We are not meant to understand infinity.
Excerpt from The Beasts of the Dungeon.
REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK p^o^q REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK
Marcus managed to strangle his laughter, though not before earning himself a concerned glance from Vistus.
"Five?" the old man asked, confused. "Are you certain?"
Elly nodded. "I've been honing my senses. Smell, specifically. They're strange in that I can't sense them by energy, but they smell unique. All of them do. I noticed that a while ago, but isolating what exactly smelled wrong took time. Too much time."
Marcus half smiled. That was exactly the kind of bullshit he expected from her. Who was she to care that divination couldn't find the terrors? That centuries of magical study had led to no solution?
Life Enhancement was not magic. Not remotely.
"So we're fighting them, then?" Marcus asked, surprising himself by how light his tone was. Vistus didn't reply immediately, which made Marcus raise his eyebrow. "Gotta admit, I'm not liking that answer."
Vistus sighed. "My primary job is to keep you alive until the Gate network is completed. That's… done, by a certain definition, but five Calamities? All at once? That's not just dangerous, Marcus. It's certain suicide."
"It is with that attitude," Elly responded with a snort. She shrugged. "Look, Calamities aren't all stupid, but most are, correct? If we can lure those away, then pick them off with overwhelming power, we can dwindle their numbers. Even if we don't kill them all, there must be a reason they're working together. Finding that out alone would be worth it."
The old man sighed again. "I know you've fought them, Elenoir, and I know that you're feeling… restless. But Calamities are unique, each and every one of them. With five, there is a very good chance one can counter our abilities. Someone as fast as yourself, or durable enough neither I nor Marcus would be able to kill it quickly. It is a risk I would only take with the Empress here, and preferably with a number of Horzo's airships to retreat to."
"Not Horzo himself?" Marcus asked, curious. "He is still an Archmage."
Vistus snorted. "You're only here because you've proven to be skilled in battle. Horzo does not share your talent for that, though he has his own strengths. No, the Texomancy Archmage will stay where he is."
"If we don't fight, who will?" Elly asked. Vistus opened his mouth, clicking it shut again a moment later. "Exactly. Like you said, we have mobility, flexibility and strength. Three against five, with each of us having killed Calamities before. If we play this smart, if we do this right, we can kill them. Or, at the very least, break them up. Also, they're getting closer."
"They're tracking us?"
Elly shrugged. "Not sure. Olfaction is powerful, but smell alone doesn't paint the whole picture. Even if they are, my point stands."
"It does," Vistus admitted, seeming to straighten. "Alright, let's do it. But scouting first, and if we can't pull them apart, we retreat. Defending the Empire can honestly be called my life's purpose, but I prefer not to actually die doing so."
Marcus rolled his shoulder. "I need about an hour to recover, so we can use that time to observe. Illusions have worked on Calamities before, in my experience."
"On the less intelligent ones, yes. It's not worth risking on anyone else, but we don't need to. Apparently, nothing beats high level Life Enhancement for intelligence gathering."
Elly preened, because of course she would, and Xathar appeared one summoning spell later. Vistus summoned his own mount while he fetched one for Elly, who sniffed disdainfully. Her very own demon horse, who neither she nor he had bothered to learn the name of, was apparently 'boring'.
It didn't speak, crunch on rocks or demanded horses to eat, so he could kind of see where she was coming from.
But it allowed them to travel without exhausting themselves, or more accurately to travel while recovering. With the slaughter of the last few days, there were very few Hounds in the area anyway. Those they did encounter, Elly took care of.
She also led them towards the Calamities, and every time she changed their direction, Vistus grew a little more chipper. Marcus supposed the man was happy to find something that could track the things, even if Elly was far from the average practitioner.
Hells, he was only winning about a fifth of their sparring matches, these days. It was forcing him to think of new defenses, something he was working on already. There was an idea, but it would require timing to the degree of perfection, something he didn't quite possess yet.
Eventually, Elly called them to halt, and Marcus dismounted to stretch. Xathar bumped him in the shoulder while Elly was peering into the distance, his tone gruff. "You have the scent of battle on you, bush mage."
"I do," he admitted easily. Xathar eyed his spatially expanded bag, from which Marcus withdrew an apple. Now that had been a pain to make. But he had, and it was expansive, durable and lightweight no matter its contents. The demon crunched happily. "The three of us killed a million flying Hounds. It wasn't fun."
Xathar grumbled in agreement. "Abominations. They should fight like proper warriors, on the ground and with hooves. You did well by exterminating them."
Marcus hummed and offered scratches, glancing at Elly. She was returning from where she'd climbed a tree, though by the way she had glided upwards, you'd think gravity had politely offered her a hand upwards.
And then down again, for that matter.
"Five, just like I thought," she reported, sounding just the slightest bit smug. "A bird-person thing, a four-legged Giant with six arms, a ball of floating flesh that reeks of magic, something that looks human but was talking to itself, and a metal golem that moved as quickly as I can."
That… that was a lot. Any one of those could kill a city, though truthfully so could they. Still. "Anything that explains why they're working together?"
"The bird-person was corralling them, I think. It has a sword, anyway, and was smacking the Giant with it. Which apparently likes to wander off, for some reason. I don't think it's too bright."
Vistus cleared his throat. "Assessment?"
"The bird-person is intelligent and probably their leader," she replied, shrugging. "The Giant is a basic brute. The ball of flesh is their mage, the human lookalike is just insane, and the metal golem is fast. Marcus moves us in, we lure the Giant away—which is faster than the rest of them after the golem—and I intercept whoever follows. You two kill it, and after that we'll reassess."
Marcus looked at Vistus, who shrugged in agreement. That was that, then. The plan. He looked at where Elly herself was looking, feeling not a thing from the supposed mage. The… flesh ball? He was pretty sure she'd called it a flesh ball. The flesh ball might not be using magic, but even if it was, it wouldn't matter.
Xathar returned home alongside the other mounts, and one final verbal confirmation later, he was teleporting them towards their target. Keeping low to avoid being spotted was easy enough, especially once they entered the not-yet eaten forest.
Prey. Elly was infecting him, he just knew it. She used adorable pouting and steadfast loyalty to reel him in, and then the knives came out. At least she refrained from turning them on him. So far.
Silent Gods, his thoughts always turned strange when he was tired. But tired or not, this had to be dealt with, and letting the Calamities burn a few cities while they got reinforcements seemed to sit right with none of them.
Or worse than burning cities, recruit other Calamities.
Marcus shook his head when Elly held out her hand, none of them making much sound at all. Even if they had, it wouldn't have mattered. A great roar of… something was coming from ahead, most likely from the quadruped Giant. Marcus waited, trusting that Elly had a plan, and moments later that trust was rewarded.
Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn't the Giant he saw first. It was the ball of flesh. Roughly the size of his torso, it floated into view from between the trees. It pulsed with magic, layer after layer of shielding wrapped around it, but unlike the other mage Calamity he'd fought, this one didn't feel even close to as strong.
But it likely wouldn't have her weakness, either.
No eyes, no ears, no mouth. Nothing to even suggest some form of sapience, though it was clearly intelligent. That meant it probably 'saw' through magic, which would be exploitable if true.
The Giant was next, rising up and up from behind the other Calamity, and it was… weird. Even for one of their ranks. Its arms weren't that strange, six of them formed in two sets of three, but its legs. It was more horse than not, but that implied a secondary body. Instead all four legs moved closer together, but evenly placed apart.
Its three eyes stared at them, and Marcus smiled when it bellowed in rage. Elly's bow twanged next to him either way, one of her enchanted arrows puncturing its neck, but that only served to make it more angry. Good.
Marcus turned, preparing to teleport them away. Not too far, lest the Giant lose them, but far enough to give them some breathing room. He couldn't see the other three Calamities, but they would be close by.
Except, when he weaved his teleportation spell, a pulse of magic blanketed the area. His carefully woven, efficient matrices frayed, bleeding power every which way, and he had to drain the whole thing away before it destabilized completely.
His instincts screamed and he moved, throwing himself aside and summoning Xathar at the same time. A lance of pure magic smashed into the place he'd just been, but Marcus didn't care. The summoning spell frayed too, but not as much, and moments later he was on Xathar's back.
The demon didn't need to be told to run, and a glance showed him that Vistus had come to similar conclusions as himself. That the more precise their spells, the more that the field broke it down, and teleportation was very precise magic indeed. So was transmutation.
Elly seemed wholly unaffected, which was good. She was shooting one of her very, very few disruption arrows at the ball of flesh, which punctured through three layers of shielding before failing to penetrate a fourth. From what Marcus' senses could tell, there were at least nine.
Shit.
"The plan holds," Vistus said, the man's voice coming from just next to him. A basic illusion spell. "Lure the Giant, test the field's range. It cannot be infinite."
Yes. Yeah, good, a plan. Marcus silently thanked every second of his training with Elly, because it meant he had some manner of instinct to fall back on when his teleportation failed. She'd insisted for him to practice without it, lecturing about crutches and over-reliance.
He wouldn't be a third of the fighter he was without her.
"Layered shielding," Elly called, her tone cutting through the noise of his own breathing with ease. "Powerful but slow. The shields are taking approximately ten seconds to reappear, and only do so layer by layer. Fifth tier at the least."
It seemed she was getting something out of their spars too. That was nice. Marcus grunted his acknowledgement, ducking low to avoid a branch.
A metal thing came storming through the underbrush, its form more blur than shape, and an equally fast Elly intercepted it. Her blade scraped along its body, throwing them both out of view, and the keening noise her weapon produced made him wince.
Then there was a cry, birdlike and sharp, which actually made the Giant slow. Fear overcame rage, its whole body jerking like an abused dog, but Marcus slashed a wave of fire at it. The comparatively crude spell was barely effected, and it made the thing focus.
Focus on him, specifically.
Xathar shifted to the side and Marcus cursed, the snapping jaws of a Hound missing him by inches. His shield, normally well crafted enough to give even Elly's strength trouble, wobbled like a newborn foal, and Marcus realized exactly how right Vistus had been about Calamities.
If Elly hadn't been here, or if Xathar was any less quick, both him and Vistus would be dead. Dead not because they'd fought and lost, not because of some heroic last stand, but because there was one Calamity that countered them near perfectly, and they hadn't expected it.
More Hounds came racing out from between the trees, which Marcus had to either kill with fire or bodily shove aside with crude telekinesis, but at least Xathar was up to the task of getting them out. Elly was still fighting the golem, and Marcus couldn't see Vistus.
The old man would be fine. Probably.
For a few long, tense minutes they ran, until Marcus felt the disruption field vanish. Not grow weaker, or taper off, but vanish entirely. A hard limit on range, then. Good. That made this… possible.
The Giant was still behind them, behind him, and it roared while smashing through the trees. Marcus slashed at it with a spatial arc, aiming for the eyes, but one of its many arms came up to shield against the attack. The third-tier spell almost bounced off its skin.
Guarding its weak points was more intelligent than he'd given it credit for. Or the bird Calamity had been training it, which was honestly worse.
Marcus teleported further away, the forest limiting his line of sight rather extensively, but then Vistus was there. The man was being carried by a giant ape, easily standing fifteen feet tall, with the Archmage cradled to its chest. Marcus ignored the sight, especially because the summon vanished moments later.
Vistus appeared at his side with an effort of will, and neither of them wasted time speaking. Marcus weaved his sixth-tier spatial cluster together and let it loose just in front of the Giant's face, dozens and dozens of infinitely thin blades slicing into the thing, while Vistus lashed its four legs together with wire.
Marcus wasn't sure what in the Hells that stuff was made out of, but the Calamity fell. From what he could see, though, it wasn't quite blind, but the spatial arcs had cut shallow lines in its face. The creature roared again, a deep sound that he felt more than heard, before its hands grasped a pair of nearby trees.
He teleported them both three hundred feet to the right, said trees impacting their previous spot moments later. Vistus lashed more wire around its legs, and Marcus detonated another cluster of spatial arcs in its face.
The Giant roared, tearing free of the metal in a show of brute strength that seemed to surprise even Vistus. It flung more trees at them, ripping them from the ground with casual ease, and Marcus had to move them twice in quick succession.
It was definitely trained. The thing waited until they reappeared to throw its second projectile, though even if Marcus hadn't moved them out of the way in time, it would have missed anyway.
A flash of light appeared in front of its eyes just before it let go of the tree, throwing off its aim. One of its many arms rose to shield against the light, though that only allowed Vistus to conjure more metal. Marcus, meanwhile, slashed at its legs with a single, sixth-tier spatial arc, managing to cut through the skin.
Vistus took advantage like they'd planned the attack, razor-thin wire starting to saw through the injured leg. With a horrendous scream the leg came free, or more accurately flopped downwards while still attached to the skin. The skin that his spatial arc hadn't cut.
Marcus blinked, grinning despite himself. Its skin was more durable than the actual flesh. Vistus seemed to come to the same conclusion, and with one more teleport, the unspoken plan flowed into action.
Each leg was cut, a sixth-tier spatial arc just about up to the task, and wire started sawing through immediately after. Fifteen seconds later it had only one leg to stand on, and the Giant crashed to the ground. Marcus urged Xathar closer, angling them behind the fallen Calamity.
Its skull, however, proved tougher than anything else on its body, which was a problem. Marcus shifted his weight when Xathar jumped to the side, dodging yet another opportunistic Hound, and a thin spike of wood cut into its head moments later.
Marcus nodded to Vistus in thanks, glancing at the Calamity. "Killing it will take too much power."
"Agreed," the old man replied. "It doesn't appear to be healing, or at least not quickly. We'll leave it here for after the fight, and lure the others further away—"
Elly's signature appeared high up in the trees, and Marcus had only just turned his head upwards when she was already jumping down. Or more diving than jumping, by the sheer speed at which she was moving. Her blade was held with both hands, angled just right so that the tip was lower than her feet.
The Giant barely had time to scream before her blade, shining with so much Life Marcus could barely look at the thing, entered its skull. It sliced through bone and brain for fifteen inches before coming to a stop, which while not reaching the hilt, seemed more than enough to actually kill the thing.
Elly pulled her weapon backwards with a grunt, but it refused to move. She frowned, a surge of strength going through her body, and she wretched it free with a mighty heave. Marcus urged Xathar closer while she hopped down, her frame the picture of grace.
"Thanks for keeping it still," she said with a light grin, flicking the gore from her blade. "Took you boys long enough—"
Her boasting was cut short when she swayed, and Marcus teleported to her side. Going from mounted to standing took a moment of adjustment, but he was quick enough to catch her before she fell.
Elly grinned sheepishly. Her left hand spasmed briefly before she stilled it. "My dashing prince."
"I'm a King," he corrected dryly. "And you've been burning through your power."
She shrugged, pushing herself upright with a hiss. "The golem didn't want to take his nap. We reached an agreement."
"It's dead?" Vistus asked, clear surprise in his tone. He cleared his throat. "Not to say—"
Elly waved him off. "It's dead, but I only have a few minutes of my full strength left, and the thing hit me in the back. My left arm is numb, which I'm correcting for with generous helpings of Life. The other three also aren't rushing in after us, which is a problem."
"The Giant was trained," Marcus added. "It protected its weak spots, adapted to my use of teleportation, that kind of thing. Safe to say the others might be too."
She hummed, sighing deeply when he linked a healing matrix together and pressed his hand against her back. At least her damaged armor made it easy to touch the injury directly. "That explains why it kept trying to lure me back towards the fleshball. I think it didn't quite understand why I wasn't affected."
"Summon her mount," Vistus half interrupted, doing so himself. "We'll make distance and observe while Elly heals. There's nothing of value close by, so we're not in a rush. But we can't risk getting close to the… fleshball until it's dealt with. Or at least me and Marcus can't. Having said that, it has to die. Today."
Elly nodded in agreement, heaving herself into the saddle after Marcus summoned her demon. "I might have a plan for that."
Marcus glanced at the dead Calamity before walking back towards Xathar, who seemed highly tempted to take a bite. Which would go exactly nowhere, and they didn't have time anyway.
Two dead, three to go, but now they were tired, injured and had lost the element of surprise.
Come on then, you mutated abominations. Let's see what else you've got.
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