Night fell before the crew guided the ship in with caution born of experience. Rocky shoals were common in this area and it took only a single mistake to rip the bottom out of even so large a ship as the Shor Begone. Under cover of dark, a crew of two, Ulric, and one other to return the boat rowed in to shore. A clasp of forearms was all they shared before the Lupid pulled oar back to his people's boat and they set course by starlight to make a breakneck run for safe harbor.
Ulric, standing on the rocky beach, softly lit by silvery moonlight, was going to do the opposite of find a safe harbor.
Deep, steadying breaths and staring at Varda's endless starscape helped to recenter his focus. A quick check on his status revealed that all parameters were green and he was ready to do the old ultraviolence. Ulric took a moment to shrug his large travel coat into a more comfortable position. It was a waxed canvas affair that felt more rigid than his armor and weighed twice as much. The high collar jutted up under his chin and the wide poncho style hood made him feel like a dark lord of the Sithian order of space magi. Actually, the only redeeming quality of the gray-green duster was that it was utterly waterproof. Just as well, the rain smell in the air tickled his nose, alongside Vatyn's salt.
Another storm. Fandamntastic. No wonder there was an inland sea splitting the continent, all it did was rain around here.
Off he trudged, carefully placing his feet to avoid rolling an ankle on the wet stones jutting up from the shore. No sandy beaches and clear blue waters had he seen yet along the Vatyn's coastline. It was all obscuring blue green waters bordered by high cliffs or, as here, stone dotted moonscapes that made travel in the dark an exercise in frustration. Frustration he was treated to in full while picking his way up from the shore to something of a highland kind of terrain under minimal illumination. Low rocky hills abounded, up, up a rise and then down, down to a fetid peat bog, thankfully avoided by going half a kilometer around, and then back up the next boulder ridden hill.
Two hours of dragging himself through the not quite darkness of a humid spring night in this rugged verticality left him in a foul temper, and that was before the hidden clouds up above dumped torrential, sheeting rain down on him for three minutes, before tapering off to a merely perpetual drizzle. Times like this, he deeply regretted leaving the glade.
Eventually, he'd had enough. Enough of just about everything, and he huddled beneath a boulder to get himself out of the rain, finding fitful sleep.
Dreams came, the punishment of a flogged conscience. He saw jagged arcs of lightning jumping from the pyroclasms unleashed on ships, their burning sails lighting the night. There were spasming, rigid forms locked in the throes of electrocution. Sometimes he was consumed by the powers he wielded, turning into a mindless storm. Sometimes he simply exploded, a cascade failure causing his core to erupt inside him. He was forced back through battles, this time failing, freezing, forced to watch the sword he hadn't blocked end him. Or end another. Varrock was there, frequently. Sometimes Taipan as well. The final macabre pantomime was sufficient horror to force him to come awake with a choked off gasp of pain weighted to rage. He wiped his face briskly, trying to shake off the awful not quite memories and found there were tears in his eyes.
Deep breathes, Old Man, he reminded himself. Nice and deep and slow. He spent another few minutes calming down. The nightmares were becoming more frequent, enough so he wasn't exactly surprised by them. The crying in his sleep was a little worrying. It was uncommon in the time he lived, there hadn't been a war, of any kind, since the Big One that had driven mankind underground, but he was beginning to suspect that he was suffering "combat fatigue".
Too much stress, too much brutality, too much overstimulation of his adrenals.
It had been a little over a year, by his old reckoning, since he'd woken beneath the boughs of the arbors on the [Plateau of Ancients]. The last quarter of it was a little much for a quiet, self-imposed hermit, who made a living tinkering with metallic complexes and fiddling with graphene microstructures. As usual, he'd thrown himself into it with nothing held back. Fixated on hammering through the obstacles that stood before him. That was no shield to the horrors he'd seen and, sometimes, done.
Ulric was doing the right thing, he felt it in his bones. The thing that felt like the only way to bring an end to greater pain for larger numbers of people, some of which he had come to feel friendship, or, even love. Right did not equate to easy, fair, or kind. War was not kind. But it was here, whether he fought or not. The only thing worse than fighting a war is losing one.
"Grim dawn there, Ulric. Awfully grim," He noted aloud from his pocket of eroded boulder.
Rain had departed but left its buddies the clouds behind. The Twins would not grace him with their dance this day. Some combination of muted light and air temperature gave the impression of it being just post sunsrise. The wind wasn't yet picked up, lending the morning that distinct stillness that early hours possessed. Atop the rocky cliffs he saw his destination ahead: Port Edunshire.
If he was going to be completely honest about it, the place looked like a shithole. None of the majestic old Europe architecture and high walls out of fairy tales. Just gray stacked stone mortared by red-brown clay, surrounded by a palisade wall that might have been constructed last week. The logs were newish, still fading from being peeled whilst green. For that matter, many of the town's buildings looked new too.
The only feature of the port town that was remarkable, other than its recent construction and dour, soulless impression was the huge lift that allowed masses of goods to be transferred from the city overlooking the sea to the ratty docks below. The lift looked similar to that of the Iriel'en, only absent their artistry. A great square platform, without rails, was supported by arm thick ropes run through a system of massive pulleys anchored into the cliff face. The timber framing holding the pulleys was new. Ulric was honestly at a loss as to why anyone would bother with building this place up. It had no harbor to speak of, the docks might accommodate six or seven smaller vessels, at most, and its position on this high cliff virtually guaranteed that there was no fresh water other than what a subterranean cistern could provide, according to how much rain it caught. Who the fuck knew what lived in that kind of still water.
Something twitched inside him. Some instinct drawing on subconscious information made him lie flat on the rocky ground, the gray-green canvas of his overlarge coat blending effortlessly with the landscape, and remain completely still. He'd seen nothing to provoke that kind of reaction but when your gut tells you to freeze like that, you'd better damned well do it. A round of the Twins must have passed while he lay there, watching. Trying to figure out what could have triggered the reflex to go to ground. A sea gull cried again, plaintive and distant from somewhere above the depressing little city. Ulric's eyes scanned the town and the coastline. He did not see a single bird.
A breeze had picked up and carried with it another such sound and this time he knew why he was frozen, why his gut said to wait and see. It wasn't a seagull, it was a person. And they weren't crying. This was a despairing wail, full of pain. There was something bad in the air here. Wrong. Closing his eyes, Ulric knew he was about to add to the weight of awful shit on his dreams. He just knew it.
Welp. Nothing for it. Let's go see what fresh hell Prespang has to offer, courtesy of the maybe ancient evil elf monster over there in Prosper.
He could not have chosen a better metaphor for what he found.
The first clue was, upon coming around one of the many rocky outcrops, a small caravel approached at great speed. From his position, crouched behind the stones of the elevating highland, he saw that it bore markings familiar to him: Trachn'ir. This little boat was either far from home and had run the Elves' blockade of the Zelas, or it was flying false flags to hide its real origin. Either way, the vessel drawing in towards the docks so quickly was up to no good. As he watched, he had that suspicion confirmed when the small hold opened and naked figures wearing collars came out of it, marched along the dock towards the lift. Each and every one of them had the long, pointed ears, and features of Aes'r-Celestin. They were all Lowlands Forest Elves. Perhaps the ship really had managed to break through the blockade.
The slaver's ship did not stay long. After unloading its "cargo", it pushed off and turned back towards the open sea. Ulric stopped watching it to see what came of the enslaved Elves. After they were all herded up to the lift, the great pullies were engaged and the heavy platform, slowly, began to rise up the cliff face. Ulric changed position, he would lose sight of them soon as his cover also blocked the view of the top of the bluff, the landing point for the lift hidden behind the outcrop.
Darting from boulder to boulder, eyes scanning endlessly the hasty palisade, the short guard towers, and any sign of adversary, Ulric managed to reach a new hidden cleft that gave him a view of the apex of the lift, from a spot above it, near to the crest of the highland crags. He was higher now, than the city itself, which sat on a leveled bed of compressed stone and dirt. From this lichen covered nook he just barely saw over the low, roughly cut logs of the wall.
The second clue to the mystery revealed itself.
Each Elf from the lift was bound, hands manacled to ankles but with just barely enough chain, so that they could scarcely shuffle. They were prodded along from the lift, which immediately returned below, and their captors took apparent joy in shoving, switching, and generally terrorizing them as they were moved to, for lack of a better word, a paddock. From there, some kind of organizational system split them up and they were escorted away to be tossed into some of the stone and clay houses, the newer looking ones. Some of them.
Ulric's third clue as to the nature of this evil place was when a group of Elves were roughly pulled over to a set of timbers and summarily crucified, their agony filling the air as he watched. The twisted signboards were then hefted and set upright, bleeding freely onto the mud of the small square next to the paddock. This close, the cries of the hanging Elves merely joined the symphony of pain that he was now able to hear clearly. Every now and then a particularly high, piercing shriek would arise, which was what he had heard from his position farther below the city.
With a start, he realized he was shaking. Furious. Already he felt the sharpness, the hardening of his vision to turn the world into a place of over contrasted, geometric edges. Ulric knew what this place was now. It was a charnel house. It was a place where people were tortured until their souls withered and the beauty that was the magic of this world was turned into loathsome poison by their suffering. This was a place for creating the Bane.
Ohh Varda, he lamented, look at what they do to your wonders. Mercy died an early death inside him. These people knew exactly what they did. None of them could be allowed to survive.
Shivering from the combination of hatred and sympathy for the dying Elves, Ulric sat back against the stone of his nook and cultivated violence. Wails of the tortured, sometimes ending abruptly, finally, proved ample fertilizer. It wasn't even Midsunsrise.
Head cradled in his arms, he let the baptism in cruelty continue. This is why he was here. To destroy the ones who would do such things. To rip them from Varda's fertile soil by the root and burn them.
Here I go killing again.
Smooth, efficient motions he made, unclasped the heavy coat's hood and unbuttoned it, letting it fall away. Next, he dug through his pack and reassumed the armored mantle that would become the last sight of every living being inside those walls that did not wear a collar. There were no innocents down there.
Ceraun raged inside him, driving, while his core hummed ominously.
[Warrior's Instinct]
[Battle Rhythm]
[Ceraunoperception]
Cool clarity of mind descended. Ulric stopped fixating on the screams and the knowledge of what was happening inside the city and determined his actions. First, get over the wall.
His matte black armor did not exactly camouflage him, not under the grey skies and against the granite rocks of daylight. It did somewhat obscure his form, especially when he was running at a speed that would shame an olympic sprinter, which he now was.
Rocky ground blurred beneath him as he kept one hand on his large sword's hilt keeping it stable on his back as he sprinted from cover in a straight line to the nearest guard tower. The rails lining the open walled, roofless tower were about five meters from the ground. They were only two meters above the top of the flat timbers of the palisade, timbers not even cut to points to prevent an attacker from doing what he was about to do. Ulric jumped, not even needing to enhance his body to land atop the piss poor wall. Barely even breaking stride he then jumped to clear the tower rail. The guard who was huddled inside her cloak against the damp air, barely registered the dull thump of his leather boots against the wood.
The woman started and opened her mouth to shout but Ulric buried her, covering her mouth while he drew his belt knife and ran it through her heart twice. Barely had he completed that before he hopped the rail to drop down to the muddy streets inside the abomination of Port Edunshire. The next guard tower was roughly a hundred meters away and facing a different angle, the walls facing the highlands being roughly pentagonal. No shouts or hints of alarm accompanied his entry into the town, his entry into the city was clean and quiet.
Taipan would have been proud of him.
Sensations of bodies through the wall assailed him, the impressions of the atrocities being committed pressing upon his flesh until he almost canceled the spell to flee knowing exactly what was being done to the victims within its range. Move.
Ulric moved, heading towards the next guard tower. He kept low, drifting past the alleys, letting speed be his cover. A mere twenty meters from the guard tower, a man turned the corner of the alley ahead. Without slowing, Ulric threw his hand up and instinctively purified a measure of Ceraun into white mana before tuning it to Caelum.
[White interference]
[Wind Blade]
The thread of vacuum guided the thin shard of hardened air at arrow velocity and then more, curving upwards before banking down along the thread of Caelum, itself following hidden air currents. The man had just unloaded himself from his pants before the sound of muddy footsteps alerted him. His eyes raised from his task and looked up just as the hand wide Caelum blade took him diagonally across the face. It looked as if someone took a full swing with an axe, splitting the man's head open with a spray of gore. The corpse dropped. Still no cries. Excellent.
Up and over, Ulric hopped up against the wall of an adjacent stone hut and launched himself to the rail of the tower that served as an overwatch, saved for last in this little cluster of sentries because its occupant was looking out over the Vatyn, instead of watching inland.
He hauled himself easily over onto the platform and, after a brief struggle, his arm wrapped around the face of the similarly huddling watchman, crushing the man's mouth and nose against the [Forest Lord] bone plates of vambrace and cuirass. Three strokes of his knife perforated kidney, heart, and lungs, before he dropped the body and rolled under the rail to fall back to the interior of Port Edunshire.
He was in view from the other posts for no more than a handful of seconds. Still. Eventually, someone would look around and notice the watchers lying down on the job and an investigation would reveal his presence. That left him with a dilemma.
Two of the posts down, three to go. Or was it better to simply begin destroying the perpetrators within? Two seconds he crouched there, deciding.
The perpetrators, he decided. He’d never clear the guard posts while remaining undetected. As much as his dearly missed wife tried to teach him her art, he wasn’t anywhere close to her match at avoiding observation. That he’d done so up to now was already beyond fortunate. What he could do instead, was create chaos by freeing the enslaved.
Each of the stacked stone huts with their thatched roofs appeared, to his electromagnetic senses, to hold between four and ten captives, and up to three tormenters. Ulric drew Xef'tocht from its sheath, wavy lines of cyan metal edge seemingly hungry to be used.
Ulric leaned, back to the corner of one of the huts, and concentrated on the positions of the evil fuckers inside. One back to the door, hips waving over a bent over captive's form while another watched from the side. Motherfuckers.
Spinning around the corner, Ulric brought Xef'tocht down through the lock, the vorpal blade shearing easily through the door and went through, shoulder low, blasting into the dim light beyond the portal. The rapist died first, a horizontal flick of the Sith severing his spine at the base of his neck, as his head turned towards the sound of Ulric's entry, and the second was only a second behind, impaled through the chest, the woman's eyes dimmed as she coughed out her last breaths, blood welling from her nose and mouth. There and then, there were no more male or female monsters, just monsters. Ulric pulled the sword free, unpinning the body from the wall and he took stock.
Seven captives, three beaten into unmoving piles, but alive, two chained to some kind of torture table, strips of skin missing, a female strapped to some kind of wedge, digging into her crotch with weights hung from her ankles, and then the young boy that was being sodomized. And this was the first godsdamned hut.
He only threw up a little bit. Grimacing away the horror, compartmentalizing it away to nightmares in the future, he got his act together.
"We have no time for delays, " Ulric whispered harshly, rapidly, in Elven, "I am from Irielhos and I come to free you all and destroy this place. Whoever can fight or hold weapon, speak, whoever cannot, follow behind and help your kin as best as you can. If you cannot move, then stay here, I will send any who are able to take you away from this place once I have finished killing these monsters."
Orders given, he began using short, careful strokes of his sword to cut the bindings free from the slaves. The woman moaned softly when he lifted her off the implement, leaving streaks of blood behind. The weight on her legs was appalling. Bastards. She was able to move but it was clearly excruciating. He finished cutting down the ones bound to the peeling tables and they huddled quietly in a corner weeping after he cut the chains off them. He was about to try the same on the slave collar of one of the unconscious Elves when the youth being abused cried, quietly, "No!"
Freezing, he looked to the Elf, maybe a decade older than Brighteyes.
Shaking his head, the young man crawled over, whispering, "You cannot! The collars must be rendered inert first, the spells inside it will kill if it is removed or destroyed."
Every single moment, and another bit of light leaving the world. Ulric tried not to curse.
"How?" He urged.
The Elf shook his head again, "I do not know. None have been freed. But all were shown an example when we were captured of a victim of a collar being removed without inactivation. My mother died, instantly." The Elf told him, too hurt to even sound sad.
His hand gripped the Artifact sword's hilt so hard it ached before he unclenched it.
No time. Fuck.
"Fine. Then, if you are seen, you can be ordered to stop or to resist your rescue?" He checked, seeing an immediate problem with his plans.
Nod.
Fuck.
"Fuck! New plan, stay here, tend your kin and yourself as best as you can. If possible, assist in freeing your people as I go ahead and kill the demons in this hell. My priority is saving you all. Failing that, destroying this city completely before any of you can be used to create Bane." He told the boy, wintry as he realized that freeing the captives might not be an option.
The Elves in the room nodded, understanding. They even looked slightly hopeful. For which outcome, Ulric would not ask.
Five minutes in this hut. Too long. He had to hurry. Get in, slay the monsters, get out, you can't play hero anymore.
Resolved, Ulric checked the streets down both ways, before he repeated the cut and ram tactic before, blowing through into the next little house of horrors. He didn't even look at what was being done to the captives inside. A downstroke of blade to cut the torturer almost in half to the waist and then out into the muck of the streets.
He worked a grid, emptying each hut of Prosper's villains, and had cleared roughly a third of them before bells began to sound and yells rose up. The jig was up. Standing over the most recently gutted torturer, Ulric readied himself mentally for what was coming. He'd saved himself so far, not tapping his core's strength almost at all. Fifteen minutes of running flat out was wearing through his stamina though, so he took a few minutes to simply breathe and gather himself. Patience, Ulric. Do it right. Concentrate.
Shouts grew louder and closer as some of the huts were investigated and the dead men found.
A long-held breath slowly sighed out of him. Time for the beasts to meet the Greater Beast.
Ulric tore out of the hut and instantly charged into the backs of three men running in the wrong direction down the street.
These unlucky ones fell with a single broad stroke, spines severed. Xef'tocht was proving its worth, in spades. The blade sheared bone without effort and the length, once thought a touch over long, allowed it a wide swathe of destruction propelled by Ulric's full strength.
"There! To me! To m-aauuhg" Shouted another who turned the corner and spotted him.
The [Wind Blade] that drove through his chest was too late to silence him.
The aborted yell of alarm brought a small squad of six into the street, standing shoulder to shoulder in the narrow confines. Ulric wasn't going to give them room to breathe.
Forwards he dashed, [White Interference] again pooling unaspected mana in precise quantities which he immediately harmonized to those rigid, enduring notes of Terra.
[Stone Wall]
The rock beneath their feet liquified and resolidified instantly, a twenty centimeter wide ridge of stone halfway up their ankles trapping them in place.
Two did something that empowered their legs, ripping free of the rock, they dropped to the mud to avoid his strike, lightning coursing through his sword.
[Crackling Draw]
A line of seared, cut stone and four corpses appeared, their chests ripped open by the lightning infused stroke. Ulric had to dodge now though, as his two misses had come up swinging and he was still recovering from the expenditure of the skill. The first accelerated suddenly, three sharp spear thrusts darting in towards his chest. He parried two, slipped in the mud and took the third off his cuirass's side plates, and then returned the favor with a thrust of his own weapon into that one's gut, drawing a groaning cry. He couldn't finish the spearman though, a large, curved scimitar, much like that one back in the Canopy, came down at his head.
Ulric swayed backwards, retracting his sword and clipped a forearm with his return stroke, not deep enough to put it out of action but enough to have the big sword user concerned. Ulric settled his feet as the other man retreated a few steps. Another pulse from that one and he took a massive over-head slash at Ulric from much too far away. Ulric readied a guard by instinct but was confused by the maneuver from such range until the nearly invisible Caelum wedge blasted his own guarding sword back into his armor and knocked him down with its force. He hit and rolled awkwardly thanks to the slick mud, regaining his feet while the scimitar's curved blade rose high again. Fucking magic.
His hand dropped to the thigh bandoleer he'd made so long ago in the glade, and he sent on of the short, slim knives in a spinless throw. It hit the man in the stomach, beneath his breast plate, and bit through the light mail under his leather jerkin. The links broke but saved him being perforated. Down came the scimitar again, and the blast of wind. Ulric had set himself this time though and the blade broke apart on his sword, shedding off his armored form, though it sent him skidding backwards another meter. Whatever horseshit that was had a cost though, the swordsman's arm struck by Ulric earlier went limp and he looked at it as if betrayed.
More shouts were closing in, Ulric needed this one gone so he could reposition and come at them from behind.
He drew another throwing knife, this time pulling Ceraun's flow into the small projectile. Ulric willed the charges apart, created the link, from source to sink, and hurled the knife. The swordsman smiled at the ineffectual blade and prepared to bat it aside.
Ulric lifted a hand and stole his smile.
[Lightning Javalin]
Thunder shook the thatch roofs and the jagged violet bolt flashed, taking the swordsman in the chest and arm, blasting him away to lay smoking in the street. If he ever got up, he wasn't going to be happy. Ulric had no chance to finish either of them, he turned and ran down the streets, the splatter of mud giving away his position as he led the pursuit back towards the lift. He hadn't come through this part of Port Edunshire, hadn't done his little angel of death routine, so there should be more assholes running around. Which was good, he needed them packed as close together as possible.
Lo! And Behold! There was a wider road, slightly drier, and Ulric raced to it, shouts following. He turned onto the central lane and he and a group of at least twelve armed men stood face to face only three meters apart. The little squad, two deep all the way across the street was a justifiable use of Werona's gift to him.
Ulric pulled the Tephras mage's catalyst from his belt and pointed it at the group as they started their charge. A small portion of his mana drew into the catalyst and the tuned [Arcanite Diamond] reverted it into unaspected magic before the circuit runed into it by the Adept Ash mage twisted his magic into a street filling, dense cloud of incredibly hot ash and cinder.
[Pyroclasm]
The billowing black and glowing red speckled cloud engulfed the men. Agonized shouts rose jarringly high pitched and were rapidly cut off as they broiled rapidly inside the ash. As the cloud traveled it dissipated, thinning and rising to reveal the cooked bodies in steaming mud. Nearby thatch roofs caught fire as the widening edges of the spell grazed them.
Sonofabitch, Ms. Autumnclaw, that is a doozy. It was one of the first unnecessary thoughts he'd had in a long time, born of surprise at the potency of the Adept's Sauri magus's working. Idly he wondered how many more of those volcanic clouds the catalyst had in the tank.
Focus, idiot, Ulric reminded himself, before taking off down the street. He turned another corner and kicked in a door. Another rapist. Shiza. He murdered the animal, cut the bonds of the four Elves in the hut, and moved on. Shouts, commands to "Find him!", and general chaos as the flames on those thatch hut roofs started to spread smoldering embers and smoke drove into the streets, pushed by the eternal winds coming off the Vatyn.
Three more huts, three more torturers dead, three more groups of mauled Elves cut free but still enslaved. [Ceraunoperception] was carrying his ass, letting him play musical chairs with the soldiers who couldn't figure out how their quarry kept slipping behind them, how they kept being caught isolated. Speaking of which, Ulric turned the corner in a rush and ran another man through the back. He let the hilt of his sword go and quickly grabbed the head of the second and wrenched it around, breaking the neck loudly. Ripping the blade free, Ulric was running back towards the wall when his mana sense felt a dense gathering of Aquae, water magic, which was growing.
Uh oh. A new challenger appears. A mage was joining the fray.
Ulric had made his way towards the far western watchtower, the opposite side of Port Edunshire to the one he'd entered. Crouched low, he spotted the tower scout looking for him. The scout jerked upright immediately and pointed in his direction, yelling. Damn, spotted. Ulric sped down the alley, and almost stepped into the huge puddle that was, somehow, spreading through the streets like creeping frost. Something told him he'd better not touch that water and he jumped to scramble up one of the huts and crossed the narrow alley by jumping roof to roof. More shouts said he was too visible but he'd gotten past the Mage's trap and was now headed back towards the lift.
Mana pulsed and Ulric threw himself down to mud. Water congealed from the air where he'd been and abruptly flashed to steam. It was a dual spell, a combination of Aquae and Incendere, or a very subtle bit of magic using only water. Somebody might know enough kinetic theory of matter to have figured out state manipulation. Dangerous, he realized, dragging himself up to get out of the area. He needed to neutralize that mage.
Suddenly his [Ceraunoperception] grew foggy, blurred, as if someone had injected static into it. Fuck. The Mage had realized there was some sort of detection being employed and was doing something to the water in the air to spoof it. He let the spell fall away, before the mage got smart and introduced false signatures to trap him. Back to doing it old school.
Taipan loved this game. Search and destroy, thirty second head start. Ulric couldn't help but miss his wife for a moment, as odd as that seemed at the moment. Alright, sad over, rage on.
Ulric swept past another two alleys and kicked in another door, killing the two men inside loudly and immediately stepped out. Just in time for three armed men in light armor and a fourth wearing a dark trench coat all too similar to the one that Captain Firecracker had been wearing. Hoo buddy, you stepped in it now.
[White Interference]
[Cinder Pearl]
Ulric decided to play into the image that he was a pyromancer himself, given the Tephras spell that was more or less the only magic he'd actually been observed using was an offshoot of the more common Incendere. The six blue white jewels of solid fire spun into burning life and he sent them rocketing towards the group.
The Mage raised a palm and water drew up from the mud lining the streets, turning it to solid clay in an instant and forming a wall of water to intercept his attack. Neat trick, Ulric had to admit, as his spell hit the wall of water and he grinned beneath his helmet casting again. Even as the gems detonated, Ulric reached out with his core and seized the air around the mage hardening it into a dense and, importantly, insulating shell of Caelum.
[Skyshield]
Flashing steam and roiling flame rose into the air and, trapped, poured down the walls of the dome of air, trapping the heat inside. Screeches filled air before cutting off and silence greeted him. He had to tip his hat to the Mage. Using steam against them had been his idea, after all. Which was how Ulric learned one of the most important lessons about dueling mages: They are not dead until you see the body.
A water bullet the size of a large apple shattered his shield so fast he barely saw it and hit his pauldron hard enough to snap a buckle. The world spun violently and he was thrown four body lengths to slide through the mud another two.
"Ugg…" Ulric moaned quietly, thankful he'd kept a hold on his sword through that. The right shoulder pauldron was undamaged but hung half off his body, one of the straps and buckles having been torn by the magical strike. That leather was [Forest Lord] hide, about as tough a material as you'd come across. His entire shoulder area was also bruised to shit. Ulric's respect for the power of those Aquae spells ratcheted up substantially. Mage uses water beam and it's super effective.
Ulric clambered to his feet, keeping his eyeballs peeled on the dissipating steam cloud. The three escorting the mage were cooked. The mage himself, however, was unharmed though a barrier of clear water was swirling, destabilized by the heat that it had had to dissipate. A barrier. Just like Captain Firecracker. He was good. As good as Gother Cenur'it? Ulric would soon find out.
The lack of shouts and clamor was good, it meant he’d managed to thin the ranks, didn’t have to worry so much about getting shot in the ass. Ulric focused all his attention on his enemy.
Both combatants had the same idea at the same time, now that the other's antagonist was directly before them and they weren't actively avoiding some form of attack. The Hydromancer's eyes turned white as he peered into Ulric's Akashic connection. Ulric didn't even waste the effort to stop him, instead focusing himself on the Mage, his being, form, and calling up the hard-faced man's own link to the planet's tapestry.
[Scan]
The flood of information poured into his mind and he instantly saw the abilities of the mage laid out before him. The only reason he had time to interpret and internalize it was because the mage was doing the same thing for his own information, seeing the breadth of Ulric’s own imprint into the world called Varda. The Hydromancer, Mr. Ifrudo the waterlogged torturer of Port Edunshire, was an Adept that had forgone any attempt to regain his spells prior to awakening. He was, in the reckoning of those that could call themselves true mages, a cripple. The Aquae Adept was also wearing an expression close to naked horror at what appeared before him when Ulric’s status manifested. Good. Fuck’em.
Ulric felt the spellform holding that barrier together, like a tapestry of energy bound by will. Relentless, he reached out with his own core and grabbed the working in his metaphysical fist, guided by his mana sense and scores of hours of trying to untangle an Archmage’s workings, and pulled.
The barrier came apart and the Hydromancer's look of horror was replaced by shock.
Instantly, the mage recast the spell pulling the pool of spilled water back into shape. Ulric jerked it apart again. Ektyl'rt, counterspelling, required a refined mana sense and the ability to recognize a spellform's overall structure so that you could destabilize it. Only those who had mastered their own mana and its control could reach out to another’s. It was hard as shit to do in combat conditions, which was why Gother had had him practicing the skill while Taipan tried to kick his liver, in between throwing small ice balls at him randomly. Pain was a phenomenal teacher. So was Gother.
Lord instinct howling, he gave in to the aggression and drew hard on his mana, tearing the third attempt at a barrier apart before spinning up his own power. Ceraun, endless, chasing, dancing Ceraun, came easily. Caelum, free and fickle and gusting, joined to it, forming four scythes of air bound together by lightning.
[Galvanic Mistral]
The mage wasn't ready for the synthetic spell, he tried to pull Ulric's weave apart and found it to be like pulling apart a knot tied with steel cable. Ulric's will wasn't so easily broken, nor was his spellform so sloppy that some schmuck could pull it apart on first glance, not with two different harmonics joined. He realized, too late that he couldn't break Ulric's spell and raise another wall of water screaming denial. It snapped into place between them just before the crackling maelstrom hit, blocking the mage from view as the spells collided sent droplets exploding into the air as a fine mist.
A cry rose up and Ulric felt satisfaction in his bones. [Prismatic Weave] elevated his mana control to a thing of thought becoming deed. Not as good as that dry old bag of bones after all, he confirmed about his enemy.
The Reforged man wasn't going to be fooled twice though, that yell meant he'd survived and Ulric was already dashing to the side, eyes scanning the surroundings for threats. Nobody hit by his Mistral made sound, they didn't have lungs to do it, or most of a head and neck or anything but chunks. Three bullets hit the place he'd been standing meteoric trenches blasting mud craters and throwing debris, while the highest slammed into a hut and blew its wall inwards. The scientist turned warrior smiled at the ploy. Fool me once.
Ulric firmed his two-handed grip on Xef'tocht, and pulsed [Ceraunoperception] briefly before letting it go. The jamming was still there but he distinctly felt the Mage, hidden behind his dispersed shield. He only had one arm and it was holding his stomach. Ulric screamed and threw his sword in a glittering spin he heard the gasp along with the damp hiss of the blade shearing through flesh. Water gathering in the air for some sort of last-ditch effort, probably that rain thing, dissipated, as well as the remnants of the water wall, the will behind it gone.
Xef'tocht was standing tall three meters past where the mage's chest had been, buried halfway to its hilt. The Hydromancer lay in two clean pieces, as if parted by a laser for a bilateral dissection. Ulric stood straight and pulsed [Ceraunoperception] again, worried about his mana reserves. He was working with maybe fifteen percent, by the slightly hollow feeling in his core.
Nevertheless, lightning still hummed through his mana circuits and body.
These were the people creating the Bane. Ulric wasn't done yet. Not until they were all dead.
Four of the sadistic fuckers came around the corner and sprinted at the evidently unarmed man. Ulric pulled his knife and let the lessons Taipan had drilled into his brain and body come to the fore. Every nasty trick, feint, and way to hurt a man. Every cut to bleed him, blind him, and destroy him blurred into the background of his brain. The charging men's expression fell when they saw their lone enemy smile with all the warmth of a glacier.
There would be no nightmares for these men. Ceraun cried for release. So did the Lord Instinct. So did he.
[Surge]
Night fell before the crew guided the ship in with caution born of experience. Rocky shoals were common in this area and it took only a single mistake to rip the bottom out of even so large a ship as the Shor Begone. Under cover of dark, a crew of two, Ulric, and one other to return the boat rowed in to shore. A clasp of forearms was all they shared before the Lupid pulled oar back to his people's boat and they set course by starlight to make a breakneck run for safe harbor.
Ulric, standing on the rocky beach, softly lit by silvery moonlight, was going to do the opposite of find a safe harbor.
Deep, steadying breaths and staring at Varda's endless starscape helped to recenter his focus. A quick check on his status revealed that all parameters were green and he was ready to do the old ultraviolence. Ulric took a moment to shrug his large travel coat into a more comfortable position. It was a waxed canvas affair that felt more rigid than his armor and weighed twice as much. The high collar jutted up under his chin and the wide poncho style hood made him feel like a dark lord of the Sithian order of space magi. Actually, the only redeeming quality of the gray-green duster was that it was utterly waterproof. Just as well, the rain smell in the air tickled his nose, alongside Vatyn's salt.
Another storm. Fandamntastic. No wonder there was an inland sea splitting the continent, all it did was rain around here.
Off he trudged, carefully placing his feet to avoid rolling an ankle on the wet stones jutting up from the shore. No sandy beaches and clear blue waters had he seen yet along the Vatyn's coastline. It was all obscuring blue green waters bordered by high cliffs or, as here, stone dotted moonscapes that made travel in the dark an exercise in frustration. Frustration he was treated to in full while picking his way up from the shore to something of a highland kind of terrain under minimal illumination. Low rocky hills abounded, up, up a rise and then down, down to a fetid peat bog, thankfully avoided by going half a kilometer around, and then back up the next boulder ridden hill.
Two hours of dragging himself through the not quite darkness of a humid spring night in this rugged verticality left him in a foul temper, and that was before the hidden clouds up above dumped torrential, sheeting rain down on him for three minutes, before tapering off to a merely perpetual drizzle. Times like this, he deeply regretted leaving the glade.
Eventually, he'd had enough. Enough of just about everything, and he huddled beneath a boulder to get himself out of the rain, finding fitful sleep.
Dreams came, the punishment of a flogged conscience. He saw jagged arcs of lightning jumping from the pyroclasms unleashed on ships, their burning sails lighting the night. There were spasming, rigid forms locked in the throes of electrocution. Sometimes he was consumed by the powers he wielded, turning into a mindless storm. Sometimes he simply exploded, a cascade failure causing his core to erupt inside him. He was forced back through battles, this time failing, freezing, forced to watch the sword he hadn't blocked end him. Or end another. Varrock was there, frequently. Sometimes Taipan as well. The final macabre pantomime was sufficient horror to force him to come awake with a choked off gasp of pain weighted to rage. He wiped his face briskly, trying to shake off the awful not quite memories and found there were tears in his eyes.
Deep breathes, Old Man, he reminded himself. Nice and deep and slow. He spent another few minutes calming down. The nightmares were becoming more frequent, enough so he wasn't exactly surprised by them. The crying in his sleep was a little worrying. It was uncommon in the time he lived, there hadn't been a war, of any kind, since the Big One that had driven mankind underground, but he was beginning to suspect that he was suffering "combat fatigue".
Too much stress, too much brutality, too much overstimulation of his adrenals.
It had been a little over a year, by his old reckoning, since he'd woken beneath the boughs of the arbors on the [Plateau of Ancients]. The last quarter of it was a little much for a quiet, self-imposed hermit, who made a living tinkering with metallic complexes and fiddling with graphene microstructures. As usual, he'd thrown himself into it with nothing held back. Fixated on hammering through the obstacles that stood before him. That was no shield to the horrors he'd seen and, sometimes, done.
Ulric was doing the right thing, he felt it in his bones. The thing that felt like the only way to bring an end to greater pain for larger numbers of people, some of which he had come to feel friendship, or, even love. Right did not equate to easy, fair, or kind. War was not kind. But it was here, whether he fought or not. The only thing worse than fighting a war is losing one.
"Grim dawn there, Ulric. Awfully grim," He noted aloud from his pocket of eroded boulder.
Rain had departed but left its buddies the clouds behind. The Twins would not grace him with their dance this day. Some combination of muted light and air temperature gave the impression of it being just post sunsrise. The wind wasn't yet picked up, lending the morning that distinct stillness that early hours possessed. Atop the rocky cliffs he saw his destination ahead: Port Edunshire.
If he was going to be completely honest about it, the place looked like a shithole. None of the majestic old Europe architecture and high walls out of fairy tales. Just gray stacked stone mortared by red-brown clay, surrounded by a palisade wall that might have been constructed last week. The logs were newish, still fading from being peeled whilst green. For that matter, many of the town's buildings looked new too.
The only feature of the port town that was remarkable, other than its recent construction and dour, soulless impression was the huge lift that allowed masses of goods to be transferred from the city overlooking the sea to the ratty docks below. The lift looked similar to that of the Iriel'en, only absent their artistry. A great square platform, without rails, was supported by arm thick ropes run through a system of massive pulleys anchored into the cliff face. The timber framing holding the pulleys was new. Ulric was honestly at a loss as to why anyone would bother with building this place up. It had no harbor to speak of, the docks might accommodate six or seven smaller vessels, at most, and its position on this high cliff virtually guaranteed that there was no fresh water other than what a subterranean cistern could provide, according to how much rain it caught. Who the fuck knew what lived in that kind of still water.
Something twitched inside him. Some instinct drawing on subconscious information made him lie flat on the rocky ground, the gray-green canvas of his overlarge coat blending effortlessly with the landscape, and remain completely still. He'd seen nothing to provoke that kind of reaction but when your gut tells you to freeze like that, you'd better damned well do it. A round of the Twins must have passed while he lay there, watching. Trying to figure out what could have triggered the reflex to go to ground. A sea gull cried again, plaintive and distant from somewhere above the depressing little city. Ulric's eyes scanned the town and the coastline. He did not see a single bird.
A breeze had picked up and carried with it another such sound and this time he knew why he was frozen, why his gut said to wait and see. It wasn't a seagull, it was a person. And they weren't crying. This was a despairing wail, full of pain. There was something bad in the air here. Wrong. Closing his eyes, Ulric knew he was about to add to the weight of awful shit on his dreams. He just knew it.
Welp. Nothing for it. Let's go see what fresh hell Prespang has to offer, courtesy of the maybe ancient evil elf monster over there in Prosper.
He could not have chosen a better metaphor for what he found.
The first clue was, upon coming around one of the many rocky outcrops, a small caravel approached at great speed. From his position, crouched behind the stones of the elevating highland, he saw that it bore markings familiar to him: Trachn'ir. This little boat was either far from home and had run the Elves' blockade of the Zelas, or it was flying false flags to hide its real origin. Either way, the vessel drawing in towards the docks so quickly was up to no good. As he watched, he had that suspicion confirmed when the small hold opened and naked figures wearing collars came out of it, marched along the dock towards the lift. Each and every one of them had the long, pointed ears, and features of Aes'r-Celestin. They were all Lowlands Forest Elves. Perhaps the ship really had managed to break through the blockade.
The slaver's ship did not stay long. After unloading its "cargo", it pushed off and turned back towards the open sea. Ulric stopped watching it to see what came of the enslaved Elves. After they were all herded up to the lift, the great pullies were engaged and the heavy platform, slowly, began to rise up the cliff face. Ulric changed position, he would lose sight of them soon as his cover also blocked the view of the top of the bluff, the landing point for the lift hidden behind the outcrop.
Darting from boulder to boulder, eyes scanning endlessly the hasty palisade, the short guard towers, and any sign of adversary, Ulric managed to reach a new hidden cleft that gave him a view of the apex of the lift, from a spot above it, near to the crest of the highland crags. He was higher now, than the city itself, which sat on a leveled bed of compressed stone and dirt. From this lichen covered nook he just barely saw over the low, roughly cut logs of the wall.
The second clue to the mystery revealed itself.
Each Elf from the lift was bound, hands manacled to ankles but with just barely enough chain, so that they could scarcely shuffle. They were prodded along from the lift, which immediately returned below, and their captors took apparent joy in shoving, switching, and generally terrorizing them as they were moved to, for lack of a better word, a paddock. From there, some kind of organizational system split them up and they were escorted away to be tossed into some of the stone and clay houses, the newer looking ones. Some of them.
Ulric's third clue as to the nature of this evil place was when a group of Elves were roughly pulled over to a set of timbers and summarily crucified, their agony filling the air as he watched. The twisted signboards were then hefted and set upright, bleeding freely onto the mud of the small square next to the paddock. This close, the cries of the hanging Elves merely joined the symphony of pain that he was now able to hear clearly. Every now and then a particularly high, piercing shriek would arise, which was what he had heard from his position farther below the city.
With a start, he realized he was shaking. Furious. Already he felt the sharpness, the hardening of his vision to turn the world into a place of over contrasted, geometric edges. Ulric knew what this place was now. It was a charnel house. It was a place where people were tortured until their souls withered and the beauty that was the magic of this world was turned into loathsome poison by their suffering. This was a place for creating the Bane.
Ohh Varda, he lamented, look at what they do to your wonders. Mercy died an early death inside him. These people knew exactly what they did. None of them could be allowed to survive.
Shivering from the combination of hatred and sympathy for the dying Elves, Ulric sat back against the stone of his nook and cultivated violence. Wails of the tortured, sometimes ending abruptly, finally, proved ample fertilizer. It wasn't even Midsunsrise.
Head cradled in his arms, he let the baptism in cruelty continue. This is why he was here. To destroy the ones who would do such things. To rip them from Varda's fertile soil by the root and burn them.
Here I go killing again.
Smooth, efficient motions he made, unclasped the heavy coat's hood and unbuttoned it, letting it fall away. Next, he dug through his pack and reassumed the armored mantle that would become the last sight of every living being inside those walls that did not wear a collar. There were no innocents down there.
Ceraun raged inside him, driving, while his core hummed ominously.
[Warrior's Instinct]
[Battle Rhythm]
[Ceraunoperception]
Cool clarity of mind descended. Ulric stopped fixating on the screams and the knowledge of what was happening inside the city and determined his actions. First, get over the wall.
His matte black armor did not exactly camouflage him, not under the grey skies and against the granite rocks of daylight. It did somewhat obscure his form, especially when he was running at a speed that would shame an olympic sprinter, which he now was.
Rocky ground blurred beneath him as he kept one hand on his large sword's hilt keeping it stable on his back as he sprinted from cover in a straight line to the nearest guard tower. The rails lining the open walled, roofless tower were about five meters from the ground. They were only two meters above the top of the flat timbers of the palisade, timbers not even cut to points to prevent an attacker from doing what he was about to do. Ulric jumped, not even needing to enhance his body to land atop the piss poor wall. Barely even breaking stride he then jumped to clear the tower rail. The guard who was huddled inside her cloak against the damp air, barely registered the dull thump of his leather boots against the wood.
The woman started and opened her mouth to shout but Ulric buried her, covering her mouth while he drew his belt knife and ran it through her heart twice. Barely had he completed that before he hopped the rail to drop down to the muddy streets inside the abomination of Port Edunshire. The next guard tower was roughly a hundred meters away and facing a different angle, the walls facing the highlands being roughly pentagonal. No shouts or hints of alarm accompanied his entry into the town, his entry into the city was clean and quiet.
Taipan would have been proud of him.
Sensations of bodies through the wall assailed him, the impressions of the atrocities being committed pressing upon his flesh until he almost canceled the spell to flee knowing exactly what was being done to the victims within its range. Move.
Ulric moved, heading towards the next guard tower. He kept low, drifting past the alleys, letting speed be his cover. A mere twenty meters from the guard tower, a man turned the corner of the alley ahead. Without slowing, Ulric threw his hand up and instinctively purified a measure of Ceraun into white mana before tuning it to Caelum.
[White interference]
[Wind Blade]
The thread of vacuum guided the thin shard of hardened air at arrow velocity and then more, curving upwards before banking down along the thread of Caelum, itself following hidden air currents. The man had just unloaded himself from his pants before the sound of muddy footsteps alerted him. His eyes raised from his task and looked up just as the hand wide Caelum blade took him diagonally across the face. It looked as if someone took a full swing with an axe, splitting the man's head open with a spray of gore. The corpse dropped. Still no cries. Excellent.
Up and over, Ulric hopped up against the wall of an adjacent stone hut and launched himself to the rail of the tower that served as an overwatch, saved for last in this little cluster of sentries because its occupant was looking out over the Vatyn, instead of watching inland.
He hauled himself easily over onto the platform and, after a brief struggle, his arm wrapped around the face of the similarly huddling watchman, crushing the man's mouth and nose against the [Forest Lord] bone plates of vambrace and cuirass. Three strokes of his knife perforated kidney, heart, and lungs, before he dropped the body and rolled under the rail to fall back to the interior of Port Edunshire.
He was in view from the other posts for no more than a handful of seconds. Still. Eventually, someone would look around and notice the watchers lying down on the job and an investigation would reveal his presence. That left him with a dilemma.
Two of the posts down, three to go. Or was it better to simply begin destroying the perpetrators within? Two seconds he crouched there, deciding.
The perpetrators, he decided. He’d never clear the guard posts while remaining undetected. As much as his dearly missed wife tried to teach him her art, he wasn’t anywhere close to her match at avoiding observation. That he’d done so up to now was already beyond fortunate. What he could do instead, was create chaos by freeing the enslaved.
Each of the stacked stone huts with their thatched roofs appeared, to his electromagnetic senses, to hold between four and ten captives, and up to three tormenters. Ulric drew Xef'tocht from its sheath, wavy lines of cyan metal edge seemingly hungry to be used.
Ulric leaned, back to the corner of one of the huts, and concentrated on the positions of the evil fuckers inside. One back to the door, hips waving over a bent over captive's form while another watched from the side. Motherfuckers.
Spinning around the corner, Ulric brought Xef'tocht down through the lock, the vorpal blade shearing easily through the door and went through, shoulder low, blasting into the dim light beyond the portal. The rapist died first, a horizontal flick of the Sith severing his spine at the base of his neck, as his head turned towards the sound of Ulric's entry, and the second was only a second behind, impaled through the chest, the woman's eyes dimmed as she coughed out her last breaths, blood welling from her nose and mouth. There and then, there were no more male or female monsters, just monsters. Ulric pulled the sword free, unpinning the body from the wall and he took stock.
Seven captives, three beaten into unmoving piles, but alive, two chained to some kind of torture table, strips of skin missing, a female strapped to some kind of wedge, digging into her crotch with weights hung from her ankles, and then the young boy that was being sodomized. And this was the first godsdamned hut.
He only threw up a little bit. Grimacing away the horror, compartmentalizing it away to nightmares in the future, he got his act together.
"We have no time for delays, " Ulric whispered harshly, rapidly, in Elven, "I am from Irielhos and I come to free you all and destroy this place. Whoever can fight or hold weapon, speak, whoever cannot, follow behind and help your kin as best as you can. If you cannot move, then stay here, I will send any who are able to take you away from this place once I have finished killing these monsters."
Orders given, he began using short, careful strokes of his sword to cut the bindings free from the slaves. The woman moaned softly when he lifted her off the implement, leaving streaks of blood behind. The weight on her legs was appalling. Bastards. She was able to move but it was clearly excruciating. He finished cutting down the ones bound to the peeling tables and they huddled quietly in a corner weeping after he cut the chains off them. He was about to try the same on the slave collar of one of the unconscious Elves when the youth being abused cried, quietly, "No!"
Freezing, he looked to the Elf, maybe a decade older than Brighteyes.
Shaking his head, the young man crawled over, whispering, "You cannot! The collars must be rendered inert first, the spells inside it will kill if it is removed or destroyed."
Every single moment, and another bit of light leaving the world. Ulric tried not to curse.
"How?" He urged.
The Elf shook his head again, "I do not know. None have been freed. But all were shown an example when we were captured of a victim of a collar being removed without inactivation. My mother died, instantly." The Elf told him, too hurt to even sound sad.
His hand gripped the Artifact sword's hilt so hard it ached before he unclenched it.
No time. Fuck.
"Fine. Then, if you are seen, you can be ordered to stop or to resist your rescue?" He checked, seeing an immediate problem with his plans.
Nod.
Fuck.
"Fuck! New plan, stay here, tend your kin and yourself as best as you can. If possible, assist in freeing your people as I go ahead and kill the demons in this hell. My priority is saving you all. Failing that, destroying this city completely before any of you can be used to create Bane." He told the boy, wintry as he realized that freeing the captives might not be an option.
The Elves in the room nodded, understanding. They even looked slightly hopeful. For which outcome, Ulric would not ask.
Five minutes in this hut. Too long. He had to hurry. Get in, slay the monsters, get out, you can't play hero anymore.
Resolved, Ulric checked the streets down both ways, before he repeated the cut and ram tactic before, blowing through into the next little house of horrors. He didn't even look at what was being done to the captives inside. A downstroke of blade to cut the torturer almost in half to the waist and then out into the muck of the streets.
He worked a grid, emptying each hut of Prosper's villains, and had cleared roughly a third of them before bells began to sound and yells rose up. The jig was up. Standing over the most recently gutted torturer, Ulric readied himself mentally for what was coming. He'd saved himself so far, not tapping his core's strength almost at all. Fifteen minutes of running flat out was wearing through his stamina though, so he took a few minutes to simply breathe and gather himself. Patience, Ulric. Do it right. Concentrate.
Shouts grew louder and closer as some of the huts were investigated and the dead men found.
A long-held breath slowly sighed out of him. Time for the beasts to meet the Greater Beast.
Ulric tore out of the hut and instantly charged into the backs of three men running in the wrong direction down the street.
These unlucky ones fell with a single broad stroke, spines severed. Xef'tocht was proving its worth, in spades. The blade sheared bone without effort and the length, once thought a touch over long, allowed it a wide swathe of destruction propelled by Ulric's full strength.
"There! To me! To m-aauuhg" Shouted another who turned the corner and spotted him.
The [Wind Blade] that drove through his chest was too late to silence him.
The aborted yell of alarm brought a small squad of six into the street, standing shoulder to shoulder in the narrow confines. Ulric wasn't going to give them room to breathe.
Forwards he dashed, [White Interference] again pooling unaspected mana in precise quantities which he immediately harmonized to those rigid, enduring notes of Terra.
[Stone Wall]
The rock beneath their feet liquified and resolidified instantly, a twenty centimeter wide ridge of stone halfway up their ankles trapping them in place.
Two did something that empowered their legs, ripping free of the rock, they dropped to the mud to avoid his strike, lightning coursing through his sword.
[Crackling Draw]
A line of seared, cut stone and four corpses appeared, their chests ripped open by the lightning infused stroke. Ulric had to dodge now though, as his two misses had come up swinging and he was still recovering from the expenditure of the skill. The first accelerated suddenly, three sharp spear thrusts darting in towards his chest. He parried two, slipped in the mud and took the third off his cuirass's side plates, and then returned the favor with a thrust of his own weapon into that one's gut, drawing a groaning cry. He couldn't finish the spearman though, a large, curved scimitar, much like that one back in the Canopy, came down at his head.
Ulric swayed backwards, retracting his sword and clipped a forearm with his return stroke, not deep enough to put it out of action but enough to have the big sword user concerned. Ulric settled his feet as the other man retreated a few steps. Another pulse from that one and he took a massive over-head slash at Ulric from much too far away. Ulric readied a guard by instinct but was confused by the maneuver from such range until the nearly invisible Caelum wedge blasted his own guarding sword back into his armor and knocked him down with its force. He hit and rolled awkwardly thanks to the slick mud, regaining his feet while the scimitar's curved blade rose high again. Fucking magic.
His hand dropped to the thigh bandoleer he'd made so long ago in the glade, and he sent on of the short, slim knives in a spinless throw. It hit the man in the stomach, beneath his breast plate, and bit through the light mail under his leather jerkin. The links broke but saved him being perforated. Down came the scimitar again, and the blast of wind. Ulric had set himself this time though and the blade broke apart on his sword, shedding off his armored form, though it sent him skidding backwards another meter. Whatever horseshit that was had a cost though, the swordsman's arm struck by Ulric earlier went limp and he looked at it as if betrayed.
More shouts were closing in, Ulric needed this one gone so he could reposition and come at them from behind.
He drew another throwing knife, this time pulling Ceraun's flow into the small projectile. Ulric willed the charges apart, created the link, from source to sink, and hurled the knife. The swordsman smiled at the ineffectual blade and prepared to bat it aside.
Ulric lifted a hand and stole his smile.
[Lightning Javalin]
Thunder shook the thatch roofs and the jagged violet bolt flashed, taking the swordsman in the chest and arm, blasting him away to lay smoking in the street. If he ever got up, he wasn't going to be happy. Ulric had no chance to finish either of them, he turned and ran down the streets, the splatter of mud giving away his position as he led the pursuit back towards the lift. He hadn't come through this part of Port Edunshire, hadn't done his little angel of death routine, so there should be more assholes running around. Which was good, he needed them packed as close together as possible.
Lo! And Behold! There was a wider road, slightly drier, and Ulric raced to it, shouts following. He turned onto the central lane and he and a group of at least twelve armed men stood face to face only three meters apart. The little squad, two deep all the way across the street was a justifiable use of Werona's gift to him.
Ulric pulled the Tephras mage's catalyst from his belt and pointed it at the group as they started their charge. A small portion of his mana drew into the catalyst and the tuned [Arcanite Diamond] reverted it into unaspected magic before the circuit runed into it by the Adept Ash mage twisted his magic into a street filling, dense cloud of incredibly hot ash and cinder.
[Pyroclasm]
The billowing black and glowing red speckled cloud engulfed the men. Agonized shouts rose jarringly high pitched and were rapidly cut off as they broiled rapidly inside the ash. As the cloud traveled it dissipated, thinning and rising to reveal the cooked bodies in steaming mud. Nearby thatch roofs caught fire as the widening edges of the spell grazed them.
Sonofabitch, Ms. Autumnclaw, that is a doozy. It was one of the first unnecessary thoughts he'd had in a long time, born of surprise at the potency of the Adept's Sauri magus's working. Idly he wondered how many more of those volcanic clouds the catalyst had in the tank.
Focus, idiot, Ulric reminded himself, before taking off down the street. He turned another corner and kicked in a door. Another rapist. Shiza. He murdered the animal, cut the bonds of the four Elves in the hut, and moved on. Shouts, commands to "Find him!", and general chaos as the flames on those thatch hut roofs started to spread smoldering embers and smoke drove into the streets, pushed by the eternal winds coming off the Vatyn.
Three more huts, three more torturers dead, three more groups of mauled Elves cut free but still enslaved. [Ceraunoperception] was carrying his ass, letting him play musical chairs with the soldiers who couldn't figure out how their quarry kept slipping behind them, how they kept being caught isolated. Speaking of which, Ulric turned the corner in a rush and ran another man through the back. He let the hilt of his sword go and quickly grabbed the head of the second and wrenched it around, breaking the neck loudly. Ripping the blade free, Ulric was running back towards the wall when his mana sense felt a dense gathering of Aquae, water magic, which was growing.
Uh oh. A new challenger appears. A mage was joining the fray.
Ulric had made his way towards the far western watchtower, the opposite side of Port Edunshire to the one he'd entered. Crouched low, he spotted the tower scout looking for him. The scout jerked upright immediately and pointed in his direction, yelling. Damn, spotted. Ulric sped down the alley, and almost stepped into the huge puddle that was, somehow, spreading through the streets like creeping frost. Something told him he'd better not touch that water and he jumped to scramble up one of the huts and crossed the narrow alley by jumping roof to roof. More shouts said he was too visible but he'd gotten past the Mage's trap and was now headed back towards the lift.
Mana pulsed and Ulric threw himself down to mud. Water congealed from the air where he'd been and abruptly flashed to steam. It was a dual spell, a combination of Aquae and Incendere, or a very subtle bit of magic using only water. Somebody might know enough kinetic theory of matter to have figured out state manipulation. Dangerous, he realized, dragging himself up to get out of the area. He needed to neutralize that mage.
Suddenly his [Ceraunoperception] grew foggy, blurred, as if someone had injected static into it. Fuck. The Mage had realized there was some sort of detection being employed and was doing something to the water in the air to spoof it. He let the spell fall away, before the mage got smart and introduced false signatures to trap him. Back to doing it old school.
Taipan loved this game. Search and destroy, thirty second head start. Ulric couldn't help but miss his wife for a moment, as odd as that seemed at the moment. Alright, sad over, rage on.
Ulric swept past another two alleys and kicked in another door, killing the two men inside loudly and immediately stepped out. Just in time for three armed men in light armor and a fourth wearing a dark trench coat all too similar to the one that Captain Firecracker had been wearing. Hoo buddy, you stepped in it now.
[White Interference]
[Cinder Pearl]
Ulric decided to play into the image that he was a pyromancer himself, given the Tephras spell that was more or less the only magic he'd actually been observed using was an offshoot of the more common Incendere. The six blue white jewels of solid fire spun into burning life and he sent them rocketing towards the group.
The Mage raised a palm and water drew up from the mud lining the streets, turning it to solid clay in an instant and forming a wall of water to intercept his attack. Neat trick, Ulric had to admit, as his spell hit the wall of water and he grinned beneath his helmet casting again. Even as the gems detonated, Ulric reached out with his core and seized the air around the mage hardening it into a dense and, importantly, insulating shell of Caelum.
[Skyshield]
Flashing steam and roiling flame rose into the air and, trapped, poured down the walls of the dome of air, trapping the heat inside. Screeches filled air before cutting off and silence greeted him. He had to tip his hat to the Mage. Using steam against them had been his idea, after all. Which was how Ulric learned one of the most important lessons about dueling mages: They are not dead until you see the body.
A water bullet the size of a large apple shattered his shield so fast he barely saw it and hit his pauldron hard enough to snap a buckle. The world spun violently and he was thrown four body lengths to slide through the mud another two.
"Ugg…" Ulric moaned quietly, thankful he'd kept a hold on his sword through that. The right shoulder pauldron was undamaged but hung half off his body, one of the straps and buckles having been torn by the magical strike. That leather was [Forest Lord] hide, about as tough a material as you'd come across. His entire shoulder area was also bruised to shit. Ulric's respect for the power of those Aquae spells ratcheted up substantially. Mage uses water beam and it's super effective.
Ulric clambered to his feet, keeping his eyeballs peeled on the dissipating steam cloud. The three escorting the mage were cooked. The mage himself, however, was unharmed though a barrier of clear water was swirling, destabilized by the heat that it had had to dissipate. A barrier. Just like Captain Firecracker. He was good. As good as Gother Cenur'it? Ulric would soon find out.
The lack of shouts and clamor was good, it meant he’d managed to thin the ranks, didn’t have to worry so much about getting shot in the ass. Ulric focused all his attention on his enemy.
Both combatants had the same idea at the same time, now that the other's antagonist was directly before them and they weren't actively avoiding some form of attack. The Hydromancer's eyes turned white as he peered into Ulric's Akashic connection. Ulric didn't even waste the effort to stop him, instead focusing himself on the Mage, his being, form, and calling up the hard-faced man's own link to the planet's tapestry.
[Scan]
The flood of information poured into his mind and he instantly saw the abilities of the mage laid out before him. The only reason he had time to interpret and internalize it was because the mage was doing the same thing for his own information, seeing the breadth of Ulric’s own imprint into the world called Varda. The Hydromancer, Mr. Ifrudo the waterlogged torturer of Port Edunshire, was an Adept that had forgone any attempt to regain his spells prior to awakening. He was, in the reckoning of those that could call themselves true mages, a cripple. The Aquae Adept was also wearing an expression close to naked horror at what appeared before him when Ulric’s status manifested. Good. Fuck’em.
Ulric felt the spellform holding that barrier together, like a tapestry of energy bound by will. Relentless, he reached out with his own core and grabbed the working in his metaphysical fist, guided by his mana sense and scores of hours of trying to untangle an Archmage’s workings, and pulled.
The barrier came apart and the Hydromancer's look of horror was replaced by shock.
Instantly, the mage recast the spell pulling the pool of spilled water back into shape. Ulric jerked it apart again. Ektyl'rt, counterspelling, required a refined mana sense and the ability to recognize a spellform's overall structure so that you could destabilize it. Only those who had mastered their own mana and its control could reach out to another’s. It was hard as shit to do in combat conditions, which was why Gother had had him practicing the skill while Taipan tried to kick his liver, in between throwing small ice balls at him randomly. Pain was a phenomenal teacher. So was Gother.
Lord instinct howling, he gave in to the aggression and drew hard on his mana, tearing the third attempt at a barrier apart before spinning up his own power. Ceraun, endless, chasing, dancing Ceraun, came easily. Caelum, free and fickle and gusting, joined to it, forming four scythes of air bound together by lightning.
[Galvanic Mistral]
The mage wasn't ready for the synthetic spell, he tried to pull Ulric's weave apart and found it to be like pulling apart a knot tied with steel cable. Ulric's will wasn't so easily broken, nor was his spellform so sloppy that some schmuck could pull it apart on first glance, not with two different harmonics joined. He realized, too late that he couldn't break Ulric's spell and raise another wall of water screaming denial. It snapped into place between them just before the crackling maelstrom hit, blocking the mage from view as the spells collided sent droplets exploding into the air as a fine mist.
A cry rose up and Ulric felt satisfaction in his bones. [Prismatic Weave] elevated his mana control to a thing of thought becoming deed. Not as good as that dry old bag of bones after all, he confirmed about his enemy.
The Reforged man wasn't going to be fooled twice though, that yell meant he'd survived and Ulric was already dashing to the side, eyes scanning the surroundings for threats. Nobody hit by his Mistral made sound, they didn't have lungs to do it, or most of a head and neck or anything but chunks. Three bullets hit the place he'd been standing meteoric trenches blasting mud craters and throwing debris, while the highest slammed into a hut and blew its wall inwards. The scientist turned warrior smiled at the ploy. Fool me once.
Ulric firmed his two-handed grip on Xef'tocht, and pulsed [Ceraunoperception] briefly before letting it go. The jamming was still there but he distinctly felt the Mage, hidden behind his dispersed shield. He only had one arm and it was holding his stomach. Ulric screamed and threw his sword in a glittering spin he heard the gasp along with the damp hiss of the blade shearing through flesh. Water gathering in the air for some sort of last-ditch effort, probably that rain thing, dissipated, as well as the remnants of the water wall, the will behind it gone.
Xef'tocht was standing tall three meters past where the mage's chest had been, buried halfway to its hilt. The Hydromancer lay in two clean pieces, as if parted by a laser for a bilateral dissection. Ulric stood straight and pulsed [Ceraunoperception] again, worried about his mana reserves. He was working with maybe fifteen percent, by the slightly hollow feeling in his core.
Nevertheless, lightning still hummed through his mana circuits and body.
These were the people creating the Bane. Ulric wasn't done yet. Not until they were all dead.
Four of the sadistic fuckers came around the corner and sprinted at the evidently unarmed man. Ulric pulled his knife and let the lessons Taipan had drilled into his brain and body come to the fore. Every nasty trick, feint, and way to hurt a man. Every cut to bleed him, blind him, and destroy him blurred into the background of his brain. The charging men's expression fell when they saw their lone enemy smile with all the warmth of a glacier.
There would be no nightmares for these men. Ceraun cried for release. So did the Lord Instinct. So did he.
[Surge]
