The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy-Chapter 248 - Battle Through the Jungle

Feng continued to lead the way, looking grim. Another oniwyrm howl echoed through the jungle. When Mirian glanced back at the lesser titan corpse, it was shrouded in abnormally dark patches. Light eaters. At least they’d be too busy scavenging the corpse to bother with them.

Her father had told her about what would happen next. For far too many creatures in the Jiandzhi, two things meant food: loud noise and strong magic. The creatures needed a lot of food, but as she’d seen deep in the frostlands of the Endelice Mountains, powerful souls were an even more important source of energy for most myrvites. Something tossing around powerful magic just meant tastier prey.

Mirian scanned the forest, her active detect life spell overwhelmed by the abundance of soul energy. Still, through the misty souls of the trees, she could see the first oniwyrm approaching. There was something else moving, though. It was like there was a cloud of souls moving toward them from the south.

She turned to Gaius. “What’s that?” she said, pointing.

“Hmm.” He scratched his head. “Ah. Probably a swarm of some kind. It looks like its moving towards the lesser titan, but if it crosses our path it might attack. Could be leech beetles. No, that’s not quite right, those swarms are smaller. Acid ants?”

“What?” Gabriel said, slightly shrill.

“But there’s some above the ground,” Mirian said.

“Oh, acid ants can fly.”

Gabriel started shaking his head. “This jungle. This bloody fucking jungle.”

Mirian looked to the other side. Another of the oniwyrms. “They’re all going to hit us about the same time. Atrah, can you deal with the swarm?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Mirian’s years on the battlefield returned to her. “Ibrahim, take the oniwyrm coming from the west. I’ll take the one coming from the east. Gabriel, if anything aims for the caravan, get its attention. Until then, veil the group with light and sound suppression spells—don’t give me that look, I can see the wands at your belt. Feng, you and the caravaneers keep the marusaurs under control. Jei, shields and minor combat spells to protect the group. That searing fire spell of yours will be useful if the ants get through.”

Feng looked about as tense as a taut cord, but he nodded, grim determination on his face. Jei nodded. Mirian hated to see the fear in her face too. I’ll protect them, she vowed. My actions will give them hope.

The crack of branches grew closer. This time, the howl of the oniwyrm felt like it was right on top of them. From out of the green came a spiraling serpent body, crashing madly through the brush, pieces of it vanishing as it coiled through the fourth dimension.

Mirian levitated in the air, spellbook hovering open before her. She opened her palms to the sky.

The oniwyrm was moving fast. Its strange mask-like shell opened up, revealing its five jaws and the terrifying hooked teeth. It lunged.

The time for silence was over. Mirian hit it with a fully powered greater lightning. Bolts splashed out of it into the trees, setting trunks ablaze. The oniwyrm reeled back, flesh charred and jaws ripped off. A tree, trunk shattered, began to topple, and Mirian grabbed it with lift object, bringing it smashing down on the oniwyrm’s head.

She prepared another spell, then realized she didn’t need it. The oniwyrm was dead. As she shackled its soul to her repositories, she turned to Ibrahim. As the western wyrm lunged at him, he leapt right at the mouth. As the mouth moved to close over him, he was already inside it, blade slamming through the soft tissue on the inside, driving right into the brain.

The creature was dead before it finished hitting the ground.

Her attention shifted to the thousands of small souls to the south being snuffed out as the swarm of acid ants arrived and met Gaius’s killing field. Mirian joined in, casting mass kill alongside her father. The foliage wilted before their eyes as the insects died by the thousands. Flying ants rained down from the air, and the leaves and soil sizzled with the acid dripping from their pincers.

Then, Mirian watched in fascination as the swarm began to resist the death curse, tendrils of souls reaching out to each other like threads spontaneously forming to become a tapestry. A spirit construct, she realized. It would be fascinating to study.

But right now, she needed them dead.

As the swarm began to cross past Gaius’s spell, Mirian made a force wall in front of the group, then dropped an inferno spell on the other side of it. The air thickened with the smell of burning bugs and smoking leaves.

Within minutes, it was over, and all that was left of that section of forest was wilted and blackened jungle. The trees still stood, but they were dead.

The caravaneers had frozen, looking at the section of deadened forest in fear. The marusaurs had all gone and sat down next to different bushes in an attempt to hide.

“Move!” Mirian said. Not exactly the emotion I’d hoped to inspire, she thought.

Feng hesitated, then signaled for the caravan to keep moving. They gathered up the marusaurs and got them moving again.

The mist jellies hit them next. Mirian almost didn’t see them; fog was hanging just above the canopy, and the tentacles dripping with glass-like needles were nearly on top of them when she noticed the glare of a strong soul just above them.

“Above!” she called, and sent a lance of fire searing through the creature. The beam pierced it, but that hardly slowed it down. The creatures had de-centralized nervous systems. There was no weak point. They had to be destroyed entirely.

As the tentacles continued to descend, Mirian used burning force blades, then sending them out like a storm. Dozens of burning blades scythed through the air, cutting the tentacles into pieces. As they fell, she hit them with force blast to send them flying away.

She missed one. It came down nearly on top of the group, still writhing. The poison-coated needle hit one of the caravaneers and his marusaur. “Ga—Atrah! Can you deal with the poison?” Mirian snapped out. She put up a massive force barrier across the canopy as two more mist jellies floated down. Fog spilled out across the barrier as Mirian filled the air with burning blades.

The air started to smell like carcasses rotting on a beach. As the last pieces of the jellies came down, Mirian tilted the entire force barrier sideways. Fragments of mist jelly rained down to the left of the caravan, squelching as they covered the branches and splattered onto the ground.

“Third oniwyrm,” Mirian snapped. Ibrahim had drawn his sword again and was already moving towards the beast. Seeing Mirian’s attention on it, he opened his palm. To Mirian’s surprise, the sword flew towards the beast on its own, but not using any kind of force spell she was familiar with. It slammed into the oniwyrm, just below the shell-mask, cutting it in the neck. Mirian followed up with shatter stone. The powerful force spell cracked open its mask, sending the oniwyrm’s head snapping back. As Ibrahim summoned his sword back to himself, Mirian sent a modified force drill into the exposed neck. Blood splattered outward as she widened the hole, and then she sent an enhanced force blade into the gap, having it snap outward like spring-loaded blades. The head fell to the ground, while the body writhed for a moment, blood painting the leaves and trunks, before the body collapsed to the ground.

Her father watched her coolly, done healing the poison. “Impressive, but inefficient. The Jiandzhi isn’t dangerous because of a single myrvite, or even a group. The Jiandzhi is dangerous because they’ll keep coming. When I had to retreat, it was because of attrition.”

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To punctuate his words, they heard another roar in the distance.

“Understood,” Mirian said. As she landed back on the ground, she said to Ibrahim, “You didn’t tell me about that dervish form.”

Ibrahim gave her a toothy smile.

“I know you have to be extending your aura outward, but then there must be some sort of transformation effect to turn that into force of magnetism. How? Without a catalyst….”

He shrugged. “It works. I don’t need to know the why of it.”

The necromancer shook his head. “If he was purely manipulating aura, he would need a catalyst. There’s no way around that. Perhaps he’s sending out threads of soul energy. Given the right flows, you could have them degrade into a chosen energy type. I don’t doubt the Triarchy’s dervishes were clever enough to come up with a method.”

Gabriel looked at them both. “You’re both seriously discussing arcane theory right now? God’s blood, you’re all insane.”

“Sanity is relative,” Atrah Xidi said.

“Sanity is defined by those that rule. It becomes a shackle that binds the masses into subservience,” Ibrahim said.

Gabriel threw up his hands and stormed off to the head of the caravan.

More roars echoed through the jungle.

“If we can pick up the pace, we should,” Gaius said in a low voice to Mirian. “If we encounter a mating pair of lesser titans, that can be a serious problem.”

Mirian levitated herself forward, landing next to Feng. “Can the marusaurs move any faster?” she asked.

“They can, they just won’t. You’re welcome to see for yourself how difficult it is.”

One of the marusaurs ruffled its green and white feathered frill and snorted. They’d moved a little faster as they’d passed by the lesser titan corpse, but when the oniwyrms had approached, they’d hunkered down and gone still to hide.

She put a finger to her lips. “I can try something,” she said. She considered the emotion she wanted the marusaurs to feel: not panic. Not fear. Urgency. She thought about what runes were associated with that. Thought about how she would have put the feeling to an Elder creature like Eyeball. She let her aura touch the beasts, then pushed that emotion through it.

Hurry.

The marusaurs looked startled, then began to trundle along faster. Not fast—they were still marusaurs—but it was now a bit faster than a brisk walk.

Feng said a series of words Mirian was pretty sure were curses. “How in the three skies did you do that?” he asked, hustling to keep pace with the pack beasts.

“Magic,” Mirian said, and wiggled her fingers.

“Heaven’s wrath,” Feng muttered. “The pleasant buffoon is right. You’re all crazy.”

Mirian tilted her head. “Keep eyes out for any green mirages or emperor trees. If I’m not mistaken, we’re about to be attacked by a pack of petal demons.” She could just make out their energies flitting about through the mist of floral souls. “Jei, be ready with light and heat shields. They fire those beams quickly. Gabriel, maintain your own shield.”

The next few minutes were tense as the petal demons gathered, moving up and down the parallel to them before they finally began to gather. More roars echoed out. Then, the pack began bounding towards them, coming in fast.

“Here they come!” Mirian shouted.

As the beasts leapt out from behind the foliage, they opened by shooting their searing beams from their manes of petals. Jei’s shield shattered, and Mirian rushed to put up her own barrier as the beams seared across two marusaurs and a caravaneer. This time, she was thinking of how to maximize her efficiency in the fight.

She started by casting bindings near the petal frills of two beasts, siphoning arcane force from them. As soon as they attempted to fire their natural spells again, she sapped the energy and used it to create explosions of fire that seared their faces. Then she repeated the maneuver as Ibrahim held two petal demons at bay with his sword, and Gaius brought up small force barriers for each beast charging. The petal beasts slammed into them.

Bindings took a great deal of focus, but Mirian had been practicing. Little by little, she could add more bindings—now she wrapped two around another petal demon as she blocked it from circling around them, then two bindings ready to start sapping the soul of another. She wove a tapestry across the battlefield. Soon enough, she’d woven siphons that acted more effectively than any shield, and dismissed her barriers. Her father, seeing what she was doing, did the same. He stepped back.

The petal demons tried to charge, powerful legs launching them at the group. Ibrahim cut the face off one, but he could only stop the one.

Mirian could stop the rest.

She fired a single black line spell at the lead petal demon. As its soul burst apart, she captured the soul energy and degraded half of it into mana, using the other half to create sheathes that would break spell resistance. Then she used that mana to send three fireballs into the petal demons behind the lead one. As they died, she harvested their souls in turn, and the cascade of fire chained through the group, searing them into blackened coals.

“How was my efficiency?” she asked the necromancer.

“Better. If you can speed up the bindings, you can use less mana on the barriers you’re using to buy time. Also, you saw what I was doing? Individual barriers take less mana than a single large one. If you can manage an absorption barrier, you can use energy transformation techniques similar to the shield.”

She nodded again. She was already making a mental list of the techniques she’d need to practice. It wasn’t enough to be fluent merely in the meaning of glyphs and runes. It wasn’t enough to be so practiced at individual spells that they flowed out of her automatically. She would become fluent enough in magic that it flowed through her without thought, like a heartbeat, and escaped into the world like an exhaled breath.

Mirian checked on the group. Gaius had already healed the wounded. “Jei, how are you doing?”

She hated the fear in her old mentor’s eyes. “I will endure,” she said.

Mirian lingered in front of her. “I haven’t forgotten your lessons,” she assured her. “Not a single one. They’re still here.” She put a hand over her heart.

Jei struggled to smile. “I am not used to things being so… beyond me.”

“I understand. They’re still beyond me,” she said, looking up at the sky. Somewhere through the canopy was the Divir moon, hanging in the sky. For now, she told herself.

“Balls! More of those sky jelly things!” Gabriel shouted.

The battle continued.

The hours crawled by as Mirian fought. Soon enough, Gabriel was drained of mana entirely, and Jei followed shortly. Another oniwyrm tried to ambush them. Another swarm of acid ants erupted from a nearby hive. More mist jellies descended with the silence of shadows. Mirian noticed a group of light eaters shadowing them a few miles later, and then they were attacked by a second pack of petal demons. Soon enough, even Ibrahim looked exhausted, though even with his shirt drenched in sweat and myrvite blood, the edges of his soul frayed from how often he was using the Last Fires, he wouldn’t admit it. “I’m fine,” he growled, and they kept going.

“How much further?” Gabriel asked.

“There’s a cave this way that connects to some of the others. We may be able to move closer to a safer path,” said Feng. He looked at Mirian, still afraid of her. “Are you…? I don’t mean to offend, but… you’ve cast a lot of spells…”

“I have enough mana,” she said. She’d fought through the Endelice with less. Her aura was waning, but she was constantly gathering ambient mana in from the rich surroundings, and each time they fought, siphoning as much as she could to minimize her auric mana usage.

She looked to her father. He gave her a subtle nod.

He’s still fine. She could see the wisdom in his restraint in the early battles.

They wove their way along a shallow stream, then through a dark area where the canopy was so thick the forest floor felt like night. Then, daylight gradually returned as they ascended slightly, approaching a set of rock spires. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

“No!” Feng gasped as they stopped.

It took Mirian a moment to realize why. It was another lone tree with towering branches fanned out in a dome. Another emperor tree.

“This is… it should be impossible. There was no emperor tree here twenty years ago when my grandmother took this route! It can’t have grown that fast.” Feng turned to Mirian. “It’s blocking the cave entrance. We’ll have to… there’s another of the strongholds two miles east. That one has been abandoned for at least a century, but it’s the only thing we can reach before dark.”

“Emperor trees aren’t actually plants,” Gaius said. “They’re just very good at pretending.” Seeing that his audience was still confused, he said, “They can move. Slowly, but they can. Likely, it figured out prey came out of the cave entrance, and settled down to feed. They’re very patient.”

Feng was shaking his head. “No one fights an emperor tree. Not even an archmage.”

Mirian looked to Gaius, then to Ibrahim.

Ibrahim, for once, looked unsure, but he nodded.

Gaius flexed his fingers. “I’m a bit out of practice, but I can assure you it can be done. Two more days until the Dahua?”

Feng kept glancing nervously toward the emperor tree. “Yes,” he finally said. “If we take this passage. And we can spend several hours underground, away from the myrvites. Then we’ll be at the river.”

“Good. Then we fight. Na—Mirian, don’t bother with weaken or mental fog curses. You’ll want to use aura suppression and look to place bindings and siphons in key points along the soul. Be prepared for powerful necromancy.”

“We discussed these in a previous cycle, yes,” Mirian said. She let her spellbook hover in front of her.

“You know how I said to practice restraint and efficiency?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t do that here.”

Mirian smiled at him. “Ready,” she said.

Gaius began to weave bindings. Before them, the soul of the emperor tree stirred.