Battlefield Reclaimer, Ch 57: Desperate Straits (Patreon)

The wave of bloody serpents slithered toward Sam as his Essence Blade sped across the distance between him and the Bloodweaver. The snakes were moving quickly, but Essence Blade was faster. It closed in on the lizard with a burning crackle of energy.

The Bloodweaver’s staff shot into the air, a golden shield appearing around it. It hadn’t been disturbed by any attack so far, but the Essence Blade made it cautious. It could sense something strange about it, similar to the energy it felt in Sam.

It was threatening.

There wasn’t a huge distance between Sam and it, only about thirty feet, but it was enough time for it to prepare its strongest defense.

The diamond-edged spell crashed against the barrier in a brilliant flare of colliding energies, releasing a roiling wave of blue and gold arcs that rolled over the Bloodweaver. Its shield buckled, wavering like a flag in the wind as the pressure caused it to stream backwards, but it held.

As he saw it happen, Sam’s face became even more serious. The Bloodweaver was a caster, which meant that as long as his mana held out, he would keep going, unless they could completely overwhelm him with power and break through his shield.

Since the lizard was stronger than all of them, the hope of doing that was slim, especially if it had some sort of recovery ability. Even as he watched, he could see a trail of blood, part of what was scattered all over, running across the stone floor toward the Bloodweaver.

It was strange and macabre, and it boded nothing good. He was sure the lizard was either going to use the blood in another spell or consume it to restore its mana.

The crystal flames were still washing over the Bloodweaver as the last of the Essence Blade’s energy collided with its shield. More crystal flame poured out of Sam, condensing into a spiral as he glanced around, but the situation hadn’t changed.

Yeres was dead, Lesat and Krana were down, Krana was cursed somehow, Ayala was busy with Krana, and his father....

At that moment, his father was sprinting toward him. It didn’t take Sam long to realize what he was doing. His dad was trying to stop the wave of blood serpents that was headed for him. Jeric’s Stamina-infused Earthen Shield was already glowing around him and the two hammers in his hands were raised.

It wasn’t clear how he was going to face the serpents, but it was just as clear that he was going to try. His determination was that of a father protecting his son, regardless of the consequences.

He didn't care if the serpents chewed straight through his shield or ripped at him with venomous fangs. He was going to be there in front of them, blocking the path to Sam for as long as he could.

It was the desire to protect in its purest form.

His father protecting him had happened before, perhaps many times more than Sam could remember, but this time, it caused an equal response to flare up in Sam. Time slowed down in his perception as he saw his father running in front of him.

His memory spun back to the last time that had happened, when they had also been close to death. The Basalt Gnome Marauder had nearly killed his father then, all because Sam had made the wrong choice and run into the middle of a battle they shouldn't have been fighting.

He wasn’t going to let it happen again.

He saw his father trying to save him and a sharp refusal flared through him. He was stronger now and much more capable. It was his turn to step up and protect his dad. He wouldn’t be able to bear the sight of him being injured again.

Every day, a father protects his son, but one day, the son also has to grow up and protect his father.

At that moment, everything that Sam had been going through for the past weeks fell into place in his mind as his personality began to shift. The repeated threats of death, the Guardian’s insistence that he protect the Seal, his increased Wisdom and Intelligence, even the sparks of essence that he’d absorbed...all of it began to spin through his mind, rearranging itself in a new pattern, one that was more mature than he had been in the past.

He’d been young and foolish before they visited the ruins, just a dreamer, but ever since then, each step he’d walked had been another push in a different direction. Before, he’d had neither the power nor the opportunity to fix the world. Now, he did, or at least the beginning of it.

It wasn’t a short path, but he’d stepped foot on enough of it to see where it led and he knew how to continue to walk down it. He’d gained the ability to do something about the problems in the world when they were standing right in front of him.

The Bloodweaver was here, a remnant of what the Guardian had told him to stop. As he saw his father running in front of him, that mission finally aligned with his own wishes. It didn't happen because of an abstract duty to improve the world, or even because the Bloodweaver was evil and would kill any human it saw. It was something much more personal.

It was attacking his father.

He would not allow it to continue to exist in the world.

Sam’s eyes burned with cerulean light as his hands slammed together in front of him. He forced out all of the essence that he could in an enormous spiral of crystal flame. It poured out from him in a wave that surged toward the blood serpents faster than his father could run.

Ten points, twenty, thirty...a billowing tide of crystal flame roared forward as it formed into the strongest Essence Shield he’d ever made. It crashed down between his father and the blood serpents. Then it tilted, turning horizontal as it spread through the area.

Sam focused on the feeling of interlocking geometric crystals as he poured his will into converting the shield into a Crystal Field. He only had one success in using the ability before this, just a few minutes before, but he could feel the pattern that he needed falling into place.

Nothing would move toward his dad.

A field of crackling energy flashed across the wave of blood serpents, locking around them. Dozens of them hung there, their movements slowing as their jaws opened to reveal flashing fangs, but one by one they froze into place, like dark ruby streaks bleeding through a cerulean crystal.

Perhaps because they were formed from a spell, it was easier to hold them in place than it was with the Grey Shard Stalker. After a moment, the serpents' shapes began to shine, refracting the light of the flames as the Crystal Field invaded them. Their structure changed.

Craaaack. CraaaaAACk. KrriiisSSsshhh.

A breath later, the spell that infused the blood serpents shattered as the mana in them froze. The Crystal Field was so intense that it didn’t take long, and the wave of crystal flame continued on, leaving behind only sinuous, crystallized shapes. Their fangs and scales shone with a strange purple shade in the cerulean light.

His dad stood in front of them, still blocking the path to Sam. As he saw what happened, he didn’t ask any questions. He just turned toward the Bloodweaver and the Grey Shards behind it, his face hard. They weren't done yet.

A wheezing laugh from the Bloodweaver followed, breaking into the silence that followed Sam's spell. It had dealt with the remnant energy of the Essence Blade just in time to see what happened.

“An admirable effort, but that was only one spell,” the lizard let out a hiss of breath as its fangs opened. “You have that little power and yet you wish to protect this old one? And he wishes to protect you?”

The Bloodweaver laughed again, its tongue flickering in the air.

“Very well, if you satisfy my curiosity, I will do you the favor of killing the old one quickly. If you don’t, then I’ll make sure that it is slow and painful.” It glanced up to the stone ceiling of the tunnel as its tongue flickered again and a quick huff of air was drawn in between its jaws, as if it found all of this amusing.

“The acid worms are a painful way to die. I enjoy slowing down the process, so that they breed in my enemy’s veins. The pitch of the screams is delightfully unique.”

Sam’s mind was already set against the Bloodweaver, but rage started to bubble up through him, spinning around the essence in his blood. A moment later, it cooled, turning to an icy calm that was much more dangerous.

At that moment, Ayala looked up as well, her face hardening. Krana was silent by her feet where she'd fallen unconscious. It wasn’t clear if Ayala had been able to help her or not, but at least the seer was no longer screaming.

“Holy Ground,” the priestess murmured, raising her hand in the air as she was surrounded by a halo of shining light. The energy spread out around her, settling into the cavern’s stone as it somehow infused the area beneath her feet.

When her spell was finished, a brilliant disk extended for ten feet on either side of her, merged into the stone like a protective circle. A dome of light rose up from it, closing over her head.

“Get inside!” she called to Sam and Jeric, who were just on the edge of it. Her hands continued to move through the air as she brought up another spell. A series of shining white and silver sigils began to form, spreading out of her hands. They looked almost like runes, but there were some differences that Sam didn't have time to identify.

“Ward of Law.”

The sigils merged into the ground at her feet and flowed into the dome all around her, adding a layered, silver effect that made the dome thicker and sturdier. It didn’t take her long to activate either one, just a moment or two.

When she was finished, the golem next to her stomped forward, its feet ringing against the stone as it moved to the front of the circle, just inside the barrier. At the same time, a ripple of stone flowed across the ground, pulling Lesat closer to Ayala until he was also inside her barrier.

While she was casting, the Bloodweaver didn’t interrupt. It just watched the circle form and hissed in laughter again. The remaining blood on the floor had already reached it and it was crawling up its body now, turning to red light as it flowed beneath its cloak in strange lines.

The aura around it began to grow stronger, the golden haze intensifying again. The Essence Blade had weakened it a bit, but as the blood continued to flow into the Bloodweaver, the damage to its shield disappeared.

Whatever it was doing, it looked like it was recharging itself. Perhaps that was why it didn’t care, or perhaps it was just playing with them.

Jeric jumped into the circle as soon as Ayala spoke, looking toward his son as he waited for Sam to do the same. Sam hesitated, however, as he watched the blood around the lizard. He had the feeling that if he let it continue with that spell, nothing good would result.

Jeric started to move toward him, but Sam held up his hand, pulling an Earth scroll from his belt as he moved forward.

“Activate that and wait for me to jump in,” he whispered, pushing the scroll into his father’s hands before he stepped forward toward the Bloodweaver, in front of the circle. Hiding in Ayala’s circle would only draw out the inevitable. He needed to do something much more effective.

He reached down to his belt as he pulled free two small objects, holding them in his left hand. The emotions flowing through him were ice and fire, shaped from crystal flame and frozen rage. The Bloodweaver had crossed his bottom line. There was only one way he was going to respond.

With his other hand, he pulled an aura out of his storage and combusted it, followed by another. It put him back to above 80% essence. If the lizard was going to take a moment to recharge its mana, then he would do the same.

There were also the Grey Shards behind the lizard to deal with. About a quarter of them had died from the flight of arrows he’d sent earlier, but it wasn’t enough. They’d regrouped now, their anger evident, but they were too obedient to the Bloodweaver to charge forward.

He thumbed the activation runes on the small spheres, hiding them in his left palm. At the same time, he formed a crystal flame sphere with the other. When the fireball was ready a moment later, he locked his gaze on the lizard.

“You want to know what happened to make you this way?” he replied, his voice taking on a hard, deadly edge as he moved a few paces toward it, placing himself in front of the others. “You chose to invade my home. You came to consume the world, to harm the people here. Then, as if that weren't enough, you dared to attack my family.”

The words rolled out of him as he added everything he’d theorized about soul remnants. He was going to explain to this lizard exactly what it was and what it had done and truly satisfy its desire to know, but in his own way.

It had finished whatever the blood gathering was and its eyes were fixed on him, waiting for him to finish speaking. Its curiosity was stronger than its desire to kill him.

“Then you died," he growled at it, the fireball rising up in his hand as he stepped forward. “Your soul was crushed to nothing by the World Law, digested like rotten meat. You were ground up, turned to fertilizer to try and restore the damage that you did when your greed drove you to come here.”

The lizard hisssed at him, starting to become angry from the insults, but it still hesitated to attack. Whatever it was, it didn’t remember its past and it wanted to know what he was talking about. It only had some strange abilities and a lost impression of what it had once been. He was using that to keep its attention as the spheres in his hand warmed up.

“I don’t know what world you came from or why you came here, but it doesn’t matter. You are a failure. Something in you was so disgusting that the World Law couldn’t digest it, and you gave it a stomach ache. So it spat you back out like this!”

He had no idea if what he was saying was accurate or not, but it was his best guess as to what had happened, and he mixed it with as many insults as he could come up with. He wanted the thing to be angry and focused on him.

It seemed to be working as the Bloodweaver hissed in building rage. It started to form another spell now as it responded, unable to take the insults any longer. The golden haze around it intensified.

“Why do I dream of what I have never seen? Tell me!” Its words echoed in his mind, laden with frustrated hatred. It had never been able to answer that question.

The monsters around the Bloodweaver were not the same as it. They were intelligent enough, but they lacked its curiosity and drive. All they cared about was fighting and eating, and perhaps some emotions for lust or cruelty. They could form a society, but it was raw and uncultured.

It rarely had the chance to speak to a prisoner who could answer more of its questions. Few adventurers had come down to these tunnels while it lived here, ever since it had been born among the Grey Shards as a strange golden variant.

The tribe had raised it like the rest of the hatchlings and it had risen to power long ago, but it had never understood why it was different. That was why it was taking the time to converse with Sam. It had a gnawing need to know.

Even if it had told these things to Sam, he wouldn't have cared. The Bloodweaver was a monster who would kill him as soon as he answered its questions.

“Because you are not from this world and you do not belong in my home!” Sam shouted as the moment he'd been waiting for arrived. He stepped forward, hurling the fireball in his right hand toward the Bloodweaver.

The fireball flew toward the lizard, growing larger as it approached. It wasn’t enough to damage the shield that the lizard had around it, but that wasn’t its job. All it needed to do was to conceal what he was throwing with his other hand.

The fireball exploded against the Bloodweaver’s shield, flaring with cerulean light at the same time as the two silver-runed cores flew through the air. The cores didn’t head for the Bloodweaver, but for the Grey Shards behind it.

As soon as the cores left his hand, Sam darted backward, grabbing for the last Slow Ice scroll that he had. Around him, he felt the brilliant silver-white presence of Ayala’s protective spells.

At the same time, stone began to rise around them from the Earth scroll that he’d given his father. Jeric had already activated it and started to summon a rocky barrier as soon as Sam was there.

“Shield everything!” he shouted to the others, hoping that they understood. “Dig down into the earth!”

The scroll in his hand hummed as he activated it. He hurled the building cyclone of ice out of the shield right before the rising stone sealed off the gap. He wasn’t sure if the scroll would help, but at least it wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it would distract the Bloodweaver for a moment longer.

“Get down!” he shouted, his voice echoing too loudly from the enclosed space, but he felt everyone crouching down in response. They didn’t know exactly what was going on, but they trusted him.

The ground below their feet began to recede as Ayala removed the stone below them, her hands glowing with Earth mana. Sam could feel them moving downward, but there was only time to go a couple of feet before the cores outside exploded.

It started as a sudden silence, as if the cavern around them had suddenly frozen, and there was a whooosshing sound outside the stone walls around them that rattled the barrier. Sam’s hands glowed with crystal flame as poured his energy into reinforcing the walls.

A moment later, the earth trembled, bucking beneath their feet as a huge wave rolled through the stone, shaking everything around them. Through the barrier, there was the echo of rolling reverberations as the stone cracked in every location, nearly shaking it apart.

His Essence Shield supported the stone from the inside, as did Ayala’s barriers and his father’s Earthen Shield, but the outer layer shattered to fragments. His essence drained away as his shield absorbed what remained of the blast, forty points disappearing in an instant.

Outside, the aftershocks of the explosion continued as thuds and crashes resounded throughout the area, their impacts carried to his senses as his Crystal Focus tracked what was going on outside.

It happened so quickly that he put it together after the fact. As the fireball exploded against the Bloodweaver’s shield, the silvery grey cores sailed toward the Grey Shards, landing in the middle of them.

At the same time as Sam was darting into the shield, the cores expanded into roiling spheres of misty grey and red, the colors clashing together. Silver runes hung in the middle of the mist, glowing brighter with each passing moment. A moment later, the red flames began to increase, fighting against the grey shadows, and the two auras swelled up, expanding outward as they swirled around the cores at the center, turning into a whipping hurricane of force.

The spheres rested at the eye of the storm, their doubled energy intensifying as the essence stored in them poured into the silver runes. The runes grew brighter, collapsing toward the center of the spheres as they swirled faster. Then the power of the cores reacted, lashing outward against the runes that were falling toward them.

When that power collided with the silver runes, the cores exploded into fragments that shot out in every direction. At the same time, the explosion ignited the hurricane of red and grey aura, sweeping outward in a devastating blast that scoured the cavern around it.

The Grey Shards were swept away, their forms disintegrating under the impact. As they disappeared, they left only the lone form of the Bloodweaver who had just started to turn around. The lizard stared at the expanding clouds, the hazy golden shield around it glowing brighter. Tendrils of blood coiled upward from beneath his cloak, forming a second shield around him as the blast hit.

At that point, even Crystal Focus was unable to see what happened as everything dissolved into a wash of power and exploding energy. The barriers around them shattered away into dust, leaving Sam’s Essence Shield and Ayala’s circle as the only remaining thing blocking the explosion.

He pulled another aura out of his storage, combusting it as fast as possible as he poured energy into the shield. This time, he could feel the strain of the essence flowing into his overstressed meridians. It was a clear sign that he couldn’t continue to combust auras without a cost.

He shoved the thought out of his mind at the same time as the area outside the shield came back into focus. The explosion had passed them over while they were inside their stone bubble. He sensed the power from the exploding cores still echoing out around the cavern, but he was searching for something more specific.

Then he found it.

The form of the Bloodweaver was kneeling, hunched over against the blast as it faced where the Grey Shards had been. Its cloak was tattered and the shield around it was fading in and out, but the damned thing was still alive.