmy. It was still hard to believe she once was smaller.
She spaced out, a sensation of her inquiring about the host becoming more noticeable now there wasn't this underlying stress of the more girls being sealed away.
"I don't know, Master." Helmy said.
We had no means to confirm that information, true.
"There are no more barriers, Master!" Sora's voice interjected from somewhere even though, at the moment, I had Helmy in my arms, and the little 'Displacer' holding me at the hip, and two 'Eviscerators' holding me, and even the growth rat-girl 'Devourer' holding me from behind. My vulpine, canine, and murine - my people, my girls, were back.
It seems over.
However, I couldn't forget the threat, the promise I've given to the 'Red' dragon should he ever interfere with me or mine, something he had done by sending his goons to seal away Helmy.
"Did we find the temple, or shine?" I queried - the unbearable weight of the disruptions to the host's telepathic network caused by the 'sealing' still left enough distress inside to forget the implications when I received the answer.
"Arke's drones cornered the people hiding there, Master"
I hesitated, and …
A split second after, an unpleasant, stinging sensation shot through my head as the 'Purifier' materialised from the tiny outburst of red smoke, and collapsed on the ground, almost as if it was supposed to send me a message.
"No." I said; to nobody in particular: "Just no."
Then I looked at Sora. She looked outfitted now, and was ready for action.
"Barrier?"
"No, Master." She answered, and I considered my option as the little 'Purifier' had to be infused with some life energy to recover by the nearest 'Defiler'.
"But there was something at their gate…"
"Those little warding glyphs." I guessed, "A few were in the viceroy's castle, too."
I turned to Helmy - my patience with the Red dragon's followers was over.
"Please get Tama and as many Purifiers are close by, and concentrate on the fire of the temple."
…
Hunh.
And of course, the water breed manipulates water, but doesn't actually generate it…
Hrrrm.
That seems to hold true for ALL breeds, they just mess with what's there instead of making more…
So then, the Purifiers can make fire out of nowhere…Or do they?
Because, if purifiers are actually drawing heat from their environment, they should be able to focus their 'drain' so as to take all the heat away and freeze stuff! Refrigeration get!
…
Or just a new horrible way to kill things. Somehow I bet it'll be the latter and not the former, because somehow I suspect storing food for later isn't really a problem…
…
Hunh.
And of course, the water breed manipulates water, but doesn't actually generate it…
Hrrrm.
That seems to hold true for ALL breeds, they just mess with what's there instead of making more…
So then, the Purifiers can make fire out of nowhere…Or do they?
Because, if purifiers are actually drawing heat from their environment, they should be able to focus their 'drain' so as to take all the heat away and freeze stuff! Refrigeration get!
…
Or just a new horrible way to kill things. Somehow I bet it'll be the latter and not the former, because somehow I suspect storing food for later isn't really a problem…
….Mutators and Corrupters….
…SONNOVA!
Okay fine that one's a bust.
Edit: to explain that SHOULD fall under the same rule, via corruptions of natural growth processes…
Buuut the problem is there's easily room for shenanigans if not potentially outright beyond 100% efficiency hax in terms of energy in to energy out, effectively.
Salty rain fell down upon the scorched remains of the town.
The sheer carnage here was on a scale unseen in any of our previous encounters with the hostile settlements and their fanatically belligerent inhabitants, with fields practically entirely turned to ash, and at least two-thirds of the buildings destroyed by fire, or demolished by the rampaging 'siege crabs', with population either dead or under the sway of the 'Fleshspeakers' still circling above the ruins.
I stood atop of the fort's watchtower, the only one that was untouched by the mayhem, and watched as hundreds of my monster girls rushing about among the ruined houses, picking through the ruined houses looking for anything we could use, or gathering the bodies to be fed as fertiliser to the 'Corruptor' alien jungle that now surrounded this accursed town.
Humans of this town were more useful dead than alive.
I took no pleasure in this though.
Every time I saw one of my girls, regardless of which brood, stepping inside of the burnt structures, I flinched, expecting the sting of pain should any of my followers run into yet another ward - rune or a warding glyph, whatever those were called.
I encountered those before, back in the Viceroy's castle, only a handful scattered in its hallways, rare and far between only to annoy us, but here, they weren't limited to the shrine we burned down, but were randomly placed at nearly every second house preventing us from moving freely about the town.
We were still uncertain how they worked, but unlike the flashy barriers and the 'sealing' spells, the little warding glyphs were far more subtle booby traps that could survive the original caster's death. Why those, and not others, I couldn't tell. I didn't understand the logic behind them. I didn't understand magic at all.
I just knew they existed, and were, as far as I understood, a single use, single charge. They were like magical landmines scattered around.
While they didn't 'seal' they could kill, and send any of my girls back to the mist, and then to me, with the message of pain and suffering shot through our shared link to remember them by. Even though the disruptions were lost in the sheer numbers of the host, they still hurt. They would have caused serious problems for a much smaller force.
We didn't know whether to disable them or whether they would run out of power after some time if we left.
I didn't even know they were there in the first place! They weren't even triggered by the passing drones - a mind controlled human or animal - only my girls in person.
First, my decision to burn the shrine felt like a knee-jerk reaction.
Then we ran into more of those subtle magical traps, and I had enough.
I never wanted it to come this far, but once I realised how many of the houses had been warded by those strange magical glyphs that brought us so much anguish and suffering to my girls, unlucky enough to trigger them. I did a little to prevent the town's destruction at that point.
It wasn't a harsh lesson to us as it was to the town's original inhabitants.
They would have to go. All of them.
When we realised that the runes could be carved into the surface, like wooden beams, the 'Purifiers' answered it by fireballs, and excessive burning was somewhat saturated by the still smouldering ruins by the rain of seawater controlled by our newest hydrokinetic breed.
Nereida and her sisters looked quite careless from a distance. Not only could they control the water, they could levitate above the sea surface with ease, dive, swim underwater, then emerge back up.
Their combined power could even beach a few small ships with the sheer force. The humans attempting to flee across the water didn't make it far.
Yet, I wasn't confident in our ability to excavate the undersea treasure.
The 'Tidereavers' - Nereida's anthropomorphic shark-octopuses - were uniquely suited to the task, but our short experience here made me reconsider sending them out right away. I didn't have any definite idea what the human priestesses could do.
This nameless town taught us so.
Those little glyph wards weren't anything new, but the humans were either getting better in utilising their priestesses' respective magic without coming in contact with each other, or the dragons simply gave them specific instructions to counter us.
I didn't know.
There was only one being that I knew - the 'Lady' - and she was still out.
The dragoness that sided with us was now nothing more than a dozing presence within the host's telepathic network, mentally stirring within her slumber, and was weakening with every passing moment, slowly dissolving into it. She wouldn't be capable of the impressive jump-scares by materialising into the physical world as she once did when we met.
I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do to stop or reverse the process, and there was a real risk that all the information she wasn't comfortable sharing would die with her.
Her obsession with worship suggested it was what all dragons needed to fuel their powers, but that was about it. There was nothing to go by.
I was even considering human sacrifice, but I doubted it would work, and dismissed it.
It would be a pointless experiment. We knew the only entity that wasn't a human, and wasn't a dragon - The Serpent - and he, or it, needed a host, an anchor person like Ari.
I knew The Serpent was real, but unlike the 'Lady', it was remarkably passive, silently tied to Ari.
This left us with the only remaining source of the information - the Scrolls.
We needed time to recover them. To do that, we need to get the humans - and their dragon 'gods' - to leave us alone.
"Miwah?"
I turned away from the scenery briefly. My pale werewolf lady was here with me, waiting.
Tama, Narita and others were all accounted for, but the town's watchtower wasn't that spacious for the entire ensemble to be at my side at the moment. It was also only one, since half of the wooden fort was damaged as a demonstration of the so-called 'siege crabs' power.
The 'Fleshspeaker' fleshy-drones worked, but this town, this entire encounter, felt more like an attempt to gauge of our abilities, a test bed of sort, rather than anything else - they attempted to seal as many of my girls they could, covered the settlement with overlapping barriers, carved the magical ward to every entrance, made use of gunpowder never seen before - yet they had very few soldiers, a little town to defend, with the little of value.
What were they trying to do besides provoking our wrath?
What if another attack was coming, this time utilising their capabilities to the full extent?
Or was something they were defending we weren't aware of?
There was something I didn't see, and it worried me.
"Master?"
I looked around, thinking that the original plan with the mind-controlled animals was probably the best course of action.
There were dozens of the scattered remnants of the 'roach-hounds'.
They didn't work as well as Angela thought they would. The bodies were disposed of quickly and unceremoniously. I didn't know if it was the idea of my 'Overseers', but the new versions spat acid and launched spikes. The innovation may not be enough.
I looked around, still ignoring Miwah.
Perhaps I should have the 'Tidereavers' focus on the fishing, both for food, and to provide the 'Fleshspeakers' with the animals to use. Their methods made me shiver, but the meaty living constructs were so far the power unique to us.
The 'Corruptors' and 'Mutators' didn't stay behind. There was even a pit, once a rice paddy, filled with the strange fungus and creeper plants that dissolved the corpses. They were giving the term 'going green' an entirely new meaning. I didn't watch too closely, lest I turn green, too.
Maybe it was even intended to find the synergy between the 'Defilers' and 'Corruptors' and 'Mutators' and 'Fleshspeakers', but sometimes, their work could turn my stomach. Perhaps it was the best thing I didn't eat today…
"Yes, Master?" My canine beauty repeated after my continued silence, and came closer, allowing me a support to lean against. Miwah didn't even return to her usual armour, and was wearing the local clothes, just an overcoat against her soft fur to preserve modesty.
"I am sorry, Miwah. I was thinking…" I said, "What should we do next?"
"We are always there for you, Master." Miwah answered, "All of us. Me and six thousand of my sisters."
"Six thousand?"
I didn't see that many, but it was rather moot: they were the ones that could turn invisible.
"Six thousand, four hundred and eight." She added after briefly consulting the host. I could feel when she did it, and once again I could notice the potent presence of the countless restless voices still whispering at the back of my head.
They were not as overwhelming and terrifying as they once were - they were part of me as much as I was part of them.
A clear memory that I was once terrified of them, and this new, cruel world felt almost strange, alien, as now I was concerned by their well being instead, and to fight the dangers the humans represented to my furry menagerie. The fact our numbers could double in a matter of days made the clash with the rest of this other-world inevitable, even if our breeds solved the food issue.
More of my girls also meant more targets for the area effect spells the human priestesses used and stronger feedback shot back to the telepathic mind.
"Thank you. I will think of something. For now. We need to establish defences here." I said. With the scroll still within its watery grave, and our rising numbers, we would have to stick to the coast.
"Yes, Master." Miwah said, in agreement.
"We need to find a defensible spot here on the coast, too."
"Yes, Master. Scouts are out."
"Where is Sora anyway?"
"Sora left to look around, Master."
"Of course she is." I sighed. She seemed to have an unquenched desire to roam, but we needed to get the lay of the land, anyway. Only thing I could do was hope she wouldn't make herself an easy target.
"Master! Master!" Meowed the little cat-girl rushing up the tower's ramp. It seems I had my 'personal Displacer' back too, assuming it was the same one, and not a new attendant designed by the 'Alpha'. There were so many now… it would take more than a glance to tell.
Perhaps I should get another fruit of Arcane and turn the small blue-ish anthropomorphic kitten into a panther-like beauty. Name her, give her something I could use to tell her apart from others.
It reminded me of something unrelated. The 'Displacers' and their large 'Warpstalkers' relatives could teleport away with such an ease it somewhat directed our attention from the other endeavour. Namely, the second scroll, one is the mountains.
There was no guarantee that the piece tossed to the sea contained the information I was looking for. I was underestimating how fragmented it all was. Even if this 'Oscar' - I still couldn't pronounce the long dead sorcerer's real name - recorded all this knowledge in his mystical grimoire of sorts, but never bound it together. It wasn't a single book. It was an equivalent of the six hundred pages, hidden separately.
I could be as well as looking for the wrong piece of the entire puzzle, and it frustrated me.
"I want to resume the scouting flights to the northeast of the Valley to search for the burial mound with the second scroll…" I said, "I want to assign a Warpstalker here. A group of Fleshspeakers and a Mutator, perhaps. Maybe even the Eviscerators as claws on the ground…"
"Yes. Master."
"Maybe a thousand Eviscerators could turn the woods into their hunting grounds…" I mused, there were so many of my werewolves, and so little space: "They would search the area, look for food, and report if they encountered any other humans. Another large group could be allocated to the city as a police force…"
The number was, I realised, insane, but we grew too fast, and we have to spread over the enormous areas, hoping we find more than just enemies to fight as it has been to this point.
"Could even Displacers transport as many?"
We were going back and forth… the valley, then here, to facilitate the attack, and then relocate again. It would strain the teleporting felines too much, maybe.
"Master. Master!" The little 'Displacer' was the one who replied this time, cheerful, excited, with her girlish voice. All the smaller versions sounded this way. It doesn't seem that they were exhausted though, and she implied they didn't mind going back and forth, so I turned my attention back to the safety concerns once more.
"We need to discourage the humans from messing with us again too…"
In truth, however, I didn't know what I should do about that until the 'brain-bug' - Arke's proxy created in a questionable way - crawled its way atop of the tower. I had asked 'Fleshspeakers' to catch someone too.
We would discourage the humans if they believed they didn't have an advantage.
"Arke…" I asked, "Did your sisters capture their gunpowder manufacturers?"
Though the locals didn't figure out guns, they used the flame arrows with the small gunpowder charge tied to the projectile. Though primitive from the modern context, gunpowder was still something I couldn't reproduce on my own. I knew it was a mixture of saltpetre and charcoal, but the details - the ratios - were beyond me.
"We don't know…" she answered. "We would browse the minds of the captured ones…"
It was probably for the best. We couldn't afford humans getting away. Not this time.
I wasn't sure where I could obtain the sulphur, too. Wasn't that found near volcanic vents?
"And the priestesses?"
I asked, watching Helmy with the few tagalongs 'Purifiers' testing whether the sword recovered was the special one the 'Alpha' had got from the 'Ravagers'. She seemed quite obsessed with having the flaming sword. And helmet, of course, though the smaller foxies considered the straw hat worn by human soldiers the worthy alternative.
Distraction was soon over, though.
"All dead." Arke said, through her 'brain-bug': "We are sure none of the humans got away."
"Good." I said. As much I wanted to avoid a fight, it was clear this was a war which I didn't know how to win.
"I guess you are now free to experiment to get those drones of yours down to the sea to get that buried scroll. Take who you would need. Nereida would help you as well."
"Yes, Master!"
As disquieting the 'Fleshspeakers' and 'Overseers' were with their flesh-shaping powers, the quick gaze at my vixen reminded me that some humans, like the ones that sealed her away, probably deserved to be turned into living processors in the living puppets.
I was almost certain I could feel the ideas forming within the host.
It did not, however, solve the very obvious problem. Next time, the locals could muster more men, more casters, and be more organised. We needed to go better - do better. I needed to be better for my girls.
What if some larger human city had more of those casters - priestesses? What if there were forty of them, instead of just four? And those 'ninjas' - the 'elites' -were a problem, too. There couldn't be a lot of them, since the humans were still forced to employ the mundane soldiers, but there was a chance for more.
A concentrated force that knew what to do would cause us a lot of problems.
Especially if I didn't know what I was doing.
I looked away and looked again at the ruins. Miwah, sensing my worries, put their clawed hands atop of mine, resting on the railing.
Arke's puppet flesh construct was about to skitter away, when I realised something:
"Arke, wait!"
"Master!" Her voice once again sounded from the 'brain-bug'. It was essentially radio when I thought of it, a magical version.
"Do you know why the humans fought us there?"
"No, Master." she said, "They are humans…"
The certain level of misanthropy was a constant among all of my girls.
"It's not what I meant." I explained, gesturing towards the now ruined settlement overrun by my monster girls. There wasn't much left now, and the rest was experiencing the excessive re-modelling, the 'Corruptor' style. Locally, there were more monster-girls than the town had, and some of them would even stay. It was, however, not about the occupation.
"Did your sisters, or any other breeds, find anything they were defending?" I continued
"We are not sure…"
Neither was I. There were thousands of my girls combing through the ruined buildings as we speak, if there was anything of value it would be found by now.
"Who gave them orders to defend this town? With all that barriers, and wards and magic. Search the memories of some drones you captured here…"
The 'brain-bug' made a few idle motions, swaying on its spider-legs up and down, as the true mastermind behind it was verifying something. I looked at Miwah. Then in the city.
"Miwah, spare a few of your sisters to search for what was left of the shrine." I said, "Hidden caches, buried treasure, artefacts, that sort of thing. Even the trinkets that the priestesses had."
I still remembered the stave. There could be more, I thought, and my mate got my meaning:
"Yes, Master."
I once again looked around.
A few of the 'Fleshspeakers' were clearly interested in reshaping the captured humans. Maybe they dug for information in the native's brains this way, and perhaps, they would even find something.
Only problem was if there was a secret on the need to know basis, and all humans in-the-know perished during our assault, but knowing who was giving them orders may provide some clues as well. I was impatient to find out what they would dig out.
After a brief moment of silence, interrupted only by the random noise, Arke came back. Her voice, once again, sounded from her proxy.
"They were ordered by the dragon," was the answer.
"Which one? Lady was there?" I asked.
The 'Lady' had disappeared after trying to convince the fishing village up north. Helmy came from that direction, just made a trip on horseback. A thought made me pause. It could be her.
"No, Master." Arke said, "Lady is green. This one was red."
So, it wasn't the reason for 'Lady's' disappearance.
"The bastard." I cursed. So, it was him, one that was sending his priestesses to seal away my girls from the start.
Although it changed a very little, I already ordered the destruction of the local shrine exactly because such was the warning I had issued to 'Red' for messing with me, and it was all obvious it explained something: How could the humans, isolated from each other by distance, without the modern methods of communication, could know about us.
As I thought, the dragons told them. At least, one specific one did.
What was worse: I couldn't do anything about it.
Except, perhaps, discourage the humans from doing the dragon's bidding. Acting through followers was, it seemed, their default modus operandi. I had to find a way to disturb that.
"Find me a survivor from this town." I ordered, "A few of them, their minds and bodies uncharged."
"Yes, Master."
I walked down the tower, through the half-ruined fort. Miwah followed me, and Tama, Narita and Ekaterina joined me. They did, however, keep quiet for now, and it seemed Tama and Helmy, the white and red vixens, have the uncharacteristic time socialising among all the destruction.
It was quite a sombre atmosphere here, even if the horde was whole again.
My mind wandered to something else.
Until now, for the first time, I didn't particularly care what happened to the town's inhabitants, the phantom pain caused by the 'sealing' their priestesses performed, their barriers that shot pain through the host, their warded houses to cause as much suffering to my girls even passing through their town - it all doomed the town in my mind.
It felt different from the entire episode with the Viceroy. Different from spiteful people throwing rocks, from the city's problems that didn't quieten much right now.
I didn't know why.
But I wasn't going to let this one slide, even if they might be unwitting pawns in the game of dragons.
They dragged five random humans into the scorched fields. They were all unconscious. Four females, one male.
It surprised me that ones doing the dragging were a mixed force that included humans, humans who were not zombified. They, upon throwing the captives into the mud, bowed down. No one bowed down. I saw no practical benefit from it. Only Ari did so, and she didn't have to either.
They seemed rather confused, nervous, but not scared, and were a strange group indeed. One that led them was a man, in a typical armour I've seen among the Viceroy's guard, but the other was, I guess, a former priest in tattered robes, and three seem like village women.
All looked like they went through the battle. They were unlikely to be local, from this nameless town, but from our holdings to the north, which meant they would need to survive the trip through the portal…
The leading men said something. I desperately needed a translator, but I would deal with this later.
If Ari worked with us, the other humans could too. I guessed.
They jerked a little when an 'Overseer' landed nearby. They were bigger than the ordinary 'Fleshspeakers', but she said nothing
It made me feel certain … assurance… in what I wanted to do.
"Could you wake them up?" I asked.
I didn't know if the stun induced by my bat-girls could be turned off. I only know, once the contact with the claws was made, it was practically over for the human.
The 'Overseer' hummed the tone, more a series of chirps and clicks than the actual screech they made otherwise, and the captives began to wake up. It was strange this worked through the sound, rather than anything else, especially if the associated element was 'mind', but it didn't matter.
There was no time to ponder this.
One human tried to run, getting faster up than the other, but his collision with Ekaterina didn't end well for him, and he was rag-dolled into the other captive trying to fight back. They groaned in pain, but I didn't quite care.
The other three humans were slower, and tried to get back to their feet, but this time, it was the 'loyalists' - I had no better word for the humans on our side that found their way there - pushed them down.
I took a deep breath and asked,
"Translate for me, please." I said, and the 'brain-bug' skittered closer.
It terrified the captives, and they started to struggle. I didn't understand what they were saying, but at this moment, it doesn't matter.
"I never wanted to fight any of you. I never wanted to attack your town…" I said aloud this time, paused, waiting for Arke to finish translating through her personal construct, ignoring the cries from the captives startled even further by the disembodied voice.
"... but your priestess sealed my people. This means war. You will go to the nearest town, and the town after, and you tell them, all of them, what happened there ...."
I waited briefly while the construct once again translating into the local tongue.
"...tell them, if they ever seal away any of my girls, we will kill not only your priestess but also every single person in the village, in the town, in the city, she came from…"
The 'brain-bug' once again continued, it seemed smoother than it was with the usual, zombified villager doing the talking, hinting at the improvement in the way 'Fleshspeakers' and 'Overseers' handled things, but I couldn't say for sure.
"...and we will continue to do so until your red dragon runs out of worshippers."
The more translation.
"This is your last chance to sort this out peacefully."
I didn't know if my speech worked. There certainly were protests from the captives. Words I once again didn't understand, but they were very quickly silenced by their own former countrymen. It was rather strange to see one of the human females kicking another, but they apparently didn't agree.
"Am I clear?"
More protests.
"Am I clear?"
Once I raised my voice, they quieted down, and I waved them away.
"Take them away. Release them at the edge of the town, let them run towards the nearest town. There must be more down the road."
"Yes, Master." Miwah said, and this time, it was the 'Eviscerators' that dragged the screaming humans away. I have a feeling that it didn't go well.
"They said they will never submit, Master." Arke provided the helpful translation. I thought they weren't happy with the terms, considering the overall tone, and this confirmed it, but considering how disastrous our relations with the humans were at the moment, anything other than total war could be counted as an improvement.
Strangely enough, the five 'loyalists' stayed, kneeled down, their heads bowed to the ground. I was wondering which of my girls brought them over.
The man said something. I didn't understand, and spared a glance at the 'translation engine' - the idling 'brain-bug' swung up and down on its spider legs, and Arke, on the other end, finally translated.
"He said that they will serve you, and in return, grant them the blessing of the dark gods."
What?
I paused, even though, the second later, I remembered Ari once had called the unspecified change the 'Fleshspeakers' did to her a 'blessing'. I had doubts it was one. She was the only one which was immune to the negative side effects, and I did recall she could easily break the grown man's arm despite her diminutive stature, which
"Tell them it may kill them. Ari was the only one which didn't end up deformed."
There was no telling what exactly he said, but the man, the speaker for the tiny group, replied. I looked towards the 'brain-bug'.
"Your choice survived. Their faith is strong too, he said, that they survived the first test."
What was the first test? A portal? Which of my girls ordered this?
I would sort this out later. As much as I was opposed to experimenting on humans, especially the rarely cooperative ones, I still made a split second decision:
"Try to make the same changes first done to Ari?"
The 'Overseer' came closer, and it was quite eerie to watch the humans eagerly await the bat-girl to step on them.
A first one, the young man in the torn priestly garb, had died screaming as his flesh suddenly experienced the unsuspected cancerous growth tearing his skin apart, reducing him to nothing more than the same deformed drone as the other zombified villagers were. It shabled away.
It was horrifying.
Yet, they weren't cowed, and the next suppliant, a middle-aged human female, threw herself under the bat-girls claw, willing to risk the same death as the former priest had experienced, mumbling to herself something in her tongue.
And, to my shock, she survived. No abnormal growth, and if anything, she was better for it.
She was immune!
How?
More murmurs in the remaining humans grew stronger. Maybe they were praying, I didn't know, but since it sparked a reaction within the host - the 'Fleshspeakers' were eager to find a better test subjects - it was likely not important
Next transformation, the next human woman survived, her body not hideously mutated.
And the other one did as well.
Impossible, we never found anyone immune, except for Ari!
I was about to stop them when it was time for the former guard to be transformed - after all, the Viceroy would not be happy if his few remaining soldiers had died - and I was starting to suspect that, for some reasons, only women could be immune. And then, he survived too.
This sparked a reaction in the humans, which now continued the chant, and I was about to ask which of my girls dragged them here to this fight even though it was, originally, meant to include just drones.
"Master…"
But then, I was greeted by the sudden stab of pain.
The 'Tidereaver', the anthropomorphic shark-octopus, materialised from the burst of the ruby fog, and then two 'Corruptors' did, all writhing in pain on the ground. Narita rushed to help them.
I was about to demand the explanation, expecting the attack, but Miwah announced:
…Hunh.
The first converts that aren't Ari…
I wonder if they'll show up in the system or not…
As far as relations between the Master and the Red? It's only a matter of time before one of the horde runs out and gets into trouble and of course Red will jump to violence instantly…*sighes* and now the only question is how long before someone triggers the scroll and I bet THEN the lady will wake up to everything on fire.
As far as relations between the Master and the Red? It's only a matter of time before one of the horde runs out and gets into trouble and of course Red will jump to violence instantly…*sighes* and now the only question is how long before someone triggers the scroll and I bet THEN the lady will wake up to everything on fire.
For the brief moment, I entirely forgot about the town, destroyed in our conflict with the dragon's followers, or unfortunate converts from our tentative holdings pressed into service. I wanted to ask, though, how many they brought over, how many survived the portals, other than the five brought forward.
All of that was pushed aside.
I had to see the scroll, even though I wasn't entirely certain what if it would tell me about my predicament, if anything, considering the language barrier between us and the natives.
Perhaps, I just needed to see what all of this was about.
The prize others searched for or fought over, supposedly long before we even came to this world, was now brought to light, possibly literally.
The 'Displacer' pulled me through one of her rifts without much hesitation, once I ordered it.
However, when we emerged from the ever shifting void beyond a few eyeblinks later, there was no scroll in sight. There was barely anything to see.
We stood among the dense, overgrown vegetation. The shadow of the thick canopy of leaves above was barely any light in, with all plants around bearing the 'Corruptors' mark with its twisted, unearthly shapes and strange, mismatching colours.
Bright eyes with the slit pupils blinked in the shade.
"For Master! Master! Master!"
A few of the architects of this floral madness were around, immediately rushing to greet me from their perches up in the trees, or in their oddly shaped, organic hideouts made of the living wood. They actually were climbers, after all.
They chirp, girlish voices filled with excitement, eager to welcome me to their home.
"For Master! Master!"
I patted one of the 'Corruptors' - a little lizard girl with the wreath of flowers around her neck - on her feather-like 'hair'- but immediately set out to find where they put the scroll they found. It must be nearby, they just hid it from the humans, which I admitted was for the best.
My 'personal Displacer' stopped me, insisting I couldn't go any further, as the other little felines were teleporting the rest of my closest companions to us, here.
"For Master!"
I didn't quite understand why, at first. There certainly weren't any humans around, so there wasn't any danger the feline was implying there was. Wasn't this the purpose of the 'Corruptors' lair around us, a hideout?
"For Master!"
I didn't understand the mention of the barrier.
We killed the priestesses that could cast that protective shield, and the one enclosing the magical scroll's burial spot must have been destroyed, somehow, otherwise my girls simply wouldn't lift the artefacts up from the sea floor.
Yet, there it was, supposedly.
There was no other explanation for the barrier surrounding the artefact simply vanishing after the battle, unless there has been some tangible connection between the nearest town's shrine, and the underwater site, and the town was, somehow, responsible for the artefact's security, as poor that security was supposed to be. This seemed logical.
I originally expected it to take days, but now it was miraculously excavated, there doesn't seem to be a reason to delay any more.
All that time we saved could be spent finding the translator, if the language was the problem here as it was for the past days, though I thought we sorted that already when we enlisted the help of the Viceroy's scribe. The sage, I recalled, the proper title was sage, was more advisor than a scribe…
The artefact called. No more musing, at very least, we have to establish that we either could read the scroll, or the reasonably educated native could, or a goose chase after the interpreter would follow.
"Wait, Master." Miwah said, interrupting my thoughts.
Tama grabbed my arm, tugging herself close and brushing her fluffy tails to me, while a couple of 'Displacer' spread their arms, gesturing and pointing, and even our shared link didn't quite understand their explanations regarding the 'edge' and the 'border'. Why now? It doesn't make sense.
With Sora nowhere in sight, it was my foxy companion that provided the explanation.
"We don't make the same mistake twice, Master." The vixen said, "There is a barrier ahead of us."
I didn't quite understand, but Miwah, quickly taking her position at my side, opposite of Tama, completed the sentence:
"The protective barrier around the artefact is still up even after Nereida moved it. Now it reaches up from the beach and the outpost the Corruptors were making."
"Stay close, Master." Tama added, then with a purr "Very close."
The vixen was back to her old, flirtatious self, and whatever forced her to keep silent, and close to Helmy, had passed. It made me briefly wonder how close she and Helmy, or the other 'Purifiers', were, but since they were not only telepathic, and often referred to each other as sisters, it was quite unsurprising that my partner didn't take the spell-scarred separation well.
Perhaps the experience made them overly cautious.
The whispers at the back of my head were restless, but I ignored them. The pull of the artefact, irresistible, in its own right, was stronger, so close, yet so far away.
I shook it off.
Now, however, I was rather interested in something else. Why was the barrier still up?
"Where?" I asked, confused, trying to piece up how to detect the edge of the invisible wall without running into it. I tried to take a few steps, but Tama didn't let me go further as I was already starting to feel a little bit sick or queasy, without any apparent reason.
Was this getting close to a barrier like?
Two 'Displacers' merely a few steps ahead pointed, to their left and right, being apparently the only breed that actually could see the barrier without risking the contact with it, and I had to wonder how it worked.
Except for the slight sense of unease, there wasn't any hint that there was any form of obstacle in front of us, and it likely fooled either the 'Corruptors' or the 'Eviscerators' before. Not even the leaves moved, despite all the plants around us were also touched by our magic, without feeling the disruptions. There was no shimmer, no other hint, and it seemed that my girls, with their keen senses and night vision, couldn't see them.
Without the 'Displacers' nearly supernatural special awareness we wouldn't be aware there was anything wrong.
Yet, the artefact, and its pull, the presence, the beacon - I didn't know how to call it anymore - it was still there.
I just didn't know what kind of traps were laid out to deter the previous treasure hunters.
It was quite frustrating.
The idea of trying to step through came to my mind, wondering whether I was somehow an exception to the rule, the same way the 'Fleshspeakers' sent their creation in, or how the 'Corruptors' and 'Mutator' re-made flora wasn't repelled by the spell, but the 'Displacer' had different opinion.
They wouldn't risk it.
"For Master!" The felines meowed, and not only did I get the clingy little cat-girl hugging my waist, but so did Miwah and Tama. Narita wasn't stopped, though she didn't make an attempt to cross the unseen threshold.
Ekaterina drew - or rather formed - a blade, testing the invisible border, but she so far managed only to cut some of the creeping plants.
The bear girl would test it, I recalled that even the 'Lady' wasn't certain whether Ekaterina could or couldn't shrug off the full might of the spell, but I stopped her:
"Ekaterina, no." I said, "There is no point."
Trying to step through it myself was enough stupidity for today.
"Kitty?" I asked, but the 'Displacer' before us protested with the slight growl of "For … Master!"
Kitty was, in fact, the 'Warpstalker' now, and was certainly different from the little one in front of us. I should certainly name the 'personal Displacer' and insist that she should keep us company at all times, but that was for later:
"Could you take us where I could see it from a distance?"
"For Master!" One of the 'Displacers' replied, reminding me of my previous worries. She was aware of my fear of heights, and was reluctant to put me through the experience.
"Not up in the air. Some solid ground. Cliff?"
"For Master!"
"That would do. Transport us now."
The cliff it was, and the 'Displacers', rash and impulsive as ever, overcame her hesitation quite quickly, and requiring no further convincing, she pulled us through the rifts.
It wasn't as dizzying as it once was, I was getting used to the teleport especially over short distances, but ending up on the cliff provided more than a distressing enough counterpart.
I sat on the rock, with the little 'Displacer' cat girl on my lap, and tried to focus. Her soft body was quite warm, her clothes minimal, and her blue-ish fur soft, and I accepted her leaning on me at all times - if there was a risk of fall, she would certainly carry me to safety.
Only after my other companions, and the few teleporting felines, assembled, I looked down the cliff, and into the distance.
It wasn't a steep one, just high rock washed by the calm sea. Below us, a familiar cove with the overgrown scenery, and the rough, partially rocky and sandy beach surrounded by either the rock, or now impassable mutated greenery. We were there before, it was the very same beach my girls appropriated once we decided to stay near the fishing village, and the fields we were supposed to 'bless'.
A 'siege crab' - an oversized abomination the 'Fleshspeaker' had created - laid overturned on its shell, his legs kicking in the air as it struggled to right itself. Stuck inside the barrier, there was no one to help him. The bat-girl circling above couldn't land, and the other fleshy drones were likely miles away.
There was no one else, but us on the cliff.
Looking at the helpless construct, or the height we observed the scene from, distracted me only momentarily:
There was something else on the beach.
And it felt strange, consuming, drowning in all my attention, allowing me to forget about everything else for the brief moment.
A black casket of obsidian half-buried in the crater.
At least, I thought it was obsidian, I couldn't tell from the distance, as it could easily be metal, or some other, unknown material that drew all the attention into itself.
It called to me in the way that defied the words to describe it.
I just sat there, surrounded by my girls, and did nothing.
Then, finally, Nereida's words distracted me.
"There is nothing more we could do, Master"
"Yes?" I said, almost absentmindedly.
"We could yank it away from the sea bed as it was buried, but when we throw it on the shore, it won't break from the impact." Nereida continued, while my stare was still fixated on the black casket: "The barrier seems to be still up, one of my sisters tested it unfortunately."
I finally broke away.
The shark-octopus girl levitated in the air to my left, the tentacles on her lower body swirled up and down, almost as if it was water which held her afloat. Her sleek body did gain a little bit of the sea's blue-green tone she didn't have before, and unlike the other girls, she didn't find herself clothes to wear yet, I noticed. My curious gaze helped me forget about the staring into the damn cache.
She levitated herself in front of me.
Her range was enormous, I realised, larger than the spell that protected the artefact, even if it required water to work, but the container was sturdier than that. After all, there was a small crater out there.
"Couldn't you reach from behind the barrier to crack it?" I asked
"We could try to flood the beach to launch it further, Master." The octopus girl suggested, but I scratched the cat girl on my lap and shrugged:
"No. There is no point." I said, pausing, then thought aloud: "We can't teleport it to slam it against the ground to break the container…"
"For Master!" The 'Displacer' confirmed, the barrier was very clearly intended to deny us access.
"How far does the barrier reach?" I asked, looking around, trying to get some bearing on the actual barrier size.
"This is the farthest we could go, Master." The octopus said, floating a little bit to the side to point towards two of her smaller kin, levitating themselves above the mild waves, occasionally forming jets of water towards the mysterious black casket, and the trapped crab construct.
It was several hundred metres away, and though the power my new aquatic followers wielded was impressive, their improvised water projectiles only barely reached towards the still unreachable treasure, showering it with the droplets of water suggesting that there is the upper limit to how far their magic could reach.
"... but you were able to get it that far?"
"Yes, Master." She said, disappointed, and perhaps a little bit ashamed: "It was fully submerged back then…"
I paused, thinking.
"You launching it from the waters' depths actually reduced the influence you have on it!"
"Yes, Master." She confirmed, "We would attempt the flooding…"
Ah, I finally understood where was she headed, and it felt like a pointless endeavour.
"...and it survived under the water for who knows how long, as well as your attempt to yeet it to the beach. It won't crack no matter how much you toss it.."
"Yes, Master," Nereida confirmed, and looked away. There were other of her kin, at the sea, but they also kept away from the invisible shield, and even though there was an option of some creative interplay between their kin and the 'Warpstalker' allowing us to crack the mysterious casket with the sheer force of impact, there was no guarantee it would turn off the magical barrier as well. If anything, it would move it to the place where it could do the most harm.
The 'Corruptors' beachside retreat was probably as effective as any quarantine we could put on the object, if not better. After all, everything was already in place.
"We need to shut that damn barrier down first…" I said, and admitted: "I just don't know how."
The only person knowing how those things were secured was the 'Lady' and she was still out.
Considering my options, I thought there may be a priestess in some other coastal town, one who was renewing the barrier again and again, possibly as their hereditary duty, but I rejected that. As far as we know, we torched the closest shrine down, yet the magical wards keeping the scroll secure still held. As much as I assumed that the human magic was dependent on the actions of their clergy, the one tied to the scroll cache seems to be independent.
It wasn't an illogical assumption. If the dragons wanted to keep this away from the prying eyes and grabby hands of the humans, making the wards independent on the whim of their own followers did make a certain amount of sense. .
"Did we find anything that would look like the key in the town?" I asked, musing that if the temple out there held the key to the box, it would be quite a reason for the defenders to fight us after all.
"No, Master." Miwah confirmed, sitting next to me, with the little 'Displacer' clinging to her as well.
"There must be something we don't see."
"There is another stave, Master." Ekaterina said suddenly, "We just found it. Similar one to one I absorbed…"
"Oh…."
Yes, I recalled it. The very presence of the enchanted gold, or similar metal, in the original stave hurt us greatly, and it was completely inimical to our presence, even after its owner had perished. This is how they did it. The object could be enchanted, we encountered the sword, the stave, even the armour, and they did the same thing to the scroll's sarcophagus!
"One of my sisters could take it…"
Unfortunately, I didn't quite understand the rules of the magic, and their limits.
"No…" I rejected the idea, "You sealed yourself back then. I don't know how to undo it again. We lucked out back then."
It must be something else.
Although the idea of the key wasn't unreasonable, a mechanical device made of metal would likely rust away due to the sea water exposure ages ago, so rather than something technological, like a lock, there was likely a magical equivalent. So far, however, the human magic only worked where the appropriate intermediary was in range.
"We got all the priestesses nearby, didn't we?"
Then it struck me, as the 'siege crab' abandoned on its beach still continued with its futile struggle to regain its footing.
"Are there any glyphs on the container?"
"We don't know…"
"Get Arke on the line." I ordered - even though the term wasn't quite fitting, "Transport the smaller humanoid drones to the area, or even the crabs, and carry them in by the water…."
"Master?"
"Equip them with picks, or whatever could damage the stone, or metal." I said, "We have to try to damage any writing on the container. It probably works like that damn trap rune…"
There was no way to tell whether it indeed worked that way, after all my understanding how the local magic worked was practically non-existent, aside of the fact it was tied to just a small, restricted caste of individuals - practically, clergy - selected by the dragons. The magic usually didn't survive the death of the caster.
The items holding the power were more exceptional than the norm.
"You could bring a stave near, try if it opens the casket, but if it doesn't work a brute force seems to be the only solution."
"Yes, Master." my girls answered, and directed her sisters and cousin to work.
A few more 'Fleshspeakers' and 'Overseers' came over, even a 'Mutator' was buzzing above us, and the unseen barrier, while the puppeteered humans, and animals, swarmed the beach side.
The poor mutated crab was helped back on its legs, but rescuing the trapped and overturned fleshy construct was so far the only success we had within the barrier.
First, the few zombified humans shambled around, clumsily trying to find the way to open the black stone box, fooling with the recovered stave to no avail, frustrating both me and their 'Fleshspeaker' controllers to the extreme, leaving us with no clue how to proceed.
"Well?" I asked, watching the entire performance from a distance.
"They don't know how it works." Miwah observed, while the next 'Displacer' rift brought in Arke's remote to talk us through the process.
"No keyhole?"
"No, Master." She answered, without prompt, her voice sounding from her 'brain-bug' as it crawled its way atop of the rock.
"Describe it to me."
"The box is completely sealed, Master." Arke continued, while the fleshy puppets down on the beach continued their almost comical scramble around the black casket.
"It is made from two pieces. There is a lid, but no handle."
"Yes…"
"The surface is covered by writing…"
"Could you read it?"
"No. It seems to be the same symbols that were harming our cousins…"
She described the sarcophagus of the black, volcanic stone, seemingly untouched by the erosion, covered by the writing she couldn't read, despite the fact she puppeteered the humans should be able to read, now, telling her meaning. Not only was there no 'open here' symbol, there wasn't even a 'danger' sign, only the nebulous runes that supposedly held the magic in place.
I wondered whether staves and magical swords and so, have their symbols, too, but that was beyond the point.
A few more attempts were made, but still no luck.
"A brute force it is." I ordered, "As I said before, hammers and chisels destroy the glyphs, this hopefully disrupts the enchantment."
Agitated by the unspoken pull of the scroll within, and frustrated by our inability to simply open the box, I committed to the brute force, to destroy the surface glyphs in the attempt to destroy the barrier that held my girls at bay, preventing us from using their abilities to crack the case.
The fireballs were tried, even creeping plants, but the barrier was relentless.
Simple, primitive, brute force, seemed to be the only remaining option.
Without the 'Ravagers' we were forced to rely on the zombified humans to do the job, chiselling away the hard rock, without pause or time to rest, while I waited, and waited. At least, the container wasn't indestructible, but the work was slow.
The minutes soon became hours and I still couldn't think of anything else, absentmindedly picking at the food that the girls brought me, then leaned to Tama to watch the tides, with the persistent 'Displacer' still seated on my lap.
As I slowly drifted to sleep in the furry embrace, the dreams of the sea came through, pulling me through to the depths in the repeating nightmare, yet this time, resisting the futile sinking feeling was easier, and the shimmering light above the waves became ever closer…
I jolted awake to the darkened skies, with the sun setting down above the sea.
"The barrier!"
"It is gone, Master."
"We are almost through."
"Get me there."
The 'Displacer' brought us safely down on the scarred beach of rocks and sand where the casket of the black stone still laid within the impact crater, making me marvel at how sturdy the whole container was.
Not only did it survive being tossed around, it resisted the chisels, and the brute force, even Kuma with her enormous strength, currently struggled to get past the sealed lid, the crowbar she created with her power breaking and the bear girl falling down on the ground in front of me.
She doesn't seem to mind the landing, as she looked up, and yawned:
"Almost there, Master."
I was going to suggest a different approach, but as Ekaterina absorbed the remnants of the crowbar, a couple of 'Corruptors' emptied the bucket of water over the stone.
"What are you doing?"
"I have an idea, Master." Nereida said, levitating close, leaving me rather confused as the other enthusiastic 'Corruptor' poured another bucket of the water on the black stone, its surface scarred with the hours of hammering. Then another, leaving me confused why this was necessary, as I saw nothing that required the cooling.
When a 'Corruptor' splashed the water on Nereida, much to the amusement of both her, and the little lizard girl, I was convinced they were just fooling around, but before I could say anything all the liquid started to move on its own.
I gave them a questioning look.
"Sorry, Master. It wasn't necessary, but our cousins got bored."
The shark-octopus girl, still levitating in the air closer to the stone container, wiggled her tentacles almost as she tried to grapple on something intangible, and three more of her smaller sisters, almost a younger version of her if not for slightly different colour of the skin, joined her effort.
When the stone began to crack I finally understood what they were going to do.
The 'Tidereavers' could use their water to put pressure on objects, pulling them apart as long as there is water between them.
They must be limited by distance …
First, nothing happened, but then, the casket burst open, its lid shot towards the sea like it was shot from a cannon, splashing into the waves.
The scroll, almost anticlimactically, fell out.
Kuma picked it up.
I was worried it would do something, but nothing happened.
It unfolded before us as she lifted it.
On first glance, it appeared to be a rather ordinary, unassuming piece of parchment with carved, yet somehow still mundane looking wooden roller handles on each end, and over the square metre of the writing surface almost completely filled.
It was, however, where the mundane ended. Not only it seemed completely untouched by the ravages of time, its surface pristine, undamaged by the decomposition, water, or mould, there was also an unmistakable aura to the artefact, a presence which I couldn't quite explain and describe, almost drawing me in, calling to me, like the beacon, it's signal now clear, laid bare without further obfuscation.
No one spoke.
I came closer, examining it.
The document was dominated by the large picture that somewhat resembled the astrological - or astronomical, it could be a star chart if you stretch it - diagram, with the several circles and lines forming the complex geometrical patterns, with odd descriptions, and comments made in the strange, flowing script, resembling more Arabic rather than the vaguely East Asian writing the locals had used. It looked every bit the mystical text it was supposed to be, yet there was more.
The diagram, and the other smaller drawing, were covered by the scribbling made in the red ink, as opposed to black, invading the precise, measured, trigonometrical drawing of circles and lines with the red drawing of the spreading roots and foggy clouds, almost like the child drawn upon the father's work. Yet, text accounted for it, the wavy, flowing letters almost coiled in front of my eyes like the snakes of ink, incomprehensible, yet accounted for the invasion of roots and misty clouds of ruby red.
Almost like they were describing the inevitable corruption of geometric precision with the red chaos coming from the silhouette in the red mist…
A red mist!
My girls were born from the red mist.
I reached towards the scroll, its unseen, mystical energies, rippled through the material, leaving a tingling sensation at the tip of my fingers. It was almost mesmerising, however, right now, I couldn't care about the scroll's desire of being found.
The system message briefly flickered in front of my eyes, and died out, providing no explanation, and no power.
We are rushing towards the end of days!
This scroll on the other hand has answers, at least for some of my current predicaments, I was certain of it.
It could tell me why I was there.
"Are we certain this isn't written in the local tongue?" I asked, nobody in particular.
It was almost comical to see the puppeteered flesh-drone to lift the 'brain-bug' to inspect the writing.
"Moment, Master."
For a while there was silence, a few more minutes, perhaps more stretching to eternity as Arke, and the other, countless 'Overseers' and 'Fleshspeakers' sifted through the minds of their enthralled human puppets.
Even Tama looked at the scroll Kuma still held up, and with the critical eye, though she didn't say anything.
"Well…" I asked, but then, the answer came from Arke's pet monstrosity.
"Master. We sifted through the minds of drones and we couldn't find anyone who could read it…"
"Very well." I decided, "Notify the sage. He was the only one who even cared about this and hasn't been killed off….
I looked up, a sunset was upon us, but the answers, they couldn't wait.
