Sexy Sect Babes Two: Chapter Eighteen (Patreon)

It had been three days since the initial attack on the wall and in that time the Instinctive hordes had learned to fear the big gonnes.

“My people have corralled a group into sector eight.” Lady Tai instructed. “You may fire now.”

Gao nodded as he frantically ran his finger over the gridded map in front of him, searching for sector eight.

Behind him the gonnes continued to fire. The constant booming had drawn no shortage of complaints from many of the neighboring sects, but all had been silenced by the Magistrate’s command that the big gonnes not be impeded in any way.

The enemy was doing enough of that themselves. For one thing, after camping beyond the gonne’s range, they had taken to approaching the walls in small disparate groups so as to make for less tempting targets for the weapons.

Only once they were near the walls did they clump up, having figured out that the gonnes wouldn’t shoot so close to friendlies. There, they put up ladders and battled the defenders on the walls.

By all accounts it was a bloodbath.

That wasn’t Gao’s concern though. His interest was in what occurred while the tribals traveled from the camps to the walls. For in that time, they were little more than scattered chaff, alone and isolated. Something the Imperial Cavalry had not hesitated to start exploiting. For the past three days they had taken to sallying forth regularly to take advantage of the broken ranks of the enemy, slicing through them like a scythe through a field of wheat.

…Or corralling them into large clumped together groups, so as to make easier targets for the big gonnes.

It was a delicate dance between two very disparate groups on the Imperial side, and one that could easily have seen the gonnes hit the cavalry as they danced across the battlefield.

Which was why a member of said cavalry troupe was with him now – seemingly unbothered by the constant thunder of the gonnes behind her.

Lady Tai was a rather severe, humorless woman, a snake-kin who communicated with her people through an advanced ki technique called ‘sending’. Still, despite her severe nature, Tai was a surprisingly down to earth woman, one who seemingly had little issue conferring with a mortal. Truth be told, the same could be said of her underlings.

Which stood to reason.

Gao had learned that the Imperial cavalry’s riders were ‘bred’ in much the same way as the mounts they rode.  Apparently every member of the cavalry was a second daughter of the noble families of Servant City, tithed to the Imperial army and trained from birth to be bodyguards for an Imperial scion.

They weren’t like cultivators, despite sharing the same skillset. They were more like the Crimson Guard; quiet, humble and fanatically loyal.

Deliberately turning his attention away from the snake-kin, he focused his entirety on deciphering the map in his hands.

Sector Eight. Sector Eight, he murmured.

Glancing over at the video feed from the wall, he watched as an enemy champion – a horrific half-horse creature - tried to intercept the cavalry only to be run through by a trio of perfectly placed lances, none of the cavalry even breaking stride.

Which wasn’t too surprising. The conventionally accepted strategy for dealing with cavalry on an open field was to bog them down with thick blocks of infantry, before having cultivators come in for the kill. And that just wasn’t possible with Gao’s gonnes constantly firing upon any large clumps of mortals that attempted to form.

The enemy had attempted to employ their own cavalry as a counter, but lightly armed and armored mortala riding horses were completely outmatched by cultivators riding spirit beasts. In the end, the enemy had been forced to pull them back, lest they inadvertently blind themselves by decimating their sole source of mounted scouts.

Finally, he tracked down the correct coordinates – and the notes attached to it.

“Twelve degrees north. Elevation nine-ten. Charge time twelve.” He shouted to his people, who in turn shouted out the order as they rushed to obey.

In moments, the guns fired as one, and Gao watched the nearby screen, waiting to see if they were on target.

They were.

A series of explosions rippled through the corralled clump of Instinctive tribesmen, throwing men and women high into the air. Or rather, their component parts.

“Good,” Tai allowed, her quiet voice somehow managing to be heard above the constant thudding of the gonnes. “My people will now return to seeking out targets of opportunity.”

Gao nodded, even as he moved to wipe an errant bead of sweat from his brow.

He’d been at this for three days now and was beginning to feel the strain. Directing the gonnes. Making sure they were supplied. Cycling crews in and out. Training new ones.

Turning to his nearby radio operator, he spoke just loud enough for him to be heard over the gonnes. “Do we know when the master will arrive?”

The young woman nodded. “According to Lady Ren, he is on his way now.”

Good. That was good.

One of the big gonnes had jammed and none of the crew were eager to try and unjam it for fear of detonating the live-shell still stuck inside. Nor could they move it away from the others for the same reason.

That was part of the reason Gao would rather the creator of the miraculous weapons behind him actually stuck around to ensure they functioned. Unfortunately, like with most of the miracles he created, Master Johansen seemed content to pawn them off onto him to figure out before he moved onto the next project.

“Make sure that someone is ready to greet him when he-”

“Incoming!” Lady Tai suddenly bellowed from behind him, unsheathing her sword as her gaze turned up toward… the sky?

Gao’s gaze turned towards the heavens just in time to see a number of feathered monstrosities swoop out of the clouds – directly down towards the firing gonnes.

“Shit,” he cursed as he reached for his revolver, many of the men and women around him doing the same. “To arms!”

Not one of them managed to pull their weapons up before the first Instinctive Rooster struck one of the big gonnes with the force of a charging bull, shattering the frame and sending the crew rag dolling in all directions.

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“The artillery park is being attacked by enemy flyers.” Jack relayed, a sinking feeling in his gut.

Across from him, Ren frowned before slamming her fist three times onto the wall behind her. Almost instantly, the carriage they were riding accelerated as the driver switched from driving casually to… something significantly faster.

And more reckless.

Fortunately, the wheeled APC they were using was more of a threat to any hypothetical obstacle it might collide with than vice-versa.  Which was why Jack could only hope that none of those hypothetical obstacles ended up being pedestrians too slow to get off the road, as he heard the vehicle’s horn sound out. A noise echoed by the vehicle behind them, the one that was loaded up with his guard detail.

I could have gotten out and flown if my armor was still working, he thought irritably.

Unfortunately it wasn’t finished – and no amount of lamenting on his part would change that. So rather than focus on it, he instead focused on listening to the scrambled shouting and gunfire coming through the comm bead in his ear.

It didn’t sound good. Not at all.

The only reason he knew Gao was still alive was because he could hear the man bellowing orders. Though how long that would remain the case, he didn’t know.

And looking at his GPS, they were still a good five minutes out even at the car’s current pace.

And even once they arrived…

Well, Jack had a few tricks up his sleeve, but he was well aware that his most valuable tool, the microbots, were significantly more effective against a strictly terrestrial opponent.

He momentarily considered radioing back to the compound to have them send Elwin after them, given that the mage was a ranged powerhouse, but eventually decided against it.

By the time she arrived on the scene, anything that would happen would have already occurred.

For better or worse.

“Flyers like me and the Magistrate are supposed to be rare, aren’t they?” he asked.

Ren nodded slowly. “Rare are the individuals as skilled as yourself or the Magistrate. It takes both remarkable levels of power and control.”

“Right, excluding me, we have three people that can fly in this city that we know of. Yet I’m getting reports of… twelve attackers?”

Ren paled. “Perhaps the enemy brought more high-level cultivators with them than we anticipated? In which case…”

In which case the artillery park was a lost cause and they’d be better served turning this truck around and retreating back to the compound. Twelve attackers who were even remotely on the level of the Magistrate or a Sect Leader was not a threat he could face.

Hell, he wasn’t sure it was a threat that even the Magistrate and the Ten Families could fight.

“That’s not the case.” He shook his head. “I can still hear fighting on the comms.”

Specifically, gunfire and people dying.

Ironically, that seemed to make Ren relax. “If any of the attackers were on the same level as an Imperial Scion, all of them would be dead already.”

Which meant the foe was weaker than they should be for being able to fly.

“You think it’s some kind of Instinctive thing? They learn to fly more easily.”

The blonde nodded. “That would make sense. For Rooster-kin at least.”

Jack resisted the urge to point out that chickens were famously flightless birds.

Then again, just because they couldn’t fly didn’t mean they couldn’t use those wings to pull off some powerful ‘jumps’. He knew that because he’d stolen a few as a youth and watched more than a few escape his grasp that way.

Perhaps that was what these attackers had done? Jumped from all the way beyond the-

The APC was suddenly rocked by a powerful explosion, rocking both him and Ren in their restraints.

Ren paled again. “You felt that?”

As Jack pulled at the belts holding him in place, he had a feeling that the dog woman wasn’t referring to the shockwave that just hit them.

No, she was probably talking about the title that was being repeated over and over again on his radio.

“The Magistrate’s arrived.”

And she was pissed.

-----------------------

Jack, Ren and his bodyguards arrived too late to take part in the fight.

And as he stepped out of the APC and onto the smoke filled battlefield, strewn with corpses and the wails of hopefully not soon to be corpses, he realized that it really had been a fight.

A brief one, certainly, but a fight nonetheless.

And even the engagement’s brevity was not because of any weakness on the part of his people. No, that was entirely a result of the Magistrate’s arrival.

Ignoring the trashed and twisted metal of artillery pieces around him, he strode over to a nearby corpse.

A rooster, as he’d heard on the radio. The harpy-like creature had been perforated from multiple directions. Nearby, another of her kin was in a similar state, collapsed against an ammo box.

It seemed the presence of gonnes had taken the Instinctive cultivators off guard. They hadn’t thought to dodge because they hadn’t realized they were in danger.

Perhaps that might have been different if there were more rifles in the mix – he’d learned the locals could be surprisingly quick on the uptake – but the revolvers carried by the artillery crews didn’t have a particularly menacing appearance at first glance.

To the uninitiated, he supposed they might have mistaken the weapons for some kind of religious symbol being waved importantly. Like a priest lambasting heretics with a wooden cross.

Of course, most of the creature’s corpses weren’t like that. Most looked like they’d been charred from the inside out. A lot had been fused to the ground.

The fact that they smelled almost exactly like roast chicken actually made him want to gag a little.

The Magistrate had not been gentle when she swooped in on a bolt of lighting. Nor when she left to chase the enemy as they tried to flee.

Jack doubted they’d get far.

He could hear and see the thundercracks illuminating the clouds overhead as The Imperial Scion zipped across the skies, chasing her foe.

Despite himself, the miner shivered. He was not a cowardly man by nature. Self interested and disinclined towards personal risk, yes, but that was a conscious decision on his part. He wasn’t the sort to let fear rule him.

He was too reckless for that.

Yet the sound of that thunder crying out overhead gave him a certain… primeval tingle. And that wasn’t just because he was surrounded by the corpses of some very powerful people who she’d slapped aside within seconds of arriving on the scene.

As the locals said, she’d disposed of them as easily as turning over a hand.

Shame she didn’t arrive fast enough to save the gonnes, he thought as he stared out at the mass of ruined metal weapons.

With only one or two exceptions, they were all totalled. The barrels had been bent or shattered, the main firings blocked dented in or just pain torn apart.

It was a terrifying display of raw physical strength.

Perhaps that was why the militia did so well. The enemy hadn’t been focused on the mortals crewing the weapons, just the weapons themselves. They’d clearly known they were on a short timetable and instead worked on silencing the weapons for good.

And they’d done a decent job – even if they’d clearly underestimated just how fast a motivated Imperial Scion could be. Either that, or the unexpected presence of small arms had delayed their destruction and subsequent attempts to escape?

“Sir.”

Jack nodded absently to Gao as the man jogged up to him. Fortunately, the Captain appeared unharmed and that was good.

He was too valuable to lose now.

“How many of the attackers escaped?” Jack asked without preamble.

Hopefully not too many. That would increase the likelihood of the Magistrate chasing them all down before they could report back to the horde.

He didn’t want the existence of his gonnes to get out yet. The small ones, not the big ones. Because while the enemy knew he had a gonne, they didn’t know that all of his mortals and many of the others in the city were packing similar weapons.

There was a reason the Magistrate and Shui were keeping their own ‘riflemen’ from the fight for now.

“Sir, I believe that-”

Before the man could finish, he was interrupted by something ‘poofing’ across the roof of a nearby building.

Jac used ‘poofing’ as a descriptor because that’s what it did. A body hitting a solid surface at that speed should have popped like a water balloon. Jack had seen enough suicidal corpos go out that way to know that for a fact.

The body that hit the roof didn’t do that. Because that would require some moisture to be left within it.

Instead, the charred corpse just… exploded into dust when it hit the roof.

Which was… terrifying.

As was the expression on the Magistrate’s face as she slammed into the ground on a literal fucking lighting bolt.

Within his robes, Jack felt his microbots shifting uncomfortably as the woman strode toward him out of the small glass crater she’d just made.

“None escaped,” she bit out. “But the damage is done. The big gonnes are ruined. Our foe can attack at will now.”

Before Jack could say anything, Gao bowed – fully, at the waist.

“I take full responsibility, Great One. This lowly one should have foreseen the possibility of an early attack.”

What the hell was that idiot doing!?

Resisting the tingle at the back of his mind that told him to step out of the way Jack subtly moved to stand between his bowing subordinate and the enraged Imperial Scion’s whose gaze was like a laser beam as it pivoted towards him.

Not that his impromptu body blocking mattered at all, as the Magistrate said but two words.

“Then die.”

And Gao started doing exactly that. He let out a choaked gasp and fell to the floor. Along with every single mortal around them. Even the wounded and dying fell silent beneath the overwhelming power of the woman’s intent.

“Gah.” Even Ren and the cavalry cultivator that was present had their legs buckle as they fell into an uncomfortable crouch.

The only one who was unaffected was…

“Stop.”

It actually took the Magistrate two glances to realize that Jack had neither buckled or in any way moved as she started throwing her killing intent around. And it was only after that revelation that she realized what he’d said.

“What?” Her words weren’t so much angry as perplexed, and for a moment, Jack couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever spoken to her like that before.

Well, in for a penny, he thought.

“I said stop.”

That was when the rage appeared, lightning crackled around the woman’s golden hair as she glared at him. “Who are you to command me, male!? You forget yourself.”

In response, entirely without any conscious thought of Jack’s, his microbots coalesced around him, shifting like a wary animal as the whip-like tentacles prepared to act as either a shield – or a sword - in his defense.

Jack knew this was a terrible idea but he continued on anyway. “Gao is my man. As are the rest of the people you are currently terrorizing. He and they are valuable to me. It would be in all of our interests for you to leave his punishment to me.”

“I am an Imperial Scion.” The woman spoke through gritted teeth.

Jack acknowledged her point, before responding with his own.

“And I am the only man that can repair these gonnes.”

Some of the anger fled from the Dragon-kin’s face as she cocked her head. “Repair?”

He shrugged. “Give me a day. I’ll have them all fixed.”

Something like a relieved smile stole over the woman’s features and for just a moment, Jack couldn’t help but marvel at just how incredibly attractive she was.

Not that it was relevant at all.

Not while she was killing his people.

“…But won’t do any of it if you don’t release my man.”

The Imperial Scion continued to stare and Jack merely gazed back as lightning crackled and microbots chittered between them.

“You play a dangerous game,” she said finally.

Jack just laughed. “We live in dangerous times.”

Suddenly, there were gasps from all around them as people finally took a breath of air. From behind him, Jack heard as Gao took in a shuddered breath.

Yet he dared not break eye contact with the woman in front of him.

“I will not forget this insult,” she promised. “For now though, I need you.”

The Imperial Scion floated up into the air, sparks twirling around her feet. She turned and flew a few feet, before turning back to him.

Suddenly, there was a stiffness from Ren and the cavalry woman and… was the air around him getting hazy?

Then the strange phenomena disappeared.

“Ha,” the Magistrate laughed. “Not even a twitch. You remind me of my father, male.”

Then she flew away with the roar of a thunder clap.

Jack watched her go, before finally letting out the breath he’d been holding. He actually sagged as Ren staggered over to him and gripped his sleeve.

“Please, for all that is holy, don’t ever do that again.”

Jack liked to think that it said a lot that the normally collected and diplomatic woman was utterly serious as she said those words.

He glanced down at her pale features, before his eyes flitting over to Gao and the rest of the mortals present.

All of them were staring, awe in their faces.

…And that was the moment it sank in for him what had just happened.

Holy shit I just blackmailed a dragon-woman who can shoot lightning from her ass, he thought incredulously.

Collecting himself, he nodded to Ren. “I’ll try not to.”

Off in the distance, one of the artillery pieces exploded, the shell inside having finally cooked off.