Chương 344: AF Chapter 343 – Down another Moarsman Hole

They were indeed waiting in the cavern at the bottom of the ramp, with shamans standing higher on the walls to see over their warriors, hulking and bloated moarsmen bent over with writhing black veins working over them and not a few bloated pustules extending from their tarnished scales. The light coming from above, unnatural and bright in the dim luminescence that radiated formlessly from the very air was finally wavering, and the sounds of metal in motion echoed off the stone coming from above.

The warm-blooded infidels were coming… Which was about when a coldly burning blur of motion shot out of the mouth of that tunnel, turning an impossible angle and running right up the side of the Blight-streaked, leaving a swath of ice behind her that hissed and spit at the Blight, bursting into pale white mistfire. Ding! Ting!

"Tremble, WE COME!" her words rang out, Whiskers of the Wild making sure it was totally understandable to them, echoing and building like knives of Thunder biting into the souls of the Moarsmen with the sudden insight that they had failed their makers and their masters in all ways.

She was up the wall, then over on the ceiling, running upside down with a scuttling speed, the brightest thing in the whole room, and all the moarsmen turned to follow her as her Tail, a thing of burning frozen energy, flicked and hurled great misting frozen spikes of solid ice forth, exploding and shattering against her targets, even as arcs of frost and bolts of needled ice descended on the gaping moarsmen from the Sword and Autobow she held in her hands.

"Blaspheme against The Deep, betrayal of the Land..." Just a streak of motion, crossing the whole ceiling of the room, turning and coming down the wall… Right among their shamans, all of whom were stumbling back as the Spikes detonated against them, coating them in rime and ice. The Mick slammed into the nearest moarsman to the ramp entry, driving Bunita in deep to the brute's spine and blowing frozen death through its torso as Lost Light caressed its Blighted flesh and erupted in little explosions as it did so.

"Steel rise in Light, to take you where you stand!" A dozen armored Knights of the Lost Light were behind him. Some of them leapt off the Disks they were riding, also slamming into the flanks of the moarsmen and getting in deadly first blows. Others hopped from one Disk to another to back them up with long Spears, while the last set spread out to the sides with brightly-lit Shields up and formed the cordon holding back all the rest of the moarsmen as they reeled from the blinding brilliance in their faces.

"Shine in ice, freeze your very souls in mist and rime!" The Scouts who came down last stayed on their Disks as the Disks in front of them fell to the ground, Bows and Autobows up and aiming at their targets, all thoughtfully limned in frost and mist back there and being savaged by a merciless woman Cloaked in a nimbus of blue-white freezing flames.

Her Sword was moving with speed that mortal muscle shouldn't have been able to power through, took down the first of the shamans before distracted, half-blinded, and none-too-bright bodyguards could react. The Mick lashed out in all directions, his Crazy Flame swordwork the thing he'd been working on the most intently for the past few months. The wild and crazy style, drawing on inner passion, was not truly natural to him, being more enamored of the powerful and sneaky underhanded style of combat himself.

But he'd seen the ability of the Fire Dragon swordwork and techniques to generate just impossible levels of savage speed and attacks. Coupled with the Flowing Waters swordwork finding ways through armor man-made and natural and delivering greater force with every blow, carrying those blows through to the next attack with Cleaves and Rends, and it allowed him to chase after Princess Kristie in viciousness and sword speed.

"To the dust, fed to the rust of sea and time"And the Land feeds well today!

"TREMBLE, WE COME!" Chase, but not catch. She was a Sage of the Sword, and he wasn't sure what exactly was involved in that, but it was a level of skill and understanding of Swords and swordplay at a level he just didn't have, and was pretty sure that he never would. In the meantime, the wretched, twisted moarsmen, already unnatural creatures, now twisted by Blight into things truly rejected by the world, would have to serve as the anvils he was beating his understanding of the Sword into final shape on.

They needed a good and bloody beating, after all. Frozen missiles thrummed overhead, and one of the shamans kicked back against the wall, impaled and frozen to it, beginning to Burn from its Blighted sores almost instantly. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"Lifted you from the darkness, but to it you've returned Grace and glory you've let die, with Blight and Corruption you've spurned The Light that once embraced you! And now the price of treachery comes due! No time to regret, no time to rue, The Burning of the Blight you've earned! TREMBLE, WE COME!"

Some of the moarsmen surged back to attack Kris on her rampage among their spellcasters, some turned around to try and engage the bearers of the very painful Light hammering at their bulging eyes dripping rancid black tears at the brightness. Rogar was the only Scout not shooting, plying his Glaive Accent over the head of a younger Knight named Shao Tai, who was holding back a much larger moarsman trying to drive her back and tear aside her Shield.

The arcing Glaive coming down and chopping into its head and shoulders with terrific force made a great distraction, and her short Katana Diaya was thrusting up energetically underneath her Shield into its belly repeatedly and deeply. It was a little surprised when its midsection and right arm broke off, frozen solid, and it fell in a misting pile to begin burning en vivus.

Kris had simply gone up the wall a few feet to avoid the bum rush of moarsmen closing on her, scampering up out of their easy reach and sideways to her next victim. The shaman was hammered by Spikes, Bolts, and then finished with a sweep of Quaver that erupted into a blur of killing diamond lights slashing through all the moarsmen around it as it died.

"Tighten it up!" the Mick ordered between the beats of Kris' Heartsong pumping in their blood, and the line of Shields and Knights pulled back in good order. Just a step, but now they were shoulder-to-shoulder, the Spear-users were plying their Weapons over the shoulders of their fellow Knights. The last Shaman dropped to a concentrated volley from the archers, who promptly began to target the heads of the moarsmen visible over the Shields and stabbing Swords of the Knights at point-blank range.

Kris was scuttling sideways along the wall, harvesting heads and flailing arms as she distributed plenty of Spikes and Bolts among her ardent pursuers, keeping them focused on her… right up until the moarsmen lines attacking the Mick had thinned out, and suddenly she could drive Spikes into the backsides of moarsmen trying to claw at him and the Knights to either side of him.

The moarsmen in front of and to either side of the Mick fairly fell apart into icy chunks, and now the moarsmen formation was broken and open. Mick went one way, the other two knights went the other, and the wolfpack began to rip down the length of the writhing, scaly line of moarsmen fixated on getting through the Shields with their maddening light in front of them.

Efficiently coordinated attacks cut down the moarsmen with speed and ruthlessness, Kris continuing to contribute from the wall at the back of the room, triggering the Mick's Sting of the Wasp, while his Break the Shield opened up each moarsmen for extra Bolts from her Autobow, feeding into one another despite the distance between them.

The Blighted moarsmen were cut down with speed and energy, actually keeping pace with Kris as she thinned down her own crowd of rabid fans trying to rip her apart and tear her off the wall in their fury and shame, raging and uncontrolled as her Song beat down on them. Her Arakne Arms keeping her Shields in their faces didn't make that any easier, happily bashing into them with icy Spikes on their surfaces at the same time as Quaver was happily tolling their doom with ding! ting!

echoing forth with the syllables of a dual Heartsong. Aye, he'd had the Lady Magos tell him how it worked, how that melody of Kristie's got the blood to boiling and hearts to hammering. It was a gloriously savage and unrepentantly ferocious Song that could pick up and carry whole armies on a tide of emotion and unrestrained fury, one so very different from the Sublime Chord of the Lady Magos that lit up magic as if it were alive and made it dance to the tune of spellcasters beneath it.

Both of them were masters of what they called the Bardic Magic, the Heartsong, and furthermore, could Dual Sing. He'd seen the way the Lady Magos' song could worry and tear at the edge of enemy spellcasters, sapping the power of their magic even as it boosted her own and those of her allies.

In the same way, Princess Kristie's Trembling Song was bearing down on the Moarsmen with the power of Thunder, sapping power from their attacks and demoralizing them with fear, shame, regrets, and just plain overwhelming intimidation that ate right into their bones. There was no thinking their way out of this fight, that was sure, the moarsmen overwhelmed by their emotions and not thinking clearly, not that they had much in the way of brains to begin with.

The heart-ripping condemnation of the Heartsong meant they didn't swing as hard or as accurately, more wild flailings than anything else, unable to think under the weight of the words beating down at them. It were an incredible weapon for a Warlord leading troops, and they all knew they were damn lucky to have it here, working for them.

The whole chamber was being hosed down, vivus chasing the Blight across the walls and ceilings as it did, the temperature dropping from the chill of the dead and the ice upon the stones. The two Knights working Healer support duty were at it again, fixing up the physical energies, and maybe topping off Soak if the Knight involved was really hard hit. The Trembling Song taking the fire out of the moarsmen really did soften the impact of the fighting.

Despite them being bigger and stronger than the moarsmen upstairs, their people had actually taken less damage, and nothing truly lethal. The shamans hadn't gotten off a single spell successfully, dying along the back wall to the archers and Kris' attacks.

"Didn't see any warrior chief or anything. Pretty much all these places have 'em. Waiting for us down below, perhaps?" the Mick conjectured. Kris, her cold Phoenix Cloak down for the moment, looked around at the tunnels leading out of the chamber.

"We're in no hurry, and we aren't going to get gang-rushed from behind. We take it by the numbers, purge this place of Blight and Blighted creatures, and we'll get to the big one when it is time."

"Ye want it alone?" he asked her.

"Do you?" she asked in return.

"O' course I do, but me ego is a shiny thing I leave in me pack for cold nights, when I can warm meself on thinking what a grand an' glorious warrior I be, all shining an' upright fancypants fer the throne now, that's me." She had the grace to be amused at his description of himself.

"He's probably going to have some nasty guards, too, so we'll be having a time of things one way or another. If you think you can call him out, you can have him."