“Always wanted to try that one.” She mumbled to herself before following.
__________
Not far away Adrian was licking his lips nervously, mentally searching for a way out of the tight spot he found himself in.
The medic, Joan, still had her weapon pressed tight to the side of his head as she roughly patted him down, though she stopped at his crotch, rudely groping at him.
“Nice big cock in here eh? I’ll get some use out of that once Tristan is through with you.”
Given that she reeked of booze and sweat, the woman’s advances were unwelcome to say the least.
“What’s a Tristan? Is that a kind of cracker?”
The gun pressed harder into his skull and she squeezed his balls through his pants.
“Don’t be cute.” She snarled at him, the stench of alcohol on her breath overwhelming him; “I got no use for cute.”
Over her shoulder though, Adrian saw Olena’s familiar figure approaching and any concern for his own wellbeing was completely forgotten.
All the planning and sneaking around and the Witch just walked through the camp like she owned it.
“That is a shame.” She called out in her familiar lilted voice; “Because I don’t think he can help but be cute, although a shave wouldn’t hurt him.”
The woman spun around to face her, leveling her weapon at her chest.
“Where the hell did you come from?!” She demanded.
Olena didn’t answer, instead she curled her fingers inwards and checked her nails.
Adrian rolled his eyes, but kept silent, his grip on his pliers tight.
After a few moments of absorbing the surprise of the woman’s sudden appearance, Joan laughed at her apparent bravado, Olena still examining her nails.
“Oh this is perfect! None of these pussies can handle what I got.” She sneered at the gorgeous woman; “But I bet they’d love a go at you!”
The monster girl yawned, bringing the back of the hand she had been examining up to cover her mouth as she did.
“I doubt that very much. I have no use for ‘boys’, beyond uses they would likely be against.”
The Witch was so utterly calm despite their grave situation, but Adrian still had his eye on the end goal, so while the drunk was distracted he made his move.
Joan’s arm swung towards him to stop him when she saw him coming, but he closed the distance before she could protect herself and thrust his pliers at her neck as hard as he could.
He did what he could to control her weapon arm, but still he flinched when her pistol went off with a resounding crack, tearing a hole in the top lip of one of the crates.
Joan tried to call out for help, but instead a strange gurgling noise came from her throat, Adrian’s pliers having found a new home.
Olena scowled at him, evidently she didn’t think she needed his help.
Truth be told, she probably didn’t.
Missing the Witch’s disapproval, Adrian guided the alcoholic medic to the ground and held his hand over her mouth to keep her silent while she bled out.
Olena meanwhile stepped closer and poked her toe at the ghastly wound he had opened in the woman’s neck.
“Blood of the guilty. Unpleasant, but it has its uses.” She declared with distaste before wiping her toe in the dirt next to the wooden boxes.
While she spoke, the woman at her feet finished dying and Adrian frantically checked from side to side to see if anyone had taken notice of the shot.
A few heads had perked up among the prisoners, but from where he and Olena were he couldn’t see Tristan and his men.
He had to work fast.
Cleaning his pliers as best he could on his pants, he looked to Olena with fear in his eyes.
“You know what will happen if any of these people see you?!” He hissed at the nonchalant monster girl; “Get out of here!”
She raised one eyebrow as she took out one of her needles and a little vial to collect Joan’s blood.
“Strange how you show your gratitude. Did you intend to die here?”
Her lips were twisted in a smirk as she spoke, but then she saw him hesitate at her suggestion.
“You did.” She mumbled, her smile disappearing when she realized the truth; “Even after everything that has been done, by so many, to keep you alive.”
“Look, Olena-” He stopped himself from making excuses as he took up the cell again, is hands shaking; “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except me dealing with this pile of death before they can use it.”
Her eyes flashed with annoyance, and… pain.
“Months have passed since your loss, Adrian. Months in which I tried to help you as best as I was able. I am… disappointed my support was worth so little to you.”
Her words were flat and he stiffened as he heard them, her emotions unknowable to him.
Feeling more than a little guilty, he opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head before he could.
“An apology now is worth only as much as the value you place on your life.” She said simply, still masking her pain; “Finish your task and get us out of here alive. Perhaps then I will give you the death you crave.”
__________
Despite the sharp crack of the weapon’s discharge the camp was slow to stir, many of the inhabitants simply too tired to care, and many more figuring that it was just Tristan once again proving who was in charge.
And the ones manning the gatling were distracted by something else: a familiar figure stumbling out of the trees towards them.
“Is that Darry? What the hell is he playing at?”
“I dunno, maybe he’s been drinking with Joan.”
The first man shuddered.
“Take a lot more drink than we got left to get me with her again!”
His partner snorted as the sentry stumbled towards them.
“Oi Darry! You’re supposed to be on watch for another hour yet!” He called out to him; “Tristan will kill you!”
But he got no reply, the sentry ambling right up to them as they watched in amusement and confusion.
The two of them still thought he was just drunk.
They’re amusement ended the moment the man leapt on top of the brush they’d used as a barricade, scrambling his way over the crude barrier.
“The hell you playing at?! There’s no room in this hole for-”
Whatever he intended to say next didn’t matter, because once Olena’s most recent paramour settled on top of them, his body bloated rapidly, and his victims shrieked at the grotesque turn.
His skin quickly split and his insides spilled out all over them, but instead of natural human viscera it was glowing green acid that covered them. It ate through their clothes and flesh, and likewise ate through the gatling on its mount.
The shot from earlier didn’t draw much notice, but after having seen what happened to the last man that screamed like that, the camp woke up all at once.
Chapter 9:
Klael
“What did you do?!” Adrian demanded in almost a wail when he heard the screams coming from the gatling.
Olena shrugged and dismissed his concern with a wave.
“I dealt with a problem.” She said unhappily; “Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject! No matter what, I need to finish this to keep Alcaia and the others from getting themselves killed!”
His fingers shook as he tampered with the power cell, desperately trying to finish his sabotage before someone in the camp caught sight of him and the Witch bickering and reacted accordingly.
So it certainly didn’t help when she smacked him in the back of the head, her ire seeming to grow by the moment as eldritch power seeped from her eyes.
“That is exactly my dilemma you short-sighted dolt!” Her frustration coming through in her voice; “Your blood is useless to me now. I can’t use the medium of someone seeking death to preserve life. I had intended on shielding Alcaia and the others, just as I did
on the night we met. Now, because of your selfish desire to be a martyr, I can’t.”
Shouts of alarm rang out all around the camp and heavy footfalls sounded near them as someone came to check on the crates.
“Hey! What are you-”
Olena turned away from Adrian mid-harangue and blew a handful of powder in the man’s face, stopping his words in their tracks.
A moment later he began to sneeze, over and over again, until he was lying on the ground trying to contain the fit she had triggered, inevitably suffocating from his inability to draw in a proper breath.
Without pause Olena turned back to Adrian to continue berating him, beginning with another smack upside his head to ensure she still had his attention.
“Honestly. Has Alcaia wronged you somehow that you want her and her people to die? They will attack soon, and right now I can’t do anything to help them.”
“Why didn’t you take my blood before?!” He demanded as he did his best not to punch her in the mouth, instead working his pliers to take the top off of the box of power cells.
“Because it didn’t matter before! The most potent magic lives in the moment. And in this moment I need the blood of a protector to keep those silly Amazons alive.” She spoke haughtily as she lectured him; “Instead I have the blood of a weak-willed and simpering child, too hung up on a dead girl to be of any use to anyone.”
That did it.
Adrian tore the lid off the box with a snarl, dropped the cell in and then reeled on her, fully intending on doing something to her that he would likely regret later.
But he stopped cold when her needle jabbed deep into the front of his shoulder, the flash of pain causing him to cry out as she set her palm against the bleeding injury.
“Wrath.” She explained quickly; “Only one use for this.”
Then she turned towards a group of men running towards them with weapons raised and cast her hand out, the blood collected in her palm pouring forth and coalescing into a series of glowing green orbs that shot outwards to collide with the unfortunates that dared to threaten an Elder Witch.
There was no subtlety or nuance in this curse; the men simply burst apart in a bloody spray of viscera and bone.
Adrian was too shocked to be angry at her manipulation, at least at first, but a worrying crackling noise behind him reminded him that it was time for them to be somewhere else.
And as much as he might have wanted to knock Olena over and sit on her, he didn’t want her to die.
So he rushed the smug Witch, grabbed one of her arms with his, ducked down and shoved his other hand through her legs as he placed the back of his head against her side and heaved her whole body up onto his shoulders in a standard rescue carry, then ran like hell.
“Hey. Rude.” She remarked in a breathless voice as she bounced around on his shoulders.
He was far too annoyed with her to reply.
The crates detonated.
A wave of hot wind rolled over his back, but Adrian didn’t look back as he sprinted through the shocked prisoners, most of them too busy staring at the results of the explosion to notice him and the irksome package he carried, though a few shouted out uncertain challenges.
He ignored them all, running into the trees and only slowing when he began to trip over the undergrowth.
“That was more dramatic than I was expecting.” Olena observed as he set her on her feet.
As a man, Adrian had never hit a woman in his life, and as an Aegis operative, he certainly had never struck a monster girl.
But in that moment he was sorely tempted.
Meanwhile, in the woods on the opposite side of the clearing, Alcaia decided that it was high time for her and her war-sisters to get involved.
__________
Tristan’s day began with a scream and a bang.
Neither the kind he would’ve preferred.
He had just reached the edge of the pool of green acid that had been two of his best men when the crates went up from Adrian’s sabotage.
The result of his work wasn’t quite as instantaneous as the Aegis mechanist had predicted; instead of a singular event it was more of a continuous series of little explosions.
But they culminated in a massive detonation that even he wasn’t expecting, flattening the tents nearby and knocking a few people standing too close off of their feet as a column of reddish orange hellfire burst straight upwards before roiling in on itself to form a mushroom shaped cloud of smoke and heat.
The smuggler watched in genuine horror as months of planning and work went up in literal smoke.
“Beth is going to kill me.” He muttered to himself.
But his murderous ex-wife was the least of his worries, because through the haze and smoke he saw several dozen black-painted faces emerging from the trees, their intentions obviously the furthest thing from friendly.
“Ah shit, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Tristan growled, anger replacing his fear; “Form up lads! There’s bloody work that needs doing yet!”
He ran around the expensive burning mess, his eyes scanning the trees where the Amazons were coming from even as he moved to and fro amongst his crew and the prisoners alike, his boot lashing out to kick any man too shocked from the sudden detonation to move.
In the center of the line of Amazons, Alcaia lifted her fist.
“Vohan... brek!”
As her arm fell her people set the heavy shields at their feet, and with a shared cry of strength the Saenga warriors raised the massively heavy bulwarks and fitted them against each other.
In less than three seconds Tristan and his men were facing a crescent shaped wall of brownish-white ceramic five feet high.
That’s when the Amazons started throwing things.
Several dozen heavy spears landed amongst them, numerous cries of agony greeting the ones that found homes in unguarded flesh.
“Fire! Open fire!” Tristan ordered quickly even as he backpedalled out of the way of one of the Amazon’s projectiles.
Despite the spear that nearly ended him, he managed to keep his cool as he directed everyone to open up on any of the women they could see behind the massive shield wall.
“Come on boys! We’ve been in tighter spots!” He urged his men onwards; “We’ll never outrun them so we have to finish this here! We have the guns, they have the sticks! Pour it on them!”
Galvanized by his leader, a man with a flamer rushed the left side of the wall, spewing fire indiscriminately and forcing the Amazons to duck behind their shields.
But his reckless charge was cut short by a spear cast from the other side of the semi-circle; the weapon catching him in the small of his back and the force of it driving him into the wall only to bounce off and to the ground.
Unfortunately the Amazon who threw it had to expose herself to protect her sisters and died almost at the same time from a lucky shot to the side of her head from Tristan’s pistol.
There was a cry of grief and rage from behind the wall, but Alcaia’s voice shouted over it.
“Vohan! Kai!”
The Saenga women let out another mutual cry of strength as they hefted their shields off the ground.
Tristan and his men stumbled back into the prisoner’s flattened lean-tos as the wall began to close in on them, slowly at first, than with increasing speed as the Amazons became surer of their footing.
But the experienced smuggler had regained control of his anger and his men, his orders calling out in counter to Alcaia’s, and everything he said, Carl repeated to keep the prisoners in line, the two factions within the camp uniting against the common enemy.
“Stand your ground! Focus your fire! Tear those fucking things apart one at a time!”
The din of battle carried throughout the forest: the screams of the wounded, the coarse shouts of coarse men, the sharp cracks of their illegal weaponry, and above it all the battle-cries of the warrior women hell-bent on ending them.
Fifty desperate criminals did as Tristan asked; firing into
the weak points of the ceramic wall, and despite the chaos of the explosion and the thrill of fear that the Amazons’ cries brought out in them, they held their nerve.
Even reinforced with leather and bark, the surfaces of the Vohan were starting to come apart from the sustained fire. First one crumpled, then another, the women behind them either falling as well or ducking behind their neighbour’s shield.
As their cover began to break apart, the Amazons’ advance slowed, and then stopped while they were forced to close the gaps left by their fallen sisters.
At this point they had come too far into the clearing to withdraw to the safety of the trees, the battle apparently turning against them.
Tristan smiled wide and stood up straight when he felt the shift.
“That’s it lads! They’ve lost it! They stole our payday so let’s make them regret it! We’ll sell off the survivors once it’s done! You all know how much the arena masters will pay for a healthy Amazon!”
With a roar of victory, the hardened criminals with him fired everything they had, forcing the Saenga girls to huddle behind their ever dwindling bulwark.
Then, just as planned, Sila and her Trogs sprinted out of the trees.
Tristan and his men were so focused on attacking the improvised wall that they never wondered why the Amazons had forced them towards the other side of the clearing.
Charging through the smoke and the flattened tents, the fifteen lizard girls hit them from behind with brutal force, their massive blades sweeping through multiple people with each swing, leaving behind gory messes of ruined flesh.
Confusion swept through the human ranks and the weapon’s fire against the Amazons faltered as they turned in a bid to save themselves from the Trogs’ ferocious onslaught.
And when the withering punishment from the lost-tech weapons diminished, Alcaia stood from behind her Vohan at the center of the Amazon line.
“Saenga!” Her voice rang out as again she raised her spear above her head and give her final order of the day; “Klael!”
Death.
At her word, the wall of Vohan was pushed over and abandoned as the wrath of her people was unleashed, the surviving Amazons taking up their spears and charging into the fray with resounding cries.
The Heartstone Saga Page 8
