The general backed off and dropped the hilt, mildly taken aback by the loss of her sword, but grinned nonetheless. It seemed as if she enjoyed every second of it.
The Maukling ambassador screamed in terror, but it immediately devolved into sick gurgling when one of the Altgardian warriors thrust the spear tip of his halberd into the ambassador and flung his dying body aside.
The general brought her fingers to her mouth and whistled. Dozens of soldiers came streaming out of the surrounding tents, weapons drawn, and peasantry armed with pikes to form a ring around the Atlesians.
Hyde took a sweeping look, assessing the situation then prepared himself to fight. “Lethal force authorized. I’ll clear a way through. To me!” With one sweep of his hand, his coat magnified in size before splitting apart and covering the other mages.
The general brought her right hand up and opened her palm. Every Altgardian soldier surrounding the Atlesians watched her in tense anticipation. She closed her hand, and with that signal, every pikeman around the Atlesians surged forward.
Hyde caught the pikes with the cloaks he had placed on his mages. Like before, the particles surged and disintegrated the pikes. “Go, now!” Hyde leapt forward and cleared a path toward the exit with his swirling aether particles, cutting down the soldiers that tried to block his way. Many of the Altgardian soldiers began to panic, clamoring to escape the camp, but most were sliced up in the flurry of blades and spells.
Away from the sight and ears of the Atlesians, a witch mounted the ramparts at the far end of the camp. She flung open a small cage that contained a raven and began to hurriedly whisper to it. “The Mauklings have allies. They bear the insignia of a foul wyrm. Came making demands. Violence. Send immediate reinforcements.” The bird took wing and flew away from the chaos of the ensuing battle, cawing loudly.
Waiting behind the pikemen were the masked, robed men Hyde had witnessed ingesting pixie dust. At least five of them blocked the path out of the camp. Hyde noticed they were starting to twitch uncontrollably. He didn’t know what Altgardians had to gain from placing drug addicts with beak masks on the battlefield. Suddenly, they rose their swords to the sky, and in a matter of seconds, black clouds began to swell, and lightning struck the beaked soldiers. They flinched momentarily, but to Hyde’s amazement they were unharmed. After recomposing themselves, they fired off blue, streaking bolts of lightning to the Atlesians behind Hyde.
Hyde spared a glance back. His aether particles had mitigated some of the damage, but heavy damage was done to a few mages’ wards. They were a step away from breaking. What unnerved him most, however, was the fact that he hadn’t sensed any aether movement from the lightning blast.
The general waited, her arms folded, patiently observing the battle. She shouted an order, and from both sides of the camp came rushing four more mages, two on either side of her. The general inhaled another deep breath, this one stronger than the last, and it seemed as if the air around her was being drawn toward her. With a mighty howl, two plumes of wind shot up on her left and right sides, propelling the four mages into the air. With a slash of their blades, the air around them coalesced into the shape of a fan, and hurtled toward the Atlesians. The rippling air came forth with a harsh roar as they fell upon their flanks.
The Atlesians were unfazed. Two mages channeled aether from their catalysts, then stomped down on the ground. Stone walls rose from the ground, mostly stopping the wind in its tracks at the cost of shattering from the force. The other mages prepared a counterattack, summoning a hail of ice and stone shards upon the Altgardian troops.
They were wardless, and thusly, had their skin shredded as they descended. The mages went limp and fell at the Atlesians feet. The Altgardian knights, upon witnessing the death of their compatriots, adopted a combative stance, and wrapped themselves in coursing air. They moved unusually fluidly and rapidly, especially for wearing such heavy-looking armor, skirting the Atlesian perimeter. One of the knights, steadying himself, rammed his shoulder into one of the last remaining stone walls and shattered it, rocks sprinkling on the Atlesians behind. With a concussive blast of air, he sent one of the mages back flying back into the final stone barrier and drove his blade through the Atlesian’s chest. He hurled the corpse at another mage, damaging his ward.
As the knight stabbed the mage, Hyde was able to attach his aether particle to the knight’s sword. He extended his hand toward the knight and multiplied the aether particles, sending them crawling down the knight’s arm. He clenched his hand into a fist. The knight screamed as the particles bit into his flesh and crushed his arm into a bloody pulp. Hyde drew more aether from air around him and his aether particles doubled, forming a defensive cloud around Hyde and his mages.
Other than the general, there were two knights left, including the bearded, elderly one. Noticing the swirling cloud of aether, they reigned back their impulse to charge, and patiently stalked back and forth, observing the shield. They beckoned the five lightning mages to come forward, and they began striking the Atlesians with blue bolts, some launching their swords towards them. They were surprised when their swords disintegrated and rods of metal sprang up from the ground to intercept the bolts. The lightning was absorbed. Nothing was working. The two knights nodded at each other and began to bellow loudly, drawing up some kind of horrific sound from the depths of their lungs.
The Atlesians looked on in a mixture of apprehension and awe. Whatever they were doing, the mages had no intention to let them finish their strange ritual. They wove together water and earth aether, turning the ground under the knights to quicksand. Now immobilized, the Atlesians were free to cast gouts of fire to immolate the knights.
It seemed as though they had been so immersed in this ritual that they had begun to disregard the inferno. Blue, acidic bolts composed of some unknowable substance flew out from their fingers.
The Atlesian mages summoned another stone barrier to block the strange bolts while Hyde expanded his aether cloud to consume some of the closer Altgardian casters.
The knights were consumed by the flame, and the mages melted into amorphous puddles of viscera before they could even cast. The general decided she would no longer sit idly by as her troops were massacred wholesale. She began loudly declaring something in her tongue. “Mein name ist Martha von Schopenhauer. Mein wille ist eure richtschnur.”
She unholstered a longbow from her back, and shot a single arrow into the ground under their feet. But they noticed an odd plume of mist trailing the path the arrow took through the air. One of the Atlesians began to release a blood curdling screech. Wispy, ethereal beings began striking their wards, and when one of the Atlesians wards fell, the spirit forced open the mage’s mouth, and appeared to vomit some horrific, viscous substance into his throat, drowning him in an eldritch slime. The other apparitions grappled and tugged at the mages’ feet, slashing with spectral daggers and thrusting with spectral pikes.
Hyde gagged and almost threw up in disgust. Necromancy. The ambassador wasn’t exaggerating when he called Altgardian magic twisted and horrific. “Run!” Hyde tried to rally his soldiers. “Go go go! I’ll cover your escape. Don’t try to fight. Just go!” Hyde then drew in his aether cloud and instantly destroyed the summoned abominations.
The general spun her right arm in the air, and swung it thrice. Quite noticeably, the chopping motions had been so forceful that the friction seemed to nearly scrape her skin off. She unleashed three small tornadoes spinning towards Hyde.
Hyde stood his ground and sent his own blast of wind at the general by swirling around his aether particles. Usually he would feel a grudging respect whenever he faced a powerful enemy but now he felt nothing but disgust and a cold fury. He thrust his arm out in front of him and swarmed the aether particles around the Altgardian general.
She exhaled and let loose a blast of wind in all directions, dispelling the particles, and sending Hyde flying backwards. The storm clouds seemed to swell even larger, and the flashes of light came down from the blackened heavens. The rolling thunder resounded again and again as an ear popping shock. The torrent of rain thickened instantaneously. It didn’t seem like she was directing the lightning anywhere in particular; it struck all over the camp, and the bolts struck so strongly that the earth they fell upon seemed to explode. Her eyes were engulfed in a deepest blue as she cackled maniacally. Hyde got the distinct impression she had lost her sense of self. One lightning bolt struck too close, and the electricity launched him into a collapsed tent.
Hyde extricated himself from the wreckage. He couldn’t die here. His life was not his own to give. It belonged to Gwynneth. He raised his hand to the heavens and with a single swipe of his hand, summoned enough aether particles to completely clear away the storm. The sun once again shone on the now desolate camp. “My name is Hyde of house Han. You have committed unforgivable atrocities on the Atlesian people. I sentence you to death.” Hyde summoned a tidal wave of aether particles to drown the general.
A barrier of strange, green light rose up in front of her, but it wasn’t nearly enough to protect her. She was flung backwards, and her back broke with a sickening snap. The general attempted to steady herself, and stand back up, but she couldn’t even feel anything from her waist down.
Hyde would have walked towards her and finished her off personally, but her necromancy unnerved him enough to stay a good distance away. Aether particles blanketed the ground as it crawled toward the general in all directions. They began to converge upon her, and eat away at her armor, and soon her flesh.
She decided that now, now was the time to regain the honor she had lost. The Altgardian code of chivalry dictated that she do so. The particles seemed to be repulsed by an unknown force. Hyde frowned and pressed harder with his Sigil. No effect.
The general grinned. In the end she was powerless. But now, now was the time to die a death befitting of a Knight. Her right arm collapsed in on itself, and was sucked back into its socket. This would be a most glorious form. Her chuckling became a guttural groan that shook Hyde to his core. Glory. Glory would be hers. Her eyes shrunk back into her head, and her grin expanded to inhuman proportions. Her teeth began to elongate, and sharpen. The general’s torso seemed to shift and distort itself to make space for her jaw, which was stretched down to her stomach. Some of her organs fell out of her distended mouth, which was fully agape. She was beginning to stand now. How was she standing? Her left arm swelled, and bulbous growths, new muscles that seemed to manifest from out of nowhere began bristling all along her arm. Her legs twisted and swelled into uneven lumps, resembling something between the roots of an olive tree and the digitigrade legs of a goat.
Hyde took an unconscious step back. He had never seen anything as grotesque. What became of the general would put the worst of Maresa’s failed experiments to shame. Even his aether particles refused to touch the beast.
She bounded forward with abnormal speed, her mouth foaming in anticipation. The beast slammed Hyde into the dirt and dragged him through the blood-soaked muck, before tossing him into the sky. Then, she used her massive arm to tear off a chunk of her own flesh from her back, and tossed it at him as he went hurtling through the air.
Hyde barely managed to yank himself to the side with his aether particles and dodge the chunk of flesh. However, he wasn’t ready for what the general did next. She leapt into the sky and with a mighty punch, sent him back down to earth. As he crashed back to the ground, his ward finally gave way. The beast fell back down with him, and tore off one of its elongated teeth. It roared loud enough for it to echo across the valley between the camp and the burning city, and it began rushing towards Hyde.
Hyde tried to move out of the way but the monster was simply too fast. He couldn’t die. Not here. Not like this. But for once in his life, Hyde didn’t see any way out. He braced himself, bringing his arms out protectively in front of him and summoning as many aether particles has he could muster. I’m sorry, Gwyn. At least he saved most of his mages.
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