Chapter 692: Interruption
Eight hours of slaughter. Of finding summoners and necromancers and ripping them to shreds in a loop around Nassau. Men in robes with twisted minds and bodies. Somehow Mason knew who they were—betrayers from the old doom. Or Makers corrupted by the gods of destruction, given ‘immortality’ on some other plane, used now like the pawns they were. Mason showed them all the mercy they deserved.
He lost himself in the rhythm of violence, swooping back and forth around the walls of the lower city, his bow an instrument of death. He stopped thinking about the insanity of it all. The why or how or even the stakes of success or failure. There was only the next target. The next largest pack of things that were about to die.
Voices were nearly shouting in his mind. Not people or messages but different aspects of himself. He paused long enough to hear Streak howling in frustration. Breaker was awake and growling as he paced. Shawk couldn’t fly above the Great Tree because of Demi’s magic. Violet waited patiently, but he could feel her desire to test her new strength. Even Stag was in his bestiary, either kicked out of the fey or escaping before it ‘closed’. It was eager to fight, but wanted something stronger.
The forest was in his mind, too. Everywhere he sensed fear and anger from the beasts and even the trees, which were burning now at many edges. There was something growing and feeding it, a river of righteous rage flowing through the soil itself. It was the great tree, Mason knew. Magic and energy that was usually made to sustain life instead…agitating it. Giving it form.
Mason saw so many messages in his profile he couldn’t check them all, but none were red—nothing screaming for his help. He landed before the main gate. A few abyssals charged mindlessly and got cut down by Honor Blades without Mason even moving. The rest of the planar army pulled back and stared, screeching and howling their hatred, but too afraid to attack.
A few leaders near the front were roaring and making a show, probably trying to build up the courage of the others. Mason probably had a second.
He closed his eyes and pushed out his senses with One with Nature, trying to understand the attack beyond what he himself could see. There was so much. He felt himself twitch as he tried to process it, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of noise.
The same moment he sensed something worse, something stronger, he got a message from Carl.
Civvies say two lords forming in your direction. Armies still growing on all sides. Ready to fall back to upper city if necessary.
He felt himself sneer as he opened his eyes. The idea that he’d ‘fall back’. That he’d run from two lords. From this.
But he knew the others were different things. Maybe he had to leave it to them to do their own thinking. Had to trust people like Carl and Haley and Chinua directing and communicating during the battle, to decide their overall tactics.
In truth, he wasn’t really a general, or even a soldier. The system had turned him into a weapon. And his job was to kill and not stop killing until there was nothing left. If the others wanted to run away to higher ground, that was up to them.
“Come.”
His voice carried on the wind as he finally gave his bonded animals permission, no longer worried about the dangers. There was only how fast he could kill. And he could kill faster with all his tools.
He lifted his bow and loosed a spread of Crippling Strike into the waiting enemy, laying traps without thinking. They howled and charged as he cycled shots. Some hit the traps and exploded. Others went down in the hail of arrows. One fast jumper reached him, and an Honor Blade drove lazily through its skull. Mason kept shooting.
They got closer when they came from all three directions. He would have leapt back into the air, but he felt the ground tremble with familiar power. He turned and stared as a cluster of abyssals came bounding like rabid dogs, teeth bared with rictus-like smiles as they finally closed on their prey.
Violet sprayed dirt and plants as she erupted beneath them. The now huge purple worm rose like a moving wood chipper, spinning blades on her maw chewing demon as fast as it chewed earth. Some managed to slip to her side and avoid the grinder. They got crushed as she slammed to the ground.
Breaker and Streak roared and howled as they leapt from the rampart, landing beside Mason and flaring with magic as Fang Brother activated. Shawk screeched and circled for a worthy target. Stag leapt Nassau’s wall in a single jump, pawing at the ground as he stared.
Strength of the Pack wasn’t linear or additive. It was more like…multiplicative. Mason felt the power of every bond stacking on him and the others. The power of each a force multiplier for the others.
He felt Shawk’s cunning and keen hunting eyes. Violet’s mass and power. Streak’s will to protect. Breaker’s strength. Stag’s mind was a reflection of Mason’s own—urging the enemy to face them head on, so that they might charge straight into their ranks, and see who’s skulls cracked first.
He grew his Claws, lowered his horns, and charged with his bonded brothers. The ground flew by, and he felt like a giant. Like he’d grown ten feet tall and could ram mountains. That together they were unstoppable.
Some of the more cunning enemy fled. The more mindless enemy stood and died. Mason and Stag struck like heavy cavalry, not even slowing as they carved two paths of carnage, Streak and Breaker thrashing survivors in their wake. Violet sprayed dirt and stone (and soon flesh and bone) as she moved through them like some kind of land shark.
Everywhere there were wolves howling. Mason thought it was in his mind before he realized Streak’s pack had joined them. Hundreds of mutant dire wolves, pulsing with his magic, were jumping on the enemy with violent snarls. How big had the damn pack gotten? It felt like the whole forest had emptied into Nassau.
Mason laughed as the more intelligent demons fled in terror. It came out more like a howl, the wolves taking it up all over the forest as they broke the army apart in a wave of fangs and claws.
And it wasn’t just the beasts. Mason felt the forest stirring. Branches grabbed at fleeing demons with twisted arms. Vines grasped at their feet. The trees themselves were coming alive as the magic of young great tree flowed through the soil in some kind of protective instinct. Was it the nymphs? Or just the tree itself? Mason suspected it was Thea and Calypsa and possibly Eve.
Gaia, it seemed, didn’t intend to sit around for the doom. The settlement of Nassau had been blessed by her, after all. Apparently she wasn’t going to be ‘neutral’ like some of the others. A forest army would help even the score. Mason wondered if he could somehow use it to shame Cerebus into doing something more himself.
Clear the walls, Mason ordered the world around him through One with Nature. Push them back. Then to Carl and the others: I’ll take the lords.
He could have flown, but he wanted his bonds beside him. Stag lowered his demon-stained antlers, the white beast’s body already soaked in gore. They raced to see who’d reach the next victim first, strides matched as Stag snorted, another blunt-force path of destruction bulldozed towards their targets.
A huge, living tidal wave rose in the demon’s ranks. Mason stopped long enough to stare and activate his Ranger’s Mark, smiling when he saw the vulnerable little gem hiding beneath all that foul water.
Shawk and his kin dove at the thing’s retinue. There were corrupted Makers in robes chanting and either helping to summon the thing or boost its power. One literally squealed in surprised terror as an eagle snatched him off his feet.
The earth shock as the primal lord reacted. Jets of water erupted all around it, spraying from the ground in boiling, filthy streams that reeked like rot. Stag swerved expertly, avoiding all of it. Mason ran straight through.
The pain was familiar, and welcome. The magic clung to him as it tried to boil him alive with heat and elemental energy. Apex Predator shifted his affinity. His defences roared to life, growing new, tougher skin even as the small exposed patches burned. He picked up more speed.
The primal lord probably didn’t expect anyone crazy enough to jump straight into a few thousand gallons of boiling water.
Mason was mid-air when he heard Shawk’s annoyed cackle and warning. He just had time to realize the other primal lord was right there in front of him, hovering and invisible. Apparently it was some kind of air elemental.
It swatted him like a fly. He spun off from a huge blast of wind, wings out as he tried and failed to stabilize, adjusting his weight and defying physics to drop like lead and crack the forest floor.
He was on his feet and running in less than a second, grinning as the eagles flew off with a real ‘fuck this’ sort of energy. Jet after jet of steaming air was being launched in their direction from the flying elemental.
Back in range, he swapped to his bow for science and loosed a hail of arrows. The thing mostly tossed them without effort, but some still exploded with reverberation and planar energy. He saw little bursts spring up all around the creature.
He was no wizard with some kind of identification power. But he was a hunter. The hunter. And he knew the sight and smell of his enemy’s blood, whatever its form. It was only a matter of time.
He kept his weight ridiculous as the thing tried and failed to blow him off his feet. And he chased his enemy through the forest shooting, exactly where he was meant to be, not a care in the world.
Planar champion. Red text flared across his eyes. Repeat. Champion incoming in the east. Erik identified. Multiple planar lords forming. Immediate assistance needed.
Fuck.