I was running down a street, a weight I had not felt in a long time within my hands. Flying above me was a familiar pair of wings, attached to a mostly unfamiliar man. At my side was Nico, his silver blade drawn, ignited into golden flames.
Our target, our object, was right down the street. Sand settled around his mostly bare feet, his body covered in ancient wrappings which seemed as if they should crumble being exposed to open air. Each one inscribed with hieroglyphics which thrummed with a faint golden light. His face obscured, save for one visible eye made of a faint blue stone. He raised a hand, the bit of visible flesh beneath withered, as if he’d just stepped out of a tomb. He was adorned in a golden neck raiment with a large curved adornment on his head, that had segments of it painted blue. In his grasp with two golden implements, a crook and a flail.
The one pointed at us was the crook, which began to glow with a faint pulsing light, as a hissing voice escaped his lips. We still couldn’t understand a word of what he spoke.
The flare of light flew upwards, blinding Nico’s brother, Cole, and sending him off course, leaving just us two to join the fray. At the feet of the abomination was one of our number, one of my cousins, Logan. He looked as if he’d been flayed. One strike of the flail had done that to him.
I didn’t let the sight perturb me. I raised a golden mace in the air, and swung it towards him, only to be knocked aside by the crook in a flurry of sand. Nico, from the side, swung his blade forward, a roar of golden fire coming forth. In response, the flail swung wide, with a sound akin to the crack of a whip. Nico stumbled back, his arm a bloody mess from a glancing blow, as his blade dropped to the ground. The thing kicked him, and he went flying down the street. He had heard me shout, and turned to face me next, both implements raised. I brought up my mace in kind, and swung with full force, channeling the gift I had been given in the depths of my blood.
An explosion of rippling force, this time, when I made contact with his crossed weapons. This time, he would be the one who was sent flying, by the force of my smite. I wasn’t about to let him recover, but something stopped my charge: The sound of a gunshot. A hole appeared in the abominations shoulder, accompanying the burns which wreathed across his upper torso. A sound in that same language, which sounded like a curse.
Another one of my cousins, Jean, slid down the side of the rooftop and fired again with the rifle in her grasp. Her bullets seemed to glow with a faint luminescent glow, not quite as strong as my smite, but certainly consecrated.
However, it wasn’t enough. Sand filled in his wounds, and with a wave of his hand, the paved asphalt of the ground transmuted into the very same stuff, launching itself for me in a wave which sent me flying across the street, bracing myself in a roll and catching myself, quickly blinking the sand out of my eyes. I saw the shadow looming over me, as the bastard reformed himself from the wave just behind me, implements raised.
Only to be caught by a massive hammer, pushing him back a step. I moved out of the way, backwards, getting to my feet, standing side by side with Jean, and her hammer. We fell into the same stances we had maintained for most of our journey together, as we faced off with the abomination. He stood at the end of the alleyway he’d pushed me into standing amongst a miniature sandstorm, floating a few inches off the ground.
When he acted, so did we, charging forward. I swung low with my mace, Jean swung high with her hammer. We both missed, as his body dispersed into sand again. He swung the flail up at me, catching me across the chest. It hurt like nothing had before. I took another kick to the center of mass, and again, I was sent flying, back into the street with a landing that broke a few bones. I laid their gazed, as the creature moved faster then I could follow, charging straight for me, with Jean, mostly unscathed with her share of the armor, in pursuit.
The two met each other again a few feet from me. I tried to reach for my mace, but I didn’t have the same talent with calling or storing a weapon as the others. My weapon laid back in the alley, even as Jean fought on alone. I could see that Nico and Cole had recovered, and were diving back towards the scene.
But time had run out. Jean swung her hammer two wide, and the abomination hooked his crook around it, forcing both weapons to the floor. He swung the flail around, and she, for all of her strength, caught it with a grimace, even as the skin on her hands began to come apart. She swung a haymaker forward, when he grabbed her face, her blow floundered.
She rotted away within three seconds. The first one, her golden shield pulsed, and shattered, the second one, she actually died, the third, her body was turned into little more then a husk. The hammer struck the ground, as the body did a moment later, and the Crook rejoined him. I couldn’t remember or feel screaming.
Cole struck from behind, landing a kick while he was still unprepared and striking him with banishment, causing the abomination to vanish. Cole was one of the strongest among us-he had both wings and banishment. A lucky recipient of a Seraph’s favor. Nico rushed up on the ground, sword in his other arm, as he prepared for it’s return.
A second later, a flash of transposition. Four people appeared nearby. Out of the six that I had expected.
My Aunt Ruby quickly looked around, as my cousin Olivia, sister of Jean saw the body, but kept her composure in the heat of things, and rushed over to me. Her hands placed to my chest, as she began to use her powers of mending on me.
Also appearing was Nico’s Uncle Antonio, a silver axe in hand, and generally looking bloody. Alongside my Aunt Victoria, speaking in her tongue.
“We will yet prevail!”
The four, plus two more, my brother and another cousin…had been sent to deal with the rest of the abominations allies in the city. I couldn’t think about it. Not right now.
I felt slightly reassured by the words, the power of the tongue at work. I was about to respond, and ask where the other two were, when I felt warm blood strike my face, and a weight on my chest. Olivia’s headless body slumped on top of me, as the abomination had reappeared. Banishment hadn’t taken for quite long enough. I screamed again, even if I didn’t feel it, and my throat was going raw.
It was raising the flail to strike at me, when Cole and Antonio both charged at once, forcing him to play defensive, backing off and conjuring more sand to momentarily put them off balance. Nico, Victoria, and Ruby were all moving to join them, as I tried to get free from under the corpse, and mostly succeeded when things turned for the worst again. When I looked over, things had progressed, far too quickly.
Antonio’s axe had been ripped from him. His face looked as if it had been burned off, and he had hit the ground. Cole was engaging in a battle hand to hand, one he was losing, using his wings to shield himself at the cost of their mutilation. Victoria charged in from behind, a morningstar in hand, glowing like the sun, shouting a battle cry which should have caused him to flee in terror.
It didn’t matter. One swipe of the flail, cracking like thunder and she was gone. Cole foolishly thought he had a moment to recover, and tried to hit him with banishment again, to buy us that much more time. A chant in that same tongue, quick and curt, with a slash through the air of the crook, it was like a dozen invisible maws had each taken a bite out of him. His blood staining the bandages with how much it sprayed.
Nico and Ruby had delayed just a moment too long to help. A guttural cry from Nico, and a hardened look from Ruby, who flourished a pair of smaller golden hammers. She swung, but with another wrist flick, all too fluid for a rotting corpse, sand moving fast enough that it might as well have been a truck struck her, and sent her flying past me. She was lucky she wasn’t killed.
Nico had been a step behind her, and in his moment of indecision, backed off out of the bloodbath alleyway, brandishing his sword. I had stood by now, and moved over to him, raising nothing but my fists. The abomination was unimpressed, the blue stone in his eye glinting as he approached.
He stepped over the body of Jean, and moved before us. Nico charged, and I tried something else. I held out a hand, and called to it.
The abomination was poised to strike, bring both it’s weapons down on Nico, kill him while he was weak.
But instead, he was struck from behind by a massive hammer, as it rejoined my hand in a golden flare of my smite, and Nico took his chance to strike him through the gut with a flaming silver sword. It’s flesh ignited rapidly, as he pulled away, swinging implement and shouting curses, but his final spells and flourishes of sand weren’t enough to stop me from striking him full force with the hammer, and ending his miserable existence.
And yet, for our heroics, nothing greeted us but the trickle of blood and the sound of silence.
I woke up screaming. Yet just like then, I rarely felt or heard it.
Nico put a hand to mine. As he looked over at me from the other side of the bed, a worried yet knowing look on his face. By how he was looking, he’d had the same sort of dream.
I soon released, and sat up. Breathing hard, as my hair draped with the sudden movement. He mimicked the motion.
“…God. Sorry.” I said, shaking my head.
“No, no. It’s alright. It happened to me too.”
We sat in silence for a few long seconds. Before I sighed, looking out at the basement room we were in.
The walls and surfaces were covered in weapons, almost haphazardly, like whoever had put them there was in open defiance of the idea of being caught. We had to move them away from near the bedsides to avoid knocking into them the previous night.
We had returned empty handed, like always, though not for a lack of trying. Nothing to be found from above.
That said, it was a new day now. One that was off to a profoundly terrible start. I remembered what had happened next just as vividly. Rushing Aunt Ruby to a hospital, as she was the only one alive. Finding all of the bodies gone, when we returned to that shitty street. Slowly receiving each of the powers of the fallen over the next weeks and months, and being forced to adapt.
Being found out by Hestia, and given the ultimatum to serve or die.
Some of Nico’s family hadn’t come to that battle, but the UN found about them through us. They got their arms twisted into joining a different division, and we rarely, if ever saw them.
It really had cost us everything. All to stop an evil that sometimes I thought wasn’t worth the trouble. I usually quashed that doubt easily. Akhenaten would have and had done unspeakable things, some simply by existing.
But sometimes I thought about the blood. About how it felt to have Olivia’s headless body on top of mine. And I wondered how much sacrifice was too much.
These were things I thought about as I reached into my space and withdrew the clothing I’d need for the day. The same outfit as yesterday, but with a pallet swap. Easy enough. Nico made similar choices, before we both headed upstairs.
Gloria and Aunt Ruby were both already seemingly fully ready when we emerged. Gloria gave me a weird look as I did. She’d probably heard the scream.
She was seemingly even more ready. A rifle slung over her back, a pair of pistols at her side. and a collection of grenades strapped to her hip. She had a few bits of survival gear as well, a canteen among other things. She had her hair tied up, seemingly ready for combat at a moments notice.
Aunt Ruby was wearing a similar outfit to yesterday. Some things never changed. She was giving me something rare, a look of sympathy. I simply exhaled, and looked to them.
“So, what’s the plan?”
Ruby put down the teacup she was holding.
“Take a seat, and I’ll explain.” She said, gesturing to two pulled out chairs. There was a plate of some attempt at a breakfast in front of each of us, but in truth, I was starving enough to eat just about anything at the moment.
“We have most of the position of the camp that Gloria’s group resides in. We do have a few problems, however. Firstly being, we don’t really know what we’re dealing with. I don’t want to start a fight right away. My current plan is to transposition within a few miles. then try to use my trance to uncover some decent information of how best to approach. While I do this, Nico will scout from far enough above that he can’t feasibly be spotted. Maisy, you’ll guard me and Gloria. That aside, in broad strokes, I do have an approach in mind.”
I motioned for her to continue as I kept eating. Nico had hardly touched his, seeming attentive.
“I intend to try and talk Gloria’s brother, Kinil, out of his plan. I believe he’s the ringleader, and intends to use the power a strange entity has granted him to cause a lot of destruction, along with his segment of the Guerilla army. While we can’t let him do that, I have no intention of being a hand of any government like this. Our goal should be to cause no lasting damage to their cause, simply take the supernatural out of it as much as possible. We can defer any of their…changed…comrades to Hestia, assure them they won’t be harmed. This should be our first prerogative, aside from dealing with any kind of supernatural entity that’s empowering this group.” She spoke calmly, with resolve. Like this was a perfectly feasible plan.
Gloria, for her part, seemed to nod along. Despite not knowing much of the English aspects, she clearly had helped concoct this.
I looked at her.
“So the plan is ask someone, pretty please don’t take revenge, go back to toiling in the mud instead?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
Nico didn’t even dispute this, looking to Ruby.
“Mrs. Horne, I don’t mean to doubt you, but I have to agree with Maisy here. Isn’t that a little…wishful?”
My Aunt sighed.
“Yes, it is. But it is what we’ll try first. I have a plan if things go wrong. But it must be done without me. I’m not able to help you in battle.”
I knew that much.
“Gloria will in my stead. She’s willing to, if things come to blows.” Gloria nodded…I hadn’t expected that, honestly, despite her getup.
“So talk first, when that fails, then what?” Exasperation started to leak into my tone.
“We cause as little harm as possible, and deal with whoever we must to complete what’s been asked of us.”
We had a pretty crummy morning, followed by a worse afternoon. We’d appeared on an elevated forested area in the highlands. Right away, Aunt Ruby had entered her trance, Nico had taken off into the sky with a peck to my cheek, and me and Gloria were stuck on guard duty. Shocking no one, no one sought to attack us. It didn’t stop Gloria from standing in stoic silence the entire time, even though I attempted to talk to her. I got only glares in response, so I eventually stopped trying. By the time Nico returned, it was a bit past noon. By the time Aunt Ruby awoke from her trance, it was well into the afternoon. At least I got to spend time with him, even if it was mostly talking strategy.
According to him, there were at least fifty people in the camp, if not more. Some of them seemed to be partaking in a red liquid that looked like a mix of wine…and blood. Most if not all of them armed. He had seen traces of large creatures moving through the area recently, too big to be local wildlife, some elephant sized. Eight people seemed to be leaders, collecting near the center. Hovering above them, however, he described an odd sight. A man with the head of a jaguar, and strange adornments that didn’t look like they came from the past few centuries. And, he said, he had a strange feeling that he saw him, despite him flying easily miles up. Nico was watching through binoculars.
“…I suppose that would be our entity.” I said, through half gritted teeth.
“Sounds like it. Do you think-” He cut himself off. Not finishing his statement. I gave him a confused look, and motioned for him to continue.
“-Do think it’s anything like him? Someone…from then, whose here now?”
The thought hadn’t occurred to me. I visibly must have shrunk away from him, because he shook his head.
“Even if it is. We’re stronger then before. We can tangle with him. It’s not going to be anything like last time.” He spoke with conviction, and the way I felt, I was wondering if he had the tongue for the smallest moment. Before I realized that was just how he made me feel.
“I know we are. We have to be. But…I don’t want to think about this being anything like then.”
He nodded at me. “Sure. Sorry, I was just thinking.”
I was about to say something more, when Aunt Ruby began to move again. She didn’t speak, just staring forward for about ten or fifteen seconds. It wasn’t until Nico spoke that she changed that at all.
“Mrs. Horne? Is everything alright?” He said, standing up, looking concerned. I also stood, without as much concern as maybe I should have had.
“Yes. I know how to get us to victory. Maisy, be a dear and reach into my bag, and pull the things near the top out.”
I walked over, and moved to comply. My Aunt’s back was a dumbed down version of the space me and Nico could store things in. She needed a conduit for it, due to the lesser share she had of that particular ability. So into the bag I reached, though the things I withdrew were far different then I expected.
A pair of large statues, that came up to about half my height. They had emeralds for eyes, and were made of strange stone that resembled jaguars. I placed them down next to Ruby, and gave her a weird look. She activated the tongue, when speaking next.
“Those are gifts from Esa. Ones I don’t intend to waste. I am going to transposition us into the camp. And I will attempt to talk down Kinil. If we are to have any chance, we have to present ourselves as threatening. Maisy, Nico, have your weapons ready-”
She didn’t have to tell us twice. Blade and hammer joined our grasps.
“Gloria, keep guard over me, and get ready to fight. I won’t ask you to attack any of your own, but any help you can provide if things come to blows. And, any aid you can give in convincing your brother, I would greatly appreciate.”
Gloria nodded. She was expecting this, it seemed.
“If things go poorly, I’ll be transpositioning back here, and activating these, sending them to you as quickly as I can. They’ll be able to help. Otherwise, we’re going to have competition in this. A magic user, a wizard to be specific. He’ll be trying to defeat the entity. Do not let him. If you have the choice between letting it get away, and letting him best it, let it get away. That goes for anyone here, or there, in truth. If you can deal with him, do it.”
That was new information to me. Wizards? In Guatemala?
Thankfully, Nico saw fit to voice things.
“…How did you learn about this?” He said, curiously, more then the accusing tone I would have taken. “One of your visions, or…?”
“A mix. One of his…servants, approached me, yesterday, and tried to get me to abandon the mission. I pretended to agree. I presumed he would not move this fast. His kind normally needs more time to prepare.”
I sighed. “Well, tell us next time. Because it seems like a lot of your presumptions end up wrong.”
According to her, she thought my brother would be fine too.
“Fine, Maisy, I will. For now, though, time is of the essence. Are we ready?”
Gloria nodded, and grasped the arm of the wheelchair. Me and Nico stood nearby, another bright flash, and we vanished.
We reappeared in the center of a rocky encampment. A few shelters set up around the surface, with plenty of people quick to point their weapons at us. In front of us, was a group of eight. Three men on one side, three women on the other, and a final set of men in the center, who they seemed to be looking towards as we appeared. One of the two backed off from the area when we did, moving towards a group of other soldiers. Each of them, however, was on guard. I noticed the six flanking the central one each had an animalistic feature-one of them had feathers poking out from joints, another had serpent scales around the neck. It seemed like there was more of these empowered people then there were before.
It seemed as if everyone was moments away from attacking, when the man in the center spoke. I didn’t understand the language, but I did recognize it as the one Gloria had been speaking to Ruby.
Gloria stepped forward, to speak to him. And my Aunt activated the tongue, to do the same. Gloria spoke first, in the same language. Her voice sounded half pleading, half authoritative.
“Kinil Miranda, it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Ruby Horne, and I come in peace.”
My Aunt led, in a measured tone first. Gloria said something right after that sounded a lot less polite.
Kinil, as I now knew, wasn’t what I was expecting. I was expecting a larger man, muscular like Nico maybe, or even imposing. Truth was, he was a somewhat scrawny young man. He looked as if he’d only relatively recently started doing physical activity with regularity, and his unkempt hair and facial hair made it look like he was somewhat deranged. Though I suppose he wouldn’t have had much time to care for himself out here. But even so, it seemed to exceed what I would call normal. It was if he let it grow wild on purpose. He had the same dark brown eyes as Gloria, but his hair was more of a dark brown then black. He didn’t have the same amount of scars either. He was shorter then most of those he stood around, and if it weren’t for the power which seemed to almost radiate from him, I wouldn’t know what to make of him at all.
I kept my hammer over my shoulders. Trying to seem non threatening.
Kinil seemed to fire something back, mostly towards Gloria, but towards my Aunt as well. He sounded guarded. Offended.
“I assure you, your sister is not my hostage. If I had it my way, she would have stayed home. But she wanted to see you. Talk some sense in to you. You know this isn’t right”
He squinted at her. Saying something in retort. My Aunt’s expression didn’t change.
“The power you want to use. I know why you want it. Lord knows I’d do the same in your shoes. But this isn’t going to end well. How much do you know the creature you beseech? Have you considered what he’ll want in return? Even if it’s truly a gift, do you know of any cost?”
That seemed to catch him a moment, but he kept his arms crossed, narrowing his eyes as he gave his reply.
“I know, desperate times call for these things. But surely you’ve had enough supernatural favors? You don’t even know why the forest bends to you, and you already beseech such things even further? I worry that you’ll destroy more then just your enemies with these abilities.”
Gloria seemed to chime something else then. And her words, more then my Aunts, seemed to ring true, in some form. One of the women next to Kinil said something to him. She seemed to have feline fangs in her mouth, noted as she smiled at us, and seemed to beckon for us to approach. Gesturing to a larger shelter nearby. Kinil seemed to accept this, and follow her gaze.
That was when he floated down. The man with the jaguar head. He hovered only just above the heads of the group, and spoke. His voice was incomprehensible. My mind revolted hearing it, like nails on a chalkboard. But I saw him point. And from the tips of his gauntleted fingers, sprouted three bolts of dark energy, crackling like lightning. Soaring through the air, and into the treeline.
I saw three objects, roughly the size of birds, but most definitely not the shape of them, fall from the sky.
And I saw them appear.
A massive army, of creatures that most definitely shouldn’t be there. Constructs made from mismatched limbs, amalgams of metal, and various creatures that seemed to be humanoid, but with explicitly wrong features. Most of them smaller then average, some bigger. A large creature resembling a griffon soared above. And in the midst of it all, two people on horseback, their horses seemingly made from light. One of them was human. The other had a skull for a face.
Kinil shouted something, gesturing to us, then them, and guns got raised.
Shit.
However, before any guns were fired, just as the creatures started to surge forward, a man appeared, in the midst of the seven.
He wore a nice suit, with a pale white face and dark eyes. He brandished a knife, and with expert precision, cut the throat of a man with leathery textures on his arms, and stabbed his blade through the chest of a woman with a crocodilian head ridge. Both of them dropped, and the man turned to charge Kinil.
In that moment, the first gunshots rung out. Most went wide in the chaos, and many of them were directed towards the now approaching army. A few dinged off me and Nico’s armor, and one put itself in my Aunt’s chair. She called out to us.
“Don’t kill anyone, capture Kinil, and we’ll reconvene-”
Is all she got out before activating transposition with a flash which thankfully through off bullets long enough for Gloria to get to cover and start shooting. I ran forward, charging Kinil.
I didn’t notice the well dressed man being gone, as I raised my weapon. Nico called out-
“I’ll stall our guests-” Before taking to the air.
However, I was stopped, by something I noticed too late.
Each of the guarding six was transforming.
It likely would have been a horrific process to watch if slowed down. The flesh parting, twisting and contorting, new appendages sprouting and shifting as they assumed warforms. Crocodile, parrot, monkey, jaguar, snake, and armadillo.
Even the ones which had been critically injured but a moment ago had been able to manage this transformation, even if it took the crocodile and armadillo forms a bit longer to get up. The monkey hybrid, still mostly humanoid, just larger, and able to assume a quadrupedal state, ran after Nico in the air, and the jaguar, the woman who had beckoned at us earlier, lunged at me in the blink of an eye. I brought my hammer down to intercept, but she was faster then I thought, getting her claw under my guard and slashing for my chest. All it did, thankfully, was weaken my armor. I took up a defensive stance, and fought back and forth with the jaguar hybrid, she was fast, but I could keep her at bay with reach and strength. As long as I didn’t over commit to a swing, I was fine, for now.
That didn’t last long. I saw, out of the corner of my eye, as Nico used banishment on the Griffon that had been flying around, but seeing what I saw, he quickly rushed towards me.
The rest of them had finished transformation. The crocodile and armadillo nearing a story tall, the latter charging straight at the invading forces, while the former seemed to look at me hungrily. The parrot hybrid took flight into the sky, moving towards Nico, while the massive serpent, humanoid features mostly gone, started to snake towards me. The crocodile, armadillo, and serpent weren’t hybrids, while the other three were. Interesting, but not the time for that conclusion.
The monkey seemed to move in front of Nico, and release an ear piercing howl. I staggered backwards, thankfully along with the jaguar, but I watched in horror as Nico was pushed backwards, straight into the waiting claws of the parrot.
The serpent, mostly unhindered, moved to charge me, but was stopped by two things-a bullet to the center of mass, and a grenade landing at it’s base, detonating just shy of me.
Gloria had been engaging many of her comrades in the background. I hadn’t been looking at her, but I could hear her gunfire. And I was grateful for the cover. Between her and the small army of monsters, the rest of the insurgents were busy.
I continued to fend off the jaguar, though, recovering a bit faster then her, able to score a few more glancing blows, including one that should have broken a rib or two. I was avoiding using smite yet, that particular ability worked best bypassing defenses, so I’d save it for the crocodile, armadillo, or entity.
However, unfortunately for me, I had issues. The crocodile was lumbering towards me, and the jaguar seemed poised to disengage to allow her to devour me. The snake was also poised to get up, and start to lunge.
I ran forward, ducking under a swipe from the jaguar, throwing my entire body weight against the snake, causing the crocodile to swing a massive tail for me. I swung my hammer at the crocodile’s tail, using the momentum to swing over, and land behind. I was looking for Kinil, or Nico. I saw the latter first.
He had taken a nasty scratch to his face, but was otherwise alright, engaged with the parrot. I started running for under him. The monkey, who had been scratched by shrapnel earlier, moved to get in my way. He opened his mouth to scream again, but I swung first, catching him in the side hard enough to knock the wind out of him and send him sprawling. However, he’d bought enough time for the parrot to move the fight away from where we were, and closer to the crocodile, who had begun to move towards-
Gloria’s hiding spot. I cursed, and turned, running that way.
When a projectile sailed through the air, and sank into the side of the crocodile. It couldn’t have been larger then a shortsword, I only noticed because of it’s stark white color. The crocodile roared in pain, thrashing out a moment. This gave Gloria, at least, enough time to move for a different point of cover. The roar did seem to attract the attention of all of the hybrids, even the armadillo turned away from crushing limb abominations to see what was going on.
The crocodile reached for the strange thing, but couldn’t reach it. Causing the snake to read it’s tail up and withdraw it with some effort. I had taken a pause, with no one trying to kill me, to try and get my wits about me. The parrot had seemingly moved over to the crocodile, allowing Nico to swoop next to me.
“You alright?” He asked, panting.
“Yeah, I’m fine. What was that?” I said, looking to the crocodile.
“The skull wizard, on horseback. He launched whatever that wa-“
He was cut off, but the crocodile swiping a massive claw. But not us.
The rocks beneath the monkey were crumbling away from the force, the hybrid only lightly struck, but still went tumbling. At the same moment, the griffon dove from the sky, and tackled the serpent right after.
The other hybrids sprung back, just as the crocodile began to thrash madly, charging forward towards an insurgent raised position. The parrot swooped after, and the jaguar began to retreat…looking to us. Just as the man with the knife from earlier appeared behind her, stabbing her through the shoulder. She snarled, just as Nico grabbed me, and we took to the sky.
That’s when we saw and heard it.
The human on horseback, was holding out an wand made from dark wood, pointing it towards the entity in the sky. It was frozen. In his other hand, a strange cube, and held aloft nearby was a scroll with golden symbols inscribed upon it. Kinil was nearby, not frozen but being swarmed by a storm of strange spectral limbs.
The man was speaking.
“-of the world I inhabit. I declare my conviction here and now, for the forces of chaos you serve, for the power I need. I work with you to ensure nothing like you never exists again.”
“What’s he doing-” I asked, sounding frantic. I watched, in the corner of my eye, as the crocodile continued it’s rampage. The armadillo had disengaged from it’s contingent, to move to help. I stopped watching when the crocodile slammed it’s tail into the parrot, and I saw the blood fly.
“I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out-” Nico said, diving, I nodded, and readied my hammer.
The man we were diving at wasn’t all that special. He had black hair, looked a bit well groomed, and wore a nice outfit. All that was odd about him was the cape and wand, really. His blue eyes pierced me, clearly seeing my attack coming.
He released his grasp on me, and I used the momentum of the fall to my advantage, swinging down. He looked up, but didn’t seem concerned as I struck down. Hitting something intangible in the process.
Nico swooped down, and got a similar result, getting maybe a glancing blow, as he kept speaking, undeterred.
“For the world I desire, I bind you. For the world that all need, I bind you. For order, I bind you, for chaos, I-”
Nico swung again, to no avail. I swung, preparing to smite-
And that’s when I saw it. Two of the strange only partial humanoids nearby fell in tearing and crushing of flesh. As two shapes sprung towards the man on horseback.
Made from stone, easily larger then the horse he was sitting atop, they had emerald eyes and sprung with the force of full wildcats. As a pair of stone jaguars put their full weight against his barrier. Nico took his chance, and struck in kind. Leaving him open to a final swing from myself.
I put the full might of my smite into the blow, a golden rippling detonation of energy ringing across his barrier, which soon was exposed and illuminated as some kind of spirit, resembling a woman, a shocked expression on her face as the angel’s magic dispersed her form into ambient energy. The blow carried on, though, crushing into the man on horseback’s midsection. He dropped the cube, stopped his chant, and went flying several meters into the air, tumbling and rolling across rocky ground. The man with the skull for a head, mounted nearby, swiftly started riding away.
Nico and I advanced on the prone man. I heard him chanting something, and I could have sworn I saw gloom start to trace between his fingers. Blood flowed from his chest, that was how hard I hit him.
I wasn’t keen on letting him chant anything else, so I lunged, hammer raised high, ready to finish off this wizard, when the entity above unfroze, Kinil swatted away the limbs, and a blast of deathly lightning fired down at me.
I dodged, deflecting the bulk of it off my hammer. Landing back near Nico.
The wizard continued speaking, the crocodile continued to rampage, and Kinil continued to advance on us.
Kindling And Miscellany 