Wandering Warrior: Jury - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Warning the camp was my first priority, but I needed to do it without getting shredded or isolated from the others.  Linking up with them and fighting a running retreat toward our fallback location was the best choice, especially since I had no idea how many ghouls were running around.  Running straight into camp would only spring the trap on myself, and ruin any chances of making it to my friends.  Especially if I ran into a group of the ghouls with cores.

This planet’s ghouls weren’t like regular ghouls, and somehow they had been getting worse over the past few weeks.  Their skin grew a kind of natural bone armor covered in deadly spikes–sometimes with nasty barbed spikes over the knuckles, knees, and elbows–protecting joints and vital areas.  Instead of being wiry and uncoordinated cowards, they were beefy, over-muscled undead knights in plate armor of bone covered in deadly weapons.

When I had fought the lich, there were only a few of them to deal with, and they seemed…dumber.  The ones we had been seeing recently had been in larger numbers, with a certain kind of animal cunning that made them more dangerous than a pack of wolves.

They also frequently carried inside them something called an ‘artificial monster core’ that my system told me was used as a way to control them.  What made the ones with a core a genuine threat was the boost in intelligence to near-human levels.  I’d even heard them speak, and they went far beyond animal cunning when it came to tactics.  The cores were made from a solid hunk of death mana that made my skin crawl when I touched one, and I still hadn’t figured out how it could be used to control an undead monster, or more importantly, where they were being made.

No matter where these ghouls were coming from, it made warning my friends they were coming that much harder.  They would zero in on me in seconds, and make it almost impossible for me to join my group.

A flash of lightning overhead lit up the forest in harsh lines of bright light and deep shadow.  The boom of thunder that followed shook rainwater from the trees, adding to the deluge drenching the forest floor.  Already, footing was getting precarious.  The leaves and needles covering the dirt had created a skim of mud and detritus that was almost as bad as an icy sidewalk outside a gas station too cheap to use enough salt to get the job done.

In the distance, I heard horses neighing, upset by either the storm or smell of nearby undead.  Given the heavy rain, it was probably the storm, which is exactly what the others would think as well.  Time to change that.

My grenades and wrist gun would work as a warning, but that knife cut both ways.  The ghouls would know exactly what direction to run to catch me.  Same thing with a flashy spell, or just straight-up shouting.  That left me with something that would cause everyone to be more alert, but not give a specific direction from where it came from.  I took some inspiration from Tew, the Green Warden, and decided on trying to cause a localized earthquake.

Dropping to one knee, I placed both hands flat on the muddy ground.  I dug my fingers in as deep as they would go, creating furrows that quickly filled with water.  The mana inside me thrummed along with my heartbeat, circulating throughout my body.  There was no way I could power an earthquake large enough to affect the area I needed by myself, so I had to tap into the energy of the world to help me.

Not something I was used to doing often, but I could do it.  As with everything, there were risks.  World sixteen had been extremely low on mana, so I had learned to tap into the local environment for a boost.  Not often, since magic had been illegal there, but I had helped change those laws before I had left.  Hopefully, they had stopped burning ‘witches’ at the stake every time somebody sneezed wrong.

Focusing on my hands, I pushed the need to connect with the earth beneath me into the wet soil.  I felt the world slow down around me as a connection snapped into place between my own energy and the energy around me.  There was no longer any worry about Soul Burn, no concern for ghouls, or quests, or anything beyond the epic calm that settled over me.  The earth and stone beneath me had been here for eons, and it would continue to be here for eons more, no matter the struggles of the beings that walked above it.

No.  I refused to lose myself in the perspective of the inorganic.  That was always the risk in something like this.  Reaching out to something greater than yourself meant you opened up your mind to other viewpoints, other ways of seeing the universe.  It would be too easy to fall into that sense of peacefulness, and lose yourself forever.

Instead, I held on to my own mind, and started shifting the tiny flows of mana through the forest beneath me.  They were virgin streams, never twisted to another purpose beyond what nature formed on its own.  I was thankful, because the strain was already making me shake like I was lifting a refrigerator over my head, only made worse by the ache of the Soul Burn that throbbed around the mana generator that pulsed behind my belly button.

Luckily, it didn’t take long for my spell to take shape, and the power started to build.  I made the spellform fragile enough that it would break on its own when the shaking of the earth grew strong enough, and pulled away before the tremors were barely noticeable.  It would build into something everyone would notice soon enough.

As I stood, there was another flash of lightning, turning the forest around me into a world of light and shadow.  I used the rumble of thunder to sprint along where I thought the line of ambushers were closing in, trying to find the edge of their line.  When I ran full-out, I could move faster than a horse could gallop.  Considering the trees and storm, I wasn’t quite going that speed, but I was pushing it, zipping around like a roadrunner on speed, raindrops stinging my eyes.  The slick footing and heavy rain actually helped make it easier for me to stay unnoticed, until I ran smack into the back of a ghoul I didn’t see crouched behind the rootball of a half-fallen tree.

It was hard to tell which of us was more surprised, but it was most definitely me who ended up on the worse end of the collision.  I had been clipped by the ghoul’s heavy elbow spike somehow, and its barbed end had torn free a chunk of my triceps as we separated.  Which hurt like a motherfucking bitch. [On the fence about this sentence.  It’s an honest reaction, but not necessary for the story. Cursing is one of those things that can either help with character impact, or hurt with reader immersion, depending on your audience. I’m open to feedback.]

The impact was about as violent as a car crash, and both of us had gone flipping into the trees and underbrush with heavy and hard contacts that hurt even my high vigor stats.  The ghoul’s shocked face and wide eyes were downright hilarious as I saw it tumble away in a spray of black blood and shattered bone armor.  A thick tree was helpful enough to stop my uncontrolled flight when I hit it with my legs, and I fell to the ground in a heap.  I laid still for a moment, trying to gauge how injured I was, and thanking my lucky stars that the grenade on my belt and the ones in my pack hadn’t gone off.  I had been too cocky, and I was paying for it with a messed up left arm and a left shin bone that was bruised badly enough, it might have been better if it had just broken instead of taking the massive soft tissue damage.

Before I could sit up with a groan, the earth had already started to shake.  There wasn’t time to feel sorry for myself, and there most especially wasn’t time to sit around meditating and healing.  I unclipped the healing and stone skin potion on my belt, noticing the vial was cracked along the neck.

I snapped it loose and poured the whole thing down my throat, slamming what would have been the equivalent of about five shots of burning alcohol all at once.  It hit my gut like a bomb, shaking my stomach harder than the earth was beginning to move.

Pushing aside my discomfort, I used the tree that had stopped my impromptu arial excursion to help me get back on my feet.  The burning sensation was spreading out from my stomach, moving quickly up my chest and down my hips.  I could feel my strength already beginning to increase, and aches and pains started to fade into nothing more than memories as it finished working down my limbs.  I flexed my injured arm, amazed at the results.  The missing piece of muscle and skin was knitting itself whole as I watched.  There wasn’t even a scar left when it finished repairing the damage, and the bruised shin I had worried about felt better than ever.

Making more of these potions just moved up on my to-do list, because I felt amazing.  There was bound to be a downside when it wore off, but I couldn’t imagine it being anything that would make me want to pass on the upside.

The ghoul I had run into wasn’t up and shouting about our little incident, so I took off again, still trying to circle around the edge of their group.  By now, the earthquake spell was picking up momentum, and I had to be more careful about my footing.  There was an obvious slow-down in my reactions caused by the stone skin potion, but the increased strength balanced it out enough I didn’t have a problem adjusting.

A loud crack announced the end of a tree’s life, the increasing earthquake making the whole forest sway.  It fell with a crash somewhere closer to the campsite, accompanied by more thunder and lightning.  I could hear shouting from what had to be Cross, and the horses losing their shit at the earthquake.  All of them would know the shaking wasn’t natural, and they were under attack.  I could most definitely check the box about warning them that something bad was coming.

Ghouls started hooting and howling, giving away their presence to the camp, along with a rough estimation of their numbers.  There were a lot of them.  Like, a concerningly large amount.  I might have been cocky about my speed, but I had made the right decision not to try and rush straight through their lines.  It would have been very bad.

Their hunting noises also told me I was on the edge of their line, with only a few more yards to go before I could finally circle around and make it cleanly back to camp.  I used a thick tree limb to help me turn a hard corner just past the final cluster of ghouls holding the end of their line.

Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I unclipped the grenade on my belt and pulled the pin before side-arming it at the six or seven enemies I could see trying to stay on their feet while the earthquake kept them unsteady.  I poured on the speed, not wanting to get caught in the blast radius.  The rain would cut down on the smoke–not that it would affect the undead much anyway–but shrapnel didn’t discriminate.  It was an equal opportunity ass-kicker.

The explosion pushed me in the back, shoving me forward between two trees.  I managed to stay on my feet, despite spalling slapping against the back of my calves and thighs.  There was no way to tell if it was actual hot metal and bone fragments, or pieces of rock and dirt kicked up by the explosion.  It didn’t matter, because the stone skin potion pushed out whatever it was before I cleared the forest edge and made it into the campsite.

It was as if I walked into a wall of water, the rain slapping me in the face with a vengeance.  Mother nature on this planet was a real bitch.  Blinking my eyes clear, I saw I was almost too late.  Not too late to save them, of course.  The team I was building was turning into an efficient little force, and I needed to remember that.  I was almost too late to be able to link up with them before they left the area for our fallback point.  They were already leading our train of overloaded horses on the narrow trail out, with two people bringing up the rear as a trail guard.  I was genuinely impressed that they had managed to pack up so much of our stuff on such short notice, but then I remembered that I had sent Jess earlier to tell them to load up because we were moving.  This time, we had blind luck on our side.

“James!  Where have you been?”  Leedy, one of the former Blue Wardens I had somehow ended up with, was the first to notice me.  “It doesn’t matter, you better hurry up!  A bunch of ghouls are about to attack!”

I scrubbed at my face with my hands, fighting back the sigh of frustration that wanted to escape.  A sharp quake made us all stagger, only made worse by the muddy conditions of the clearing.

“Let’s go.  We can catch up when we’re clear.  There’s too many of them to fight under these conditions.”  Cross, the other guard in the rear–and my apprentice Judge–was in full captain mode.  He liked giving orders, and sometimes, he was even good at it.  “I can hold them here while you gain some distance.”

And then sometimes, he said some stupid shit like that.

“How about you shut up and we all run?  That earthquake spell I put in place is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.  The only reason those ghouls haven’t charged us right now is they are trying to figure out what’s happening before they commit to the attack.”  I jogged forward at the pair of them, making shooing motions with my hands.  “Come on, we don’t have much time.  Once they realize it’s not an actively controlled spell, they’re going to rush us.”

“This is you?”  Cross turned to follow me as another hard rumble caused him to nearly trip and fall.  “How?  I thought you were still on the mend.”

“Not important.  Run now, talk later.”  Leedy was in the rear, considering he was the slowest of the three of us.  His armor was glowing, meaning he had already activated the runes used to enhance his speed and strength.  It would tire him out quickly, but the man had enough grit to push past the inevitable exhaustion he was going to soon get hit with.  “They’re going to be right behind us.”

“He’s right.”  I slowed down a bit to let Leedy catch up.  “I’ll have to show you how to do what I did sometime, but we’ve got bigger concerns at the moment.  If we can make it to the stronghold in time, I think we can hold them off.  If they get the chance to surround us…”

I didn’t need to finish the sentence.  They had heard how many ghouls were behind us, and it wasn’t good.  Even with my stats, Jess being a fledgling mage, Cross developing well as a Judge, and Leedy and Murphy in their Warden armor, we would be hard-pressed to make it through in one piece.  It was important to remember the enemy always got a vote, and none of us were invincible.

A bolt of lightning struck a tree nearby, adding to the chaos.  Leedy sprinted even harder, eager to catch up with the horses.  Behind us, the earthquake spell was reaching its crescendo, and the ground started to split apart in great rents that cut through the forest.  We had made it past the epicenter, so we only caught the edges of the attack, but the ghouls bore the brunt of the assault.  Their hoots and howls that normally meant they were on the hunt took on a more desperate tone.

There was a final mighty rumble as the spell formation shook itself apart, and miniature canyons yawned open, creating small mudslides as trees and huge amounts of earth fell into the gaps.  We had all fallen to the ground, unable to stay on our feet during the heavy shaking.  Each of us looked back to watch the end of the spell, and it was downright apocalyptic for the section of forest caught in the strongest area of the earthquake.  Anything caught in the morass was crushed into a pulp while the ground settled back to stillness.

A screen popped into my vision, telling me how effective my spell had been.

New Title Earned: Crack Kills

-Your unique use of earth spells has managed to crush more than 50% of the enemies arrayed against you.  Destroying a pristine section of the forest in the process has gained the attention of one of the gods.  Lucky you!

Skill Imparted: Large-scale earth magic uses 3% less mana per minute.  An additional 2% will be applied if the earth magic being used is outside of combat, including construction, training, and enchanting.

Well, a useful title for once.  The attention from a god probably wasn’t good, but I was beyond caring at this point.  Either way, it was time to get out of here.

“Come on guys, we need to go.  There’s still a lot of ghouls who are going to want revenge, and we need to get ready for them.”  I brushed myself off after I stood, only managing to smear the mud into a more even layer over my clothing and armor.  I hoped the rain would clean it off a bit before the storm blew away.

Both Cross and Leedy were looking back at the destruction, so we all saw as the mud-covered forms of ghouls rose from the earth like angry murder mushrooms.  Now that huge swaths of trees were gone, we could get a better idea of how many there were coming for us.

Even after killing more than half, we were still going to be pushed hard.  I stopped counting at twenty, and grabbed my two compatriots, shoving them to get them started.

“Go.  We’ve got to get to the castle.  These things aren’t going to kill themselves.”