[Warpworld] Ch 13 – Broken Klaw

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            The warband was hurrying towards the foot of the mountain, some trotting with the pace of hunters, others ahorse and looking for a fight. Almost all of them were dressed against the cold, save the ones on the truly demonic mounts in full, unnatural armor, their vaguely doglike mounts bulling through any drifts and the snow, radiating unnatural heat as they did so.

            Then slivers of Light started falling from the sky.

            They were hard. Very different from the writhing colors and hues in the wildstorms that came boiling down from the north. Shades of arcane color given solid shape and form. Each as individual as a fingerprint, javelin-sized wedges moving with unearthly speed and precision, and they fell in on the incoming warband out of nowhere, giving them no time whatsoever to react.

            Where they hit, the humans below just exploded into white dust and were gone. Shades of silver and gold glittered with terrible Wrath and Judgement that was anathema to everything the men believed in, and smote them down.

            The cryohydra had twelve heads, but they could not follow all the Shards as they tore through the men, easily a score of them, punching through one and going on to the next, wiping them away as they punched into the next and the men exploded, not even given the chance to cry out as they perished.

            It was not a fight. It was a casual massacre.

            Ices hissed as they watched, finally understanding exactly why the mighty dragon Feature was also bowing down to the human. This level of power was just unbelievable to see! Volleys of hard light rained down, and the invading humans died.

            Some tried to flee, to break and scatter and save themselves. None of them got anywhere, the Shards upon them instantly, following them and zigzagging between them with unerring accuracy, slaughtering them and their mounts alike, showing nothing that was Tainted mercy.

            The only ones not so treated were the twoscore men in the great red and black spiked armor, waving about their flaming Weapons and roaring for a battle. Seven hissed that they had the foul Collars they’d noticed on the manticores, and the other heads nodded as they spotted the things carved with Runes hard to look at, burning things that hurt their eyes and reminded them of pain and hunger and madness.

            They breathed in the vivic flames on their fangs and stayed calm.

            In less than one minute, it was all done. The rest of the warband had been extinguished, wiped away cleanly and completely, save for vivic flames misting about over trace remnants of Chaos on the land and soil.

            The knights on their warphounds seemed unmoved and unimpressed by the slaughter of their fellows, continuing with their tirade of challenges. Ices hissed as one of them unlimbered a great fell Banner, adorned with a flag dripping with symbols so evil four of the heads had to turn away, blinking. Four other heads quickly clamped their mouths about the eyes of the afflicted ones, letting vivus wash across them and chase away what they’d seen.

            A pulse of magic and a mad swirl of winds spun up around the knights, a terrible tempest that would make it impossible for anything to fly down there!

            Number One hissed the loudest, recognizing that the winds would force down the Dragon and the Master, making them vulnerable to the knights!

            And then Feature and the Master came out of invisibility right in front of that Banner-bearing fool. The hydra’s heads could actually see his eyes widen in shock as Feature’s Noseblade punched right through the slit in his helm, lifting him off his mount, while the massive demonic hound was snatched up in great claws twice the size Ices had ever seen before, the Dragon huge and massive, terrifying in his grace and power.

            The Master’s Staff was fully extended, a grimly shining Spear over two feet long limned in electrum and glorious flames so bright and true the Ices were ashamed to gaze upon them. He seemed to only be touching the base of it as he swept it forward and backwards as Feature swept right through the press of knights.

            A head leapt free on the right. In the midst of the cross-cut, the Banner was chopped in two, and the tempest up above evaporated in mere breaths, its power severed, and then a third knight lost his head.

            Snarling and snapping haplessly, the hound was hauled up into the sky, kicking and scrabbling. Two hundred feet above the ground, it was tossed contemptuously free, spinning tail over teakettle as it fell toward the ground, a long, mournful howl escaping it at the ignominy of its death, the body of its rider limply following it down in death.

Feature drew a tight and graceful arc in the air, coming back down towards the knights milling around as they turned to face the dragon, their shouts and bellows abruptly silenced as a cold and weighty Aura pressed down on them from above.

But this was not mere dragonfear. This was far, far worse. This was dragonfear bearing an Aura of Menace!

Heaven had judged them and found them wanting!

Feature came in, undulating like a snake, leaving them uncertain of just where and when he was going to hit, but he never came within true reach of their weapons, pulling up just before he reached them, and he began to corkscrew.

The Ices all stared in wide-eyed rapture.

First, the Noseblade, scything across as his head snapped out fast as a serpent, dodging a cutting axe and splitting a head. Then the Master, utterly unperturbed at the roller-coaster spin, staying absolutely affixed to the Dragon as he rolled over and his shining Spear plunged down like an arc of divine wrath, shattering helms and explosively sending a knight flying with a blasted skull.

The front claw, meeting a flaming weapon and tearing it off to fling away, the second claw reaching down to rip the knight screaming from his saddle. Then the rear claw, doing the same thing, rolling, corkscrewing as the Master made another circuit and chopped another knight’s helm in twain, another knight plucked out of his saddle after being disarmed.

And then, and then the corkscrew suddenly arched and started in the opposite direction, wrongfooting the next knights who thought they had the timing.

The Tailmace Rattles rang with an almighty crunch as another knight’s helm was flattened by its whipping impact, far at the end of the confusion, lashing out farther and faster than they could have expected, a flail worthy of a Titan crashing into another Knight, a warphound, another knight...

Flaming weapons lashing for the dragon chopped full into the helms of the knights thrust into the way of them, and then their wielders were plucked up out of their saddles.

The Master killed one more knight who thought to rise up and get in reach for a blow, and instead had his skull cloven and explode right there as the mighty Feature drove for altitude, a knight in each of his four claws, although only two of them were struggling. Rattles whipped left and right, knights were flicked out of their saddles with terrible crunching impacts as the Dragon arced up into the sky.

At the apex of his climb, he flung the armored knights, letting them fall screaming a hundred paces to the ground, if they could scream at all, and turned back towards the ground again, the Master on his back unperturbed, his Spear held out to the side at full extension, focused and barely moving.

Now Feature deigned to roar, a thunderous sound so full of condemnation and weighty judgment that the legs of the warphounds buckled to hear it, despite all their savagery and readiness to do battle.

It was letting them know this was not a battle, it was an execution!

---

            Ices hissed quietly as the last of the knights and their demonic hounds were slaughtered. They were not given the chance to fight back, executed by a foe who kept them out of reach and cut them down with all the contempt they deserved, not giving them the battle they craved... a battle where they might actually be able to harm an enemy.

            It was a very potent lesson, and displayed that the Master was anything but weak in personal combat. Ices knew how heavy and hard those helms were, and the Master’s Spear had chopped them in two like they were made of meat, not metal.

            Eleven hissed, and the others looked that way.

            Ho, another group of these Tainted humans was watching the fight from a neighboring hill.

            The Ices hissed, debating what to do. Ever the wisest, Number One simply spewed frost up into the air, catching the eye of the Master and the mighty Dragon, and all the heads pointed.

            They saw Feature and the Master’s eyes shift, and the Master’s Spear rose, and pointed.

            Hissing gleefully, the Ices plunged into the snow, off to the hunt.

            The humans seemed to have realized they were in danger, because they quickly started descending the mountainside.

            It would not save them. The Ices knew how to snowboard, now. More pointedly, Feature had also mentioned to them that they could use their ice to slicken the path, or divert their course this way and that, helping them move even faster if they hardened the snow.

            The little humans desperately trying to scramble down the snowy sides had no chance to outrun the Ices!

---

            “See the other set?” I pointed, and Feature turned that way, quickly zeroing in on the points of Evil I was seeing there.

            -On it,- he /stated, sliding into Invisibility as I hopped off.

            It was time for that most essential of battlefield skills... salvage, scavenge, and clean-up.

            Lots of burning Chaos Weapons, perfect for Burning down and turning into Mana crystals for Investing into other Weapons and Gear. If they happened to be empowered by the chained and Bound souls of demons or something, all the better.

            I waved Mortus Dius and brought up a fleet of Disks, which Magnus and I proceeded to start filling with everything metallic and magical that the dead had been using. The former I’d melt down and purify in doing so for raw materials, while the magic would be broken down, purified by vivus, and made ready for use in other things.

            I actually had a place to put all of these things now, too.

            Without Feature available, I actually couldn’t actually see my surroundings in the visible spectrum. In the thaumaspectrum, the swirling winds of corrupted magic kind of dominated the landscape and sky, painting it in unclean colors that had me forcibly thinking of the lower planes, Chaotic swirls and forms that probably would have driven an unprepared mind mad to regard them at all.

            They just looked like something that needed to Burn to me, and I was working on it, I really was.

            I just had to get done before the interruptions became constant and prevented me from doing so. Hopefully this slaughter with no survivors should buy me at least a week before anything else came investigating.

            All in all, it meant I had to get back to work instead of having fun slaughtering a bunch of demon-worshipping arseholes who believed in the glory of offering up anyone they butchered to a mad parasite on a throne of skulls somewhere in the Lower Planes.

            Well, I supposed everyone needed some entertainment. I could definitely see why Mithar had sent me here...

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