Millennial Mage

Tala rocketed through the air, momentarily confused as to what had happened.

I was practicing reducing my own effective gravity. I thought I saw something moving in my peripheral vision, then-

In an instant of clarity, she remembered a heavily armored Leshkin lunging from a nearby trunk and striking her with incredible force.

She was in perfect health, despite her new ballistic trajectory. Oh, that’s where so much of my ending-berry power went…

She saw the two-wagon caravan in the distance as a wave of lesser Leshkin seemed to fall like rain towards it. Oh… that’s bad.

She saw movement closer, as she continued arching through the air. Lower gravity really allows for greater distance in ballistic arcs.

Two shapes, clearly armored, were sprinting at impossible speeds after her, across the frozen ground.

I’ve got to land safely. She twisted in the air, less than three seconds having passed since she’d been on the cargo-wagon. She reoriented just in time to see a massive wooden hammer coming for her face. I guess this one was planning on flanking me.

She couldn’t decide if she was lucky for having come face to face with the flanking opponent before she engaged the others, or unlucky for coming into their striking range so perfectly.

In either case, she threw her arms up to catch the blow, just as it landed. Both her arms broke with sharp cracks. Her scripts didn’t impart invincibility, just a much, much higher resistance than was average.

She had a tight control on her ending-berry power, keeping it internal, in her core, and allowing her inscriptions to handle surface level and limb protection. That freed up her mind to focus outward. And left my arms exposed… Not that ending berry power would have resisted this creature’s blow very effectively.

Her now limp hands were driven against her face, stifling her instinctual scream of pain.

The blow caused the top half of her body to reverse directions, flipping her in a crazy spiraling twist to land in a tangled heap on the ground.

This is becoming a repeating theme for me…

Tala’s scream morphed into one of frustration. It had already been a long day.

The first, renewed attack had come an hour after morning travel began, and they’d been increasingly hard to deal with. This was the third attack in as many hours and the first from ambush.

Leshkin knights had proven to be a lot harder to fight, and now she was separated from the others, potentially facing three. I’ve got to get back.

Her arm bones clicked back into place, pulling back into proper alignment before the structure reknit, her regenerative scripts eating into her reserves to get her back in fighting shape. Vaulting to her feet, she pulled Flow to her hand, instantly pushing power through the weapon to change it into the form of a sword.

I need to be at normal weight. I’m not practiced at fighting effectively while lighter. Her left middle finger touched her thumb, and she focused on herself, ramping up the effect of gravity, aiming for a ‘normal’ effect as a result.

The war-hammer-wielding Leshkin knight was approaching with deliberate, careful strides, as if expecting some sort of trick. Or waiting for the others to catch up.

Terry appeared behind that armored giant as it was advancing on Tala.

No, just regular sized…

The armor just made them look much bigger.

But it’s a part of their body, so… they are bigger?

Now was hardly the time to consider such things.

Terry struck the creature’s back, center mass, knocking the attacking beast forward, causing it to stumble as Tala lashed out with Flow.

The knights were fast.

Its war-hammer came up, knocking Flow up so that her blade sheared off the top of its head and helmet, instead of separating it at the neck.

They’d learned the hard way that this wasn’t a lethal strike for warriors or knights.

Full head removal, bisection of the body horizontally or vertically, complete obliteration, or solid hits from specialized, guardsmen weaponry. Those seemed to be the only guaranteed kills.

Strangely, a diagonally-bisecting cut left them with some ability to fight on. We’re probably missing something critical.

Sadly, the Leshkin seemed to slowly change over time, so the knowledge from previous wars was never precisely accurate.

She whipped Flow around in a tight circle for another cut, but the knight lunged forward, punching out with its heavy weapon.

The impact threw Tala back, across the open forest floor.

The ending-berry power took a large tick downward as it protected her ribs and organs from being pulverized; the blow had been greater than an ox kick. I need some space to drink more ending-berry juice.

Thankfully, she’d gotten her weight back to normal. Unfortunately, it didn’t really matter. She slammed into one of the great trees, actually denting the massively magically enhanced material. More ending-berry power used. Thankfully, she’d managed to keep her head tucked, and she’d taken the impact mostly with her spine.

She snorted at that. Who’d have thought I’d be trying to take damage on my spine…

She jerked herself out of the tree, calling Flow back to her hand. Wait; when did I lose hold of my weapon?

Remembering back, it had been at the moment that the massive hammer had hit her sternum. Understandable. Have a nice day.

Tala shook her head. Her thoughts were a bit scrambled. What is going on?

Right! I’m fighting knights. She refocused on the space before her.

Terry was a flickering blur, engaging the three knights, trying to give her time to recover.

She almost laughed. When she thought about it, this was probably how he’d been sparring with her. He’s operating under the limitation of: Contain, don’t kill.

The acid was a serious risk for Terry, especially if it came from a wound he was actively creating.

Focus, Tala!

She locked on to one Leshkin, which had a war-pick, clearly the greatest danger given its deep penetrating potential. The creature’s form seemed to be composed mostly of long, fruit-like plant matter of varying colors. Its armor was a grey, tight-grained wood.

Tala’s left middle finger touched her thumb once again, and she began pouring power into increasing its effective gravity. In the time since she’d been forcefully ejected from the top of the cargo-wagon, she’d been too focused on fixing her own effective gravity to target one of the knights. Until now.

While Tala was dumping power into the gravity increase, she also pulled out her flask, downing a large amount of ending-berry juice. She strode forward, returning the flask to Kit, continuing to increase the knight’s weight more and more.

The creature was tripping and stumbling all over the place, and every time Terry knocked it down, it struggled to get back up.

Next. She switched targets and began ramping up the effective weight of the sword-wielder. That Leshkin seemed to be composed all of fine roots, like the hair thin ones that she often saw around weeds when she’d helped cultivate her father’s garden. Get it together, Tala.

She was almost to the skirmish, and Terry anticipated her arrival, appearing opposite her approach and screeching.

Hammer swung for the avian, and Terry simply flickered, allowing the weapon to harmlessly pass through the space he’d been in.

Tala took that hammer-knight-Leshkin from behind, quickly cutting it into quarters with a practiced pattern of two strikes. Flow pulled a little more strongly on her power as it overcame the natural resistance of the being, but it wasn’t significant.

The extra pull of power would also have cauterized the flesh of any being made of mundane material. Unfortunately, the Leshkin weren’t. Their vegetation-substance simply caught fire, and the acid-blood bubbled and whistled as the force of her blow caused it to spurt away from her, through where Terry had been.

Terry gave her a bit of an irritated glare, and she returned an apologetic glance. Oops.

He didn’t let her error slow him, however, and he quickly engaged the now-stumbling sword-knight-Leshkin, and Tala took a moment to behead then bisect the downed and struggling pick-wielder, coating the ground in more corrosive gore.

As she stepped around the ick, she glanced at her left hand, and contemplated the gravity scripts that were responding to the gesture from that hand. These are awesome! Exactly what I needed.

The gravity manipulation wasn’t a quickly lethal skill, not by a long shot, but it was an amazing support ability.

While intelligent creatures could likely compensate for a time, Leshkin seemed almost to function along preset lines of action, rarely having good responses for odd tactics when used against them.

The sword-Leshkin followed the other two knights in death shortly thereafter.

Tala stood panting, the heavy breathing more from adrenaline than true exertion.

In the moment of silence, she heard Leshkin screeches from a distance, along with cries of pain. The caravan!

She snatched up the Leshkin’s weapons, dropping them into Kit, and only slightly regretted leaving the armor behind. They need me.

She began running, but Terry was immediately beside her. He let out an implicative squawk and hunkered a bit lower as they continued to run. “Right! Thanks, Terry.”

She hopped sideways, her great strength allowing the running leap to give her quite a bit of air.

She landed on Terry, and the terror bird bent lower still, greatly increasing his speed.

Tala tucked down, gripping his collar to gain better purchase as they quickly caught up to the still moving wagons.

Come on; come on; come on!!!

Lesser Leshkin were everywhere.

There must have been a hundred. Thankfully, more than half were dead or dying, if the piles of out of place vegetation were any indication.

A quick assessment showed her a group of three guards who were hard pressed by a Leshkin warrior along with a pack of lessers. “There!” She pointed, and Terry veered to the side, taking them that way.

Tala leapt from her partner’s back and swept Flow outward, cutting four Leshkin. The warrior was bisected at the waist, and three lessers were cleanly beheaded. She put enough force behind the strike to knock the bodies aside, which directed the spray away from her allies.

Terry body-checked another two off their footing, and the guards were able to use the slight reprieve to finish off the remainder that had been within reach.

“Next enemies! Let’s move!”

* * *

It was getting closer to evening, and the attacks just kept coming.

Twelve guards had been injured beyond Mistress Odera’s ability to heal.

Two more had died.

Tala didn’t have the mental space to process that, but she knew it would hit her hard, later. One had died just before she’d reached him.

If I’d been faster…

But now was not the time.

There was an outer perimeter around the city of Makinaven, inside of which the inward pull of power was greatly increased. That draw-down of power was a strong deterrent to the majority of the most powerful arcanous beasts. Leshkin were among those that usually stayed out of that zone.

The head driver and Mistress Odera had just finished a quick consultation, before letting everyone know that the caravan was less than an hour from that line, if they could keep the current pace up.

The spaced out, unit-based assaults had been replaced by an almost constant, steady inflow of Leshkin.

As such, Terry had been placed on get-the-bolts-back duty. He couldn’t flicker while holding a quarrel in his beak, but he could still move fast and then flicker straight to the next to be retrieved. Thankfully, something about the quarrels’ method of execution caused a banishment of the acidic blood as well, thus better preserving the ammunition.

It was a good use of his skills, especially with his understandable reticence in subjecting himself to the Leshkin’s acid blood.

Yeah, definitely blood. These things move around; I don’t care what they’re made of to start with. It’s blood.

Between Terry’s efforts and how on top of retrieval the roving defense was, they had only lost a couple of pieces of ammunition throughout the long slog of the day.

Near the beginning, they’d been able to strip the fallen warriors and knights, claiming all the armor and weapons to help increase the payout for the trip, but lately, they’d had to struggle just to claim the weapons.

Kit had quite a stock of Leshkin weaponry, now, but the pouch was far from full. This will be a good haul…if we survive…

They’d actually been getting into a good pattern and rotation, since the enemy had stopped arriving in units. The building exhaustion across all the defenders was the only true difficulty. Unfortunately, shortly after Mistress Odera’s announcement, something changed.

Almost as soon as the defenders had been informed that they were closing in on relative safety, groups had rejoined the ever-present lesser Leshkin assault: warriors led by knights.

Worse still, it turned out that the warriors and knights weren’t alone in their renewed assault.

Tala was fighting behind the caravan, acting as rearguard to give Rane a momentary breather.

As she struck down yet another warrior, taking an ineffective blow to her leg from the creature in order to land a killing strike, movement caught her attention at the edge of her vision.

She lifted her gaze to stare through the horrible light of the seemingly endless forest, and her eyes locked onto a fear made manifest.

The sound of booming footsteps, somehow striking at the pace of a charging bull, overrode the sounds of routine battle around her.

Even at the great distance between them, Tala could still see that the creature was three times her height, and vaguely in the shape of a man.

Its armor was reminiscent of some of the latest designs she’d seen for heavily armored guardsmen, though those were usually only used in the plains routes, where mounted guards could easily sweep away enemies on open ground. The Leshkin really do evolve over time.

A massive glaive was held before it. The wicked blade was leveled at her chest. Even at such a great distance, she had no doubt of its target.

It was at least six hundred yards away; only a fluke in trunk alignment allowed her to see it at all.

Even so, it was growing closer at an alarming rate. It will be on us too soon. She looked around at those fighting with her. Each was winning their engagement; the caravan was protected, but none of them were free to face this new threat.

If any actually could.

Her eyes returned to the new, fast approaching foe.

If she had any guess on its speed, it would be upon them in less than ten seconds. How can anything move that fast? That was at least double the speed of a galloping horse. If not triple!

It was an insane pace. A forest of destruction, condensed into the body of a giant. If it gets here, we’re dead.

Her right hand came up on pure instinct. Her first two fingers extended upward, her ring finger and pinky tucked down, all four pressed together, palm pointed towards what was obviously a Leshkin juggernaut, her thumb tucked in tight. She channeled magic into the activation and focused.

Crush. One gold ring burned away from the back of her hand.

Immediately, the massive creature stumbled, and it fell into a tangle of limbs, plowing a deep furrow through the hard packed, frozen soil. Somehow, it kept its great weapon whole and free of the tangle. Good instincts.

It didn’t stay down.

With obvious effort, the beast forced itself back up and lunged back into motion, quickly building up speed once again.

A second ring burned away on the back of Tala’s hand, and the Leshkin went down much harder than it had in the first fall. A screech that froze even the other Leshkin washed over the caravan. An ancient creature of ridiculous power was livid.

The juggernaut forced itself up once more, cocked back its arm and whipped it forward.

The third ring blazed to life on the back of Tala’s hand, and the Leshkin juggernaut simply flattened. Sixteen times effective gravity wasn’t enough. That was a horrifying amount of force to have been shrugged off. It had required three full activations. Sixty-four times gravity.

Tala’s relieved mind barely caught the blur of motion, high up through the trees, her enhanced senses focusing in on the unusual movement.

A flicker of dappled, late-evening light across the dull wood was the only confirmation Tala saw.

It wasn’t enough to save her from harm, even with her physical enhancements.

Her eyes widened, and she began twisting away from the incoming, thrown weapon.

The motion unquestionably saved her life. Or at the very least saved a lot of regeneration.

The razor-edged sword blade of the juggernaut’s weapon hit her right shoulder, in the divot between her chest and shoulder, right at the joint. Her rotation had shifted the point of impact away from the hollow beneath her throat.

The sheer force of the blow overwhelmed her defensive inscriptions, draining all of her ending-berry power.

A distinctly resonant pop reached her ears as her humerus separated from her scapula.

The feeling of a deep stretch in all the muscles of her shoulder was followed closely by a tearing sensation that felt like nothing so much as the ripping off of ten thousand scabs or having each hair on her head pulled out one at a time. Her flesh tore as the weapon continued, unrelenting.

Now coated by an aborted spurt of her life’s blood, the glaive moved through her to kill a guard who had been fighting behind her.

His spear dropped to the ground, left behind as he’d been jerked away, his lifeless body now pinned to the back of the chuckwagon, twenty feet beyond her.

Tala watched in horror as her right arm fell free, somehow not thrown backwards.

Her arm was gone, and it had been replaced with agony; every nerve that was no longer connected to her seemed to be screaming in horror, all at once.

She staggered, suddenly off-balance and disoriented.

Her active spell-lines, those that had failed to save the arm to begin with, hung in mid-air, clearly in the shape of her now missing arm, connected to her bloody shoulder but utterly beyond her control.

The limb, no longer attached but still clothed in an elk-leather sleeve, lightly bounced as it settled onto the detritus of the forest floor, twenty-seven golden rings shimmering obviously on the back of the hand that was no longer hers.

Power ripped through her and on instinct she directed every void-channel she could create into her regenerative scripts.

Blood flowed out, through the gold inscriptions that had, just moments ago, surrounded, reinforced, and enhanced her vascular system. As that was filled, bone blossomed outward, marrow forming from the fine network of vessels that connected to it.

The hard casing of compact bone came next, again following the scaffolding of inscriptions, blazing with power in the dim light.

Her soft and connective tissues came quickly after that, the whole process taking less than five seconds, and draining her magical reserves almost entirely.

Her physical reserves had taken an incredible hit as well.

And I lost the reserves stored in my arm.

From the jagged tear around her shoulder, her elk-leathers regrew her right sleeve. It looked strangely similar to how her arm had returned: small tendrils first, which then expanded outward, weaving into the lattice of magical skin, now bent toward Tala’s use. She instinctively directed a void-channel into the garment to keep it powered. Given all the stress the garment had been under throughout the day, she just barely caught it before the reserves fully emptied.

In a daze, she looked down at the limb, bleeding out on the ground before her.

That’s my arm…

Her vision unfocused, and she stumbled again.

Oh, rust. I just lost my arm.

Her mind refused to listen as a small part of her tried to point out that it had already grown back.

By all that shines. I LOST MY ARM!