Blood Shaper-Chapter 38Book Six

Volcanoes erupted across the world, the land shattered as earthquakes broke continents into fragmented pieces, tsunamis wiped away coasts and drowned mountains, and everything ended in tumultuous calamity as the world ripped itself to shreds. At least, that’s what Eleniah felt like should be happening with how fucking angry she was. The part of her that remained professional and wasn’t overwhelmed with emotion did it’s best to keep her looking at worst mildly annoyed or aggravated since there was no point in letting the troops she was with think she was mad at them, but internally she was furious.

The second to worst part of all of it was that she couldn’t think of a good enough reason to change the plan. Dividing the elites up to escort the smaller armies so that each and every ritual circle was shut down in time was vitally important and there was every chance that the enemy would have elites that she would need to battle in position to stop their advance. Quantity had a quality all it’s own, which meant most elite fighters couldn’t single-handedly take on an army and win, but the end goal wasn’t just killing whoever was in the way, it was killing whoever was in the way and making sure whatever bullshit the vampyr were trying to enact didn’t happen. And the thought of the army she was working with taking out whatever elite or elites were station to defend the circle they were targeting without her help didn’t include the numerous non-elite vampyr that would be defending as well.

The worst part of the situation was that the rage was just a cover for the deepening fear that was coursing through Eleniah. Being separated from Kay was a problem on multiple fronts to her. She trusted him to make good decisions and knew that he was strong enough to take care of himself, but that didn’t matter to her. They were stronger together than apart just by having each other’s backs. She trusted Edric not to betray Kay, but she didn’t know if he was strong enough to really defend her boyfriend the way she could. Eleniah had been in love before and she’d lost people she’d loved before. This was the first time she’d been in a relationship she felt could really last the test of time, and she didn’t want to lose Kay to what was coming.

She wasn’t worried about the world ending or the vampyr creating some kind of catastrophe, not in an immediate way. There was the general concern she normally felt when something big was going down, but focusing too much on the hypothetical situations that would occur if they lost drained too much energy and made fighting against those hypothetical harder. Eleniah was worried about what would happen to Kay while they fought against the vampyr’s plan. Kay had been caught up in the idea of being some kind of “chosen one” or having some kind of fate that stole away his effort and hard work. He wasn’t one of those and there was no one directing his life so that he did certain things no matter what, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a hero.

Kay was the kind of hero Eleniah had seen practically countless numbers of times before, the right person in the right place at the right time with the right strengths to save people from their troubles or to prevent some horrible event. There were hundreds of potential heroes of that stripe in every moment and dozens around the world that made the decision to stand up and risk themselves for the sake of someone else. Depending on your point of view Kay was either not special because of the number of people who’s ranks he stood amongst or they were all special in despite of their numbers because of what they’d chosen to do. Personally, Eleniah tended to lean toward the latter, but that wasn’t the important part.

The important part was that she’d seen cast numbers of those heroes dying as a result of their choice to stand up and fight against the odds. Life wasn’t a tale where heroes always won and evil always lost. Villains and scoundrels won all the time. Heroes were slain during their quest or had to sacrifice themselves to save the day all the time. Eleniah had actively worked with enough heroes or even been one enough times to see it with her own eyes over and over and to personally escape death by the skin of her teeth dozens of times, and she knew that the greater the danger the more likely the hero wasn’t coming back to celebrate their victory with the people they’d saved.

If she had her way things would be going very differently. They’d have more time to prepare and stack the deck in their favor, and there sure as shit wouldn’t be any splitting up and dividing their strength into packets! But life never went perfectly the way anyone wanted and she had to deal with the hand she’d been dealt. Even as she hated every second she spent moving away from Kay and they both approached deadly battles that could mean the death of either or both of them she knew that this was happening the way it was because Kay was serious about the oaths he’d sworn to the people of Avalon, his people, and she loved him for that as much as anything else. Oaths were important, protecting your people was important, and destroying evil where you found it was important. He wouldn’t be the man she’d fallen in love with if he didn’t agree with and do his best to uphold those principles she lived by.

She scoffed sardonically at her own train of thought. It was as much her fault that they were in this situation as much as anyone else, she’d been the one to point Kay’s feet down the path that had led to this. Of course, if she hadn’t the vampyr might have already turned the world into an eldritch hellscape, so it all balanced out in her mind.

The soldiers around her continued to march on as she kept her easy pace. She wasn’t a speed focused fighter but she had a couple of Skills that helped and she didn’t have any armor or equipment to drag along, so she had to slow herself dramatically to make sure she got to the target with her assigned body of troops. The four divisions of Crusade soldiers led by their Crusader Generals with attached units of Shatterplate Order hunters and adventurer auxiliaries were making good time and she had no complaints about the mixed unit of trustworthy vampires and Blood Guard attached to her for this jaunt. She knew her mounting irritation and impatience about how slow the army was going was unreasonable, so she kept all her complaints about their speed internal.

They were actually making better that good time, with the officer using their Classes to boost the speed the army was moving at they made it within rang of their target within a few hours of splitting away from Kay and the other troops. As scouts started reporting back the status of their target Eleniah cleared her mind of the worries and fears plaguing her and focused on the goal. She couldn’t change what had happened, she could only affect what would happen from now on. And what would happen from now on was that the vampyr at this ritual circle were going to die as fast as physically possible so she could go make sure her lover didn’t end up dead.

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She scowled as the army split into units and began advancing on the target location. The burnt and destroyed ruins of the town they were assaulting had been dragged away to create a clear area where esoteric designs and unnerving shapes had been carved into the ground. The debris had been piled to create makeshift walls and there were sentries and defenders lining the area acting like actual soldiers defending a key point instead of mad, ravening beasts. Those were there too but the fact that there were enough vampyr acting like people with a goal instead of lunatics to count on more than one hand was alarming. All of this pointed at there being a vampyr with more than half a brain left being present, and that meant Edric’s worries had been right on target. The smarter and closer to sanity a vampyr was the stronger the more likely they were to survive into becoming an elite, which meant someone that could give Eleniah a run for her money was there.

The makeshift walls were blasted apart by sappers or mages and demolished by powerful soldiers who literally ripped the piled debris into smaller pieces to clear the way forward. Soldiers flowed into the encircled area as they split into smaller units and started slaying vampyr that blocked the way. Eleniah kept her head on a swivel as she scanned the area for her opponent, or opponents if there were more than one elite to deal with. She slipped inside the wall with the Blood Guard and vampires following her.

“There’s no need for all of you to babysit me!” She snapped at them. “Some of you split off and start helping deal with the stronger vampyr! You!” She pointed at a Blood Guard officer nearby, “Who’s protecting those ritual experts we dragged along?”

“We left a number of the adventurers who specialize in defense with a portion of the Blood Guard who came with us, Lady Eleniah. A few units from each Crusader General’s army also stayed behind to guard them.”

She held back her customary knee-jerk response that she wasn’t a lady. “Good. Now find me a damn vampyr elite so that we can get this show-“

“Lady Eleniah!” Someone shouted from outside the circle of people listening to her, “A more organized defense has formed near the center of the circle! There appears to by a vampyr leader there who-“

The ground where she’d been standing shattered as a foot wide crater formed where she’d kicked the ground. A shockwave blasted air and grit around and almost knocked over several of the weaker or less well braced individuals that had been around her as she vanished.

A ring of vampyr in a variety or eclectic armor and clothing surrounded an uncanny looking object at the center of the ritual circle, all them turned outward to defend against the soldiers pressing in on them. Some of them screamed or shouted nonsense or contextually inappropriate statements or cries as they fought, while others were dead silent or snarled like beasts but all of them fought with a level of coordination most vampyr lacked. In the center of the defensive circle a vampyr draped in fine silk robes stood protectively over the artifact and threw sickly bolts of energy at the attackers.

Eleniah descended from the sky like a meteor, completely skipping over any defenders that were between her and her target. Her explosive landing sent ranks of vampyr tumbling away as she slammed into the ground and the attacking soldiers immediately took advantage to tear into the vampyr with gusto.

“No! No!” The vampyr in robes shrieked as Eleniah recovered from her landing. “You don’t understand what you’re doing! The Great One’s ascension is for the good of us all! You’re only-“

The top half of the vampyr disintegrated as Eleniah’s fist punched through it’s torso and the force of her blow unmade the eldritch tainted monstrosity’s flesh. She looked down at the legs of the monster with a hint of confusion and disdain as they collapsed before snorting and glancing around. The Crusade’s soldiers were still fighting the vampyr defenders, though a few of the monsters were coming her way, so she pitched in and started wiping out pockets of resistance.

When only the stragglers were left to be finished off she found the nearest officer and started barking orders. “Send some messengers to grab my people! They should already be on the way over here, but I want this damn thing locked up as soon as possible!” Two Blood Guard pushed through the milling soldiers. “There you are! The leader was a waste of time, or maybe they were too busy being crazy and thought they could talk me down or something. Either way, we’re mopping this shit up and moving on as soon as possible. I want a clear area for the ritualists and other experts to start dismantling this circle now, then start clearing out any vampyr within a mile of here! And tell the experts I want this thing nonfunctional in under-“

“Ma’am the artifact!”

Eleniah whipped around the see a tendril of unsettling flesh curl up from a hole in the ground and grab the twisted looking eldritch artifact the vampyr leader had been defending. It dragged the artifact down into the hole and then seconds later the ground beneath all of the erupted. A veritable forest of tentacle-like roots covered in bone plating burst from underneath them and began lashing out at absolutely everything. Eleniah immediately began returning the favor and roots began to explode as she destroyed every single one that she could reach.

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The roots reared back and vanished beneath the ground. Eleniah debated diving in after them to find the damn eldritch item that had been taken. The vampyr from before had been defending that more than the circle, and they didn’t actually know what the vampyr’s true plans were. The artifact could be just as or even more important than the ritual itself, which means she couldn’t let it get away. Right as she was about to jump into one of the tunnels left behind by the retreating roots when the ground started to rumble again.

A few hundred feet away the earth buckled as something massive pushed it’s way out from underneath. A writhing tangle of roots heralded the rest of the monster that emerged, all of them growing in clusters from the four limbs extending out from the center. Each limb was as big as an ancient tree with abnormal joints along them that let them bend, tipped in warped paws with crooked claws growing from them. The four symmetrical limbs all grew thin near the center where they connected to a cocoon-like shape dangling between them all. Bulging shapes moved underneath a dripping liquid wrapping that completely covered everything that was inside. Sitting atop the cocoon and connected to whatever was inside it through a stalk rising up was a single human-looking head with a blank expression and empty eyes. Every bit of the monster except that solitary head was a deep blackish-brown color and had the texture of rotten wood. Despite everything else the head looked like a normal, if fairly pale, human child’s head, if you ignored the fangs peeking out from behind the closed mouth.

“Change of plans!” Eleniah shouted. “First I kill that thing, then we do everything else I said! Move your asses we’ve got other places to be!”