Wild Wastes 5 -CH14- (Patreon)

Rushing ahead Vince threw out his left arm and clothes-lined the woman he’d kicked. His arm was in motion as it struck her on the head and neck. The force of it slapped her to the ground like a bowling pin being blasted to one side.

Even as Vince got right up to the Nullifier and Zathira the man broke free of Zathira’s bite. The Lamia’s unhinged jaw and fangs coming loose as the man thrashed about.

He did so by releasing the blade and leaving it stuck in Zathira.

Getting a few steps away he ended up next to the lone standing Nullifier. Grabbing the other man by the shoulder the High-Priest said something in a language Vince didn’t understand at all.

There was a brief moment where the weaker Nullifier said something that was clearly a dissent, only to be rebuked, then rush off. The High-Priest collapsed to their knees, one hand coming up to press to his throat.

Zathira had done a fair job of tearing out the man’s throat as it all went down.

Even if the poison she’d more than likely pumped into him didn’t do the job, the physical wound itself would have made it much more likely to sucumb to it. Together the two things was a guarantee of death.

“You’ll see,” hissed the High-Priest as Vince reached the Lamia. “You’ll see just how strong—”

Lashing out with his sword, Vince removed the man’s head from his shoulders. Sending it tumbling to one side then dropping the sword down next to Zathira.

The blade the Nullifier had put through her was right in the middle. It’d gone in the center of her torso, where the rib cage didn’t cover it. Given where it was, Vince knew it was quite likely that a lung as well as some of her intestine had been struck.

There was no possibility of leaving the weapon there, and waiting any longer would risk blood-loss inside of her. Vince had to pull it out and then try to heal it all on his own here and now.

Grabbing at her clothes he shimmied it one way, then the other, before realizing he could just cut it against the sword still stuck in her. Running it back and forth across the bloody blade. It hadn’t gone all the way through her so it wasn’t as if it didn’t have a cutting edge.

In no time he’d freed the area and could really see what he was working with.

Pulling out the blade from Zathira, who was staring off into nothing with her dark eyes and unhinged jaw, he heard only a groan from her as well as a soft whimper as the tip came free.

Blood poured down her front and started to spread over her armor.

Zathira looked unconcerned with it and was entirely focused on what he assumed was her Undead horde. Her jaw sunk, then settled back into place.

She let out a small yawn he often saw her do after using her fangs, then sucked in a short breath.

“His sword-went through-the shield-in one-go,” wheezed Zathira, not looking at him as he eased her down to the ground.

Throwing down the sword atop his own Vince pressed his hand to Zathira’s wound. Pushing out from his palm he wanted to bless Zathira. To gift her with healing, wound cleansing, and get her back to rights.

Flooding her with magical power.

There was a resistance to his desires. As if he was pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it.

Or at least, a small hole.

Some of what he poured into her seemed to stick. The blood that was coming out of her lessened by the second, in fact. Healing was most certainly occuring.

It just wasn’t doing so as quickly as he expected it to.

“Should go-get the-other one,” moaned Zathira.

“Busy. Making sure my High-Priestess of Death doesn’t join her domain so soon,” grumbled Vince.

“You can’t save her,” said a voice from behind him.

Glancing over his shoulder he saw the woman he’d bowled over on her stomach. Her shoulder didn’t look right and one of her legs was clearly broken. In his haste to get to Zathira he’d ended up battering the woman by going through her.

“A wound caused by a Blade of Null doesn’t allow for healing. There’s no going back,” the woman hissed.

“Well, I don’t believe that, and have already proven it to be wrong. She’s not even bleeding half as much as she was,” declared Vince then pulled his hand back. He could feel the end of the power granted to him by the grove coming.

A small trickle of blood was flowing, but it wasn’t very much at all. Nothing that’d end her life anytime soon. The edges of the stab were also greatly reduced, the ends pulling closer toward the middle.

Rather than a sword it looked more like she’d been run-through with a butter-knife.

“See? Your belief is nothing,” Vince stated and gestured to Zathira’s bare middle. “Can’t heal it… in another hour I’ll have that to nothing at all. Your faith is nothing more than a house built upon sand. Shifting wildly with every word and never actuall stable.

“You should just worship my goddesses instead, little Nullifier. I’ll even spare you if you do. I’ll let you come join my magicians and be the head of whatever Nullifier’s we recruit or subvert.”

“I… you… what… no. No!” spat the woman on the ground. Her cloth covered head shaking back and forth. “No. Lies. This is… lies.”

“Nope. Entirely true. I don’t acknowledge your god. Your religion. Your beliefs,” Vince muttered with a shake his head as if to mock her own gesture. “None of that’s true at all. It’s all fake. Just superstitious rot made up by people who want power.

“Same reason they want you to go down and fight in the south. So that they can stay in power. Not because there’s something actually in the south that needs help. If anything, there’s less people being persecuted as the south is taken over.

“No, little Nullifier. You’re just part of a cult. Nothing more.”

Vince left Zathira there to go get his pistol. Putting it back into it’s holster. Then he hesitated over the dead Nullifier, wondering if he should cut out the heart and eat it.

He decided against it if only because he needed to grab up Zathira and get moving. Though there was one more thing he needed to do.

Picking up his own sword he stuffed it into the sheathe, then picked up the Nullifier’s sword that Zathira had been stabbed with. Moving to the woman he’d been speaking with he took her own sword.

Holding it up he waggled it at her.

“Let me guess. Your sword here… this is an impossible to break sword?” he asked, looking to the wounded Nullifier and contemplating their weapon.

“No heathen like you could shatter a Null Blade!” she hissed. “That’d be like—”

Vince ignored her, held it in both hands, then put his boot down over the middle of it. It bent under the weight, resisting his desire to see it snap.

A low humming resounded in his ears.

Then the weapon cracked at the point he’d had his boot on it. The metal giving way to his wishes.

“That’d be like a sword breaking, because it’s just a sword,” Vince grumbled and threw down the hilt and broken blade next to the woman. “When you’re being hung later, maybe in a few months, a few years, remember that you’d been given the chance to join and scorned it.

“For now… I’m letting you live. So you can tell everyone how pointless it is to resist me. That your faith is false, your belief is false, your idol… is false. All will bend before me, or break,” hissed Vince and lashed at her mentally. Wanting to know more information about the man who’d nearly ended Zathira.

What he learned in that moment that he broke into her memories he found that he’d been mistaken.
The man wasn’t a High-Priest.

He was just a priest of the Nullifier.

There were two positions higher than him, not including the Nullifier himself.

I couldn’t even put down four acolytes and a priest without difficulty. They’re far stronger than I knew.

Far stronger.

Moving over to Zathira he ignored the female Nullifier any further. She wasn’t useful to him beyond this moment. Her purpose was to push doubt into her own religion when she reported all this back.

Because Vince had already realized the route to power here and in this situation.

Religion, rituals, and belief, were the heart of everything in his world as far as deities were concerned. He needed to make sure his interactions with the Null and the Unsatisfied.

“You ready to go?” Vince asked, looming over the Lamia. Her wound was open, but it wasn’t bleeding any longer. He needed to put more power into her, but at the moment he’d done all that he could.

“No, still… putting them into a siege they can’t leave,” murmured Zathira, her skin looking rather pale. Her breathing and speech sounded much better, however. “Leaving spell triggers in the Undead. When they’re this fresh, I can leave spells in them to take action. It’ll hold for a few months.

“I couldn’t get that Nullifier that ran off. He eradicated two groups of Undead with his spells and just kept going. This won’t be as much of a distraction as I wanted it to be.”

“More than enough. Time to go since I’m going to have to carry you. Pretty sure you won’t be able to move,” growled Vince and then reached down to gather up the Lamia.

She put her arms around his shoulders, put her head on his shoulder, then wrapped her lower body around his hips. Letting the rest of her tail move out behind him and drag on the ground.

Damn, this is a lot easier when she’s awake. She can help a bit with her positioning.

“Atis, which way?” Vince asked though he didn’t wait. He was already quickly moving toward the south. She could direct him on the way, but he wasn’t going to waste any time here.

“South is fine. The route we take has a few different ways to get to where we need to be,” Atis reported.

Vince had a doubt though in the back of his head.

There was the distinct possibility that the Nullifier’s would come looking for them on their winged beasts. He hadn’t seen one, but he knew they were now in the air and working to prevent the Dragon’s from holding the skies by themselves.

Which meant he really shouldn’t be trying to get on the same track the Ratkin were.

It’d likely on lead to them getting run down.

That was a thought for a different time.

What was needed right now was a bit of time to recover some magic, then try to fill Zathira up again. That’d need to be done somewhere that they could hunker down for a time.

Glancing to the dark sky Vince figured he still had a good number of hours to make some distance. To get out of range of where the Nullifier’s might come looking.

“Anywhere to burrow for a time? Zathira will need some tending,” asked Vince.

“No. We can’t stop,” Atis answered. “We must continue. You must get to the route and keep going. It isn’t a route we can use whenever we wish. It goes to the west and crosses over on the shore.

“It’s only available at certain times of the month, we must catch up to the others. We have no choice.

“We have no choice so… start turning to the right. We must try and angle ourselves so we can catch up.”

Grimacing, Vince shook his head. He really didn’t like this at all.

He did as he was told though.

As much as he didn’t want to risk the Ratkin, that he wanted to tend to Zathira and get her back to rights, he needed far more to get back to his own people. Without him at this time, he knew for a fact that there was a significant chance everything would fall apart in Spain.

***

“They’re very persistant,” Atis grumbled from Vince’s back. They were moving at a swift jog through a significant amount of bush. More than enough to cover them up to his head in fact.

Thankfully it wasn’t enough to slow him down normally. He’d spent a great deal of time moving through things like this.

Carrying a Lamia was more of an issue than he’d expected and was causing him a great deal of problems.

Even if she was doing all she could to help him out in doing so.

They’d only been moving for four or five hours but their progress was considerably slower than any of them wished. They had to be extremely careful when crossing any area as Vince couldn’t exactly hide from their pursuers.

A handful of Nullifier’s who’d taken to flying beasts and were currently patrolling the skies.

Looking for any sign of him so that they coudl more than likely run him to ground and end the chase.

A pace that was could charitably be called a crawl was what they were stuck at now.

“I’m sure I’d be just as persistant. Just as you would be,” grumbled Vince, realizing they’d have to make a change here and now. If these were the forces that were readily available to try and chase him, then it would only become worse with every hour.

He’d already dilly-dallied about this decision for long enough. There was no longer any reason to hold on to hope that something was going to change. It was a safe bet to say there wouldn’t be any change that would be favorable to him.

Only changes that’d be worse for the three of them.

Sighing, Vince turned, got into a kneeling position, and set Zathira down.

She ended up sitting oddly given that she was a Lamia, but they were at about an even level in height. He could meet her eyes easily.

“Alright, Zathira. It’s time for us to give you your hourly dose of healing,” Vince said with a chuckle. He’d pulled all he could from the grove whenever there was a chance to stop. He’d taken all he could from the Dryads and Dragons as well.

The problem was that the wound she’d been given really was a bottomless pit of sorts. Where he’d managed to get her to a nearly healthy state, but had done so by draining resources from everyone else.

Vince began to work at emptying his power pool into her once again.

I may have talked big about the Null Blade’s, but those are damn nasty. We’ll have to be careful with those. We can’t let them get anywhere near our people.

That or we need to come up with a counter to it.

Maybe… maybe that Yaris is a goddess of magic as well as Elves. That her faith magic can over-come any issue so long as it’s done by one of her personal priests.

Similar to Dryads being the birth, sex, and baby portfolio, Elves being magic, enchantment, eternal lives, and such.

Something to consider.

Then again, there’s the distinct possibility Elysia’s already figured that out ahead of me and is working on it.

All too quickly, he ran out of power.

Zathira’s pale face made her eyes rather large and bright right now.

Grinning at her he nodded his head.

“Alright. Couple of things. I’m going to head north and cause unholy hell for these people. I’m going to target all the resources I can. Go full on Ratkin on them,” Vince promised. He also realized he had a Ratkin with him right now that he needed to ditch. Reaching back over his shoulder he casually pulled Atis out of her seat, ripping the leather ties free at the same time with a casual bit of strength. “You two need to tell Petra that. Let her know everything that’s happened here and what we learned.

“Take this sword and present it to her. Let her know it’s an issue because this is the type of weapon that magic has a hard time to heal. This is literally what nearly killed you Zathira.

“After that, please let them know we need to propegate the mythos of the Lord of Dragons, Dryads, and Elves. To really push it into Francia, England, and the lands beyond. So that everyone believes in our myth, even if they don’t believe in the goodness of us. Because even hatred, is still belief.

“Lastly, you need to—”

The sound of wings in the distance reached Vince’s ear. Causing him to pause and look in that direction.

“Lastly, tell Petra about the whatever it is in England and how it’s related to the Nullifier’s,” Vince continued and then stood up. “She would have just used me as a force multiplier anyways. This works out just as well with me doing the same kind of work. It just means you two and the other Ratkin can make it back.

“Any questions? Because I need to get moving if I want to divert these flying fuckers off and away. Already got an idea on how to do it but… eh… we’ll see.”

“No,” Zathira murmured with a shake of her head. Watching him curiously. “Though… thank you for making sure I lived. You could have just as easily left me behind and moved ahead.”

“Could have. Chose not to,” Vince agreed with a shrug of his shoulders. “Just throw prayers for me at the pantheon. Better that way since I get power for it anyways. Alright… I’m off. I’ll see you soon I hope.”

Vince drew his pistol and began running back the way they’d come from.

There was a great deal of woods they’d been moving through before this. He could use that to pop out on the other side and take some pot shots at the flying Nullifier’s.

With any luck they wouldn’t be holding their shields up at all times. They’d in fact be rather prideful, more than likely, and be thinking that they were the hunters. That there’d be no concern for their lives or their mounts in any way.

Pushing the safety lever off Vince grinned as he ducked, dodged, and leapt through the growth.

Gonna be a lot like being a Ranger again.

This time though with a great deal more power available to me.

Okay… get out of this area, take shots, kill them if possible, break contact, retreat to the north-west. Make for the coast line and see if we can’t start causing problems.

Especially at that junction point that they use when Nullifier’s aren’t available.

That’s a damn bottleneck they willingly walked into.

They won’t spare Nullifier’s just to bring supplies over, and chances are they’ll need a lot. More than south of the Portal-storm can handle on it’s own.

Perfect… then… here we go.