NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 36: Something Reckless
“What do you mean, gone?” Seena asked.
“Just what I said,” Seeyela answered. “They aren’t there anymore.”
“Which means we probably shouldn’t stay here,” Hiral pointed out. “There’s no way they could’ve all vanished in the time between Seena’s fireball and Seeyela going to check, which means something else got their attention.”
“Like somebody breaking an entire café-full of dishes?” Yanily asked innocently.
“Yes, something exactly like that,” Hiral deadpanned.
“Uh, guys, looks like we may’ve gotten somebody else’s attention too,” Nivian said from the front, and when Hiral turned to look, he spotted dozens of glowing orbs in the hall ahead. The roots weren’t glowing strongly enough to completely illuminate what was stumbling down the halls, but they definitely weren’t skeletons.
No white of bone shone in the blue and green light, and the overall shapes were bulkier. Muscle and flesh filled out the clothes worn by the crowd ambling forward. With each step, the details became clearer to Hiral’s high Atn, his eyes mixing with his other senses to provide additional information.
Lips drooped weakly from around their sharp teeth, but no breath passed into their lungs. A smell like rotten meat rolled ahead of them, and there was a kind of squishing sound as they took each limp step. And, more than just filling out the clothes they wore, their bodies seemed to push them almost to bursting, like they’d grown bloated or gorged on too much food.
“Are those Lizardmen still alive?” Wule asked, but his tone said even he didn’t think that was possible as he stared at the glowing blue eyes.
Hiral tackled Seena to the ground at the same time something cut through the air where she’d just been. Thunk. It hit the wall with enough force to crack stone.
“Hiral? What?” Seena asked, her fireball fizzling out as she lost concentration, and he rolled off her to look at the wall.
Where a three-foot-long arrow protruded from the stone.
His head snapped in the other direction while Seena’s eyes lingered on the arrow, but that obviously hadn’t come from inside with them. No, it had to have come from… there! Across the wide street and through the rain, Hiral spotted a gaunt Lizardman drawing another arrow from the quiver at its back, sliding it into the massive bow in its hands.
Hiral’s eyes met the archer’s glowing blue orbs, and he raised his RHC faster than the undead could draw its bow. Except, it didn’t draw its weapon; it ducked down behind the wall as Hiral pulled the trigger.
The searing bolt cut a line through the falling rain, leaving a steaming tunnel where it passed, and shot over the hidden archer. The fact the archer had dodged sent warning bells screaming through Hiral’s head, but other problems quickly arose to drown them out. The crowd of undead that had previously been limping towards the party suddenly burst into a snarling run.
Bloated arms stretched ahead of them, patches of scaled flesh hanging along with the torn clothing to reveal the muscle underneath. Wounds previously hidden by the distance and shadows suddenly grew visible as the monsters rushed ahead, the squishing Hiral had heard stemming from the goopy entrails dangling from torn stomachs.
“Oh, that’s not right,” Yanily said, but it was Seeyela who acted first.
A Gravity Well formed in the center of the hall, directly ahead of the rushing group, and three hydra heads burst out, teeth bared in a growling threat. The closest undead charged straight towards the impossibly black ball hanging in the air, then vanished with a pop. Others, running past it against the walls, managed to resist its pull, but the hydras made sure they suffered for it.
Lightning blew off chunks of flesh with explosive force on one side, while gouts of endless flame charred tissue until it was a blackened, bubbling mess on the other. The third hydra—spitting lightning charged with infernal fire—sent arcing bolts chaining between the whole group, leaving holes clean through where it passed.
And yet, none of those clearly fatal wounds stopped more than a handful of monsters. Even among those, only two could said to be truly dead, the others pulling themselves along the floors with ruined limbs, trails of gore staining the tiles where they passed. Nivian, Yanily, Right, and Left all dashed ahead to meet the wall of snarling, rancid bodies charging towards them, and Hiral lifted his RHCs to support them.
Yanily, however, was the first to truly act, lightning sparking along his spear. He slid to a stop, one foot back, and dropped the head of the spear low beside him.
That starting point…
Hiral didn’t even feel a pulse of solar energy from Yanily before his entire body and spear condensed into a bolt of searing lightning. Up—and through—the undead directly in front of him, Yanily zapped to the ceiling and rebounded off of it, straight down into a pack of the sickly monsters. The undead Yanily hit directly practically evaporated from the explosion of electricity and force, and every other monster within ten feet was hurled back.
Wet thwacks echoed off the walls and ceiling, some of the bloated bodies bursting in a gush of internal fluids and organs. At least a pair of undead flew directly out the large windows, but of the rest remaining, most of them started to get back up. Bodies scarred by lightning, limbs missing, and flesh scorched, the undead rose like it was all just a minor inconvenience.
“Stupid undead…” Yanily muttered, adopting another new stance Hiral hadn’t seen before.
No, that wasn’t true… it looked a lot like what Balyo used to do when she charged up her biggest attack. One foot forward and the other back for balance, Yanily kept his spear horizonal but drew it back slowly, almost like he was fighting some unseen force to keep it moving.
Undead came at the spearman from both sides, and he would’ve been instantly overwhelmed if he was alone. Except, he wasn’t. Hiral’s shots dropped the two undead on his right—though it didn’t kill them—while Right and Left covered the spearman’s other side. In that second, churning lightning coalesced around Yanily’s shoulders, almost like wings, then burst down his arms to his spear. All that power raced to the spear’s tip at the same time he thrust forward.
With no undead close enough to directly stab, chained lightning leapt from the spear to the mob in front of him. Flesh and muscle tore off in great gobs where the lightning struck, but it wasn’t just the front line that suffered. Like a ravenous beast with a mind of its own, the arcs of electricity jumped from undead to undead, spreading out and lighting the hallway in sharp blue-white, racing deeper and deeper down the hall. Smoke and the smell of burnt flesh rose almost instantly from the technique that could wipe out an army.
A living army.
As it was, only one in ten undead fell, the rest continuing on despite their empty health bars.
“Yup, hate these things,” Yanily said, falling back with the doubles at his side and forming a defensive line.
Hiral pulled his triggers to cover them, but movement from across the street tore his attention back in that direction. An arrow was already cutting through the rain. Except, it wasn’t aimed at him, and he threw out a panicked wave of Rejection. The rain shot sideways in a cone, catching just the feathered end of the arrow. Not enough to completely deflect it.
Hiral’s eyes barely kept up with the shaft, and he watched it lance straight for Seeyela. The woman didn’t even see the arrow coming, her attention firmly on the monsters clashing with her friends in the hall, but something jerked it to the side at the last second. Like it was caught by Hiral’s Rune of Rejection, the arrowhead twitched oddly, a speck of black appearing just to Seeyela’s side. With the arrow bending in the air, the viciously barbed arrowhead passed just over the woman’s right shoulder, though the long shaft snapped around to hit her like a whip.
Seeyela shouted in pained surprise as the force of the snap sent her stumbling to the side, then over the low wall of one of the shop’s picture windows.
“Sis!” Seena shouted, her head going back and forth between where Seeyela had vanished and the mass of undead engaged with the others.
Since the Gravity Well didn’t vanish immediately, Hiral chose to trust in the protection of Seeyela’s Armor of the Ghost-Web Matriarch. Her passive defensive ability, the Gravity Armor, had likely already saved her life, but he couldn’t hope she’d be so lucky again. So, instead of assisting the others with the clawing monsters inside, Hiral again lifted his RHCs and aimed at the bigger threat across the street.
Two more bolts of Impact carved through the falling rain, but the archer again ducked behind the stone rise on the edge of the roof. Hiral had aimed lower this time, expecting just that reaction, but the stone only cracked slightly at the hits, small chips flying off. The thin archer popped up immediately after that, arrow already nocked in his bow, then drew and fired in one efficient motion.
This time, instead of aiming in Seeyela’s direction, the arrow cut through the rain towards the opposite end of the hall—right for Nivian and the others holding the line.
Hiral’s wave of Rejection again came too late as he twisted, just catching the tail end of the arrow, and it buried itself in Nivian’s thigh with a crack from his bark armor. It’d caught him in the side of the leg, but the tank didn’t falter from the sudden injury. He fought through the pain, holding back three of the decaying monsters while his brother pushed solar energy in his direction.
Those arrows are strong enough to punch through Nivian’s defenses on top of the protection from the crystal armor. Not good.
Hiral’s next bolt cracked uselessly off stone, the archer already hidden from sight, but he held his second shot, waiting for his opponent to pop back up. Except, the archer didn’t immediately rise and shoot again.
What’s it doing?
Hiral got his answer a second later, when the archer rose almost halfway down the block and loosed another arrow from an entirely new position. RHCs and shots too slow to reach his enemy before it ducked back down, Hiral instead used the extra heartbeat to toss a wave of Rejection at the arrow. This time, he caught more than half the arrow with his push, sending it careening off course to slam into the wall outside. By that time, however, the archer had already ducked back into hiding on the other side of the street.
Despite having better weapons for the exchange, Hiral wasn’t coming out on top of this. It was almost like the archer wasn’t aiming for him, instead forcing him to divide his attention between protecting his allies and trying to get a lucky shot in. Meanwhile, the archer had the freedom to direct the pace of the fight however it liked while it hid and changed position. With multiple targets to choose from, it had all the advantages—unless Hiral could put some kind of pressure on it across the street.
Across the street?
Hiral looked at the wide avenue—it had to be almost a hundred feet across—but he had one more card to play before he needed to get reckless.
Completely forgoing defense for the moment, Hiral focused every ounce of concentration on spotting any sign of movement across the street. As soon as he… There!
Hiral activated his Rune of Time Dilation at the first glimpse of the archer popping up above the stone protection at the edge of the building. The falling rain paused as everything slowed, slowed, slowed, pressure already starting to build in Hiral’s skull, like reality didn’t like what he was doing to it. For now, the pressure was tolerable, and Hiral took the first blink to really get a good look at his opponent.
Whatever the archer was, it was different from the skeletons and bloated undead they’d been fighting. It was thin, yes, but not just bones. The muscle and flesh were almost desiccated over the bones, dry like they should be flaking off despite the rain, and the glow in its eyes was more pronounced—stronger, focused, calculating—while the line of blue teardrops running down its cheeks was almost neon. The bow in its hands was strong and well-designed, while chain and metal scales covered its upper body in additional armor.
The slowed time didn’t allow Hiral to use his View ability, apparently, but maybe he could find out the thing’s name when it was a corpse. Again. Whatever. Pushing against the bounds of the Time Dilation, Hiral forced his RHCs to take aim as best he could, though the pressure was building faster and stronger than it had the first time he’d used the ability.
The arrow and the head were his main targets, and he activated his Rune of Time Contraction while pulling his triggers and zeroing in on those points.
He only managed to get off six shots before the Time Dilation became too much. Time burst back to normal speed, and his barrage of shots exploded from his weapons and tore through the falling rain. Maybe it was his imagination, but the archer’s blue eyes widened in surprise at the storm of searing bolts coming its way.
Thwack. His first bolt blew the arrow out of the archer’s grip, snapping the shaft in two at the same time the second blast hit the bow. The well-crafted weapon didn’t shatter like the arrow did, but it did go sailing into the air further back on the roof. Without even a second to look at its fallen weapon, the archer took the third shot in the side of its head, metal clanging like a rung bell. That impact, unfortunately, saved the monster’s life, the force of the blow staggering it back so the fourth shot barely nicked its shoulder, while the fifth and sixth completely missed.
Even as Hiral watched, the undead pushed itself back to its feet, swaying like it was drunk, and its head twisted slowly from its bow back to Hiral. When he didn’t immediately open fire again, the monster turned on its heel—almost falling over in the process—and started for its bow. With his RHCs on cooldown for the next twenty seconds due to the use of his time runes, Hiral couldn’t do anything but watch as the archer staggered towards its fallen weapon.
I need to do something before it recovers.
“Right, I may need you after,” Hiral said as he sheathed his RHCs and sprinted back to the wall opposite the wide windows.
“After? After what?” Right called from the front line, his punch landing against a bloated torso with a sound like hitting a wet paper bag.
“After I do something reckless,” Hiral said as he darted ahead.
Just before he reached the large, open windows, he thrust his palms down and behind him, pouring energy into his Rune of Rejection at the same time he leapt with all his might. Pure force shot out behind him, the backwash of his takeoff rushing in both direction down the enclosed hall, and launched him out of the hallway like a ballista bolt.
Cold rain washed over him in a flash, seeping through his raincoat as his leap whipped the hood off his head, and his velocity powered him high above the street. Still, even with the forceful ejection from the hall, he wasn’t going to make it all the way to the far roofs—and he was very high up.
Haven’t really tried this so far above ground… but…
Hiral pulled his arms forward again, cutting off his jets of Rejection, then steadied his body and shifted as if he were running. Power flowed into his Rune of Rejection, and he pushed that under the sole of his lead foot. Like he’d suddenly met an angled surface, Hiral bent his knee as momentum carried him forward, then leapt off it. Still not enough to make it to the far roof—and the archer was now within fifteen feet of its weapon—so Hiral forged another plane of Rejection, then doubled the power again when he sprang from it.
The jump devoured distance, the rain stinging his skin from how fast he cut through the downpour, but he stepped and stepped again, speeding up with each bound. Then, with the archer a mere five feet from his bow, Hiral cocked back his right hand, building a Rune of Impact in front of his fist, and leapt one last time.