Hey! Hey! HEY!
Welcome back, one and all, to the shimmering gates of Enverdolmal!
I am sooooooooooooo sorry for the prolonged absence, Folks!
The last month or so has been sooooooooooooo f@cking hectic for me that I don't even know where to start telling you all about it!
- New girlfriend!
- Moving in a month or less!
- New promotion at work!
- New artistic tablet so that I can start doing my own art for One Last Knight for you all and posting it on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok!
(Find One Last Knight's page on Facebook to find the links!)
I have been quite busy, and I hope that you all have been happy and healthy.
The world we all share is slipping into an increasingly weirder state by the day, and I am so so so so so so so so so so so sorry that I haven't been here to provide that escape as needed! But I hope this chapter finds you all well, and you enjoy every last word of it!
It is a bit long!
But I promise it will bridge a couple of big gaps that were started in the first parts!
I love and appreciate all of you for your patience and loyalty to not only me, but my characters, their stories, and the world of Enverdolmal as a whole!
I will let you all get to what you came for, yeah?
I love you all more than you can imagine!
Thank you kindly for nearly 41,000 views across all languages that read along!
You all are amazing, and with your continued love and loyalty, mayhap one day I will be able to get you all a physical copy of Volume 01!
That is not only my goal, but my dream...
LET'S MAKE IT HAPPEN!
I will see you all back here at the gates soon enough, yeah?
Enjoy!
And off we go!
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Amoura was stunned for a split second.
A second was all the eager Orcis needed.
The Ex-knight's last attack -a swift kick to his chin followed by a generous slap from her reinforced buckler to his temple- had seemed to do little to nothing to the charging monster, and now the slobbering thing was on the offensive.
Amoura barely had time to react, but she did, and just in the nick of time.
The enraged Orcis before her grabbed the handle of his long, jagged sword before swinging it back in a vicious, two-handed, upward swing, one that would ultimately be the death of the woman had not been for her extraordinarily honed reflexes and a fair amount of luck on her end.
As the wicked instrument closed in on her at the speed of a blink, Amoura snapped her small shield up and between its lethal bite and her hips.
The heavy blade smashed into Amoura's shield with enough force to have rent her in two had her shield not been in place. A blinding pain exploded in her left shoulder as her arm boned absorbed the kinetic energy.
The small -in comparison to the lumbering Orcis she faced- woman was violently thrown backward and up, her guard all but shattered.
Straining to focus through the pain, she forced a good portion of her fleeting strength into her right arm, bringing her sword to bear as she flew backward.
The Orcis spun on its heel with the attack it had thrown, and leaped after the soaring woman.
It was done toying with her, and Amoura was sure it meant for the next attack to be its last.
With a short, sharp bark and an accompanying grunt, the monster lifted its nasty sword over its head and readied itself to deliver a single crushing downward chop.
-----
From roughly eight yards away, Davien's gaze followed the flight path of the freshly killed Orcis.
His Gatemen had snapped the filthy thing's neck with a swift, brutal kick, sending it off in the direction in which it currently flew.
Davien was turning his head and body, letting his eyes search for and lock onto the true object of his desire.
"AMOURA!"
He yelled as he found his beloved wife locked in visceral combat with the muscular, ever-encroaching Orcis.
His heart leaped as he watched her dodge and parry several ugly, sloppy swipes a few seconds before enacting a clean counterattack of her own.
Davien had witnessed his wife not only in combat, but in training as well, and he knew quite well what she was and wasn't capable of.
He had very nearly predicted the technique that she was about to use.
The powerful roundhouse kick and subsequent shield bash both had landed cleanly on the monster's head, yet... Its reaction was far from what Davien and Amoura had thought.
In a single breath, the Orcis countered the staggering shield bash, bringing its own weapon back and up in a powerful uppercut-like swing that lifted Amoura from her feet and sent the startled woman flying backward.
A second wind hit Davien like a charging bull, and adrenaline rapidly flushed his system. A generous portion of that adrenaline was almost instantly converted into Aether. Before the desperate man could react, the Orcis leaped after his wife, its muscled arms extended over its head, readied for a horrific and uncontested attack.
Before the desperate man could react, his loyal, ever-vigilant Gatemen did.
-----
Gatemen C4482 was... different in many ways from its enlisted brethren.
It was the one Gatemen that Davien and his wife could stomach having about in their personal space.
The Gatemen's history was... painful for the pair to live with.
Davien had invented the astoundingly complex automatons as a safeguard to help the humans and humanoids guard against the ever-encroaching monsters who roamed the wilds of Enverdolmal.
It had never been his intention to have them militarized...
He was no weapons manufacturer, no.
He was a scientist and a humanitarian.
He had sought only to protect and defend, and never to be made to send his inventions to war.
As of late, the local desert-dwelling Orcis and goblin clans had been growing more and more aggressive, and the ever-astute Jakon Industries, in coalition with the B.C.D.F., had responded to the new threat levels by tuning the most recently manufactured Gatemen to respond to the humanoid species' presence with immediate and often destructive countermeasures.
Although this newest development had caused a palpable rift in the community of Bant, the goodly folk amongst the Orcis and Goblins that lived in the city were never targeted nor discriminated against.
Davien himself had made sure of that.
The group that had charged the Jakons that morning was far from civilized, and Davien's Gatemen had reacted and would continue to react to those negative energy signatures until they were eradicated.
Amoura had poured all the knowledge of her military training that she could into the memory core of the unit that she had taken to calling "82", and she had personally "fed" it all of the books she could find that pertained to war stratagems and battle tactics.
Theirs was a hyper-lethal machine.
That was exactly what the two of them needed at this moment.
82's feet and ankles shifted and turned in the blink of an eye, transforming from their familiar foot form into a pair of rapid propulsion systems.
The same rapid propulsion systems that got it from the main entrance of Bant to the battle it was currently in.
"ON IT!"
82 chirped to Davien as he blasted off towards the dueling pair in a bright burst of jade-colored Aether.
The Gatemen rocketed toward the Orcis so quickly that Davien stumbled back in surprise, bits of sand, dirt, and other earthy debris pelting his person from the sudden shift in the air around him.
In a split second, 82 cleared the gap between Davien and Amoura, arriving at the battle in a fourth of the time it would have taken the man.
The machine slammed into the flying Orcis without slowing, its right hand locking onto the thing's right wrist and its left arm wrapping around its thick, muscled neck as its flight path and attack were both quite suddenly interrupted.
The warrior roared in protest, twisting and grabbing at whatever he could reach, its inhuman strength almost contesting that of the inorganic being.
The Gatemen wrapped its articulated legs around the creature's waist as they wrestled and plummeted through the air, shifting its feet back into their regular forms and locking its toes together; its goal was to entangle the raging Orcis enough for it not to be able to get to the wounded woman when they inevitably hit the ground.
The pair landed in a heap and rolled off to the side and away from the woman.
82's core objective shifted from intervention to termination.
Suddenly, a flash of purple light filled the area for a split-second, and the Gatemen felt a strange, intrusive pressure in its lower back.
Before 82 could process what was happening, its systems began to fail rapidly.
-----
Amoura was glad for the sudden intervention, as jarring as it was, but it didn't solve the equally immediate problem of the ground that was rapidly rushing up at her.
She braced herself as best she could and hit the hard-packed dirt, rolling as she landed mostly on her upper back and shoulders.
The impact angle hadn't been steep enough to break anything, but her momentum was such that she rolled over backward several times upon impact, causing her to lose her bearings as the world spun around her.
She had sworn she had heard Davien cry out to her somewhere off to her left before 82 had slammed into that thing, but she could very well have been hearing things in the chaos of combat.
"AMOURA!"
This time she definitely heard it, and it was most definitely her husband's voice.
She shook the dirt and sand from her hair and made to stand, but as she rolled over onto her stomach and went to push off the ground, pain shot through her left shoulder and down her spine, sending her face first into the ground in agony.
"NNNNNNGGGGAAAAAA!"
She screamed out in anguish as her shoulder was dislocated with the exertion.
The toxins that the Orcis arrowhead had been steeped in had finally begun to kick in, and Amoura could suddenly feel her strength fading rapidly.
"Wha..? What's happening to...me?"
She managed to mutter before she lost consciousness.
-----
Boongaloot watched as the scenario unfolded before him.
All had gone to plan thus far, and not even the loss of every single life under his command that day could dampen his mood.
He was no stupid Orcis.
He would join when and only when the advantage was his, and as he watched on, he realized the moment to make his cameo was soon to arrive.
His first wave was obliterated by a blast of invisible energy from the man's outstretched palm, an attack Boongaloot had to admit he hadn't seen coming.
The first Orcis that led his charge was thrown violently backward and into the one behind him with such force that they both were instantly killed.
Boongaloot took note of the man's power and watched on.
The arrows he had passed to his archer were laced with a rare, potent paralytic agent that he and his last squad of Orcis and Goblin slaves had "harvested" from a nest of desert spiders.
His last squad had been eaten alive nearly to the man, but he'd gotten what he'd needed...
That -as always- was all that mattered to Boongaloot.
The completion of his own goals and those of his Black-cloaked masters.
One of the arrows launched had landed true, and Boongaloot knew that it would be only a matter of minutes, if that, before the Fe-male was out of the fight.
His remaining Orcis closed in rapidly, pressing the attack as he watched on.
One of his largest and strongest had charged the Fe-male, as directed, and the remaining three would surely be enough to overwhelm the lone male.
Boongaloot wasn't the best with numbers, but he was no stupid Orcis, and he knew outnumbered when he saw it.
The Fe-male and large one fell away to the side as they were locked in one-on-one combat, and the lone male stood his ground rather impressively as the last of the squad cautiously moved to engage him.
Boongaloot liked where this was going.
He drew his own long, cruel-looking sword and readied himself to enter the fray.
He wanted that shiny little sword that the Fe-male carried, and he would peel it from her dead body if necessary.
Getting her dead would be the fun part.
As Boongaloot burst into a brisk jog, he suddenly caught a hint of movement in the distance and high above the battle that raged before him.
He slowed his jog, raised a hand to his forehead, and squinted to sharpen his vision.
What he saw initially made the hair on the back of his muscled neck stand on end.
He wasn't FULLY sure...
But he thought he could see what he thought was one of those stupid Mecha men falling rapidly from the sky towards his fight!
FACK!
Boongaloot swallowed the initial wave of fear and remembered not only his plan, but the pulsating lump of tainted Aetherite he kept strapped to his hip in a small satchel.
The facking Mecha wouldn't be a threat for too much longer!
He picked up his pace.
The man was turning out to be a lot more capable than Boongaloot had been led to believe, and that was becoming more and more obvious by the second.
As he made his approach, he watched as the man rather skillfully dodged a pair of synchronized attacks before he blasted one of the Orcis in the face, sending it flying backward into a nearby tree.
Before the second Orcis could follow up, Boongaloot's greatest fear manifested before he could get into position.
From seemingly out of nowhere, the Mecha man appeared.
Just as his Orcis spun on his heel and made to tear the man in half with a single powerful slash, the Gateman landed with a measured crash, changing its form in an instant and stopping the blow in one fluid motion.
Boongaloot slowed his pace.
The Orcis had its own weapon torn from its hands, and as it relinquished the weapon to flee, the Mecha threw it back toward him, running him clean through.
The Orcis, thrown against the tree, recovered remarkably quickly, but its counter-charge was cut short by an amazingly swift kick from the hyper-adaptive Gatemen.
Boongaloot could see the odds shifting out of his favor, but he had his plan, and he still had enough of the element of surprise to pull it off.
He was no stupid Orcis.
In the distance, he could see his largest was overwhelming the Fe-male, and that fact pleased him greatly.
The weapon she wielded would soon be his trophy, and the man who had built the stupid Mecha would be dead and out of his way.
All was essentially still going to plan; he just had to deal with the Mecha before him that he knew would threaten his life just as soon as it was done killing the last of his "new" squad...
Boongaloot watched and realized what was happening before the man could, as his back was now to the approaching Orcis, and he would take full advantage of the rather serendipitous situation.
He could see that the Mecha was responding to whoever it thought was in the most immediate danger, and at a glance he could see that his large Orcis had pressed the Fe-male into what appeared to be a lethal corner.
This forced the Mecha to shift its priorities to her and her safety, and thus it had also turned its back to the lone approaching Orcis who it obviously didn't think was as much to worry about.
Boongaloot was both blessed and glad that the thing had underestimated him.
As it turned to aid the woman, it shifted its form once more into what Boongaloot assumed was its flying form, and in the blink of an eye, it leapt forward at great speed.
Boongaloot was no mathematician.
He was not the smartest, nor the wisest, nor the most knowledgeable of his people,
But his timing and depth perception were nearly incomparable.
He had been the number one stone thrower and skipper of his clan for as long as they had existed, and he was about to prove to no one but himself why that was an indisputable fact.
As the thing took off, Boongaloot slid to a halt while simultaneously slamming his right hand into the small satchel that held the shaped shard of tainted Aetherite.
He took mental note of the aerial position of his Orcis, the Mecha, and the distance he had to work before they both hit the ground, all in the blink of an eye.
He snatched the shard from its home, cocked back his powerful arm, pumped a solid amount of Aether into both his arm and the shard, and let the projectile loose with a launch that would have made his father proud... Had his father had the ability to express such an emotion toward him, that is.
His aim was true.
As the pair of combatants hit the ground and rolled about, the pulsating purple shard slammed into the side of the Mecha and lodged itself firmly between a pair of the armor plates that made up its midsection.
Success!
With a flash of purple light, the tainted Aether rapidly infected the Mecha's internal workings.
He knew now that it was only a matter of time before not only the Mecha was out of the fight, but the Fe-male as well.
Boongaloot began walking toward the man who was now unaware of his slow approach.
He was sure that the man was very nearly exhausted, so he didn't worry about his strange push/pull spells.
He had all the time he needed.
-----
Welcome back to the gates of Enverdolmal!
Whoooooaaaaaa!
Things are starting to get wild!
What will become of Davian and Amoura?
What about 82!?
What is Boongaloot's goal, and who does he work for, AND to what end!?!?!?!?
How could any of this end well!?
I hope you all enjoyed that new instalment, and I am sorry for the cliffhangers!
Lol, that's just a part of how this all works!
It will be worth it, you have my word!
I love you all more than I will ever be able to express through these pages, so I hope these stories are enough to prove that, yeah?
I will see you all back here soon enough, yeah?
I will do my best to make that ASAP!
Till then?
Safe travels, Folks.
And as always:
Stay safe.
Stay healthy.
Stay vigilant.
-Bluu.