Chương 972: Day Nine Hundred And Seventy

Dear Diary, Something's bugging me, and I don't know what, but for now I'm gonna call today a win. So yesterday at dusk we wound up spotting the Spartans. Okay, we spotted one Spartan, along with a Farmstead with blood literally dripping from the end of the courtyard. Just to be clear, this looked like one of the classic 'Lancaster Farmsteads'. One central building facing east, with two buildings perpendicular to it off the front, a single courtyard in the space between the three buildings.

We'd come in from the northeast, which gave us a view into the end of the courtyard, let me see the blood coating the pavers, dripping off the end of the stone. We all froze when Ryan lifted her fist, but the one Spartan we'd spotted was looking more or less directly at us, and even if I'd Blended the trackers a bit, there were nine of us, and some of us weren't as naturally or habitually stealthy as the others.

He didn't shout immediately, but he tilted his head like he'd noticed something, then opened his mouth and inhaled like he was about to raise an alarm. I didn't stop to think. Here, practically in my own backyard, M-Space was full of tentacles of every shape and size. While four of them grabbed him by the wrists and ankles, lifting him from the ground and hauling him toward us, I rammed a fifth directly into his mouth.

The Spartans may be evil fucks who commit atrocities the way Scouts collect merit badges, they are neither slow nor ineffective at wrecking shit. Fucker bit me. Not like a cat trying to express displeasure, either, or somebody tryna take a bite out of something tasty, but like an animal fighting for its life. Which, I suppose, is exactly what he was in that moment.

For what it's worth, my tentacles aren't particularly stronger than an equivalent sized limb, which meant that one that fit in his mouth wasn't strong enough to force it's way past him biting it. He dropped his spear, then his shield, and I realized why a moment before they hit the rocky ground beneath him. I shoved tentacles beneath them, like kicking my toes under a falling ceramic plate to keep it from shattering on the floor.

The Cold Iron edge of the shield burned into one tentacle, the filigree in the spear blade did the same to the other, but I kept the noise down to quiet clanks and grunts as I backed away, pulling him back behind a copse of trees. My trackers, not slow on the uptake, followed. Before we did anything else, I shoved a finger into each of the Spartan's eyes, then filled his cranium with Mana Blade. The Cold Iron strips on his armor didn't stop burning me, but his limbs went slack.

I laid him on the snow, pulled everyone in near me, then whispered, "Ryan? Sound Ward?" She waved us away from the Spartan, which I hadn't even thought of, and threw the Ward up. Still keeping my voice low, because fuck taking chances, I said, "okay. I don't see any exits from the Farmstead on this side. Probably the only doors are in the courtyard. I'm going in to pull any hostages out. You guys," I nodded to the Heroes and hunters, "move down to where you can see into the Courtyard.

Your job is to take out any runners, as well as identifying and pulling out any friendlies I miss."

"Would be easier if I had my Crossbow," groused Chloros.

"Fuck." My mind racing, I asked, "does it have to be yours, specifically?" She shook her head, and I Co-Located four of me to the Academy Practice Yard shed with the ranged weapons, grabbed six Crossbows and as many cases of bolts, and stepped back.

"Okay. Not the best bolts, but still better than any of you trying to go hand to hand with these assholes. That one," I nodded to the cooling corpse, "was strong as shit. Do not get any stupid ideas. Shoot the shit out of them, all of you jump in if they come at you, above all do not fight fair." Lemmy gave me a bit of a booger look, but the trackers just nodded. I turned to him and Marie.

"Okay. After I get the non combatants out, I'm gonna kill as many as I can before they realize we're here."

"That does not sound very Glorious." Lemmy's statement could have been a complaint, but I just shook my head instead of bristling at him.

"This isn't a duel, Lemmy. It's not a sparring match, or even a fuckin' war. This is fuckin' pest control. You saw what they did." He nodded.

"These fuckers are monsters, and deserve just as much consideration. Got it." He took a deep breath, looked around, saw everybody else, Marie included, nod along with me, and said, "so it is. What do you want us to do?"

"There are three buildings there. When I start, I'll let Marie know. You guys move up and cover the side buildings, clear them if the Spartans twig to what's going on." Lemmy looked to Marie and, almost as formal as a Lancaster, said, "you are senior; which side would you prefer?" She tilted her head, looking at him, then nodded.

"So Polite." Before he could ask again, she purred out, "I'm Right."

"So you are." He turned back to me.

"On your signal, Champion." I nodded, then pushed my Blend up until I was a bad dream. I maybe could have Co-Located, but some part of me did not like how hard that first motherfucker had been to take down. I'd had him totally surprised and outmatched, and he still nearly alerted the rest. Twice. Three times if I counted the shield and spear separately. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

My feet finding hard stone to step on without me really thinking about it, I slipped down to the entrance to the courtyard. A dozen bodies lay there, all of them bearded, none of them whole. I split myself in three, one going into each building. In the bunkhouse on the right, six Spartans had two dark-haired women half-stripped, their clothes ripped away from their fronts, the sleeves holding their arms back as a pair of Spartans undid their armored skirts and four more looked on.

In the one on the left, a similar scene played itself out, except the victims were a trio of boys. The oldest couldn't be more than about twelve, but all of them had been stripped naked, and bones jutted from their broken, bloody arms. Inside the main house, I found six more Spartans each in the process of raping one of the Farmstead's women. One in each of the downstairs bedrooms, one in the kitchen, one each in three of the four upstairs bedrooms.

Two more women lay spread eagled on the main central table, their hands and feet pinned to table by knives. The 'master suite' held a pair of captives. They looked alike enough to be twins, their naked skin red and white with frostbite. One girl, one boy, neither older than the boys in the bunkhouse outside. I Co-Located myself fourteen ways, one for each hostage except the twins. Mittens? There are only eighteen in here. Sentries. Let Lemmy guard the courtyard while you hunt them? Done. Kill. Them. All.

Still Blended into a bad dream, I laid a hand on each of the victims, then stepped them to Academy Infirmary. I tried to step them there. The boys, the women in the bunkhouse, the women in the bedrooms, they all Translocated with me, and as I laid them in Infirmary beds I shouted, "I have assault victims in need of Healing!" To their credit, the two Heroic Healers were in motion toward the victims before I even spoke. The women pinned to the tables screamed as the blades pinning them to the tables glowed.

Ignoring the searing pain, my tentacles ripped those knives free, flinging them at the doorways to the bedrooms, where the Spartans had already leapt for their weapons. I jumped those two to the Infirmary as well, thinking, Kitten? We need more Healers in the Ladies' Infirmary. On it. Karen replied before Saffron. Then again, I guess she didn't have to explain shit to the Grand Council when she disappeared. The last two, the twins, just shuddered as they didn't so much Translocate as smoke and convulse.

"Fuck!" I dropped my Blend on that me, kicking the door closed and tossing the bed against it.

"Don't worry, you two, I've got you, I'll keep you safe." They just stared at me, uncomprehending, as they settled. The rest of me gave into the rage that had been building the entire time we chased these fuckers. One of me stepped to the roof of the main building, throwing a Ward over the entire compound that filtered out light. My guys didn't need it, and the Spartans wouldn't for long. Inside the house, inside the bunkhouses, Spartans died.

Four died in the main house as I shoved the fucking daggers they'd used to pin their victims to the table through their eyes. One each, followed by a quick swizzle to slice their brains into assorted serving sizes. The other two managed to dodge, to deflect the improvised weapons and Mana Blades I'd assaulted them with. In the Bunkhouses, three more died to me putting a fist through their faces while slamming tentacles into the backs of their heads.

One of the fuckers in the left side bunkhouse screamed out, "to arms!" I shoved my fist into his mouth, and when he bit down I punched his brain with Mana Blades from my knuckles. Weird thing, felt like his brain meats were mildly resistant. Not, like, Mana Blade proof, but almost like he'd been skull fucked by a Dragon or something. The first Spartan backing out of the right bunkhouse wound up with Lemmy's sword punching straight through his skull, making him look like a unicorn for a second.

Before Lemmy fully freed his sword, the next Spartan fleeing me turned and attacked him, pushing him back out through the door. Not very far, though; Lemmy fully grokked the need to keep his opponent bottled up in the doorway, and his sword was a blur of strikes and parries on a level with Larry at his finest.

Meanwhile the first dude out the left bunkhouse door just dropped, boneless, four bolts sticking out of him, including one out the side of his helmet where his ear would be, another right through his neck at the base of his skull. The next two out the door had their shields up as they shifted towards Lemmy's back. I guess they didn't quite get the rate of fire on our Crossbows wasn't the highest.

They also didn't really understand the penetrating power, because as I grabbed the last Spartan from that bunkhouse by the head and proceeded to slam him off the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, another of the Spartans in the courtyard dropped, four neat holes through his shield, two through his chest armor. I don't think any of those killed him, what with the pair of bolts sticking out the front of his helmet, but I wasn't in a position to do forensics just then.

The guy in the doorway managed to push Lemmy back enough to get another Spartan out that door. Fortunately, I guess the darkness played in Lemmy's favor, because the Spartan who could have taken him in the back instead charged for the distant clickety sound of reloading crossbows.

"Need a hand, Lemmy?" Both of the Spartans glanced to me, which proved to be a huge mistake as Lemmy took one through the eye with his sword. Of course the other one managed to knock the sword out of his grip with the haft of his spear. Lemmy shouted, "fuck! Perhaps a hand would be in order."

"Kay." I grabbed the last Spartan coming out of that bunkhouse when he inadvisably spun around to face Lemmy. One Mana Blade later I tossed his severed hand to Lemmy. What? It had a spear clutched in it. Inside the main house, I'd kinda lost my cool just a huge bit.

Four of me took swing after swing at the living Spartans, who with my Blend still up could barely detect me when I dented their armor, pounded them back against a wall, slammed hit after hit into them, until one of them started leaking blood out of his mouth and nose with each punch. That mostly stopped when his chest plate wound up crunched flat to the wall. The wall behind the other dude failed, spilling him out onto the courtyard. He fell.

The tentacle I brought down out of the sky burned, but he squished out of the gaps in his armor as I shoved down with the kind of force that had torn the Mother of Water Panthers apart. Lemmy finished off the last guy, using his captured Spartan spear kind of like a staff. I wasn't gonna judge, I used my swordstaff like that most of the time. At that point the sound died down to metal sliding across rocks, across mud, across the courtyard as Marie dragged five limbless, grunting Spartans into the courtyard.

"We didn't really need to question them, Mittens." She rolled her eyes and nodded to the dead farmers.

"Revival Fodder." I glanced at Lemmy, who shrugged.

"Fuck It." I reached out, ripped out their Souls, and burned them as I laid a tentacle on each of the farmers. It had been a long while since I felt quite so viscerally, violently satiated as I whispered the word, "Revive."