BT II - Chapter 15 (Patreon)

Jakaw chattered at the two of them, its tails swishing quickly back and forth in the humid jungle air.  Leeka held up a hand, stopping Micah in his tracks as she squinted at the agitated monkey.  She clicked twice at it before pointing into the undergrowth.

It chittered back before hopping to another tree and shimmying upward, disappearing into the canopy.  Micah raised a single eyebrow at Leeka, asking a question without opening his mouth.

“Jakaw reported that there weren’t people nearby, but that it was getting a weird feeling about the trail it was using, so I told him to check things out carefully,” she supplied helpfully.

Micah frowned slightly at the narrow path they’d been following.  There were any number of places for an ambush, but at the same time, he was hardly afraid of any of the mundane monsters the jungle might have to offer.  There were a handful of high level dungeons that would give him pause, but unless an absolute pinnacle creature like the Maarikava escaped and evolved amidst the winding trees for a couple of decades, there wasn’t all that much for him to be afraid of.

Of course, he’d been bitten by that sort of arrogance in the past.  His conversations with the Pashta tribe had given him some idea of what was out in the jungle, and although the environment was likely dangerous for the average blessed, of the monsters described, only tree basilisks would have been able to find a home in the Cavern of Rust back in Basil’s Cove.  Even then, panacea should be more than enough to handle the creature’s sight-borne petrifying curses.

Still, it was best to be a little careful.  The Pashta and the Roktoll were only fighting over the small portion of the jungle immediately surrounding the Amghul river valley.  Micah had no way of knowing how dangerous the jungle became away from the pocket of civilization carved by the two competing tribes.

It was best to be careful and avoid surprises.  He had no way of knowing how far the third prince’s influence reached.  It had already manipulated events to send the Maarikava after him, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for it to make another attempt.

The relative silence of the jungle was broken by a warbling series of hoots and screams.  Above Leeka and Micah, Jakaw screamed at them from the bark of a nearby tree.  Leeka nodded, chirping something back at the small monkey before it scurried around the tree it was clinging to, disappearing into the heavily overgrown forest.

“Did it find anything?”  Micah asked, planting the butt of his new spear in the ground as he tracked the small furry shape jumping from tree to tree.

“Maybe?”  Leeka replied with a shrug.  “It made it to the edge of the dammed up lake where the river kraken lives and it couldn’t see anything.  That said, Jakaw smelled people.  Lots of them.  There’s no way of knowing how fresh the spoor was, but I don’t think we’re talking about a handful of people bringing it food.  It sounds like something is up.”

“That more or less squares with how my luck has been for the last month or so,”  Micah said, picking up his spear and sighing.  “Still, the faster we get this done, the quicker I can be on my way so we might as well get this over with.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Leeka responded, shaking her head with a frown.  “Jakaw is worried this might be an ambush.  For all we know, we’re about to walk in on half of a Roktoll warband.”

“Then your tribe gets a little extra out of our exchange.”  Micah shrugged.  “I have enemies that outclass me, but they’re on the other side of the ocean, and given my overboard escapades, I suspect they don’t actually know where I am.  Having me wait around for a more opportune time to strike honestly is probably puting the Pashta at more risk than letting me finish all of this now.”

“But,” Leeka began, eyes glancing worriedly down the footpath.

“But nothing,” Micah said evenly as he walked past her.  “The time I spent making enchantments for your tribe and waiting for my new spear to be finished gave the actual threats time to find me.”

She hurried after him, anxiety creasing her face as she begged him to stop.

“It isn’t just the river kraken.  There are dozens of blessed warriors, huntresses and trappers in the Roktoll.  We don’t have any idea how many males they have let alone what magic they wield.  All of this could be one massive trap to eliminate you.”

“Honestly?”  He asked rhetorically.  “Even if the entire Roktoll tribe shows up, it won’t realistically change things.  I only signed on to kill the kraken, but if I have to kill every Roktoll blessed to fulfill my contract?  So be it.”

“Brave words for a warrior so small.”  A woman’s voice echoed through the jungle just as Micah stepped into the open.

A tall woman, almost twice Micah’s height, stood atop a dam made of logs and boulders.  To her left was a large pond fed by a tributary, and to her right was a smaller waterway that gurgled away, eventually feeding into the Amghul itself.  More importantly, standing beside the woman was a much smaller man, barely taller than her waist.  His light purple hands were moving, enchanted rings glittering in the morning sun as he began to cast a spell.

Three women blocked Micah’s way to the dam, one in front with a spear, her two companions standing a step or two back and wielding a bow and a weighted net respectively.  Somewhere on the other side of the dam, he made out a pair of males, heavily shrouded in bird feather cloaks as they began weaving some sort of defensive magic.

“Is this the part where you challenge me to some sort of dramatic duel atop that pile of rocks while the rest of your friends watch on?”  Micah asked quizzically, hefting his spear and tossing it from hand to hand to test its balance.

“Duel?”  She barked out with a laugh.  “What have you done to deserve a duel?  You saunter into my territory announcing that you plan on killing Krekkapat in your conversations with your little friend and expect the honor of fair combat?  By Ankros you must think me a fool.  No, the only honor I will offer you is your death at the hands of my finest warriors.  If you fight well enough, we may bleach your skull and put it in a place of honor as a trophy of the glorious Roktoll tribe.”

“Great,” Micah responded, motioning Leeka back with his spare hand as he settled into the first stance of TITS.  “I just wanted to see where we stood on all of this.  Everyone on your side tries to kill me at once while I return the favor.  Anything goes.”

“If you can manage to kill one of us in an eight on two fight,” she sneered back, “that person was weak.  They deserve to be replaced.”

“Eight on one,” Micah corrected, blowing out a breath as he loosened his muscles for the upcoming battle.  “Leeka, stay back.  This is going to get messy.”

“What?”  Both the Rotkoll woman and Leeka asked at the same time, both of their faces locked into an expression of absolute disbelief.

“Haste,” Micah replied.  He’d used the spell enough times that he didn’t really need to say anything to use it.  Still, stating the name of the spell seemed to match the mood of the moment.

Before the Roktoll chief could reply, he exploded into motion.

He Flash Stepped forward, the ground just behind him magically converting to quick sand just as he passed it.  Almost at the same time, almost twenty seeds, moving almost too fast for the eye to see, pinged off of his breastplate, unable to penetrate the thick enchanted scales as Micah leaned to the side, letting an arrow zip past him.

Then he was in front of the spear wielding woman, her eyes wide as she thrust her weapon at Micah.

“Foresight” he said evenly, finishing the spell even as he used the haft of his spear to slap her lance away with a dull wooden crack.

Before she could recover, Micah ducked under a pair of vines and thrust his weapon to the side, piercing her leather battle skirt and goring the leg underneath.  She stumbled backward, high hit points and discipline the only things keeping her upright as Micah reflexively tried to activate the sonic enchantment on his spear.

“Bree!” She shouted, fear and pain clouding her eyes as Micah frowned at his weapon before turning to pursue her.  “He’s insane!  You need to summon Krekkapat-”

Whatever else she was trying to say was lost forever as Micah dove in, tapping her spear aside with his first thrust before his second slashed open her chest.  Finally, he buried the weapon in her throat.

Another arrow clinked off of his armor, unable to penetrate despite the swearing huntress standing barely five paces from him.

Just as Micah prepared himself to lunge toward her, the ground beneath his feet turned into hands of stone reaching upward to grasp his ankles.  They only held for a moment, but that was long enough for another stream of seeds to pepper his unprotected face.

Micah got his hands up in time, crossing them just as the rock hard plants struck.  His bracers managed to catch most of them, but a couple snuck around the armor, slicing open his cheek and hands.  A tingle of magic from the stinging wounds warned Micah that even his brief contact with the seeds had inflicted some manner of curse or debuff upon him.

He ducked, eyes following the rainbow arc that proceeded a vine slicing through the air behind him at neck level.  A moment later, the second vine reached out, grabbing Micah’s wrist and trying to yank him off balance.

Micah grunted, muscles straining as the former spear wielder gurgled at his feet, gasping soundlessly as she clutched at her bleeding neck.  Then, just as foresight warned him of another wave of incoming attacks, he lunged forward once again, ripping through the vines and rocks that sought to hold him in place.

“Enough!”  He yelled, taking note of the heavy tangling net that landed on the ground behind him.  Micah flipped a mental switch, letting his armor siphon off a chunk of his mana.

A billowing cloud of super-heated steam exploded outward from him, drawing shrieks of pain from the two nearby women.  The huntress dropped her bow, hands clutching at her eyes and mouth as the scalding vapor attacked the delicate membranes.

Moments later, it was a moot point.  The tip of Micah’s spear poked out from the back of her skull, robbing her of any opportunity to heal or escape.

The woman with the net, likely the Roktoll’s head trapper turned to run only for Micah to Flash Step away from her dead companion, kicking her in the small of the back hard enough that she rocked forward, head bouncing off the rocks of the dam.

He bounded past her, butt of his spear swinging like a club as he cracked the weapon into the side of her skull, immediately knocking her unconscious.

The instant his feet touched the dam, the pond erupted into a writhing swarm of tentacles that darted toward Micah.  He danced through them, dodging, ducking, and using the blade of spear to slice the rubbery ropes of flesh as he made his way toward the Roktoll chief.

Next to her the male laid a hand on her, activating a spell that looked suspiciously like regeneration before retreating toward the other two men at the far side of the dam, out of the steam’s range.

Micah grinned, pointing briefly with his spear as he cast poison fog on the survivors.  By his account the Roktoll had two wood magic users and one earth magic user.  In all likelihood they’d be able to find some way to counteract the virulent toxins of his spell, but it would keep them busy.

At the same time, he rolled his arm over concentrating on the tattoo of the sturgeon.  Gold light exploded outward, illuminating the stinging fog bank created by his armor.

The bound spirit leapt into being, a shadow of its former self as the distance from its original binding weakened the power of the spell.  Still, it was more than enough to keep the River Kraken occupied.

Micah ducked under a thrust from the chief’s spear, his movements beginning almost a half second before she began the attack.  To his side, the sturgeon dove into the lake, golden light fading as it latched its jaws on the bleeding, rubbery hide of the monster.

He thrust back, twisting his spear as it traveled through the air to avoid most of the moment from the Roktoll woman’s block.  It still struck, but it was anywhere from a clean hit, instead, just leaving a line of blood across his target’s right’s shoulder.

The chief raised a hand above her head, sending out a pulse of energy as she activated her blessing.  Rainbow light appeared everywhere around Micah, foreshadowing a massive series of attacks raining down from above.

A quick low thrust from Micah’s spear drew another line of blood across the Chief’s calf, but rather than follow up on the attack, he dove off of the dam, splashing down in the knee deep tributary stream a half second ahead of the wave of lightning that rained down from the heavens, obliterating the wood and stone structure and sending a huge wave of water toward Micah as the reservoir emptied itself.

Without pausing, he jumped into the air pushing one hand into the water as he cast sonic orb.  The entire river thrummed, drawing a choked scream from the chief and a mournful bellow from the kraken as the spell cut through their armor and attacked their organs directly.

The chief staggered backward woosily, trying to deal with the nausea caused by his spell attacking every inch of her body that was touching the lakewater.

That distraction proved costly.  One second of immobility was all it took for Micah to finish casting vacuum, annihilating most of the injured woman’s left side and pulling her toward the sudden emptiness.

She landed on the far side of the lake, most of her body missing and her usually orange skin cooked red from the constant exposure to the heat from Micah’s spell.  One of the two remaining men screamed, dropping to his hands and knees to wretch while the other simply turned and ran, abandoning his companion and the purple lipped corpse of the remaining caster that had been unable to deal with poison fog in time.

The river kraken bellowed in rage, ignoring the damage dealt to it by Micah’s summoned sturgeon as it dug its tentacles into the spirit’s ghostly hide.  Barbed grips ripped chunk after chunk of gold, glimmering mana out of the creature as the frenzied beast sought to avenge its slain master.

Micah just grinned, jumping out of the water wrong enough to sprint up to the battle.  His first wind blade caught its attention.  The second scored a deep rent in its side.  By the time he blinded it with his third, the creature was pulling itself up onto the shore, child sized tentacles whipping back and forth in an effort to silence him once and for all.

He blurred, haste combining with a number of Flash Steps in close succession as he closed the distance between them before the barely lucid monster could even locate him.

Then his spear began to dance, plunging deep through the creature’s hide before being ripped out in a gout of blood faster than the weary beast could react.  It tried.  For all of the gap between the two of them, the kraken was beyond reasoning in berserk rage, but it was far from enough.

Barely twenty seconds after he had closed the distance, it lay on the shore, barely moving as its blood soaked the sand.  The cloud of steam rapidly faded away revealing Micah as he almost casually walked up to it.

Weakly it swung another tentacle at it, but he caught it.  The slimy limb tried to jerk away, but Micah held it in a sure grip as he finished casting coma.  Finally, the monster lay still, torso moving slightly as it took in oxygen, but otherwise completely dead to the world.

He turned to Leeka, grinning at the look of wide-eyed astonishment on her face before dropping the tentacle and nodding in the incapacitated river kraken’s direction.

“Just out of curiosity, do you have any big and important trees nearby?  Something with a lot of lore and history to it?  I might have another use for the big guy over here.”