The Greatest Sin

Twisted by cursed magic, perfected by Anassa’s sorceries in the ages leading up to the Great War. The beastmen are a vermin that should have never existed. Not a natural race of Arda but a construct, the most they can be likened to a plague of our making. A disease that has spiralled and evolved out of control in response to our medicines.

It will be a day of celebration when they are finally made extinct.

- Excerpt from the secrets texts in the White Pantheon’s closed library. Written by Goddess Maisara, Of Order: ‘Documenting the Inhabitants of Arda’.

Logar snarled as his eyes once again readjusted to the darkness of night. Fer had entered in an hour ago, he had laid still behind a piece of hard-wood pulled out the ground by the darkfurs since then. The two packs causing chaos had pulled back, they were only there to buy time anyway. Fer had assumed a loss-ratio of sixty percent for them two, Logar had put it as high as eighty. Traius had said none of them would return.

But they did. Battered, burned, pierced by shards of ice or stones or trees pulled from the ground, but they came. Out of ammunition, beaten and blooded, but with wet swords and axes dripping with crimson, they came. They had dropped fourty each, the first pack that had landed next to the Floromancy dorm had seventeen return, the second had twelve. They had to face pyromancers, most of these members had been bitten by fire. It would be a good thing to show to the herd back home: plenty of pride in that.

And so Logar readjusted his rifle as he leaned. The sights had been raised so that his wolf-jaw would not get into the way, the trigger guard had been removed so that his thick fingers could press it and a device had been fitted onto the front. It didn’t silence the sound, it merely angled it away from the rifle so that he would not return deaf.

Traius saw the first wave first. Six mages hovering in the air as they scouted what the pack was doing. He gave a raw, turned his machine and sprayed into the air before anyone could react. One put up a shield, five fell to the ground. The witch holding the shield wobbled as she caught bullet and bullet in grasps of air. Logar turned and aligned the sights to her head.

He pulled the trigger as the rifle released a deafening boom. The woman reacted to late, only her eyes catching sight of the wolf-man once the bullet had left the barrel. She managed to move one finger before it pierced her head. Traius burst of firepower tore into her for a second before she too fell. Logar sniffed the air as he signalled to the minotaur. The bull-man shrugged as he took up position at the rear of the pack, close to the door of the Divine Library.

Fer had talked about how mages were near-unstoppable, how a shield had to be overwhelmed with catapult fire in the past. How they would mow down horse and man with merely finger snaps. Logar had expected to step into a boiling cauldron and he had found himself in merely a warm bath with annoying flies circling him. He simply did not understand how they fell so easily. Even the Sect-Members of Great Guguo would be more aggressive in a hunt, these people merely acted out combat. He smiled to himself, yes, those were the words: These people did not fight, they merely played at fighting.

Darkfurs were organizing the returning pack members to serve as scouts. A few of the beastmen handed off their sidearms, several of the over-eager wolf-men had brought two rifles each, and then a third strapped to their back. Logar had merely thought it funny back then but now he would report to Fer. Side-arms were needed.

A minute passed of barking and orders and howling with rage into the air. Fire raged in the distance, the woods that had been set alight raged close to the pack of Beastmen. A high-pitched whistle from a nearby wolf-man indicated opponents. Logar angled his scope as he looked down the path.

Eighteen of them, all in colourful robes fully coloured. With staff and wand were marching down the corridor. All the gemstones on them were glowing as if in response to the glittering red eyes of the beastmen. Logar heard it before he saw it, the howling winds cast by aeromancers to safeguard the mages from the hail of metal. “WEST! PREY!” He barked and let off a shot.

It got caught in the air. Traius and the over minotaurs changed directions. Hooves in the ground to account for recoil, each one the heavy beat of a drum. And then they opened fire. Bullets flew over Logar’s head as the mages stopped moving. One of the aeromancer’s raised their staves, the white gemstones glowing brighter. “DARKFURS! OVERWHELM!” Logar shouted.

Two of the beastmen magicians stepped forwards. Twisted by sorcery, a species that had been created in the Great War to give the herds the strength needed to counter magicians. Their broken teeth spilled out of their black maws as they started to chant spells. One unleashed a red blast of sorcery, the over called forth the grass. The wall in front of Logar expanded forwards with the speed of lightning, it rode the ground like a prancing dolphin, disappeared into the path and then reappearing in a burst of cobblestone as it tore forwards.

The blast of sorcery forced the mages back. A brown-robed geomancer smashed his staff into the ground and pulled up a wall of rocks to safeguard his comrades. The rock cracked under the fires of red sorcery, the path lit up, the grass setting alight as more of the darkfurs poured their power into that devil’s beam. And then the racing vines burst out of the ground. They entered that rock like needles piercing cloth.

A crack formed. Another. A third. A fourth. The rock ripped apart as a hydromancer launched a spike of ice into the mages. More gunfire came from the East. The minotaurs turned to suppress the new enemies as cobblestone landed around the mages like rain. One stone hit the lead aeromancer on the head and Logar found the opening again. He licked his lips as the shield cracked and pulled the trigger.

One shot, like a wolf’s bite to the jugular, and the mage fell, blood flowing in arc from his head as the man collapsed to the ground. The beastmen did not need an order. Two dozen wolf-men fired into the team of mages. One man managed to raise a wall of rocks that was quickly swept aside by the whipping vines. The devil’s beam of red sorcery swept through them, simply removing skin and bone from existence as it tore through the men with fires as hot as the sun.

And the team of mages fell. Logar turned to the other side. Five minotaurs were close to overwhelming a small pack of mages. Merely three, their blue barriers shone with pure magic as they waved their staffs, searching madly for a chance at a counterattack.

That chance never came. Each bullet came an inch closer as their magics were expended. With the fire-rate of five machine guns, that came quickly. Blue energy cracked and faded, and then tore apart. The barrier blinked for a single instant, but a single instant was enough.

A bullet tore into one man, he fell. The woman next to him took a step back as she cowered to him, and then she died. The final of the trio turned to free and his back was opened by bullet holes. And so the silence returned. Two minutes of respite for the beastmen to catch their and reload.

The fire besides the beastmen opened up as Logar was launched into the air by the ground hurling the beastmen aside. Two of the minotaurs fell, one was pierced in the shoulder by a massive chunk of ice. A snake of water tore into the beastmen in the front. The darkfurs took up formation as bestial sorceries started to combat human magics.

A vine caught a fireball, a blast of red wiped a blade of air heading towards Logar. A wave of dark noxious air tore into vines that ripped from the burning woods and into the pack. Logar turned, roared, clicked to full auto and sprayed whatever his gun had left into the forest. A man screamed out. A ball of light came.

A bright light shone from within the woods as the magicians’ glowing catalysts revealed them through the flames. Pyromancers were holding the fire back. A minotaur stepped forwards, blood streaming from his chest where he had been peppered and cut by the exploding pathway. He hefted his flamethrower towards a red-robed pyromancer and pulled the trigger.

The man in red raised his wand, the jelly that made up napalm was cooled, the fire went out. Logar fired into a blue-robed witch five feet in the air, spheres of water circling around her. Her robe discoloured with purple as he dropped yet another magazine and fed the hungry gun, she fell to the ground, not even a scream escaping her lips.

More pyromancers stepped forwards towards the bull-man spraying fire. They raised their wands as the bullman roared. Logar saw him squeeze the trigger and grin as the fire reflected off his eyes. The bull-man took a step forwards, heavy hoof cracking cobbling and severing a green snake of vines that tried to down him. He kept spraying, mid-way through the arc, the jelly would simply be put out to land and splash over the mages.

Logar raised his gun, calmed his bloodlust with a breath and switch to semi-automatic once again. He aimed at the closest pyromancer. A bullet to the head downed him. Then the next. The third fell. Fire roared as the minotaur clicked.

The flame thrower was out. The bullman let out a furious howl and tossed the piece of metal forwards. Something clicked, something made a spark, and twenty mages covered in the jelly set alight. Logar licked his lips as he listened to their screams and the smell the burning flush. It was tinged with that ugly smell of napalm, but it would have still made a fine meal.

The mages fell as their muscle and skin melted off them. A pyromancer tried to put himself out but it wasn’t fire burning him, it was the liquid jelly that had coated him. His hands blinked with flames, he put them out, they set alight again, and he put them out. Eventually he fell to his knees. Logar checked his belt with his hand, he had brought as many magazines as he could stuff into the vest around him, in places where they should go and tied on by strings and tape to places they shouldn’t. Three left.

“COVER THE LIBRARY!” Logar shouted. “HOLD THE DOOR! CLOSE THE CIRCLE!” He looked around. That offensive had left a good quarter of the back on the ground. One bullman had fallen, his head caved in by a lance of rock, Traius was bleeding from every limb, although he still stood and moved easily. One darkfur had fallen, cut in half by a clean blade of air. That was a bad loss.

With Anassa though, they could replenish numbers. With Anassa and Fer freed, it would be safe. “PREPARE BARRIERS!” Logar shouted as he kicked a bench from the ground and knocked it over. It would be a fine firing position. “SPREAD POISON! BUY TIME!”

The pack roared in answer as the rest of the minotaurs dug in. One darkfur pulled a rotting tree out of the ground for men to shoot from as Logar kept shouting orders. “BUY TIME FOR PACKMASTER!”

With Fer and Anassa, they may get out of this yet.

Logar looked into the air as he a swarm of magicians in the distance. A hundred or so, moving in formation. They had brought the students too to act as support. A blue bubble rippled around them as if they were in a giant opaque whale. “PREPARE FOR COMBAT! HOLD FOR PACKMASTER AND GODDESS ANASSA!” Logar shouted as he readied his rifle and prepared for the next spilling of blood.

He just hoped it wouldn’t be his.