Chapter 168

Wood exploded into the open air in a cloud of splinters as Luke bulled his way through the wall. Behind him, the house shuddered and loose pieces of timber, weakened by the flames, collapsed onto the floor. A chunk of the roof came down right after, exactly what Luke had been afraid would happen.

It buried the writhing mass of tongue-vines, but the two soldiers also got caught up in it. One of them was completely hidden by the falling debris, but the other had managed to extra himself enough that his upper half was still exposed. Unlike Luke, however, he didn’t have a high enough stamina stat to handle being subjected to the flames like that.

Amidst fresh screams of pain, Luke rushed forward and pulled out his knife. With one hand, he lifted the slab of roof that had crashed down on the man, while the other worked his blade to slice any vines he could see still wrapped around the soldier’s legs, but for the first time ever, the alchemically treated ever-sharp blade failed to slice through something. It was no wonder the soldiers had been having such a hard time getting free; those tongues were stronger than steel.

If his blade wasn’t up to the task, Luke would just have to help another way. He grabbed hold of a tongue-vine with both hands and, ignoring the slicing feeling in his palms and fingers, tore it into two pieces. Then he grabbed another, and another, and another. Finally, the soldier was free. Luke grabbed him with his free hand and shoved him backwards, away from the burning house and the deadly constricting tongue-vines.

He threw the chunk of burning roof and timber off to the side and heaved the next piece into the air. The older soldier was on his back underneath it, unconscious and still snarled in tongue-vines. His clothing was on fire and he was covered in burns, but he was still alive. Mercifully, the tongues were not. Sometime in the last few seconds, the demon itself had died, and it was much easier to pull the second soldier out.

“You’re not looking so good, buddy,” Luke said. [Analyze]came back with a 26 for the soldier’s stamina, which was comparatively low. Pretty much all of the rest of soldiers where mid-thirties or higher. “Let’s get you back to your boss.”

Luke helped the still-conscious soldier to his feet and carried the one who’d been buried to where the captain was arguing with the black-sword woman about something. They fell silent as he approached, at least until Luke set the man down.

“Your recklessness caused the house to collapse,” the captain said. “These burns are your fault.”

Luke shrugged. “Could have been a lot worse. If I hadn’t intervened, they’d have died like everyone else.”

Other than that one mishap, things seemed to be going well for the villagers. They were successfully holding back the gargoyles now that the soldiers had started to take over confining the tongue fuckers and herding them into the fires. A number of gargoyles flying around had scars across their skin from being struck, and in three separate spots, a group of farmers were collaborating to kill them. Two villagers armed with pitchforks would pin the gargoyle to the ground while the rest took turns pounding on it with sledgehammers until it eventually deflated and its concrete-blood stained the grass.

“That’s one way to do it,” Luke said, nodding towards the hammer-wielding groups.

“Standard tactic,” the sword-wielding woman told him. “Nets are recommended, but I think this way works better.”

Before Luke could respond, she rushed off to attack a gargoyle that had managed to separate a woman from the rest of her group and was trying to drag her up into the air. She was small enough that Luke thought the gargoyle might just manage it, but then that black sword struck its wing. It wasn’t sharp enough to sheer through it anymore, but the impact still forced the demon to drop the woman.

“Looks like things are under control now,” Zea said. “Half of those lashers are dead, the gargoyles are being thinned out and aren’t causing nearly as many problems as they were ten minutes ago.”

The captain grunted, but otherwise ignored her while he scanned the village. As far as Luke could tell, Zea was right. There might be some casualties if people made mistakes, but that was always the danger of life-or-death fighting. The captain looked worried. No, scratch that. He looked terrified, and like he was barely keeping it under control.

“You know something,” Luke said. The man started and looked over at him.

“We should evacuate the village as soon as those lashers are dead,” he said.

“We’re not evacuating when we’re winning,” the village woman snapped back. “You’ve got no proof that more demons are coming.”

“It’s the smell,” the captain said. “That’s the real danger of the lashers.”

“That burnt sap stink?” Luke asked.

“Other demons can smell it. It draws them in. If there’s anything else in the area, it’s heading our way right now.”

“Everything in the area is already here, attacking us,” the villager said. “If there was anything else, it would have already shown up.”

“What kind of demon are you expecting?” Zea asked.

The captain just shrugged. “There will be something. I have to be ready to intercept it. Hopefully there won’t be too many.”

“Not much we can do about that unless something actually shows up,” Luke said. He turned to the sword-wielding village woman and said, “You have any first aid supplies? This guy’s going to have a hell of a time coming back from these injuries if we don’t do anything to help.”

The woman grimaced and shook her head. “Tried to set up a first aid station an hour ago. The gargoyles swarmed it and killed three people. Tried it again inside a house. They attacked that too.”

“Fuck. What have you been doing with the injured?”

“Two guys are carrying them away from the fighting, to a farmhouse about a mile out of town. But they can’t keep up with how fast people are getting hurt. Maybe we can spare a few more to help now that the Jigon-Sai is here.”

“You have your wounded all gathered in one central location? Tell me it’s at least guarded,” the captain said sharply, his head whipping around to stare at the woman.

The woman shook her head. “Not enough people.”

Luke wasn’t entirely sure what language the captain started speaking in, but he recognized the tone and assumed the man was reciting a litany of long-winded swearing. He took a moment to compose himself, then called out, “Jigon-Sai!” followed by what Luke assumed were orders. He thought he caught the word for “assemble” or “return” in there.

The village woman said something, questioning what the captain was doing, if Luke understood her correctly. Why did they need so many languages anyway? Things would have been a lot simpler with just one.

“What’s going on?” Zea asked Luke.

“Not sure. I think the good captain here is ordering all his troops to pull out of the village. Maybe we’re heading for that farm with all the injured on it?”

“Maybe we should just walk away from this whole mess,” Zea said. “Not to be heartless, but this isn’t our problem and they’ve got it under control. Unless you want to spend the next hour fucking around and mopping up the last of the demons, we might as well go.”

“Well… Maybe. We’re probably not going to get a better time to break free of these soldiers without killing them. But we’d be giving up access to their healers if we leave.”

“I doubt they were intending to honor that anyway, and we’ve got enough money to pay for our own.”

The Jigon-Sai soldiers had started extracting themselves and were assembling in front of their captain. Of the original eight he’d entered the village with, only six were still standing. One was laid out where Luke had left him, and the other had lost his head to a gargoyle while he was trying to contain a lasher. His body had been left where it had fallen, at least for now.

The captain started snapping out orders while ignoring the screeching rant of the village woman. The rest of the villagers scrambled to fill the holes left behind by the soldiers, but they weren’t in a good position to just jump right in and Luke saw more than a few fresh injuries.

“That’s not cool,” he said. “Just going to bail on these people like that?”

“We need to get to that medical station immediately,” the captain said. “The village can defend itself, but those people are going to die if we don’t hurry, and it’ll be worse for everyone else.”

“Why? What do you think is coming?”

Practically on cue, a tremor shook the ground. It was slight, so small that Luke barely felt it. No one else seemed to notice, but the captain was watching him. “You have a high perception, right? Did you feel the ground moving?”

“Yeah? What does it mean?”

“Go! Now, run!” the captain bellowed. “Blood hunters about to breach a mile that way.”

The soldiers all gaped at him, but they quickly got over their surprise and began sprinting out of the village. The sword-wielding woman protested, but her words fell on deaf ears. The soldiers left her behind, and the captain hesitated only long enough to look to Luke and Zea.

“This… this is a suicide mission. We go now in hopes of limiting the devastation to come later. The two of you should flee. If you can convince the villagers to go with you, so much the better. I am sorry I was distrustful of you and thought you might be demons in disguise.”

The captain ran off without another word, leaving the two of them with the village woman. She’d fallen silent after they left, but she stared at them with tears in her eyes. “I take back any bad things I said about him,” she said when she noticed Luke looking at her.

“He seemed pretty certain that he was going to die,” Zea said. “What’s a blood hunter anyway?”

“Demons that multiply by eating blood. They’re individually weak, but their numbers can grow out of control if they’re not culled immediately. With all the wounded there… I didn’t think it would be a problem. There haven’t been any demons here before today. They were all in the south and on the other side of the mountains.”

“Are you part of their military?” Luke asked. “You seem to know a lot about these.”

“No,” the woman said with a shake of her head. “My uncle was. He died to the demons a month ago, and I went to fetch his possessions. He had a book detailing the different types of demons we’ve encountered so far, their tactics and habits, the best ways we’ve come up with to defeat them.”

“That’d be a useful book to have,” Zea said. “Could we maybe get a look at it?”

“Doubtful,” the village woman said. She pointed at the burning house that Luke had caused to partially collapse. The fire had moved all the way up the exterior walls and was making its way across the roof now. “That was my house.”

Luke would have felt bad about it, but honestly, he’d only sped up the total collapse of the building. All of the burning houses were destined for the same fate. Their owners had known that when they’d lit the fires to begin with.

Another tremor passed under his feet, this one stronger and lasting far longer. The others felt it this time, and they turned to look out east towards where the Jigon-Sai had run off. Even as Luke watched, something the size of a grain silo burst straight up from the ground and rose a hundred feet into the air. It was a dirty yellow color and had mud caked on its skin, which glistened with some sort of slimy fluid.

The top of the silo split open, and hundreds of dog-sized creatures flew out into the air. They whirled around like some massive swarm of mosquitos and, as one, dove for the nearby farmhouse while the humans inside shouted and screamed.

Six soldiers and a captain weren’t going to be enough to stop that, not even close. If the village woman was right about these blood hunters, it was in Luke’s best interest to go help them. He glanced down at Zea, who sighed and nodded. She’d obviously come to the same conclusion.

Luke used [Burst Step] to throw himself forward and ran as fast as he could.