Published at 17th of September 2024 10:02 pm

Book 2 Chapter 64: Carapace, Fur, and Feathers

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Dantes walked through the main streets of midtown toward Mondego’s manor. He was lit by street lights casting their rays through a thick fog. The streets were busy as they always were at night in midtown. Some of those going about their shadowy business noticed Dantes, and cleared a path. Some watched without shame, excited to see what drama was stirring outside their homes and businesses. Most had no actual idea who he was, thinking he was another mutt with an inflated sense of self walking through town dusted out of his mind.

As he came within sight of the Manor, the guards began to cry out and prepare for him. There were men raising crossbows, mages brandishing wands, and even a few dwarven mercs pulling out rifles to aim at him. It was at that moment he gave the signal for the pigeons he had flying far above the manor to drop their load.

He’d only been able to prepare two dozen explosives due to a lack of easy access to gunpowder, but even that had a profound effect. Before the first of the guards could fire off their weapons, the bombs began to strike the grounds of the manor. The pigeons had surprisingly good aim, with three of the bombs landing solidly on those guards in front of him, and exploding in flashes of light and fire, sending out shards of scrap metal he’d mixed into them and knocking them off the wall.

Those same explosions rang out all across the manor, killing guards and setting fires all throughout its grounds. At that moment, Dantes began to bolt directly for the front gate, drawing one of the anti-vermin enchantment breaking hammers from his coat as he ran. One of the shooters managed to recover and Dantes extended a wand from his wooden arm and aimed it at him, firing out a flurry of razor sharp icicles that impaled him and knocked him from the wall.

A second guard, a dwarf with a rifle, stood up and aimed his weapon at him, but he too fell backward as a crossbow bolt hit him in the chest and exploded. An excellent shot by Jayk who was laying down on a nearby rooftop.

Dantes reached the outer barrier where the enchantment lay and sent his will through his hammer, slamming it against the invisible wall created by the enchantment which caused the hammer to crumble into dust from being expended.

With the enchantment down and all of the focus on the front gate, Dantes moved on to phase two. He shifted into a bat and began to fly up into the sky, once there he dove down into the rear of the manor and landed on the roof, sitting quietly and slowly into himself as he crouched down, watching the courtyard.

Dozens of guards were scrambling, looking for him, trying to escape the explosions, or trying to put out the fires before they spread. Occasionally one of them would be dropped by a crossbow bolt.

To increase the confusion further, Dantes released his coiled will, and gave a single order to all of the vermin he’d gathered nearby.

“Attack.”

A sea of rats and roaches swarmed over the walls, across the courtyard, and toward all of the guards. At the same time, bats and pigeons began swooping downward, pecking and scratching at their eyes even as rats and roaches started to crawl up the ankles. A half-dozen went down almost instantly, but the rest held on.

A mage summoned a wall of flame to protect their flanks, and another one sent out a blast of lightning that tore through the bats and pigeons dropping their smoldering corpses and making the courtyard smell like a midtown restaurant that promised only the freshest meat. Several of those being attacked by vermin were able to ignore them, and began stomping, slashing, or clubbing them to death. They were protected by enchantments of some kind.

With the surviving mages revealed, Wane and Orebus made their entrance. Wane repeated his trick he’d used against pillion and one of the walls where a number of guards were trying to take shelter from vermin shattered into dust, they fell into the dust, and reappeared battered and bruised behind the dust as it moved toward the mage that had summoned the wall of fire.

That mage panicked, and began throwing small bolts of fire toward the dust, blowing off pieces of it with every blast until the cloud of dust was completely gone.

Wane had left the cloud of dust and walked, completely silent thanks to his spell, around to the mages side where he brought down a club.

The club bounced off some invisible protection that the mage had managed to summon. Wane laughed, and released his silent enchantment as the other mage tumbled backward in surprise at the sudden influx of noise.

“Good! I was hoping I’d be able to test a few more things out.”

At the same time, Orebus approached the mage that had been shooting bolts of lightning into the sky at bats and pigeons. The mage saw him, and directed one of his spells at Orebus.

Orebus reached out a hand and seemed to actually catch the bolt which vanished. He whirled his body around doing a series of motions with his arms and pointed the arm opposite the one that had caught the bolt. An identical bolt fired from that hand and seared toward the mage who just barely managed to stop it from striking him by telekinetically moving one of the pigeons that was swarming in front of it’s path.

Orebus ignored his lack of an easy win and just calmly walked toward the man.

It was then that Mondego made his appearance, along with another half dozen guards, one of whom was dropped by an exploding crossbow bolt almost immediately.

Dantes fired his pistol at Mondego from above and the bullet bounced off of him and strafed a different guard's shoulder.

Mondego whipped around to see Dantes above and his face contorted into a scowl. He summoned a spear into his hand and threw it.

Dantes was ready this time, throwing himself backward on the roof to avoid it and shifting into batform before his back hit the roof and twisted to fly into the courtyard. As he did so he sent the vermin to swarm Mondego and his fresh goons, covering them completely in carapace, fur, and feathers.

Dantes landed back on the ground just as Mondego engulfed his shield in flames to clear the vermin off of himself and began looking for him. Dantes revealed twilight from his hand and sent out the thick fog of weakness toward him. Mondego moved arrogantly toward it, but was surprised when he started coughing.

Dantes and Jacopo then combined their will and sent it all throughout the garden. This was why they wanted to draw Mondego outside where the drake-tear flowers grew. They had the advantage there.

They had the grass at Mondego’s feet rise and try to tangle him up, and at the same time they sent will and lifeforce into the plants all around him and began having them all wind toward him, reaching for his limbs.

The shield that surrounded Mondego flashed, and caught fire again, this time staying alight rather than fading, burning away all of the plant matter that was wrapping around him as well as the vermin that were attempting to swarm him. At the same time, he summoned a mace into his hand and charged toward Dantes.

Dantes raised his wooden hand and extended a wand through his palm, sending his will through it. A powerful blast of water flew from his palms and hit Mondego throwing him back and soaking him. Once the wand was empty, Dantes blasted it from his palm at high speed causing it to break against Mondego’s fire shield. He then extended another wand, and fired a cone of frost from it. Mondego’s fiery shield faltered a bit, but he was unharmed. When he went to stand though, he slipped on the flash frozen and melting water in front of him and fell forward as he tried to bring himself to his feet so that he could charge Dantes again. A third wand appeared in Dantes’s palm and from it shot heavy rocks that slammed him back down to the ground and caused the shield to flicker even more.

Mondego roared as he stood this time, and raised his right hand. One of the rings on it started to glow, and from that hand fired what looked like dozens of heavy iron nails.

Dantes dodged away from them, and turned around to fire off another wand at Mondego, but before he could, Jacopo saw the nails turning in midair and coming back toward him. Dantes swiveled and lowered himself to the ground while morphing his wooden hand into a shield. Half of the nails struck it, and the other half flew past him, but began to turn around quickly.

Dantes could feel through his hand that the nails were slick with something, and the sweet smell emanating from them told him it was some kind of poison. As the rest of the nails swiveled back around, he had the bushes of drake-tears near him swarm in front of him to catch them.

Mondego managed to bring himself to his feet while Dantes was struggling with the nails, and closed the gap. Another of the rings on his hand glowed and he threw out four round vials that exploded on the ground next to him in clouds of gas. That gas flew toward him and into his nose, mouth, eyes, and ears.

He immediately threw himself backward contorting in pain.

Jacopo took control of the plants, and started throwing vines, thorns, flowers, and even his fellow vermin at Mondego’s fiery figure to slow him down.

Dantes embraced the pain, and used it to tether his focus as he had the last time Mondego had done this to him. He brought that focus down to the unseen layer of himself that he’d been able to find, and from there he located where the poisons were attacking him. From there he strengthened the life force within himself in those areas, and tried to will the poison out of himself. He’d been mentally practicing doing so since their last encounter.

Mondego fought past Jacopo’s resistance, and summoned another spear that he threw at him.

Jacopo dodged and shifted into a bat, joining the cloud of them in the sky as he continued his arboreal assault.

“Where is Mercedes!?” cried Mondego as he fought his way to the prone Dantes. “Where is my wife!?”

Dantes managed to push the poison out, and rolled over, still feigning pain as he reached deep into the root system below Mondego’s feet. He pushed his wand into the ground as he feigned a pained groan.

Mondego slammed aside another series of ropelike root and took another step closer. “I will carve your skin away from your bones if you don’t tell me where she is.”

A crossbow bolt exploded against his chest, and he stopped. “Wait. I know that crossbow.”

Dantes sent his will through the wand and activated it, causing all of the hard ground below Mondego to suddenly become mud.

At that same moment, Dantes and Jacopo channeled all the strength they could into the roots and branches of everything nearby, channeling life-force into them to make them rise and coil around Mondego. They burned, but the life-force they were sending through caused new growth just as quickly. They then started to pull Mondego down, dragging him into the mud.

Mondego cried out, and smashed, and clawed. He summoned more spears and tried to use them to hold himself up, but the ground was too loose. His fiery shield kept sputtering, hitting the limits of what it was capable of as everything that could continued to slam against it. Slowly, his head sank beneath the mud, but Dantes and Jacopo kept pulling until he was several feet below the ground. Until they felt him stop moving.

Dantes heard footsteps coming toward him, and dodged just in time as a large orcish man took a swing at him.

He dodged ungracefully, and threw a handful of mud in his face.

The orc stumbled backwards, but before he could do anything, Zak appeared behind him and ran him through with his sword. He then placed his foot on the man’s back and kicked him off of it. He held out a hand to Dantes.

Dantes took it, and stood up. Zak was covered in blood, and his sword had signs of very heavy use.

“I destroyed that mirror like you asked. Mondego won’t have an easy escape anymore.”

“Thank you, but I don’t think it’s going to be a problem anymore. We need to check on the oth-,” Dantes stopped talking, he could feel his fingers tingling heavily.

Zak’s eyes were wide as he felt it too.

The ground where Mondego had been sunk, exploded suddenly outward, throwing them backward in a blast of mud, and dirt.

Zak’s head slammed against a nearby tree, and Wane, who had been approaching after helping Orebus defeat the other mage, was impaled by a sharp piece of shattered stone.

Dantes managed to pick himself up just in time to see Mondego flee back into his manor. He started to follow him, but hesitated. Zak was breathing, but unconscious. He seemed like he’d be okay. Wane on the other hand, was losing a lot of blood.

Dantes pushed himself to his feet, and dragged himself over to Wane. He roughly removed the jagged piece of stone from his gut, and smelled that same sewer scent that had filled the air around Tel when he’d died.

He gritted his teeth, and placed his hand on Wane’s chest. He extended his will, but unlike last time he’d tried, this time he could feel something. The faintest touch of it. He turned all of his focus to it, releasing all of the nearby vermin in order to bring his attention to Wane at that unseen level. Once there he found all the areas in which he was struggling, and sent his lifeforce into him. He channeled from the gardens, into himself, and from there into Wane. As he did so he could feel that faint touch of life strengthen, his eyes glowed gold as he did so, and when he thought Wane had enough to survive, he broke contact and collapsed backward for a moment, panting heavily.

Orebus approached, clutching his arm as he did so.

“Is he okay?”

Dantes nodded. His hearing was starting to recover from the explosion and he could hear the stomping of boots on cobblestone moving toward the manor.

“Get him and Zak out of here. The guard is about to arrive. They’ll take care of whatever goons Mondego has left.”

Orebus nodded, grunting as he adjusted Wane to fit on his back, and then doing the same when he lifted Zak. He looked at Dantes, seemingly about to ask him to come on, but stopped. He knew. They both knew what had to happen next. He began to move toward the back wall to find an exit around the guard.

Dantes pushed himself to his feet, and held out his arm. Jacopo climbed up it, and they walked together to the entrance of the Manor.

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