The Fall Of The Tribes

by Philip Read

  They reach the treshhold at which more numbers give diminished returns and get in each other’s way at 7 attackers for every Awakened warrior and they keep filtering out the ones damaged enough to be banished by the next attack. They circle and attack from all around as bats bombing in the air, as large wasp like creatures that try to stab into my back, as snakes slithering at my feet, as wolves nipping at my legs.

  It isn’t just the Awakened that are hurting them either. Everyone with an artifact is causing them damage but there are so many of them that they just retreat letting the fresher ones take attack lead. “They are regenerating!”

  Someone shouts and I curse under my breath as I feel the substantial unclean spirit energy come in like a bad odar from the house. And yes, with its arrival all our hard bloody work comes to nothing as every hurt or banished creature rejoins the fight as though undead constructs of a necromancer. But these things are worse than undead because they have intelligence, they plan, and they don’t do suicidal attacks even as it’s clear that we aren’t permanently banishing them.

  I see and I feel the benefits of Awakening in my own fight and I’m slowly becoming aware of others as I’m in the thick of it, but really is it it? Has aquiring this meagre power been my lifes ambition since I was a child listening to stories of legends that had Awakened? It really cant be because I dont feel that powerful so I seek within myself and burst the pool that is my spirit reserve and i activate and I do something I have been yet to do as an Awakening, I activate a skill.

  I activate spirit oppression and on a purely physical level nothing happens to the naked eye. But the creatures all around do become slightly more corporeal, do start taking more damage and do release pain filled bellows more often encouraging the fighters on. No one not sensitive to spirit is aware of any form of struggle happening on a spiritual level but as I see the creatures begin to struggle under my oppression I’m realising this is where I should have focused my attacks from the beginning.

  Razor’s naked blade is now honed in spirit and no longer in aura and I cut thought the creatures with much more ease. Delivering debilitating injuries if not banishing them outright as my superior perception and speed starts showing itself. I convey the effectiveness of spirit with my mind to no one in particular very grateful to Vevina for teaching me that skill.

  *

  Albert

  These cretins dare to attack me in my own marked territory! I will show them the folly of their actions, they will rue the day they ever heard my name I will make sure of it. The audacity, and I thought the people of this kingdom cowed and submissive enough for my tastes.

  I watch my summons swarm the attackers and rip into them through the empathic link I have with them. I’m inwardly fuming but the attackers are fairly weak and easily dispatchable barbarians and orcs and dwarves most of whom as mundane as the shit I took this morning. The few Awakened barely passed their first level of Awakening, and all seemingly Awakened to swinging clubs and sharp objects.

  “Kill them slow.” I send to my creatures, Yolanda coming in from her private quarters stretching her neck.

  “We have company?” She asks, clearly seeing that we do with her own spirit sense. I hate stupid questions and I just turn away from her.

  I was about to seriously start on one of the other children before enjoy a barrel of wine and now they’ve ruined it for me. Now I’ll have to hurt one of my toys to asway my frustration after I take care of this and that will leave it ruined. One less child to play with in this already anorexic child slave market.

  I use up my vast spirit energy to open and keep the portal to the Spirit Plane open as each morphic spirit comes through. My attractive portal skill attracts low level spirits that are easily controlled once here for the duration of the summons. They love it here and come with glee for the short duration of the summons.

  The skill specifically adopted to only allowing morphic spirit creatures through for some reason, but that really isn’t a problem. More of the barbarians come in from the woods and I frown at Yolanda casually looking at me. The portal at this level I can keep open for hours but that’s not the point.

  “Are you just gonna stand there?” I finally ask.

  She shrugs and goes outside to go face the barbarians coming in bypassing my summons. The creatures are a lot more powerful on their own plane in whatever form they take there than they are here when they are summoned to Gaia.

  I also walk outside and watch as Yolanda meets the few that have made it this far. She uses her spirit hold to stop them in their tracks, a skill that almost always works on opponents that aren’t prepared for it. But one that can never hold the powerful for long nor even the weak after they are attacked.

  But her attacks are decisive as she accumulates and sends spirit force punching through their chest’s one after another in an impressive display of sigil mastery.

  As they come the get trapped within her hold but I notice a few of them shaking it off before she has accumulated the power to finish them. She notices as well and instead uses the quicker spirit slash to disable her opponents as they come out of the hold. I snort at her weakness, the woman is over 150 years old at least and has been a sorcery for more than half that time but she’s having to use real effort to get rid of several novice Awakened and mundane warriors, pathetic.

  I turn my back to her and notice that my summons are dealing with the initial attackers efficiently but they look raggered themselves and their numbers have been reduced. No more are coming in through the portal so I close it and activate a summons rejuvenation to bolster them again. I open the portal again and those that were banished come rushing out like a pack of hungry scavenger dogs.

  The is suddenly a shockwave from Yolanda’s side of the house and I frown, but with my little imp I notice her struggling against a of three of the savages. Her spirit shield shining brightly as they pound and chop into her shield with hammer and axes. My frown deepens as I notice that even those she had dealt with initially with holes in their chest managed to get as far as her feet before needing more encouragement to do.

  Then there is suddenly a blistering suppressive force spreading from the center of my side of the house like the glaring of the sun in the sun in the Gonubi Desert at the height of Summer. I release the discomfort with a spirit cleanse but my summons seem to be very susceptible to the oppressive force. They they have a fledging spiritist amongst them, that’s interesting.

  I watch the invaders attack with more vigour and success under the influence of the spiritual force. As a summoner I can’t negate it directly but I can easily kill the offending worm. “unclean thing slither from the cold depths under my direction and reap death as your reward” I summon one of my personal babies from the depths of the Styxian waters of the Spirit Plane.

  Ssshhhaa..

  Ssshhhaaa…

  The Styx affinity creature slithers out of a portal the size of a coin from the palm of my hand. It’s body slimy and completely black with no eyes and a forked tongue tasting the air around itself. It extends as it slithers out leisurely, not one of my fastest to summon but very affective against martial monkeys.

  “Go my dear, feast.” And the thing slithers into the fray in it’s horrifying glory.

  Chapter 101

  Sachihiro

  Things get better quickly as my spirit oppression bellows silently against the creatures on their true bodies. They start dying rapidly under our onslaught and I send the signal for the last of our reserves to come in and its as though they were a flood held back by a large dam. They flow within our mists as enthusiastically as our opponents had come against us.

  I slay/banish the last of my opponents and rush to the manor as quickly as I can but I divert my path as I feel it. Something dark and slimy and big and ugly and horrifyingly deadly. I don’t know what that creature is but it slithers from the front of the manor from the person standing there shining brightly within my awareness.

  I really don’t know what that s
nake, worm, eel thing is but instinctively I know I am no match for it. I know no one in our party is a match for it thus I can only go for the summoner and not the summoned, and I have to go for him as quickly as possible.

  I move in quickly but staying as far away from that thing as I possibly can whilst sheathing Razor and unsheathing my nodachi in an almost simultaneous smooth motion that surprises even me.

  The sorcerer sees me coming and only smiles a slimy smile before the the now raggered and greatly depleted summoned creatures rush towards me as the very corporeal and much more physically present snake death thing rolls into their mists. I activate afterimage and bowl into the summons in my path with little resistance. My nodachi honed in spirit aura cutting through them without me slowing down and I’m within reach of my quarry a second later.

  My blade clashes against a spirit shield I didnt even feel was in place that blooms a dark purple at the point of impact like an invisible water balloon exposed by being touched. The bastard doesn’t even flinch and its very disconcerting that I didn’t feel that shield, my dimensionalawareness is deeply founded in spirit and vibrational sensitivity after all.

  I slash a few more times to no noticeable effect as my comrades die fighting a creature from beyond this world that we aren’t equipped to deal with. The thing completely obvious of my spirit oppression and the spirit summons all but depleted.

  “You are a hundred years too young to think you could challenge me boy.” The fat sorcerer says and I feel his spirit energy be sucked inwards, even his shield coming closer to his body allowing me to move close enough to kick the man if his spirit shield wasn’t impenetrable.

  I do realise that whatever he has planned isn’t good so I stop fooling around and do another thing I haven’t had a chance to do since sparing with Masashi years back. I activate soul presence and everything seems to go quiet as I feel the usually imperceptible energy of souls around me. The energy my nodachi has been stealing from our defeated dead for years in order to heal itself of the damage done to its half of our soul.

  With soul presence is zanjutsu, a sword discipline where I become the zanpakutō and the zanpakutō becomes me. I thrust into the shield with my aura enhanced strength supplemented by the power of an afterimage ultimately doubling the force of any strike I make with part of my soul used to add to the hone and the entire shield lights up and vibrates very clearly to my also enhancedawareness now and to everyone that sees it.

  At the back of my mind I know the loud impact made a loud dull ringing sound but sounds come slowly to me now as other senses take the limelight. I strike again and again even as I notice two interesting occurances. First my awareness in soul presence has greatly enhanced my awareness of souls in general but their energy specifically. Secondly there is a thin tendril of soul moving from a previously imperceptible thread from the shield leading to a small monkey on the other side of the manor.

  I send that awareness to da even as I realise how ragged they are fighting against the other sorcerer. One that has a large number of unmoving tribesmen at her feet and is yet to take a direct injury as far as I can tell. No more tribesmen are falling though as a raggered bloody Om in tattered rags takes her attacks and somehow grounds them like a lightning rod grounds lightning.

  My opponent finishes whatever he is doing even as Mira comes in out of seemingly no-where with a terrifying aura and just intercepts the brunt of the dark spirit rich, mana rich liquid in some kind of air balloon which she then swallows. She jumps back up with a bellow of cold wind covering a large distancr spinning her kurasigama above her head to give it momentum before releasing it honed in mana rich aura directly at the snake creature.

  Unlike every other weapon formed against it this one actually pierces the skin and the thing hisses a long piss producing hiss. She comes back down controlled and with katana in hand and cutting cold air bellowing around her both in attack and defence.

  The ground were some of the liquid she didn’t get spilt is dead. Even the soil on which the grass had been is a dark inactive void in my awareness as it has lost its vibrational frequency. It’s silent to me and to the world and I know that nothing will ever grow there, nothing.

  I keep the sorcerer focused on me attacking his shield, its now obvious the snake spirit creature I was so wary of is impervious to most physical attacks but susceptible to magic. I didn’t even think of using my water element as I’m so used to being only a warrior but I don’t think I will ever make such a mistake again.

  I can see that the fat sorcerer is now frustrated but still not yet worried as we take the upper hand in the struggle. Then what I’ve been waiting for happens, da manages to kill the little monkey creature watching from the roof and my blade suddenly finds purchase in flesh.

  The man is reeling from both the rebound of that creature dying and my blade continuously cutting into him over and over and over. This is zanjutsu so I’m wounding his soul directly, parting fat flesh, sinew and muscles with precision and power. He stumbles seemingly disoriented from the onslaught, bleeding from everywhere, his eyes changing colour but there is definitely something wrong here.

  The wounds on his soul are only scratches and flesh wounds, not the deep scares that are still evident in Victor’s soul after our single exhibition. The wounds on his flesh are not as deep as they should be with the strength behind them even for a creature of his girt. I try to take his head with a slash cutting through veins, tendons, muscles, soft tissue, trachea, connective tissues and leave a scare on the bone to a gushing spray of blood that geysers around us.

  But still there is a dark feeling within my gut and I take a step back as the creature Mira and the others have been focused on disappears, banished back whence it came. But the man is still standing even if still disoriented and extremely wounded.

  “Oh unclean thing, fill me with your filth, liar, sloth, the rotten one I emplore you to grant me a piece of your power as I summon you within myself” the fat fucker says somehow with an open throat and the vilest most eye watering aura that has ever been present under Rigel is suddenly very thick around us.

  “What have you done.” I find myself saying as I watch the vile creature before me regenerate at an alarming rate and set those completely white eyes in me. I feel his eyes on my skin like just by looking at me I’m being touched by his fat slimy fingers.

  “Shit.”

  “Run!” Someone shouts from a distance, Mira I think but I cannot run, to run in this situation doesn’t even cross my mind as the aura of fear the thing is giving off in waves turns into the Rage within me.

  “You martial warriors think because I am a summoner I cannot withstand an up close direct attack, it isn’t the case at all.” The thing in human skin says in an unclean voice, every time it utters a word the scent of a decaying corpse fills the air and spreads wide. I can almost see the vile odour permeate the air around me.

  Then suddenly I can’t breath as the thing steps towards me. “I am a 500 year old Grandmaster Sorcerer and you, a brat that feels less than 50 years old think you can defeat me? The insolence!”

  And we clash, or at least the thing waves its hand and I clash against something hard but yielding that sizzles against my spirit directly having cut through my spirit shield like water cutting fine paper. I am thrown back or jump back I’m not sure which but I land on my feet smoothly. The pain on my spirit body screaming for attention and for me to roll around in the ground to quench the fire that is still burning my very spirit.

  But there is nothing burning on my spirit body and this is just the risidual pain from whatever this thing did to me. Mira is suddenly flinging dark energy orbs at the thing and it takes the damage directly on its folds of fat that sizzle and burn before regenerating before our eyes.

  It casually waves its arm at her and she screams a scream of agony throwing herself on the ground and rolling about. Mira has no berserker rage, she has nothing with which to filter the pain. Da is suddenly on the thing with a pondorous chop of his h
oned artifact axe and it cuts deep into the thing’s back breaking it’s spine with a loud snap.

  The thing sighs and the odour in the air is suddenly actively chocking everyone, cutting off Mira’s screams as we all struggle with something ringing our lungs from within. Da uses some ability get out of it, slashing low then high dodging a backhanded strike and sinking his axe deep into the thing’s foot. Om’s roar rings out from somewhere and another dark orb smashes into the thing’s face.

  It just keeps rejuvenating and is killing us all somehow just with it’s breath. I rush in and strike fast and hard, the strain of maintaining afterimage so long already making itself known at the back of my mind as my chakra pools get dangerously low. I cut with all I am in the Rage state and I don’t let up. Da and I fighting the thing together for all we are worth as it swings its ponderous arms around and we keep well away from those but its body seems very very resilient and just keeps regenerating.

  Mira falls on the floor and starts having convulsions several meters away, the pain and the breathlessness finally having gotten to her. I redouble my efforts as best I can as I scream my own scream giving my all to stopping this thing.

  Suddenly Ava is running into the fray in a raggered bloody state. Stubborn, brave, stupid Ava is running in as fast as she can, the Rage upon her and her furry beautiful to see. But I wish I could disengage and stop her for she has no chance against this thing and I know no words could diswayed her.

  She comes in high and releases a chakra skill with a word.