Intimancer

The hunters sat on a log together in the pre-dawn light, spitting distance from the ocean waters lapping at the sandy shore.  All of them were well rested and ready to face the hoard of crabs when they appeared.

“Hunters, the majority of Gaviota has been evacuated to the northern hills.  The remainder are ready to defend our homes or are further back to support how they can.”

Rick and company turned to face the woman who gave the report.  The dark tipped white feathers along her arms and taloned feet told them she was a seagull beastkin.  In the two fingers that poked out from the end of her wings where her hands would be, she held a tray of warm bread and some cuts of meat and cheese.

They all ate light.  They didn’t want to be too full before the fighting began.  “Thank you for the food.”  Rick said to the woman.  “Will you be joining the defensive line?”

The grin the woman gave in response was vicious.  “I’ve never met a gull who didn’t fight claw and feather for what they feel is rightfully theirs.”

They all shared her grin.  They wouldn’t have to worry too much if the ones staying to fight were like her.  Rick looked to the lightening sky, their part to play will come soon enough.  The waiting for things to start chipped at his willpower more than anything, like the slow climb up the first hill of a roller coaster.

They had a plan, he just had to follow it.  If things went south, they would call it out to each other and move on from there.  Sade always did insist on several backup plans.

They all stood and checked their gear one last time.  Rick had his spear and new hammer all good to go.  Tyr checked her massive bow and then the two axes at her belt.  She still had her ginormous arrows to go along with the bow, but she also had several stashes of regular arrows to use in the coming fight.  Her custom monstrosities were far too expensive to use against an army of monsters.  Sade had her mace and her wits, one blunt and the other razor sharp, both deadly.

Lilithane surprised the group when she first strolled up to them in Shatak with a full set of chainmail on top of a cloth gambison, a broadsword at her hip, and a small shield strapped to her arm.  Their healer came for a fight, and she would certainly give one.  Rick certainly felt naked compared to the shaytoni.  He and the others wore only leather pants, vests, knee pads, and some recently acquired shin guards and bracers.

Their group did not focus on protracted brawls.  Speed and ambush tactics were where they worked best.  But now they needed to play defense against waves of monsters.  They will just have to make due, they wouldn’t have taken the job if they all didn’t agree they could pull it off.

The first few rays of sunlight had begun to poke out from the tall cliffs behind them.  It was time.

“Good luck.”  Lilithane said as she began walking to her assigned position.  Tyr snorted but Rick and Sade gave good natured waves before channeling their mana and moving to their designated spots.  Rick would take the area by the docks, Tyr would take the opposite side and guard the whole southern shoreline, Sade would be in the middle.

The sunlight was halfway up the shore when the first creatures arrived.  Three long legs poked out of the water first, dragging shield shaped bodies with two huge pincers guarding their flat faces.  They looked like every crab that had graced Rick’s dinner plate, except these things were each the size of a dog.  Each of its six legs must have been a meter long and the pincers the size of Rick’s head.

The crab monster in front of Rick paused when it saw him.  The thing let out a terrifying hiss then started scuttling sideways at top speed, its pincers poised to snip him to ribbons when it got the chance.  I guess this means they ain’t friendly.  Don't know if this makes me nervous or glad.  Rick thought as he dashed forward as well, his spearpoint leading the way.

Rick hopped to the side just before he got close.  The crab didn’t anticipate his sudden movement and its swing with its claw impacted only air as it passed through where he would have been if he continued forward.  He wasted no time in gloating and simply slammed his spear forward with every ounce of strength he could muster, right into the monster's unprotected face.

The iron slipped between the plates of its mandibles and sunk deep into the softer insides.  The monster crab let out a screech of pain as it shuddered and convulsed, whether to shake him off or because its brain was destroyed Rick didn’t know.  He got his answer when all six legs gave out and its body crashed into the wet sand below, twitching slightly in its death throes.

First monster and first weapon test down.  He cheered to himself before hopping back to assess the situation.  He could see red and brown shapes begin rising up from the water all up and down the beach.  “Their faces can be pierced!”  He called out to his companions.

“Their shells are quite thick.  Can only damage limbs with a mace or hammer without magic.”  Came Sade’s report after she disabled, but couldn’t kill her first target with her melee weapon.

“Confirmed on piercing faces.  Regular arrows are effective!”  Tyr roared from her position on the opposite side of Sade.

One of their first goals was to see how hard the crabs were to kill without any magic.  While most people could learn basic spells, combat magic was considerably more difficult and the chief confirmed that few, if any, of the people of Gaviota were capable of casting anything that powerful.  Hence the tests before the true waves of monsters began.

If the monster crabs were too tough for the hunters to deal with, then Lilithane would run back and warn the villagers to stay clear, disable, or just buy time until she or someone with strong magic could come in and clear the monsters out.

Thankfully it seems the proud people of Gaviota would be able to extract their pound of flesh just fine.

“The first wave is here!  Prepare to cast on my mark!”  Sade shouted and Rick faced forward.

His mana thrummed in his veins, eager to be unleashed.  He observed the line of brown shells and orange limbs shuffling out of the waves and selected his targets.  He needed to be as efficient as possible, there was no telling how long his mana reserves would last.

“Now!”

Rick unleashed the spell he had prepared.  A geyser of freezing mist shot out of his hand and bathed the still dripping monsters in icy magic.  While ocean creatures were resistant to cold temperatures, the water that was pooled in their joints however, was most definitely susceptible.  The group of monsters got locked into place, unable to react when Rick brought the hammer down on their armored skulls.

The frozen chitin shattered like glass when the heavy iron impacted it.  Each swing of his hammer caused another unmoving monster to die without ever getting a chance to retaliate.  Rick would alternate freezing a new line of crabs solid before running in and pounding them into crab cakes.

He saw his wave of monsters was reduced to piles of broken bodies so he spared a quick glance at how his teammates were doing.

Sade was twirling around and dual-casting her freezing mist with her arms outstretched to her sides.  Once everything around her was coated in ice, she drew her hand in the air in a complex pattern.  Small glowing blue spikes of magical energy collected above her head.  She pulled out her mace and started smashing, in between each crunch of orange exoskeleton she would point at a different target with her off hand and one of the spikes would shoot off like a bullet.  The missiles would bury themselves into their targets then erupt out the back of the monster's shell and keep going with hardly any of its deadly momentum reduced.  Sade chose her targets well, each time she shot her magic at a crab, there would always be another target right behind it.

Tyr had her bow around her shoulder.  In one hand, she held one of her new axes and was carving a wide swath of destruction through a mass of chitines bodies.  Her other hand was also unleashing a stream of mist like the other two, freezing rows of crabs in place for her to dice into pieces when her axe came around again.

Their line was holding strong, but it was not perfect.  Every so often a crab would have a modicum of common sense and just attempt to run past the three freezing terrors.  Tyr would occasionally twirl around with her bow drawn and snipe the occasional crab that left its face exposed to her.  For those that were not facing her direction, she would try to hit in the vulnerable leg joints in an effort to slow them down.

And then there was Lilithane.  The few monsters left unmolested or crippled by Tyr met the angry healer and her sword.  The few glances Rick could spare showed the shaytoni dispatching her foes with quick and efficient movements, no doubt born of countless hours of practice.  She must have done more than just look up to the blue paladin when she was younger.  Rick thought before getting back into the thick of things.

The rising tide of crab monsters felt endless.  For each one Rick killed, it felt like two more took its place.  The monsters scrambled over the ever rising pile of their dead and charged at him, as if hoping that they would be the one to end the hammer wielding menace.  They died all the same.

Rick’s arms ached.  He could feel his strength ebb with each swing of his hammer, but the enemies just kept coming.  Where before there were only three or four crabs coming at him at once, at that moment there were close to eight.  More and more of the things were running past his line of defense, he in turn, was unable to respond as new waves of giant crabs rose up from the depths to challenge him.

With one last blast of freezing mist, he felt the spell sputter and die, the energy in his body needed to sustain it empty.  “I’m out of mana!”  He called out.

“I’m out too!”  Tyr shouted, now wielding an axe in both hands and acting like a cyclone of death and dismemberment.

“I still have some, but I am getting close to empty.”  Sade said.  “We should fall back!”

The trio made a fighting retreat back up the beach.  Without the magic to turn the crabs into sitting ducks, they were significantly harder to deal with.  Rick narrowly avoided getting his foot sliced off when one of the beasts came in from the flank while he was busy stabbing another one with his spear.

“They’re thinning out!”  Tyr called out when Rick and Sade were getting closer to her position.  He looked around and saw she was right.  There still was a veritable hoard of scuttling crabs, but there were far fewer reinforcements coming out of the water than just a few minutes ago.  They just needed to hold on a bit longer.  Rick’s aching body protested at the thought, but he shook himself to ready for the final push.

“Anyone injured?”  Sade asked.  Tyr and Rick called back in the negative.  Rick had a few knocks against his legs that were almost certainly going to turn into bruises later, but he had been exceedingly careful around those pincers.

It was fortunate that none of them needed healing.  The tide of monsters was still crashing around them and even was brushing right up to the barricades.  The people of Gaviota were holding for the moment, but if the three hunters didn’t stop the brunt of the swarm then the villagers would be overwhelmed.  Rick could see Lilithane pulling injured people away from the fighting and working on healing the worst of their wounds.  Rick hoped that there were no fatalities amongst the civilians.  That would be a failure in itself.

There was suddenly an explosion of water coming from behind the line of monster crabs.  The trio looked up from the fighting for a moment to see gigantic orange pincers rise out of the tumbling white spray.  Legs like lampposts carried an armored body the size of a small car, its pincers the size of motorbikes.  All up and down its bright orange body its chitin sharpened into spikes.

“I think we found the king crab.”  Rick laughed at his lame pun.  It really did look like an oversized version of the species he knew from Earth.

“Aye.  Hey Sade,”  Tyr agreed then turned to the mage, grinning with malicious intent.  “Ya got enough ta give it yer little surprise?”

Sade returned the evil smile.  “I think I do.  I will need you to immobilize it for a moment or two.  The last thing we want is for me to miss.”

Tyr chuckled darkly and grabbed her bow.  She then reached for the quiver with her ballista bolt sized arrows.  “I’ll keep the ‘little’ guys off you!”  Rick said as he rushed forward to intercept any of the dog sized crabs aimed her way rather than the village behind them.

Tyr pulled back on the string, the muscles along her arms and back bulging obscenely.  She let loose, the missile flying through the air as if launched from an actual ballista.  The shaft buried itself in the soft meat of the joint in one of its many legs.  The thing let out an ear piercing screech of rage and started to charge, the obstruction not even slowing it down.

“Fuck!”  Tyr cursed and drew her two axes.  “Looks like I got ta get up close and personal.”

She let out a roar and charged forward through the sea of shells and pincers, her axe heads leading the way and crushing or swatting aside anything in her path.  Rick could see limbs and other pieces of crab fly into the air to mark her deadly procession.

“Start channeling Sade, I’ll keep you safe.”  Rick said as he moved to help his friend while she prepared their little surprise for the guest of honor.

Sade’s hands danced in front of her as she wove the spell into being.  Rick found out that using his hands to trace the mana path through the body made spellcasting considerably easier after Sade taught him the technique.  All three of them, though, considered it a crutch, an extremely helpful one when it came to learning new spells, but a crutch nonetheless.  It wouldn’t do to have observant opponents knowing when or even what specific spell they were trying to cast.

But this situation was an exception.  Sade was talented enough to dual-cast ‘freezing mist’ without so much as a twitch, a spell Rick considered to be one of the most complex formulas he had ever attempted, one he still struggled to form without aid.  The spell Sade was now weaving put ‘freezing mist’ to shame in both the complexity and sheer power needed to even cast. She needed every advantage she could get to make sure she pulled it off.

That giant enemy crab was about to regret all its life choices.

Tyr had finished carving a bloody path through the hoard to her target.  Before the spiked monstrosity could swing its arm to intercept her charge, she dashed to the side and buried an axe into one of its tree trunk sized joints.  The injured limb jumped up in the air and tried to skewer the elf with its needle sharp tip.

Tyr just roared with joyous laughter and jumped out of the way, swinging her other axe at another gap in the natural spike armor.  The leg slammed into the soft sand with a sudden jolt that snapped the spike off completely where she previously weakened the joint.  With a pained and confused screech, the whole side buckled and the monster fell down.

“Yer up!”  Tyr called as she bolted away out of the line of fire, cackling all the way.  She knew what was about to happen, and needed to be as far away as possible.

Sade’s eyes snapped open.  She brought her right hand forward and made a fist.  Her other arm extended out and cupped her enclosed hand from the side.  Like drawing a sword her hands separated and Rick could see the magic arc between them.  Electricity writhed and snaked from her palm to her enclosed fist, forming an electric blue spear out both ends.

Rick could feel the air around Sade become charged with power.  The hairs on his arms and head stood straight up with all the residual static electricity swirling around her.  More and more spare bolts shot out from her hands as she drew them further out.

Once her magical weapon was fully formed, Sade cocked her arm back, aiming at the still downed monster, and threw.

The writhing mass of electricity that left Sade’s hand erupted out as an actual bolt of lighting that flashed through the air towards its target faster than Rick could blink.  The air boomed with the sound of thunder.  The shockwave from the sonic boom rippled across the ground and kicked up loose sand and broken pieces of crab into the air as if Sade unleashed an artillery shell.   

The blue bolt of lightning crashed against its target with an explosion of plasma, ripping free from the other end in an explosion of gore and sparks.  The giant crab wailed in pain and crashed down to the surf, twitching with electric convulsions.

Tyr wasted no time and rushed back in.  She swung both axes down on the arm holding one of its pincers, biting deeply into the tough flesh holding up the weapon.  Without warning the monster reared up and backhanded the elf in the torso, sending her flying away and crashing among the few surviving crabs still making their way towards the village.

Rick was already running toward the creature.  That monster had just taken devastating attacks from both his companions, he doubted it had much more left in the tank.  Even if it shrugged off a lightning bolt in just a few seconds.  The monster’s sheer tenacity was definitely worthy of respect if nothing else.

“Ya got this!”  Tyr cried in encouragement from the pile of mangled and shattered crabs that broke her fall.

The spiked monster faced his way as he got close.  Rick noticed that the arm Tyr chopped was hanging limp at its side.  He took a deep breath and started running as fast as he could.  It had mangled legs, a bum arm, and had to deal with the aftereffects of being impaled by lightning, he could do this.  The monster grabbed its injured arm with the other pincer.

And fucking ripped it out of its socket.

Before Rick could fully process the sheer brutality of that action, the giant crab threw its damn arm right at him.  He dove forward to get out of the way of the flying limb the size of a harley, just barely coming away with minor scratches as the spikes brushed up against his back.  He came out of his roll with only a meter or two between them.  The monster already had its limb in the air, ready to flatten him before he could move out of the way.

Thinking quickly, Rick hurled his sledgehammer with one arm at the creature's face.  The heavy iron weapon was deflected as the crab swung its arm down to block instead of crushing him to bloody pulp.  He slid under the pincer and jabbed his spear straight into the eldritch horror it called a mouth.

After burying the shaft all the way up to his arm, he kicked himself off of the shell to gain some distance, anticipating some sort of retaliation for the impromptu root canal he just provided.  The two stared at each other, neither blinking, the crab’s beady black orbs glaring hatefully at Rick’s brown ones.  He was panting heavily.  He had used almost every scrap of strength to damage the thing in that last attack.  Now he was tired, sore, and was out of both magic and mundane weaponry.  Yet the crab never made its move.

It took Rick more than a couple moments to realize that the monster was already dead, frozen in hateful defiance of those who brought it down.

“Woohoo!  Great job Rick!”  Sade cheered as she leapt into the air and swung her fist over her head.  Tyr howled, actually howled, in congratulations from her position further away.

The villagers were mopping up the last of the crabs so the three gingerly walked in close and hugged each other.

“Lets… let's wait a while before we do that again, eh?”  Rick slurred.  He was exhausted.  Based on how high the sun was at the moment, Rick guessed they had been fighting for hours.  He certainly felt like it.

He could see Sade’s eyes already drooping as her own extreme exhaustion began to show.  “Lets.”  She sighed back.

“What the fuck was that?!”  Came a shrill shout from behind them.