III-53 Capture (I)

The biggest weakness of the orcs is their cruelty. Never let them convince you that it's a strength. Yeah, it's terrifying the things they d

The biggest weakness of the orcs is their cruelty. Never let them convince you that it's a strength. Yeah, it's terrifying the things they do to people. Yeah, it does leave you scarred, leave you traumatized. But we can take it. We can learn from it. We can adapt to their methods. If there is one thing we have over them, one thing, it's this: that they cannot survive with no cruelty. You pin them in place and an orc atrophies fast.

We kept a master tier orc in a cell. He lasted two weeks. Two weeks before his muscle mass faded. Two weeks before his bones turned brittle. Before he started suffering from the effects of fast-acting dementia. Two weeks before his mana field shriveled away into nothing. Two weeks. We all know how long a master tier can usually go without food, without sustenance. They don't have that time.

If you can force them to starve, they're going to go feral. And they're going to be driven towards greater acts of psychopathy. Don't think of them as these perfect rational psychopaths. They are intelligent. They are dangerous. But they're not perfect. Not nearly close. You can force them to make mistakes. You can force them to decay, to suffer. You can force them through boredom, through stalemate. The best way to hurt an orc is to not fight them at all. Box them in place and make sure that they get no chance to scratch that itch of theirs.

And if you don't have that option, then you should move on to the next best choice. You lure them out. You use their cruelty, their urges against them. Present easy targets. They'll know it's a trap. The orcs will know. Don't get me wrong here. It's not that we're fooling them. It's that they can't resist after a certain period.

Their cruelty is not their strength. It's their drug. And we can be the dealers. We can control them. We can.

-Legend-Ranger Marion Crow-on-Graves

III-53

Capture (I)

The expeditionary force appeared over the horizon as a splash of tumbling white contrasted upon a midnight sky freckled with scintillating stars. A distant, spiraling mountain was the only other source of light on the horizon, and at its apex rose a high, curved gate that glimmered with dimensionality. Around the gate spiraled crystalline dimensionals and the metallic bodies of automata. 

That was apparently Margarita Point, one of the Republic's minor cross-dimensional mines. At present, Whisper and another detachment of orcs were moving towards Margarita Point, erecting a massive dimensional veil to hide the impending ambush about to befall the expeditionary force. The veil extended wide and high like a grand screen some few kilometers high and wide.

“This is more than just mana, Shiv,” Valor said, as he watched the scene unfold. “This is control and experience. They don’t need someone to direct their spellcasting because they have done this over and over again.”

“Yeah,” Shiv said, impressed by how fast the dimensional veil was going up. “I hope I get good enough to pull that off someday.”

“You will. Give it time.”

Margarita Point didn't have much in the way of defenders, as it wasn't a great gate in the scheme of things. But still, a Pathbearer there could jump off, could go warn the bulk of the Inquisition's forces still stationed at Fortress-City, Diego. And Shiv really didn't want them to miss out on their own surprise. 

So the orcs went about engineering things to stay subtle. As the army of twenty-thousand gray-skinned brutes moved out, they adjusted into a curving shape, spreading around the approaching expeditionary force like the open jaws of a beast. Only a few of the orcs took to the air immediately, and those orcs moved alone, with great distance between them and the next flyer. Most of the orcs remained grounded, but they still moved fast, and more importantly, they moved without making any noise at all; without damaging the land at all.

The orcs along the exterior were the eyes and the senses, and what followed behind them was what Bonk described as the skin—the second layer of orcs. Shiv remained just behind the skin, moving with the bones. The bones were the hard-hitters, the ones meant to crash in and break the enemy. This was the best place for the Deathless. 

Though Shiv had a Master-Tier Stealth Skill, he was by no means subtle, and the orcs needed subtle to best deal with the Inquisition's forward scouts—forward scouts that Shiv couldn't perceive. But they had been there. Uva noticed remains left by the orcs. Blood and viscera. But no bodies. The Inquisitions outermost scouts were invisible. But it did nothing to spare their lives. The orcs were coming, and they were better at walking the darkness than the Republic ever was.

Shiv could spot the orcs serving as the eyes in the distance. The orc scouts were fast closing around the expeditionary force. Their bodies faint shrouds of dimensionality, surging across the land, gliding as if blots of darkness across plains of sparse vegetation. Through it all, the orcs moved on solid, without requiring direction, without chaos or confusion. They knew their roles, and they played accordingly to the situation. And as they collapsed around the two thousand inquisitors, maintaining a four hundred-meter distance, all Shiv could hear was his heartbeat as tension built.

His heartbeat, and Uva’s groans of nausea.

"You alright?" Shiv asked mentally.

"Is it always like this?" Uva said. She was staring at the sky through his eyes, feeling the world around him using his senses, and her stomach churned. "It's so wide and keeps going. There's so much light."

Shiv was about to say something regarding how the sky was pitch black, aside from a few glittering stars. But then he remembered Uva was used to the Abyss. And compared to the Abyss, this might as well have been daylight.

"I have no idea how you put up with this."

"I'm just used to it, I guess," Shiv said. "This was, well, this is what I've known all my life. The sky is just a normal sight to me. So is the horizon."

"And you're never worried that you might just fall up, that it will swallow you?"

The Deathless frowned. "No. Why?"

"Because it's just too open. Anyone above could be staring at us. We're so exposed."

He wanted to say that it was paranoia talking, but this was the way an Abyssal lived: Hiding in the darkness, using the denseness of the Umbral Wilderness to keep themselves from being spotted. And, in a sense, she wasn't wrong. The expeditionary force proved remarkably easy for Adam to spot from kilometers away.

A shrouded orc approached them then. Shiv narrowed his eyes at them and only managed to figure out who they were when their veil splashed over with his.

"We are about to engage," Helix said.

Shiv looked back at the horizon. He could only see a few dots of Dimensionality out there. "How can you tell?" he asked Helix.

"Using my Awareness Skill. You’ve neglected. You have eyes, so use them!"

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Shiv snapped. "Alright, Helix, use your wonderful orc eyes and tell me what your orc senses feel."

"My orc senses tell me," Helix said, gesturing out with a large hand, "that our Shadows and Thieves are getting through their final layer of scouts. And that the Inquisition is becoming aware of the danger they’re in.”

"Huh, how can you tell that?" Shiv squinted as hard as he could, but he couldn't see anything from the horizon before him that gave any indication that a series of battles were underway.

"Pay attention to the veils of Dimensionality. Are they moving? How are they moving? Focus your gaze, what can you tell?"

Before Shiv could notice anything, Valor's voice let out a gasp of realization. "Ah, I see. Quite.”

"See what?" Shiv replied. "I just..." And then he stopped talking. He watched as a few thousand veiled orcs quickly moved from position to position, but their acceleration happened in bursts, almost as if they were trying to throw someone off or intercepting someone. 

At the same time, the tide of clouds carrying the expeditionary force was slowing down dramatically.

Awareness 33 > 34

"Now you see," Helix said, "a series of battles have concluded. We just can't see them."

Shiv frowned. "But I don't see anything breaking. There's no dust, no debris."

"That's because they are Shadows," Helix said with a hint of derision in his voice. "Not everyone is a bomb or a brute. Shadows focus on subtlety, on precision. You might have noticed by this point that not everyone's Master-Tier Physicality makes them substantially stronger. Sometimes it makes them extremely adaptable. Or flexible" And that made him think of Uva. "At other times, it makes them more suitable for other circumstances. Consider Bonk for a moment. At the amount of force he outputs, he should be leaving colossal craters everywhere."

"But he doesn't," Shiv said. He remembered Bonk's attacks, how each strike built based on a concept of resonance. It didn't even unleash that much of a shockwave, to be honest.

And as soon as he realized that, a wall of shrouded figures began moving in on the orcs. At the same time, a few hundred other shrouds went still, holding in place even as the clouds drew closer. "What's happening now?"

"Ah," Helix breathed, his breath hot with anticipation, "now our Shadows are marking targets. They’ll be firing their shots soon. And you will learn the weakness of having obvious commanders.”

And true to the orc's words, a few thousand projectiles cut through the air. There was no signal, no warning before they fired, and no noise as they tore through the cloud bearing the Inquisition’s forces. As soon as the first orc loosed their shot, the next followed. And soon, a chaotic series of volleys surged up from all directions. 

Spells of flame, of ice, of Dynamancy, and more cleaved across the world. But more often than not, Shiv saw spells of Dimensionality splashing over the massive cloud looming in the horizon. The dimensional spell blasted outward, staining the air with a faint veil of static.

“The hells is that supposed to do?” Shiv asked.

“Make sure the Inquisitors can’t just jump out,” Helix replied.

All of a sudden, the entire orc army was surging. The orcs near Shiv accelerated. Those who operated as the skin remained in place, waiting for the rest of the orcs to catch up. Along the exterior, the eyes began to circle the expeditionary force. Columns of destruction blew pockets through the clouds. Faint figures fell from gaps, descending as a rain of bodies. Inquisitors were dying, orcs shed their veils and roared theatrically—some sounding bestial, while others used the opportunity to practice their singing voices.

This shit is like a fever dream.

"Go, go, go now!" Helix called out. "Go before we lose our flavor, before we lose our pound of flesh!"

And that was all the encouragement Shiv needed. He spiked his field twenty more times. And just as he used his Biomancy to funnel the venom bound to his armor, his body swelled, his muscles expanded, his skin hardened. And the world around Shiv exploded as he shot forward like a meteor, overtaking several of the orcs.

"Wait?" Helix said, suddenly falling behind. “Too fast—don’t leave me—”

But Shiv didn't stop. The shock waves unleashed in Shiv’s wake launched the orc Biomancer through the air.

"Catch up when you can," Shiv said mentally. There was a faint grin on his face. Helix prided himself on biomancy. But despite all of Helix's knowledge, he was an orc in desperate need of humbling. "In the meantime," Shiv called back to Helix, "Work on your Reflexes. Your physical skills are embarrassing."

A chain of explosions surrounded the expeditionary. A larger storm manifested above and unleashed a chain of lightning downward. However, before the massive cloud carrying the expeditionary force could be consumed, a shield shimmering and multi-layered, pulsed into existence. It gave off a prismatic glow, but along its exterior, Shiv saw shifting wavelengths that distorted the air, wavelengths he remembered seeing from Dynamancy spells. At once, several orcs collapsed their dimensional veils as they began to call out to each other.

"Dynamancers! Singularity Bomb!" an orc bellowed. Shiv guessed that was a maestro, judging from how several other orcs nearby froze to respond.

Shiv didn't freeze. He climbed higher into the air, building speed and power. But as he did, he froze time and found himself among the few still capable of movement in the world. There were five other orc Chronomancers he could see, but they didn't move as he did. He was the only one that had the Strider of the Unbending Path. 

But he corrected that assumption a moment later, as he realized there was a golden shape lurking high above the clouds, fast ascending. A second thereafter, the massive form of a golden dragon burst through, and on its back was a small figure, a small figure holding a lance a hundred meters long.

Shiv let out a laugh. “Ah, system. You didn’t need to do this for me. But I’ll never say no to a dragon fight.”

The battle thrill was upon him, and the Inquisition came ready to brawl after all. He spiked himself toward the dragon, prepared for anything. At the same time, he began to shape a Vitae Golem. It emerged from his being, drawing out strands of white and red mana. As it comprised itself in his shape, a call sounded through the air.

"Halt!" A woman's voice shook the world. "Halt! You will be engaged! You stand across, facing an Inquisitor!"

"I know who I'm facing!" Shiv shouted, but she didn't respond. He realized her broadcast had been telepathic, and he was just yelling. Yelling while he had already broken the sound barrier. Shiv snorted. This wasn't going to be a matter of dialogue anyway.

The rider continued her warnings as she approached. Her dragon was moving so fast that it left a jetstream of flame in its wake while its scales burned bright hot. "I am Hero-Inquisitor Athena Santiago. I ride Valero the Swift. Turn and be spared. Stay and face judgment before the ascendants."

Shiv finished infusing his Chronomancy Skill into the Vitae Golem, but the Hero Inquisitor wasn't lying. That dragon was damn fast, faster than Shiv by a substantial margin. Good godsdamn shit, he thought to himself. That dragon’s fast as hell.

He had maybe a hundred meters and half a second before she closed. He sent a telepathic command to the golem, and decided against giving it a vitality drain skill. "Charge the expeditionary force, spike yourself, detonate when you're about to break." It shot off immediately, and Shiv accelerated toward the incoming dragon a moment thereafter.

He magnified his Skysplitter and slashed out with his blade. He tried to strike the incoming lance, tried to strike at the side of the rider's lance, trying to parry it. But as soon as he made contact, her weapon trembled violently.

Shiv felt his blade bounce off first first. 

At the same moment, the dragon and the rider turned ethereal and suddenly grew impossibly faster. They blinked across 400 meters, and they washed through Shiv like a river blasting through a stone. Though they passed through him as if intangible, he was wrenched back and pulled off course.

It wasn't like he was being overwhelmed by a greater force. Rather, it was like someone changed his accelerating vector entirely. Shiv suddenly pointed the other way. Behind him, the rider materialized. She thrust out with her lance, and a narrow beam of flame pierced the underside of his abdomen. The beam tore through the exterior armor, but his bone adamantium immediately began to heal thanks to the basilisk flesh.

Gods, I love Biomancy.

Shiv cast himself back a second in time to reset his position. He reset himself and slashed out at the rider again. At the same time, he triggered Minor Illusion, Chameleon, and Creeping Void. 

A splash of blackness swallowed 200 meters of space. Once again, the rider and her dragon turned ethereal. She rushed through the minor illusion, but the moment she felt no resistance, she tore off skyward, resetting her own position as well.

Huh. A jouster, Shiv frowned. He remembered Tran telling him about calvary Pathbearers who just focused on charging down dangerous foes. He guessed this rider was one of the Inquisition’s secret weapons, meant to guard and slay Chronomancers specifically.

Shiv felt cracks spread across his temporal shell, and a half second later, the first lines of damage formed upon the dragon's Chronomancy field as well. They were almost evenly matched as Chronomancers—neither was going to be outlasting the other.

Shiv shot up in the air after her. He adapted his strategy. She could move fast. Well, he could be in two places at once. He flung a bone drill at her. It shot forward, and he used his vitae strands to guide it, adding additional dexterity to supplement his lacking aim. The bone drill zipped across the distance and hammered into the underside of the dragon. A splash of sparks lit the time-frozen midnight sky as the bone drill bounced off at a sharp angle. 

That was like some kind of Frictionless Vector Toughness Skill on the dragon. 

Shiv noted the attack had been dead on, yet it slipped off like the rider and dragon's body was slippery.

Marksmanship 12 > 13

Once more, she went ethereal, but this time Shiv threw his Skysplitter. The blade sailed high into the air, but its path was hidden by the Creeping Void that seeped out from his body. Both dragon and rider climbed higher, but they were unaware of Shiv teleporting to his blade. As soon as they rematerialized, Shiv reached out for them. He slashed at them, using both his Vitamancy and Biomancy as magical weapons.

Strands of red and white crashed over the rider, while Mana Hydra wound itself around the form of her dragon. At the same time, Shiv materialized the venom gland he had stored within his Biomancy. As soon as it manifested, he burst the venom gland over her, directing the corrosive liquid through her faceplate and into the orifices of her dragon.

Aegis of Assimilation 104 > 105

The rider spasmed. The dragon curled in on itself. Blossoming mana explosions detonated off their body, and Shiv's Skysplitter descended to slay both at once. Yet the dragon flared bright with Chronomancy, and suddenly it projected itself back in time, and the rider went with it. They blinked to where they were a second ago, and more of their temporal shell burst away.

Shiv gritted his teeth and cast himself back in time as well. He arrived about three hundred meters away from the dragon, and he spiked his field a few more times before he detonated in her vicinity. As he discharged his inertial sheath, the rider lifted her lance high, and an oval shield of opalescent mana expanded around her and her dragon. Shiv's detonation impacted her, but it splashed over the shroud as if a wave parting around a stone. Shiv felt his temporal armor break apart entirely, and somewhere in the chaos, the dragon lost their armor as well.

The world suddenly started moving, and he brought his Skysplitter back to parry his own discharge as best he could. His body was damaged. He fed the wounds into his biomancy, and the crystallized chain of spells materialized within his Biokinetic hydras. 

At the same time, a second discharge exploded outward from below. That was his Vitamancy golem trying to crack through the protections guarding the expeditionary force. Shiv directed one discharge against another, and two clashing waves of fire and force splashed together, sparing him the turbulence. 

But at the same time, the golden dragon tore up through the air and suddenly went ethereal once more. She twisted hard and then banked left before plunging like a falling spear. Shiv tried to track her, but she vanished into a sea of expanding pyromancy spells. Shit, Shiv cursed. "Uva, we have a time dragon here, with a rider too. Reach out and alert some of the orcs if you can. I don't want our guys getting taken by surprise."

"Acknowledged," the umbral Psychomancer said while trying not to vomit.

Shiv pulled down on his gravitic field as well. As he fell, he pointed his Skysplitter at the slightly cracked prismatic shroud guarding the expeditionary force. Spells burst out from the shroud, attacking the encroaching orcs with shockwaves and more. A few hundred orcs were briefly repelled, but more pushed through the Inquisition's hasty defense, slamming against that prismatic barrier with might and spell. 

More cracks began to spread, and the outermost layer broke like a glass cage as Shiv slammed blade-first upon it. As it parted, Shiv felt his blade suddenly halt as it struck another layer of wards beneath. As soon as he made contact, lightning surged up through his body. The Deathless spasmed within his biological armor. Whatever the magic sustaining the inner wards, it allowed them to electrocute Shiv, even through non-conductive structures. Despite this, Shiv's Adamantine Adaption learned to resist the electricity, and he regained control of himself, pushing through the flood of lightning.

Adamantine Adaption 170 > 171

He lashed down with Vitamancy and Biomancy. His mana hydra hammered the inner shield, a smokescreen for the vitae strands that followed. The crimson mana missile slammed against the protective dome, enveloping it.

At the same time, Shiv impacted it again and discharged his inertial sheath once more. More cracks spread through, however, the lightning flooding through his body was growing more intense with every passing second as well. However, his Vitaemancy slipped through the second layer and the third and the fourth and finally splashed past the inner thresholds of the Inquisition's defenses. 

He slashed blindly using his vitae as he made contact with bodies. He sapped their vitality from them. He crushed and pulped the weak and struck and pinned the strong. Life force flooded him briefly and then someone shattered his Vitaemancy strands. Hard-hitter, Shiv growled to himself. His Vitaemancy was adamantine-hard as well. For someone to break his mana so easily indicated that he was about to run into a hero.

Just then, Shiv felt himself get pried off the protective wards. An impossibly strong force ripped his body off the protective onion shielding the expeditionary force. Shiv struggled against the crushing pressure, using his gravitic field to stabilize himself, but halted as he saw a massive gravitational vortex descending upon him.

 It was 500 meters wide and shaped like a sphere. It had chunks of landscape orbiting it and more than that, it had orcs revolving around it as well, cheering, laughing, using the massive Dynamancy spell to hitch a ride straight into the main fight. Shiv couldn't help but laugh. Crazy godsdamn bastards, the Deathless grinned. But this is my kind of insane, too. I want in on this.

He stopped fighting the gravity spell; instead, he let it take him. He let himself spin around its massive length, joining the orcs as they prepared to crash down upon the Inquisition's protections. Shiv suddenly went still as he rammed into something hard, someone that felt like an unbreakable wall. As he turned, he saw Bonk right behind him, holding him in place. "Glad to see you've joined us."

"What do you mean joined you?" Shiv shouted. "I was practically the first guy here. I even got into a fight already.”

"Were you? I couldn't tell. I lost track of you for a moment."

"Yeah, that's because you don't have Chronomancy. They got a gold dragon by the way."

"That's good, that's good. Dragons make things interesting. They never die easy—ah, BRACE! BRACE!”

“BRACE!” The orcs let out a collective shout.

The vortex crashed down against the layers of prismatic shielding protecting the expeditionary force from harm. For a moment there was a clash, two sets of magic grinding against each other. A series of mana detonations blasted outward as the swirling sphere of gravity ground against the many-layered defenses erected by the inquisitors. 

Blasts of lightning cleaved through the gravitational sphere—but the orcs spell had both mass and mana behind it. The Inquisition’s protections began to shatter one after another even as the gravitational sphere burned away, its size pushing through the barriers.

Bonk turned and glared into the gravitational spell. "Dynamancers, put your backs into it!" And just then, Shiv caught sight of orcs within the spell as part of the vortex collapsed. Those were orc magi. They weren't just casting a spell. They were literally piloting it into the fight from within the vortex. The orc magi thrust their hands out. The Dynamancy spell blasted outward, flinging Shiv and all the orcs against the flagging protections like artillery shells.

This time, Shiv smashed clean through the Inquisitor's wards and as he blasted in, he felt soft bodies splatter against his armor, weak armor burst and shattered before his initial brutality. At the same time, his mana hydra lashed out. It swept through the Inquisitor's ranks, shattering magical resistances and ripping bodies apart, bodies he assimilated into his Biomancy. 

Chaos swept through the Inquisitor's ranks, but even so, they fought to maintain discipline. As Shiv tore through the outer vanguard, magical bolts cut through the air, coming right at him. He swatted them aside with his Magebreaker and pulled his field in the direction of his attackers.

Frictionless Vector 65 > 66

Yet just as Shiv charged forth, he was intercepted by one of the Inquisition's vanguard. They slammed their shield against his person, and Shiv suddenly felt all the momentum get torn out of his body. His sheath went silent for a moment, and then three more Inquisitors slammed their shields in place right beside the first. The three shields trembled with kinetic energy, and unleashed a blast of concussive energy that did nothing because Shiv threw his knife behind them. He teleported and swung his blade wide, magnifying it to its maximum size. 

Bodies blasted through the air, launched back by his blow. Shiv spiked his field again, looking for the center of the expeditionary force. Meanwhile, his mana hydras began to move around him in a churning spiral, crashing against Magical Resistances and assimilating every bit of biomass he could seize.

The shield-bearing vanguard behind tried to respond to Shiv but the orcs were upon them a moment later. Bonk struck them. His first blow bounced off hopelessly, but the orc shifted his stance and swung twice more. 

The sound of shattering shields sang out to Shiv, but he didn't wait to behold the final fate of the three vanguards; he had his own victims to claim. The cloud beneath his feet felt soft but solid and with every step, a fog of static lashed at his flesh, trying to electrocute him. Orcs flooded in from all directions and Shiv felt several inquisitors cast spells of Portomancy and Dimensionality.

Squeezing pressures washed over his body, but no one managed to teleport out. True to Helix's words, they pulsed in place but were then rebuffed. The orcs had anchored the expeditionary force using a colossal amount of dimensionality to effectively weigh down the Jump Mages.

If the Inquisitors wanted to escape, if they wanted to survive, then they would have to fight their way out. They would have to create their own breakthrough and somehow, Shiv didn't think they were going to be capable of that.

He swung his blade from side to side, yet before he could get far, he found it held in place by the towering automaton he saw earlier. Its drill-like head roared as it spun and the machine Pathbearer tried to pry the Skysplitter out of Shiv's hands. Shiv pulled back but to his surprise, he was actually struggling. The machine Pathbearer was strong. Their Physicality was a match for his at the very least, perhaps more. 

Worse yet, as the bot gripped Shiv’s Skysplitter keeping it from scything through the rest of the expeditionary force, Shiv could feel the weapon cracking, taking damage. He shrank his blade and charged the machine Pathbearer. He made it a meter through the air before he was suddenly knocked aside by someone charging, by someone tackling him. 

Shiv spiked his field against the new adversary and after a brief struggle, halted himself and brought an elbow down on the head of the offending inquisitor. A resounding clash sounded as the inquisitor's body went stiff. They were wearing a full set of adamantine armor. Shiv wanted to see if their toughness was to match. He slashed down using his Deepest Edge and where the armor only bore a deep gash on the outside, flesh parted within, and Shiv swept through the slain Pathbearer's body, stealing their biomass for his own.

He could feel the beginnings of effort. He could feel the beginnings of mana strain build within his Biomancy and just then, Shiv had an amusing idea, an upgrade to his corpse flail. He fused all the recent biomass he'd stolen but also fed a spare set of armor into the spell pattern as well. Just like before, the spell patterns didn't mix. They shattered, but that was fine with Shiv. Bone adamantine cancer was still more than acceptable. 

Immediately he projected his new creation and began to shape it. He didn't hold the flail physically anymore. Instead, he wrapped it within a mana hydra and spun it around himself in a swirling orbit. A mess of mangled tissue and teratoma hammered into bodies and shattered formations. At the same time, Shiv swung his blade and discharged his Inertial Overdrive. The Inquisitors were blasted back, battered aside. Shive tried to push forward and rip into them—only to be driven back himself by a chain of gravitational bolts. He countered the Dynamancy spells using his field, but ultimately found himself plodding forward rather than blasting ahead.

He kept cutting, slashing, fighting. He attacked anything that wasn't an orc while trying to keep an eye out for the bald  Master Inquisitor. But the expeditionary force didn't die easy. Every single one was clad in high-quality armor. And though he swatted many aside, they fought their way back to their feet and held to their formations, each person trying to keep the ones beside them alive.

A telepathic tsunami exploded out from the center of the expeditionary force. "Inquisitors!" a baritone voice proclaimed. "Our vanguard has been breached! Jagged Onion! Jagged Onion! Fighting retreat. We need to kill our way out! We need to make a breakthrough!”

And at once, inquisitors began to adjust their formations. The surviving members began to collapse inward. New inquisitors stepped out from the others, holding massive tower shields in their hands. Shiv charged them, swinging his new cancer flail down upon a still-adjusting group of soldiers. But he felt his mana hydra stopped dead as a Biomancer among the inquisitors matched their power against his. "Alright," Shiv thought to himself, licking his lips. "Let's see."

Then something exploded from beneath his feet and drove him high into the air. A searing pain slipped through his gut, and Shiv found himself being carried higher and higher. As he looked down, he found himself impaled on the end of a lance. And holding that lance was the dragon and her rider.

Shiv grinned through bloody teeth. "There you are. I was wondering where you went.”