Slumrat Rising

Vol. 5 Chap. 77 What Mountaintop?

Frobisher blinked. “Pardon?”

Truth clarified. He kicked off the rock, moving so fast he wasn’t even a blur to the people around him. The Tongue of One Who Speaks For God whipped off his shoulder, up, then down again, aiming for the thinner armor around Frobisher’s neck. The blade nearly reached the neck. Nearly.

The counter-spell exploded outward. The armor glowed with golden calligraphy as an explosive wave blasted away the sword, and Truth along with it. He was still in the air when the spear came whipping down on him. The silver metal of the shaft glowed with more golden runes. Incisive screamed at Truth to dodge. He listened. The Tongue slapped against the spear shaft to drive himself to the side and out of the line of attack. The silver spear smashed into the rubble, raising dust head high. When the shaft lifted, Truth could see a razor sharp gouge in the concrete. It wasn’t just a spear. It was a halberd too. You just couldn’t tell.

Oblilt- DAMN!

Truth didn’t give Frobisher time to reset. He kicked a rock at his face, then went low. Frobisher countered with a fireball. Truth had just enough time to spot that the fireball had been cast from Frobisher’s boot before the blast hit him and smashed him clean through one of the few surviving walls of the hospital.

Truth was up out of the dust before the sound reached the perimeter troops. Didn’t even sting. Body cultivation back up and running. He rushed straight back in. Can’t give anyone with the System space. Frobisher was already cooking up something nasty. He was sure of it. He launched through a broken window, and found out exactly what the Starbrite Knight was serving.

Frobisher had his spear planted, pointed at Truth like he was preparing to resist a cavalry charge. Not content with defense, he manifested seven spell arrays around him, each glowing with rich golden power. Truth had never seen the like. He sped up. There was no way that was going to be anything nice.

Truth was right about that.

Needles fell like a sudden rain out of the spell arrays. They came in their thousands, acid iron drops from a polluted sky, crashing down on him. He wasn’t going to be parrying that, and he didn’t care to test his skin’s toughness on it either. Truth scrambled to get out of the way and back under cover.

Faint hope. He watched the needles blow through solid concrete and rebar like they weren’t even there, as they inexorably closed in on him.

Something in him rebelled at the thought of retreating. It seemed wrong. Obscene. He could close on the knight. He had Earth Folding Step. Was it actually possible to keep him at range?

Truth turned back again and stepped, the Tongue already whipping up at Frobisher’s face. He heard a muffled swear from under the visor as the older man stepped back and whipped the butt of his spear up and around. A feint- another spell array was forming under Truth even as the spear butt threatened to smash his head open. Truth stomped down on the forming array, sending the fangs of Incisive in to break up the spell before it finished forming. It required uncanny timing to pull off a trick like that. Practically precognition.

Truth didn’t slow his attack, keeping the point of his sword going for Frobisher’s face. Frobisher wasn’t a slouch at hand to hand. His spear kept moving, the ends whipping around, coming high and low like a dancing dragon. Truth wanted to grab it, take the fight to a grapple, but every time he started to make a move, Incisive screamed a warning. By the third try, he figured it out. That invisible halberd blade could pop out anywhere on the spear. No range was bad for the Starbrite Knight.

Which was maddening. Doctrine for fighting armored opponents was to get them on the ground and attack the joints with a long, pointy weapon, or bash in their head with a hard, heavy weapon, or remember that you are a goddamn mage and use magic to turn them into soup while they were still trapped in their turtle shell. But the System had gone silent. He didn’t have any spells that would let him do that. Best he could do was stay on top of Frobisher and keep him from casting.

Frobisher, for his part, was rapidly losing his temper. The whole point of being the Starbrite Knight was to keep people off him long enough for him to cast serious magic at them. It had worked a treat on Elgin- the fire and magic just slid off his armor like water on glass. Now, he had someone who could keep up physically and was cutting apart his spell forms. Which was unnerving, given that each spell took milliseconds to cast with the System’s assistance. And he didn’t want to go too hard, as he still planned to recover the… whatever this person was.

At this point, anything to do with the anomaly was a nice to have, not a need to have. And he was about done dealing with this high speed pain in the ass.

Truth hooked his heel behind Frobisher’s calf as he cut at the Knight’s wrist. He doubted he would get through the armor, but he might just break some bones. Or at least trip him. Incisive gave another warning- danger! Big danger! Truth hopped backwards, letting Earth Folding Step carry him twenty yards away.

An array grew out of and over the spell armor. Arcane geometries brought life to the silver, like frost ferns growing across cold metal. Wrapping Frobisher. Reinforcing him. Spreading from the armor to cover an area three meters around him.

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“Incisive and some movement spell. Body cultivation, and an angelic blade. Funny, I thought we had killed the last of the Spellblades years ago. I say “we,” I mean progress, really.” Frobisher erected another array above his head in milliseconds. “Mages should act like mages. I’m not ashamed to admit the spear is a PR thing as much as a practical one. By the way, surrender or die. You can’t survive this spell.”

“I hear that a lot. I’m guessing there is no functional difference between you and Starbrite at this point?”

“No idea what you are talking about. Odd choice of last words. Oh well.” Frobisher pointed his spear at Truth, and demonstrated what Tier Nine really meant. Incisive screamed at him to move. For once, he was too slow.

Like the sun falling down and the moon coming up and smashing you in the middle. Like hearing the door slam shut and knowing Dad’s home. Like standing in front of a hurricane of biting, stinging ants. He didn’t have the first clue what this spell was. It was almost certainly a combination of several spells. All he could do was hang on, and try to run and survive. He dug in his toes and dashed away.

The spell could track him. Running didn’t help. He didn’t have Obliteration anymore, so he didn’t know how he was going to get through that spell array around Frobisher. He could feel the blows on his skin accumulating. It should have broken him already. He didn’t have time to wonder why.

“What the Hell did the Anomaly do to you? I’ve torn down buildings in seconds using this spell. Armored bunkers just vanish before it. And you are… bruising? The kids in the lab are going to love tearing you apart. You really will be of great use to Starbrite. Wonderful. How wonderful for you! Your life will have not been in vain.”

Not that Frobisher was letting up with the spell. He had absolutely no problem beating someone to death slowly, it seemed. Truth tried to retaliate by scooping up rubble and throwing it at him. It didn’t work. Frobisher had been telling the truth. The ruined building was being reduced to dust wherever Truth was standing. He swore and turned to face the Knight. He’d have to do it the dumb way.

He raised his sword and rushed in. No longer dodging and weaving. There was no point. Just full frontal assault, cutting down whatever was between him and getting the job done. He imagined himself as an avenging angel, swooping down on the ungodly and bringing obliteration to their whole line. He tilted his head back and screamed. Wild fury, outrage, and inescapable death would follow!

Frobisher slowly shook his head.

“Angelic possession. Trusting your body cultivation to keep you from exploding and riding the Angel’s fury. Not to mention enjoying their spell resistance.” There was a grim note in Frobisher’s voice. “Naughty, naughty. Cute little juniors should leave their corpses in one piece, so that their seniors don’t have to waste their time sorting out all the bits.”

The spell changed. Instead of a hurricane of ants, it was more like an inescapable storm of infernal axes.

“Well, if you aren’t going to be left with an intact corpse anyway, I might as well make it quick.”

Truth grinned through the onslaught. His blessings were working again. Including the Blessing of the Bronze Sea. Demonic energy? Bring it. He kept moving forward, smacking aside the magic blades where he could, moving his body, trying to limit any cuts he got. And he did get cut, the blood falling on the dust and ruins of the hospital.

Even if he could suppress or abolish the infernal taint, the wound still burned. Those axes bit through hardened skin and tore open muscles. Incisive was in a constant state of alarm, but his body and spells were working as an integrated whole now. Every step, every slip, coordinated and controlled. Incisive moving in lockstep with the Meditations which moved in lockstep with the Earth Folding Step. The Earth Folding Step didn’t have to travel a long way- it could travel a fraction of a centimeter if you wished. Constant micro adjustments happening below the level of conscious thought, all with the aim of minimizing damage. That, and getting closer.

It was a grind. One he couldn’t afford. Frobisher would collapse from dehydration before he ran out of magic, and Truth would bet the old knight had surpassed the need for water decades ago. He crouched down, compressing his body into a tight ball and held the Tongue out in front of him. He took a single shuffling step.

The air locked around him. Freezing him. Invisible wires of razor sharp magic pressed in on him, trying to cut him as he forced himself to his feet. Lunging upwards, the point of his sword aimed at the underside of Frobisher’s chin. The knight tried to step back and give him a knee to the ribs as he went. Magic flared around him. Frobisher was done trying to keep anything for the lab boys. Before the watchers could blink, everything within a hundred meters would be obliterated.

Truth ignored the threat and kept shoving his sword forwards. He leaned into his blessings, leaned into the strength the angel was giving him. He just needed a single nick. One cut through the armor. Just one.

The knee caught him hard, the armored knee cap digging in. Breaking things. The built in spells sparked against his skin, scrabbling for a hold on him. He could sense the spellforms solidifying, the horrifying, torrential magic of a Level Nine pouring into them. Truth felt the tip of the blade hit that hardened, enchanted, gorget. He put every scrap of muscle and magic into the lunge, letting Incisive coat his blade as he drove it through the armor, and into Frobisher’s throat. And once he was in, the bane went to work.

The Tongue of One Who Speaks For God was a killing tool. Its bane spell was one of the very best in the world. The angelic blade had barely split the thyroid cartilage, had barely reached into the throat, when it started going to work. The spell reached into the old knight, and started destroying him from within. Whatever it took to kill him. Organs collapsed. Magic ran wild. He could feel the old monster’s apertures destabilizing. Could they explode? He didn’t intend to find out.

He shared a quick moment’s emotional communion with the angel, and stepped away. Perks dragged right along with him, from his hiding spot in the rubble. When reality unfolded, they were two hundred kilometers north of Harban.

Frobisher slowly collapsed onto the ruins of the hospital. The human watchers were fixated on him. It all happened too fast to follow. More than that, Frobisher was a legendary, mythical, Level Nine! It was impossible that he could die at the hands of a nameless junior. Impossible.

The inhuman watchers, however, ignored him. The rubbery, eyeless, homunculi rushed over to the spatters of blood Truth left on the ground. One dipped his fingers into it. Slowly rubbed the blood between them. And sniffed.