Chapter 247 - Predator

The lesser titan looked at them curiously with its dozens of eyes. Then, the mouths on the sides of its body let out high pitched screams. Without hesitating, the beast charged forward. The bone tusks along its front shifted and warped, creating a lethal spear wall.

As Ibrahim entered his dual dervish forms, Mirian opened up with a bombardment of force spells, opting to keep her spells quiet so that thunder didn’t bring more myrvites down on their heads. Branches went flying, and leaves came down from the canopy in a flurry, but the blades and blasts she was sending forward bent around the creature in a cone, distorting before they could do anything to the gargantuan myrvite.

“Bad opening. Lesser titans can manipulate force energy!” Gaius called from over by the cave entrance. “Did I not mention that?”

“You did not,” Mirian snapped, putting up a prismatic shield as the lesser titan stampeded closer.

“Ah. Did I also forget to mention they can siphon most kinds of shields, and disrupt arcane spells?”

The prismatic shield began to dissipate, and the beast was almost on top of them. Mirian dashed off to the side with accelerated levitation, only to find that the extra push of force she was using in that spell was also being countered by the lesser titan. She put up a black shield just in time to block the charge. Not all of the force of the slam was converted into light that could be nullified by the shield, and she found herself hurled backward into a tree.

Ibrahim sidestepped the initial charge, then started carving up the front leg of the beast, his strikes coming hard and fast. Black blood splattered out of the lesser titan. One of the bat-like wings on the side of the beast’s leg opened up and try to stab the dervish with a spike of bone, but he parried it easily, circled around two steps, then was right back to carving off pieces of the beast.

Gabriel, on the other hand, was backpedaling madly as he plinked the mryvite with small fire spells. Mirian had half a mind to tell him to just retreat into the cave with the others, but decided he could use the practice. She resumed levitating. If force spells were out, and she didn’t want to alert the whole forest to their presence, she would have to use heat and necromancy as her primary tools. She moved higher up into the bottom layer of the canopy as she circled around so that she could cast spells from a better angle.

As she flew, she watched Ibrahim still in close quarters with the lesser titan. His blade cracked against one of the swinging bone tusks, lodging in it. Immediately, his off-hand came around, punching the tusk so that the bone shattered. It was a neat trick, but it also did nothing to stop the lesser titan from ramming the dervish, sending him flying backward. One of his forms was the Lone Pine, but the form could only prevent so much injury. The lesser titan started stomping forward to trample him.

Mirian cast flash in front of the beast to blind it, then used shape stone to pull pillars of rock up directly in front of it. The beast stumbled into them, its front legs collapsing, though its back four legs kept it stable. She followed up with a cone of flames while it was off balance. A weaker myrvite would have been turned into charcoal, but of course, the lesser titan wasn’t just big, it had absurd spell resistance too, so she only burned it. She tried to follow up by cutting up one of the nearby trees so that it would fall on the beast, but again, the force spell was sapped away. 

The lesser titan proceeded more carefully now, but it was still moving towards Ibrahim. By now, the dervish had recovered. As Mirian peppered the beast with arcane fire lance spells and channeled a necromantic weaken, Ibrahim charged again. This time, as one of the tusks went to impale him, he grabbed on and used the momentum to let himself be hurled up into the air. Mirian momentarily stopped casting—partially so she wouldn’t hit him, and partially because it was such an impressive display of acrobatics—and watched as he went from a flip into a perfect landing on the back of the beast, then immediately started carving chunks of flesh off it with a flurry of scything blows.

The myrvite’s deformed wings near its back turned into bone claws that reached for Ibrahim. With the dervish on top of the creature, Mirian needed to modify her strategy. Her full-power spells could probably overcome the lesser titan’s spell resistance, but Ibrahim would be collateral damage.

She flipped pages in her spellbook to where she had glyphs and runes more useful for casting debilitating spells. She held onto the weaken curse she was using to sap the myrvite’s strength, and added mental fog and soul disruption. By then, Ibrahim’s blade—embedded point down in the back of the creature—had slipped from his hands and he was wrestling with three of the bone appendages.

That looks really difficult, she thought, and considered what else she could do to help him. She looked back at Gaius.

“Have you tried heat transfer?” he shouted from by the cave.

That will complement the curses nicely, she thought. She wasn’t familiar with what the spell was called, but she had the glyphs for it. She began to rapidly transfer heat from the body of the lesser titan into the air, chilling its limbs as it sent gouts of steam into the canopy. Ice crystals would be forming inside the joints, both impeding movement and slicing up the tissue from the inside.

The bone claws moved away from the dervish. Instead, the lesser titan violently shook its body, sending Ibrahim flying off it—without his sword. Mirian felt the grip of hostile siphon spells starting to rip away the arcane force powering her spells, while the beast’s soul struggled to break her curses. Mirian put a finger to her lips, considering her strategy. I could strike it now that Ibrahim is clear. But it’s probably best to use this as an opportunity to better assess Ibrahim’s strengths and build collaboration. Fighting together in battle is good for forming bonds.

With that decided, she used manipulate magnetic item to yank Ibrahim’s sword out of the beast and move it next to him, just as the giant myrvite used whip-like extensions of its soul to tear apart her freezing spell. This time, it charged towards the cave.

Again, Mirian moved stone from the earth, this time using the rock she was moving to form a trench in front of the wall. The lesser titan stumbled before ramming through it, sending rock and soil splashing out. Dust choked the air. Mirian used gather smoke to quickly dissipate it.

Ibrahim, meanwhile, had taken his sword and was charging the flank.

Mirian heard the crack of gunfire and turned. The caravaneers had gotten the rifles and were taking shots at the creature alongside Gabriel.

Hmm. Mirian had been practicing one of Ibrahim’s new dervish forms. She’d started getting the hang of it the night before, and it was the perfect form to use here. Mirian assumed The Desert Flower Blooms Without Rain. This was one of Ibrahim’s great secrets for winning unwinnable battles. Like the auramancer stances, it flooded his aura outward. Like The Spear That Cuts Water, it could impart an instinctual understanding to reflexes and motions, but to a whole group. It made even untrained fighters suddenly naturals in combat. Surprisingly, she found it easier to use when her aura was connected to more people. The patterns liked to dance between people; it was like letting ripples bounce about in a basin, rather than trying to restrain them.

Immediately, Ibrahim picked up on what she was doing, shifting his dual stance so that he was using the Dance of the Dusk Waves stance in conjunction with the Last Breath stance, sacrificing the protection of Lone Pine, trusting that instinct and reaction would be his defense. With three dervish stances fueling him, he came at the lesser titan like a thunderhead, blade moving so fast it blurred, each strike hitting with the strength of several men. The beast lunged at him, but he was already circling around, weaving in and out of thrusts from its wing-appendages and flailing tusks. Once again, the beast’s movement was stymied, and its black blood was gushing from dozens of wounds.

With the Desert Flower stance affecting them, the carvaneers’ gunfire went from wild to pinpoint. Each rifle shot now struck a body-eye or soft spot, and they reloaded with the fluidity of professionals.

Mirian recast her curses, now directing the heat she was sapping from the beast into points inside that would sear its organs. Her soul energy from her spellbook’s repositories was draining fast to facilitate piercing that much spell resistance, but she was already preparing the bindings that would let her siphon the lesser titan’s soul as it deteriorated.

She could sense the fear in the lesser titan now. It lashed out in panicked strikes, attempting to crush Ibrahim with powerful stomps. The dervish danced out of the way, again using one of its tusks to vault himself to a new position, then catching a vestigial wing as it tried to batter him and redirect his momentum in mid-air. His blade blinded another of the fleshy eyes on the side of the beast, and then the titan gave up, screaming as it attempted to charge back into the jungle.

Mirian concentrated her spellpower, strengthening the bindings around its soul and beginning to drain at it. The beast’s movements became more panicked as it stumbled into the tree line. As the soul energy accumulated, Mirian concentrated it into her next necromantic spell, then switched to her own invented form: the Burning Tempest Sunders the Sky.

She cast black line. It cut across the air like a thunderbolt of shadow, slicing right into the lesser titan. Her curses had weakened its soul, distorting it with necromantic bindings. Now, along the path of the spell, the weakened parts detonated. She leashed the torn soul energies with soul siphon, then used the lesser titan’s own broken soul to cast another killing spell. The myrvite stumbled, this time collapsing to the ground, sending the trees shaking.

Ibrahim let out a battlecry, sprinting after it. With a huge leap, he landed on the neck of the creature, then planted his blade firmly down, driving it down like a shovel into soil. Black blood bubbled up around his blade.

The beast thrashed once more, then stilled.

The jungle returned to silence.

Ibrahim withdrew his blade, his front side covered in gore. He smiled at the group as he strode back towards the cave. As Mirian landed by his side he said, “I want to fight another one of those.”

“Good news, then,” Mirian’s father said. “I know you were trying to be quiet, but anything nearby that was paying attention just heard that. If there’s another lesser titan around, it will respond to the screams it just heard. The light eaters will continue to stalk us from the shadows, but mist jellies, oniwyrms, and petal demons are hunters, not scavengers. We can expect to fight the rest of the way.”

“Fight? You didn’t do anything!” Gabriel said, still shaking with adrenaline. “Is that part of what you negotiated?”

The necromancer shrugged. “You had it in hand. My instruction is far more valuable than my direct intervention. After all, only one of those things lasts.”

Meanwhile, Feng and the other caravaneers were gaping at them. “What are you?” the caravan leader finally managed.

“A group of myrvite hunters. Prince Sulha paid us to investigate the disturbances in the Jiandzhi,” Gabriel said quickly, the lie obviously practiced. He’d gone from shaken up and angry to sounding bored in an instant.

Feng didn’t look convinced. “How would the Second Prince of Alatishad know about this?”

“I’m not about to reveal secret details about my prince’s information gathering network. Regardless, you win because our report is going to the politicians in Wongzho first. After all, neither of us want Sanctuary Road closed, do we?”

“I’m not leaving the marusaurs, no matter what you say,” Feng said.

“Wouldn’t ask it of you. The whole point of this all is to turn a profit, isn’t it?” Gabriel said, though he was looking at Mirian when he said it.

Mirian’s face twitched with a brief smirk. Terrible at fighting, but I can’t afford to forget that he’s clever.

“Get the packbeasts. We should move out quickly. There’s a reason we hired the best to guide us through here,” Gabriel finished. A few caravaneers were still gawking, but Feng said a few curt words and got them into action. As they moved back into the cave to get the marusaurs moving, Gabriel came over. “The longer we can keep them alive, the easier things will go.”

“We’re not in disagreement about that. We need to talk tactics, though. Until you can increase your myr rating, your combat spells will be ineffective here.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re useless. Have you tried illusions?”

“Tried? Mirian, I worked for the Republic Intelligence Division for God’s sake.”

“So use those.”

“Petal demons don’t have eyes. And light eaters are just gonna… you know.” He made a chomping motion with his hand.

“Add a heat spell to the illusion so it gives off warmth. Add a small tremor spell to replicate footsteps. An auditory illusion for anything that’s sensing that. These are predators; give them fake prey to hunt.”

Gabriel glanced down at his belt full of wands. “Yeah, not a lot of flexibility here.”

“I can modify one of your wands. Is that one illusionary disguise?”

“How’d you know that?”

“They’re standard issue. I can use that as a base. It will just take an hour where we’re not being attacked.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “Should have known. Fine. Well, what should I do until then?”

“Use your levitation wand. Fly around. Be a distraction, and be a set of eyes that can analyze the whole situation.”

“Sure. Fine.” He sighed loudly. “I hate this fucking jungle.” To Gaius, he said, “Atrah, can’t you, I don’t know, turn the corpse into something useful?”

The necromancer nodded. “Sure. Just give me a month and the supplies I need to craft the runes on those bones. I might also need several specimens to properly test the actual function of the bindings, since the lesser titan soul is fundamentally different from a human one. Then I’d just have to work on the control runes so that I could get the undead construct to ignore the imprinted soul’s instincts. I think I could get that done in a year. For context, Triarch Saffia’s team of necromancers were able to reanimate and train a manticore in five years, and it’s their techniques I would be leaning heavily on.”

“You could have just said ‘no,’” Gabriel grumbled.

Mirian said, voice low, “You should probably learn a bit more about necromancy. It’s very useful.”

By then, the first marusaurs were emerging, looking very displeased that they were going to have to go near a lesser titan, even a dead one. They kept snorting and pawing at the ground in agitation.

Feng snapped his fingers at the lead one. “Let’s go. Let’s go!” he said.

Reluctantly, the marusaurs started moving faster, which meant the caravan had sped up to a brisk walk.

In the distance, Mirian heard the howl of an oniwyrm.

Then another.

Then a third.

“Here they come,” muttered Gabriel.

Ibrahim turned from cleaning the blood off his sword and gave Mirian another huge grin. “Here they come,” he said.