Chương 254: Day Two Hundred And Fifty-Two

Dear Diary, You'd think the fucksticks would eventually learn, but no, their answer to 'it didn't work' always seemed to be 'do it harder then'. Story of my pre-Isekai sex life, that. The moment after she roared out, 'YES!', Marie leapt toward the outer wall of the fortifications. I ran after her, Co-Locating to the wall where she was about to jump right over them; on the House side of the fortifications the walls were only like six feet tall, tops.

Between some hefty landscape engineering including a dry moat filled with irregular rocks guaranteed to fuck with somebody's footing, the outside was maybe thirty feet tall, with eighty percent of it backed up by all the fuckin' dirt in the world. That left like a fifteen foot drop from the top of the wall to ground level outside the moat.

Marie didn't even slow down; she'd dropped to all fours, and despite my duBois honed sprinting, I could barely keep up with her by Translocating along side of her as fast as I could. Inside my head I called out, you watching this, Boss? As it did so often lately, the rustling of paper accompanied Loki's response, with great anticipation and delight, Champion. Weird thing. The last three times I'd gone into a fight, at least a real one, I'd been so pissed I couldn't think straight. I just fucked shit up. This time?

I was pumped for the fight, yeah, but these assholes hadn't just killed my kid, or my wife, or raped my friend. Oh, I had absolutely zero fucks to give about what happened to them, since they'd been given the option of coming in out of the literal cold and turned it down, killing the messenger in at least one case. But I wasn't a raging ball of death. I'd already Co-Located once to keep up with Marie; I did so again with the lead me, the one Translocating in an attempt to keep up with a sprinting Tiger.

In the gathering gloom I saw eight hulking figures between us and the spots where the Fire Bolts had come from. They had their backs to the tree line, although it wasn't so much 'tree line' this close to Lancaster House as it was 'carefully engineered tree farm', with trees in straight rows and columns. Because of course the Lancasters would plant trees like that. The moment I saw a tree big enough looming in the distance, I Translocated the me back by the General to the top of it.

I realized right then that Marie hadn't gone straight at the eight big guys. Instead, she'd angled to place herself between them and the fortifications, right where they absolutely could not miss her. I Co-Located myself again, then had to slide all four of me to a stop as Marie stopped dead in her tracks, turned to face the Rogue Calverton Heroes, and roared. I'd heard Marie roar before. Well, I thought I had.

On the Equinox, she'd let out that motorcycle revving noise that a big cat makes to tell you 'I am the apex predator, and I will absolutely kill and eat you if you get in my way'. This... wasn't that. This was different. Louder. More focused. This wasn't a question of asserting dominance. This was four hundred years of humiliation and denied rage given sonic form.

The me at the top of the tree wasn't even quite in the line of fire, and I still almost fell out of it as my grip went slack and all my sphincters either clenched or said 'no, no, drop off all waste now, we need to run away faster!' The eight big guys crouched, bracing one foot behind themselves, putting their shields up and hiding behind them. The eight dudes I'd picked out standing behind them, using the trees as really shitty cover? One of them toppled to the ground, clutching at his chest. DRT, motherfucker.

Still. Two versus fifteen looked way too much like a fair fight. Fuck fighting fair and fuck these guys in particular. The four of me backing Marie up stepped behind the line of Mages, Co-Locating to eight of me as I did. At the same time the me in the tree fell back on my first real fighting trick. I dropped a massive Filtration Ward centered on my tree, blocking all light. In wireframe I leapt to the Mages, Mana Blades sliding out of my wrists as I did so.

Of course the fuckers had Mana Wards up, my Mana Blades sliding off them. Fuck it. The one extra me used Mana Blades to quarter the dead guy on the ground, and four of me stepped to him, grabbed up his limbs, and stepped right beside two of the Mana Warded guys. Now, I have definitely been angry enough many times to beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker, but this time anger didn't enter into it, just cold, calculated malice. I didn't bother swinging at their faces, or anyplace else they might catch a break.

I hammered their knees from the front and their ankles from behind. One guy toppled, barely getting his arms in front of his face in time to keep his face more or less intact. The other dude wasn't so lucky; one of his knees snapped backwards, and his hands were too busy grabbing at it to protect his face when it hit the ground.

The two of me holding the dead guy's arms threw them at another pair of Wizards, then Translocated out into the tree farm, while the other two kept taking two-handed swings at the assholes on the ground using the legs of their departed buddy. While I'd been playing pattycake with the Mages, the High Priests of Arse decided to make a whole ring of themselves, their spear tips glowing with a faint red witchlight, like they'd just been pulled from a forge. It gave them maybe six feet of visibility at most.

It also showed the tiger-woman hunting them exactly where they were, just in case she hadn't known already. I watched in wireframe as she leapt over the Priests facing her, landing noiselessly in the middle of their circle. Her hands speared out in front of her, and the sound of rending metal filled the darkness. Six of the Priests spun, shields up, spears stabbing into the middle of their circle. The other two?

Their bodies dropped bonelessly to the ground, and Marie silently launched herself out of the gap they left, steamrolling the poor Mage who'd been standing in her path. In half a heartbeat, she flung the decapitated heads of two Priests at the nearest pair of Mages, although 'flung' didn't really do justice to something the size and weight of a bowling ball thrown hard enough to describe a flat arc right into the chests of those poor motherfuckers. One of them went down, clutching at his chest and moaning.

The other didn't even do that, as the impact threw him straight back into a broken-off branch in the tree behind him hard enough to provide a handy dandy hatrack for the helmet that killed him. Of course, I am not slow when it comes to someone giving me a hint about wreaking havoc. All four of me leapt behind the four Priests furthest from Marie, reaching around and sliding their backup swords free and throwing them toward the Mages.

As those four tried to spin fast enough to hit me, I Translocated away, one of me landing where each of those swords had landed. Meanwhile four of those poor dumb motherfuckers nominated themselves for Darwin Awards by turning their backs on Marie. She leapt back over the two decapitated bastards, her whole body low to the ground as she grabbed two more Priests by the ankles, her shoulders taking them in the backs of the knees.

Her momentum carried all three of them well outside the Priests' ring; she leapt, carrying the pair of Priests into the air with her. They flailed, trying to hit her while being yoinked along by their ankles. Somehow telling things like 'momentum' to fuck off and bother the Priests instead, she came to a complete stop when her feet hit the ground. Physics, pissed at Marie's blatant disrespect, did what seemed natural in this world and took it out on the two nearest targets.

Namely the knees of the two bastards whose ankles she lifted, then cracked like goddamned whips. Four of me picked up those fucking Cold Iron short swords I'd liberated, tossed them near the two upright Mages. Just as they gathered Mana in front of themselves, Fire Bolts forming just inside their Mana Wards, waiting for a target to drop their Wards and light me up.

Of course, while their heads were on a swivel, their Fire Bolts tracking along with their gaze, those same Fire Bolts served to highlight them way more than they illuminated the four of me who leapt behind them, picked up the Cold Iron swords, and stabbed each of them in the back of the neck and square in the middle of their ass. Their Mana Wards dropped when the Cold Iron hit them.

Their Fire Bolts might have gone any which way if I hadn't spared the time to keep them aimed right where they had been when the Mages died. Two really impressive Fire Bolts tore their way into the back of the four remaining Priests, who'd formed a line facing Marie. I got big sad when for all the fireworks, it didn't do much but light one guy's hair on fire.

Motherfucker had his priorities straight, and ignored his own head being on fire to keep his spear and shield pointed in the same general direction as they'd heard Marie rip the lower legs off two of their buddies. I saw them set themselves, realized what they were about to do, and jumped in behind two of them, stealing their backup swords, tossing them as I Translocated away from desultory retaliatory kicks.

A moment later the four upright Priests charged forward, shields up, spears out, doing a hell of an impression of a cavalry charge for all that they didn't have horses. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. For half a moment, I worried Marie hadn't seen them lining up, as she seemed to be more interested in unzipping her latest victims' armor in spots where there weren't zippers, using nothing but her claws.

With the Priests halfway to her, she punched her hands down toward the two downed Priests' left hands. When she spun to her feet, she had their shields, one in each hand. Instead of bracing herself, she leapt at them, roaring. Their spears sunk home into her shields. For a moment she hung there, suspended eight feet off the ground by four spears that had punched straight through the shields she'd liberated.

Then she roared again, and somehow I knew without any need for Blend shenanigans that her roar translated almost exactly to 'oh, you done fucked up, A A Ron.' She somersaulted forward in midair, twisting and, right before her feet hit the ground, throwing the shields away; despite two spears in each of them making them way less aerodynamic than they normally would be, they flew away overhead and landed somewhere out in west bumblefuck.

Okay, I have no idea where they landed, because midway through they punched through my Light Ward, dropping it for a second before I put that shit back up.

I couldn't help it, the me in the tree tossed up a Public Address mode Message Spell and, after cackling for a solid five seconds, during which Marie leapt back, grabbed an upright Priest's shield by the simple expedient of ramming all five of her claws straight through it, leapt away dragging him behind her, then grabbed him by the collar and twisted his arm until it came loose from his shoulder. The moment it did, she threw it away, grabbed his other arm and did the same thing.

As I got my laughing under control, I realized where Carruthers might have learned his leg trick from. Not his fault that he's at least a foot shorter and way less gifted at mayhem than Marie, because before dislocating his hip? She ducked under a wild attempted headbutt, grabbed his ankle in one hand, his thigh in the other, set her foot on his knee and heaved.

Right as she did it again with his other leg, I managed to use my Message spell for something other than laughing at the poor bastards who'd become High Priests of Arse-boy just in time to meet up with the engine of destruction that was Marie Unleashed.

"Just in case your boss Arse isn't listening right now, do me a favor and tell him that when I'm ready to come for him? He's gonna wish Marie had caught him." I tossed my Cold Iron swords down next to four of the five Mage casualties and neutralized the living fuck out of the backs of their skulls. Then those four of me stepped silently behind the three Priests, far enough they wouldn't hear the snow crunch under my feet, close enough to hear one of them say, "Marie? Maenad fucking Marie?"

Another one said, "Leonidas said he killed her!" The third one growled out, "when we see him in the Elysian Fields, you two hold him down while I kick him in the nuts." The guy who claimed Leonidas killed Marie shouted, "yeah, in like ten minutes when we're there. Fuck this, I'm going down doing what we were ordered to and kill a bunch of that fodder." He spun, took two steps, and ran into a sudden pair of Mana Blades at eye level. Always wanted to use Moe Fu to take somebody out like that.

Bucket list item checked off. The other two spun to face in the direction of the flash of light from my Mana Blades, but I'd extinguished them the moment tweedle-dumbest went limp. A moment later I faced a single Priest as his buddy got yoinked off his feet almost noiselessly. Marie had grabbed both of his ankles and leapt toward the trees. I had to hop to another tree as she landed five feet beyond the one I'd perched in, the dude's feet in her hands.

The rest of him wrapped around the tree, looking like the really bad kind of auto accident where subcompact car meets telephone pole at eighty miles an hour. As the tree itself toppled, she stood, looked at his feet, shook her head, and tossed them away. Meanwhile his buddy, the last Priest standing, muttered something and his shield started to shine with that same ruddy glow their spears had. Smoke rose from it, but he didn't seem to care. Four of me stood between him and the fortification side of the Light Ward.

All four of me smiled at him from well outside his reach. He just stared at me, hatred burning in his eyes.

"What's the matter, Arse Priest? God of Holes left you high and dry? Not even gonna go out in a blaze of Glory trying to get at least one of me?" He spun, releasing his shield just as he completed his pirouette, flinging it edge-on toward me. The me in front of it jumped straight backward, catching it on my forearms. It hurt like a bitch when it cut through them, even more when it dug into my chest, but my weight proved just a little too much for what he'd intended.

Instead of embedding twenty odd pounds of superheated Cold Iron into ostensibly flammable things like our Volunteers, it slammed edge on into me as I hit the outer wall of the fortifications. I kinda slumped back into myself. The pain from that pair of hits stung, but not nearly as much as one of me dying. I stepped down from my perch and said, "your attack was not very effective." One of me bent over and scooped up some snow, packing it into a round ball as his growl got louder and louder, building into a war cry.

Just as he opened his mouth to scream something, I threw my snowball right into his face and called out, "Marie! I choose you!" She reached out and almost delicately wrapped a hand around his neck, forcing him to kneel with one of her feet behind his knee. She reached out with her other hand and foot and, as he struggled futilely, ripped his arm off at the elbow. As he screamed, she did the same with his other arm, then flipped him over and did the same with his leg.

Over the course of maybe a minute, she ripped his limbs off half a limb at a time, taking her time with it. As the inhumanly tough bastard lay there limbless and panting for breath, I muttered, "Marie used Sparagmos! It's super effective!" Then she loomed over what remained of him, let him watch her pull back one hand, then drove that hand stiff-fingered through his neck from front to back.

As his head rolled away, she pulled back again and rammed her damn clawed hand right through his breastplate, coming back with a heart-shaped lump of meat, which still kinda twitched a little bit. Then she let out another roar, this one way more an announcement that finding out had happened, a victory cry that knocked the snow off the fucking branches as far as I could see in the tree farm. As she lifted the last dude's heart to her mouth, I called out, "Marie!"

She paused and looked at me, raising one eyebrow eloquently.

"Don't eat that." Her head tilted.

"Why?"

"You don't know where it's been. I mean, I get it, total badass move, but... ew. If you're gonna eat a heart, at least eat one that isn't tainted with Arse." She sighed, shook her head, and clenched her fist. Shredded meat and blood ran down her arm, and she took a pace toward the nearest insufficiently dismembered corpse. I stepped all of me into one standing beside her.

"Sorry, Marie. You can when we get back, but right now I think we need your particular brand of mayhem elsewhere." When she looked at me, I said, "these dude's buddies. They aren't High Priests of Arse, but they're definitely in league with him." She shrugged, shot me a crooked grin, and held out one gore covered hand. I stepped us both to the northwest farm, where Angel and four Calverton Heroes held the courtyard against six rogues. Marie didn't hesitate.

One second a fight was happening, the next limbs flew in every direction. I stepped beyond the line to see another block of Calverton Heroes surrounding a half dozen of their number who'd been a little bit perforated by arrows; Bill and Raven knelt over them, the flickering light of Stabilizes and Heals emanating from them. I stepped four of me behind the double line of Rogue archers pelting the Calverton guys with arrows.

I dropped four with knuckle-duster Mana Blades to the backs of their knees; when the other two in the back line turned on me, I rose to face them, only to have one of the two stumble backwards, his eye spurting fluids everywhere. I figured out why when I saw the guy in front of him topple forward with a crossbow bolt sticking out the back of his head. The final guy from the back row spun to face the new threat. That made me feel some kinda way, so each of me shivved him a couple times.

Neck, face, gut, spine, all good spots, so I hit them all. The other five guys finally turned, and four of me stepped behind them and snapped off a series of Mana-Blade enhanced punches, perforating them from the backs of their knees to the napes of their necks. They dropped like puppets with their strings cut, giving me a perfect view of Bonnie hitting the final asshole with a right to the face.

Well, right through his face, really, and when her matte black right hand hammered through the soft tissue on the outside, through the bone, and into the soft tissue where he kept unused things like his frontal lobes, the noises were unpleasantly... wet.

"Welcome back, Commander!" I swear to God, she's the first person I've ever heard being perky on a battlefield. Let alone with grey matter glooping off her hand to the ground.

"No time!" I grabbed her, stepped her to the little triage area to leave her with Bill and Raven as I called out, "I'll be back!" I grabbed one of Marie's gore-soaked claws and stepped us both to the northern farmstead. This time our guys were clearly winning, and as I watched Lachlan blocking a hail of point blank arrows with an Air Shield in his left hand right before he brought down what should have been a two-handed sword and clove right through one of the remaining archers from crown to crotch.

Marie didn't bother asking, she just leapt forward, leaving dismembered corpses in her wake. When the last one fell, I called out, "Lachlan! Fred! To me!" We linked hands, Fred grabbing Lachlan's rather than Marie's. No idea why. Blood washes off. So do brain matter and assorted bowel contents. A moment later we stood in the courtyard of the western farmstead. As we got there, I heard the non-sound of Slayer's blade flicker, then normal not-really-silent silence reigned.

A few seconds later, I made out the sizzle of burning flesh and the slow, steady drip of someone bleeding out. I stepped out into the snow, looking out at a wireframe field of the fallen. Okay, about a dozen and a half were on their knees, not in positions of supplication, but in that 'barely upright, because exhausted' pose I knew way too well from having been in it, briefly, before passing out. On multiple occasions. Larry spun when my foot crunched in the snow, hooking Slayer to his waist as he did.

Right about then the guy he'd de-headed, because it's not 'beheading' if there's no head left to roll around, crumpled to the ground in a clatter of armor and weapons. Of course Larry had to choose that exact moment to remind me, that despite having become a productive member of what passed for society and being my friend Bonnie's favorite mount, he was still fuckin' Larry Lancaster.

"Commander. What kept you?"