Calamities. The Emperor warned me about them. I trained for a thousand hours to fight them. I had a dozen potions and nine summons. I expected the fight of my life. I expected to be challenged, to improve, to receive a glimpse of what I would one day be capable of.
I killed it in fifteen minutes, and the beast didn't touch me once. What a disappointment.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK p^o^q REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK
"Look, I get that you're excited, but please stop looking at me like that."
Elly just grinned harder. More? She was messing with his brain, is what she was doing. "You called this a date."
"I did not. I simply stated the fact that you seem to enjoy hunting highly dangerous monsters more than drinking wine with me on the Redwater castle roof, and made a self-deprecating joke about needing to step up my game."
"Daaateeee," she replied, abusing her lung capacity to really stretch out the word. Elly gasped. "Do you like me, husband?"
"Less by the second, wife."
Marcus didn't engage her hurt and dramatic expression of betrayal, wondering why he'd thought it was a good idea to give them privacy. Oh, right. The several hundred thousand Hounds they were sneaking past.
The party they'd assembled was with them, part of their usual guards with some additions, but it had been simple enough to add a second layer to the spell. Auditory and visual privacy for them, complete privacy for the whole group.
It had still been one of the more nerve wracking moments of his life, sneaking past entire hordes of Hounds. But that had been a day ago, and now it was normal to see them snap and push each other. To see smaller groups of Champions move through and collect those they wished to add to their tribes, or for smaller groups to follow in the wake of Burrowers.
How many of those were still underground, he wondered. How many thousands of the monsters were eagerly digging tunnels through the world, slowly spreading out into the wider Empire? How many tribes had followed them? How many Hounds went unnoticed right up until they ripped through an unsuspecting soldier from below?
It also hadn't been nearly as simple as he'd assumed to hunt the actual Calamity. His ability to teleport and hide them—which wasn't nearly as useful as it seemed for containing the Dungeon—allowed great mobility, but the area it could be in was vast.
The Calamity was massive, but that didn't help when there were this many creatures around. He also wasn't particularly keen on bumping into one of its brothers or sisters by mistake, as small as the chance of that was.
Either way, Elly had stopped grinning. She mostly just looked at the writhing, living blanket that had been deposited on the land, desperately tearing apart already barren soil for any hint of food. Soon enough the horde would be moving on, though the when and how wasn't his concern.
Marcus dropped the inner privacy ward, the rest of their hunting party snapping to attention. "We're moving on. I will remind you that any nausea lasting longer than thirty seconds upon arrival has to be reported to the healers."
A trio of eyes glanced away, shame burning on their faces, and the healers themselves just nodded. It had been an issue when first starting out, one that practice hadn't accounted for. Ego.
None of the handpicked few wanted to slow down the group for something as trivial as an upset stomach, disregarding the protocols set for noble and proud reasons. Which became far less noble and proud when they'd started throwing up nearly uncontrollably, resulting in an hour's delay.
At least it had cleared up any notions of glory, so that was something.
Supplies weren't an issue, not with the backpacks he'd created, but this hunt was starting to drag on. Morale was being damaged by the sheer scale of the enemy, sleep was difficult so close to enemy lines, but most of all Marcus didn't like leaving his army for longer than he had too.
It was good, then, that they found their prey a few hours later.
Building sized. That's how the Empress had described the monster, and she herself had no doubt either read or heard the description from the actual scouts. One might think to picture a fairly big two floor home, then imagine it could move.
It was nearly twice that size. Six legs rose so high into the air a dozen Hounds could stack under its belly, the central disk those limbs were attached to possessing no discernible front or back. It tapered off slightly into a disk, a strange face made from living stone attached to the bottom, but even then it wasn't quite a head.
There was no neck, no rotation or even the ability to tilt. Neither was there hair, color or something approaching skin. It was as if someone had carved a face onto a boulder, placed it under the six-legged platform, and called it a day.
It was also one of the most terrifying things Marcus had ever seen.
He could almost convince himself it looked ridiculous, those first few seconds. Their party was standing on a hill, out of sight and thoroughly hidden, and the Calamity wasn't doing much. Just walking forwards, one step at the time, and someone had let out a startled laugh as it nearly fell over.
Being able to feel its legs stomping onto the ground killed any sense of humor. As had the seconds after it, the Calamity raising the leg it had stomped with and letting out a rumbling laugh.
It sounded like the grinding of stone. Like tumbling rock, a mountain speaking with millions of tons of granite and marble. It was not a mountain, but it sounded like one. Felt like one.
And it had just killed a Champion for sport, stomping down and inspecting its work.
"Observation first," Elly called quietly, the first to snap out of it. "Equipment test, terrain verification, the works. Go."
The team got to it, not as worried about discovery as they'd been only hours before. Not like they were ever going to fight the Calamity without attracting thousands of Hounds. The trick was for that not to matter, either through a quick kill or by repositioning so quickly all their enemy could do was chase.
And yet, for all that their planning had sounded so very good in his head, observing the Calamity turned out to be fairly pointless. He hadn't expected the thing to launch into a detailed breakdown of its abilities, of course, but he had expected more than this.
Because, well, it was just walking. Of course it would be. It did kill more Hounds and Champions than expected, even breaking into a relatively shallow Burrower's tunnel and laughing for a whole minute afterwards, but nothing other than that.
The one important thing they'd learned was how annoyed it was at its fellow monsters. The sheer size and proportions of the disk would make it a haven for flying Hounds, but the few that tried to land were dislodged. Literally, the massive creature shaking itself like a wet dog until it was free.
It was encouraging, but nothing else about the thing was. Magic resistance couldn't be felt, not until he actually engaged and felt direct feedback, but he doubted a spatial arc would slice it in half.
If Calamities were that easy to kill, the Empire would have long conquered the Dungeon.
It was big, it was moving, and it was highly entertained by killing. Faster than it looked, too, though not nearly as fast as someone like Elly. Not that it would matter at that size. It could still cross more space by virtue of sheer mass.
Or maybe it just looked slow. One step for that monstrosity would be dozens and dozens of his own, though that assumed he couldn't teleport. And speaking of teleportation.
"I'm going to try and slice it in half," Marcus noted, receiving nothing but a nod from Elly and silence from everyone else. "Be ready. I'll reestablish our protections the moment I'm back."
Marcus exhaled, focusing. There was an outcropping of stone relatively close to the beast, close enough to attack from, and it was within his line of sight. Teleport, attack, retreat. He'd done it a hundred times against Elly. A thousand.
Space twisted, and suddenly the Calamity took up most of his field of view. It was far, far bigger from here, the disk its legs supported seeming to block out the sun, and it was only reflex that pushed him along the motions.
The spatial arc slashed forwards, his most powerful one. Wide enough to slice all its legs clean off, and with enough power to bisect a castle. He felt his reserves drain nearly a quarter, the most he could push into the attack without destabilizing it, and Marcus spun around to return to the group.
Another push and he was back, hiding their presence a moment later. He let out a breath, turning to see if he'd done any damage.
Marcus sighed. The Calamity looked mostly unharmed, a relatively deep gash embedded into three of its legs, but nothing more. It looked at where he'd been, doing the monster equivalent of blinking in confusion, before letting out a bellow of rage.
Elly hummed. "My turn."
Her warbow rose and a special arrow was nocked, one covered in runes so fine they were almost invisible. They had a few mages making those for this exact situation, though this particular one wasn't a mage killer.
No, this one was made to punch clean through stone. It whistled through the air, keening loudly as the sheer force behind it pushed aside the wind, and Marcus could feel the Life energy she'd embedded into her bow. Could feel it augment its strength, its power, its sheer capability to deal death.
The projectile flew, and Marcus lost sight of it a moment later. The Calamity flinched and stumbled, roaring in rage again, but after a few seconds it refused to fall over. Elly lowered her weapon, head tilted. "Clean hit. The arrow punctured at least three feet deep. It would have done triple that to regular stone."
Marcus' reply was interrupted by yet another scream of rage, but this one seemed focused. A ripple of energy spread out just behind the noise, which did exactly nothing to him but ripped through his basic illusions like paper.
Ah. That's probably not good.
The Calamity snapped to look at them, rushing forwards without so much as a second's pause. The small horde of Hounds around the monster followed, though the scattered few Champions he could see looked more hesitant.
Marcus glanced around for good cover as Elly's people started picking off the airborne threats, Elly herself shooting another two arrows into the thing's face. Going for the eyes, he presumed, but though it screamed at every hit it never slowed.
"Moving," he called, waiting exactly one second before depositing the party four hundred feet to the right. He layered the illusions again, but the things seemed uncaring for them now. It scrambled to change directions, digging enormous grooves into the earth with each leg, but nothing else. Marcus grunted. "Moving again in thirty seconds—"
A rush of magic swept out of the Calamity, crudely weaved and seemingly trying to make up for it with power, and Marcus moved them the second it did. Their last position erupted into a mountain of spikes, jagged things the width of a man, and he felt his eyes widen.
That wouldn't have killed him or Elly, but it would have created a real mess amongst the others. Maybe even kill their healers. Those had only basic defenses and no enhanced reflexes.
Oh, right. The massive Calamity was still charging towards them.
It had to change directions again, but it didn't seem overly bothered by the fact. Nor was it in any way concerned by how many Hounds it was killing, going by the enthusiastic stomping. Silver linings and all that.
"Endurance test," Elly called, never quite having stopped firing arrows. She had plenty thanks to his spatial storage, so there was no reason to be particularly conservative. Not with mundane arrows, at least. "Marcus, keep us away from that thing. Everyone else, focus on the Hounds."
Affirmations all around, all but five of the Life Enhanced soldiers they'd brought pulling out their own bows. Those weapons weren't nearly equal to Elly's own, but they were still enhanced with runes and fired by supernaturally strong bodies.
Elly annoyed the Calamity, the soldiers took care of any Hounds getting too close, Marcus kept them all safely at a distance. And that's how it went, for a while.
Then it all went wrong.
It was something small, at first. More Hounds flooded into the area, overcoming their apparent fear of the Calamity now that food had been found, but that only necessitated slightly more frequent jumps.
Then Elly ran out of runic arrows, their highly overprepared stock of fourteen proving not nearly plentiful enough, but they weren't really doing too much damage anyway.
After that was the change. The mistake. The event he'd no doubt remember for the rest of his life, for it was the first time it had ever happened.
The Calamity predicted his teleport.
Marcus very nearly panicked as the ground he was only just touching erupted into spikes, great cracks appearing and decimating any sense of balance. The party's cohesion shattered, shouts of alarm and pain ringing out through the barren hills, and he stomped down on an instinctive desire to teleport them again.
He'd leave someone, or multiple someone's, behind in the chaos, and that was unacceptable. Blood splattered over his face as he turned, a man whose name he'd only learned some thirty hours ago too slow in dodging, and he watched in horror as the Life Enhanced soldier was speared on and taken up into the air by one of the spikes.
Cold flooded through him, granting clarity, and he grasped anyone he could see. Moved them out and away, if only twenty feet or so, and barked at the healers to tend to the wounded. If nothing else, being able to teleport people impaled by spikes prevented more trauma.
The healers snapped out of their own stupor, getting to work, while Elly was pulling more people out. Marcus took a moment to breathe, whirling when a shout of alarm sounded to his right.
He finished turning, and an instinctive terror tried to grip his mind. The Calamity loomed above them, far too close for anything resembling comfort, and its grinning face was swiftly hidden by the rapidly descending pillar of stone that creature dared to call a limb.
No time to plan, no time to think, so Marcus just acted. Grasped space with his mind, forgoing spell matrices and fine manipulation, and stretched. He'd done this before, most notably so during his first near death by assassination attempt, but this felt different.
Not easier, though. Not easier in the slightest. Marcus groaned as space folded outwards, the limb going from nearly touching to hundreds of feet away, and he ignored a trickle of blood dripping from his nose as he turned. He was about to shout at them to clear a space, but Elly had beaten him to it.
Everyone was clear of the ruptured and spike-filled earth, so he moved them all away. Almost felt the Calamity graze them as he did, his blatant violation of spatial law granting them nothing more than a long second of time.
They weren't dead, but this wasn't much better. Elly's sword flashed as the group of Hounds he teleported them close to charged, her and a dozen of their guards taking care of them quickly enough, and Marcus risked glancing at the Calamity.
It was looking at its limb expectantly, a brief and confused tippy-tap of movement happening when it found no corpses stuck on its feet. It looked around, growing more and more agitated, and Marcus rebuilt his illusions as quickly and discreetly as he could.
The Calamity snapped to look in their general direction again, but at least it didn't seem to have an exact location. He breathed out slowly, a hundred spars with Elly ingraining the need to avoid hyperventilating into his very bones, and took one of the potions from his belt.
He drank it down and returned the empty bottle to its place, feeling a rush of energy flood his limbs. Not magical energy, but it would keep him sharp. Marcus turned, finding his two healers tending to the wounded, and moved to join them as Elly kept them protected.
Illusions were great, but they didn't do much if the enemy was already inside of them.
Most of the soldiers not fighting alongside Elly were drinking potions of their own, and a pair of them tended to four bodies. Two were missing limbs, having bled out in moments, a third was the poor soul who'd been impaled right in front of him, and the last had his neck twisted almost completely sideways.
Marcus ignored them and spun up a healing matrix, summoning Vess with a flick of his wrist. He'd forgotten in the excitement of ambushing the Calamity, though he didn't see what she could have contributed. Now he never would.
The succubus stepped out of her portal as he got to work, Marcus having to direct a soldier to hold down her comrade as he did, but there wasn't much to be done. The man's heart was giving up, and even if he fixed that half his right lung was gone.
He spotted Vess looking at the Calamity, the demon ignoring death like only their kind could, and grunted in annoyance as the man he was healing died. It was the most feeling he could summon at the moment, which should have made him feel bad. It didn't.
Elly returned when Marcus was rising to his feet, sword coated in blood but unharmed herself, and he returned her hard grin with an empty smile.
She glanced at the corpse near his feet, grin vanishing, but it was still in her tone as she spoke. "I have an idea."
"Good," he replied, tone so very flat. "Because I would like to kill that creature."
Elly pulled out one of the explosives they'd brought, one of a very limited supply, and some feeling returned to his soul as she dangled it between her fingers.
Bloodlust was better than apathy, he decided.