Every parent says that there will come a day when their children recognize how wise they were. I’ve heard it multiple times a year, all my friends have heard it, and all of our parents have heard this from our grandparents. I was skeptical of this day coming. My dad is a weird dude who likes MMA and teaches several martial arts as a hobby. Mom even agrees with the me. Seriously, he has more posters of heavily muscled shirtless men than your average high school girl. So yeah, weird.
Today in Bendon, my opinions were changed. His first sigil was from this metal praying mantis thing and worked with his swords, and he put in some work. The police and national guard had been wiped out by a portal opening behind their lines and disgorging a tentacle monster. It could heal by eating people. Nearly three hundred people would have been trapped and eaten in the local super market if dad hadn’t shown up alone with only his katana and gone all sue chef on its face. Seriously, it was the most anime thing I have ever seen and now most of the adventurers are begging to take lessons from him like he’s some kind of wise old master.
Day 21, Owen Landers
Silas made an embarrassing squawking noise as he slammed into the dragonkin. They were just as shocked as he was, both of them raised their femur clubs, but that was as far as they got before he knocked them both over. Unlike the dragonkin, Silas had formal training on what to do when knocked over. Slapping one palm down on the chest of a dragonkin, he shoved himself into a roll over the opposite shoulder and other dragonkin.
One of them clawed at him, cutting his skin with their claws. Silas hoped Flesh Lord’s protection extended to infection. He was back on his feet, mantis sword drawn, with two dragonkin clambering to their feet. This was perfect, he went to stab one of them before they could get ready again.
His plan was thwarted when the centi-snake tore around the corner like a train with far more legs than any creature should have. Silas glanced at the dragonkin, “Truce?”
The closer one tried to hit him with the femur. So, no truce. Silas evaded the wide swing, then chopped his sword into the side of its skull. That would have done quite a bit to a human, but the forward curving horns flowing from the temple blocked him. The mantis blade stuck in the horn, giving Silas leverage, but no way to do anything with it.
A screaming dragonkin went sailing overhead, reminding both Silas and his foe that there was a nightmare prehistoric monster. Silas saw it coming over the dragonkin’s shoulder and used the stuck blade to drag the dragonkin into the centi-snake’s path. Well, he tried, the dragonkin was stronger. He only managed to bend the creature over slightly and drag himself towards it.
The snake slammed into both of them in a wave of sharp points and green scales. Silas would liken it to being run over by a combine harvester. The jaws snapped closed where he had just been, the sound was loud like a gunshot. Silas didn’t have time to feel relief at not getting bitten in half as a split second later the serpent's neck bowled him and the dragonkin over. Fortunately, the ton and a half of monster was split between nearly a hundred legs, making the trampling painful, but not lethal.
Another thing that Silas had never considered, insect legs were not little points that they jabbed into walls. No, they had several joints, and claws, and could even have fur. Silas was sure he had heard in high school biology that only mammals were supposed to have fur. Evidently, he remembered incorrectly. The centi-snake had small bristles running along the carapace and twin toes ending in points to help it grip.
His sword was pried loose from the dragonkin’s horn, so there was at least one upside from being run over by a mutant titana boa. Silas immediately thrust the blade up, trying to slice the monster’s stomach open using its own momentum. Hey, it worked in the movies. Not for the first time the silver screen failed Silas, he lacked both weight, leverage, and a good angle. The scaled plates were scratched, but they easily thwarted his attack.
A few seconds after impact, the trampling was over. Silas could already feel the bruises forming from getting tenderized. He didn’t forget his goal, rolling over he brought the mantis blade down like a guillotine. The prone dragonkin took it on his forearm, hissing when it was buried in his forearm. It threw a straight punch in return with its uninjured arm.
Silas tried to block, but on the ground, he had to rely exclusively on his arm strength. If the dragonkin had a body stat, it was at least one higher than his, because the punch blew past Silas’s block with no issues and connected with his helmet. The bone armor might currently look like a used chew toy, but it was up to the task of handling a punch.
Wrenching his sword free, Silas rolled away and rose with a rock formation to his back. The dragonkin was slower, giving Silas time to look for the centi-snake. It had the minuscule turn radius that came with being a snake, simply bending in a U. Where the ravine was too narrow for both its head and tail to pass, it climbed onto the walls.
A centipede snake sounded utterly ridiculous, but when scaled up to this size in a tight environment, it was terrifying. Silas went through his knowledge of snakes, birds typically hunted them. It was common enough to be the centerpiece of Mexico’s flag. He felt an idea forming, but before it could foment, the dragonkin were both rushing at him.
Silas watched both of them move. He had taken some martial arts when younger, not enough to call himself proficient, as he only got his green belt before choosing to spend his time out in nature. When his father had signed him up, the local black belt, Tucker Landers, had immediately noticed that Silas’s father was dangerous. Later Silas had asked about it, all his father said was, “Dangerous men prove it by how they walk, weak men prove it by how they talk.”
In the army, he started understanding what was meant by his father’s words. Self-control, competence, and productive experience were the hallmarks of truly dangerous people. The dragonkin lacked all three traits, they were confident, but they did not coordinate, they didn’t pace themselves, and they were wild in their aggression.
They had also forgotten about the bus sized serpent barreling back at them through the ravine. Inhaling, their throats started glowing, and neither stopped running at Silas. Both were surprised when he placed a foot on the rock next to him and jumped into the air. The snap of the serpent's jaw closed below him, missing by a few inches. Silas landed on the centi-snakes back and tried to find a grip on the scaled body.
An explosion bucked the serpent into the wall. The fire breath had been expelled beneath the snake, which pissed it off enough for it to switch targets from Silas to the dragonkin. Silas almost fell off, before deciding to grip a leg in his off hand and push towards the head. The body was too big for him to wrap his arms around to grab a centipede leg on either side, so he was forced to hold on awkwardly as the monster wheeled around to make another pass at the dragonkin.
Silas had remembered how birds hunted creatures like this. Peacocks would often jump down on the snake from a tree branch and peck into the serpent’s brain stem. It was so effective, that it was how Silas had already handled several larger creatures. He almost fell over again when the segment he was transversing rose onto the wall.
Looking forward, he watched the beast’s jaws clamp down on a shocked dragonkin. It had tried to get out of the way, but it was too slow. An arm was bitten off and swallowed before the snake had passed by again. Relief fell over Silas as he saw the injured dragonkin rise. He needed to be the one to kill them if he wanted to purify them. It felt cruel to kill what was essentially teen dragonkin. Unfortunately, they were still monsters and it needed to be done for Arabella and her daughter to survive for more than a day or two.
The other dragonkin did something. It screamed its anger at Silas, which made it the most sympathetic creature here. Then it reached down to its comrade’s stump of a shoulder and rubbed blood over its face and arms. It seemed like some kind of war ritual or a ritual for the dead. Silas couldn’t be sure.
He pushed forward while the centi-snake twisted around for a fourth pass. Only a few legs from the head, Silas was taken by surprise when the blood covering the dragonkin lit up as if it were made of gasoline. The wave of heat generated was far beyond the fireball, forcing the snake to put on the brakes.
It slid forward and would have collided with the burning dragonkin if it didn’t rear back. It stopped in the classic king cobra pose, though instead of a hood with an eye pattern, it had insectile legs. Silas lost his grip, falling to the serpent’s midsection once again. It all looked like a tail, so he couldn’t be sure if he was standing atop anything vital. However, he knew that the dragonkin wasn’t stronger, he was just covered in flaming blood. Once the snake realized that, the juvenile dragonkin would die.
So Silas stabbed. His weapon was three feet long, more than enough to go three quarters of the way through the body. With his weight on the hilt, it sank all the way in. With a jerk, the centi-snake twisted back to see what had harmed it. The dragonkin did not pass up the distraction. In an explosion of fire, it rushed at the snake, shoving its claws into a gap between the scales. The fire on its body died as the energy was transferred to the hand.
Only now did Silas realize that it was the same arm that the other dragonkin lost. Another explosion rocked the centi-snake backward. The once flaming dragonkin staggered back, looking utterly exhausted and missing an arm. As for the centi-snake, it had a beach ball sized chunk of its body splattered over the ravine. So it wasn’t just a bright fire show, Silas was glad that he was able to watch it before one tried to use the move on him.
The snake tried to hiss, but a good chunk of its lung was gone. It was bleeding horribly, but nowhere near dead. If it chose to run, Silas wouldn’t stop it. Unfortunately, it seemed too angry to flee. It moved to strike down at the two injured dragonkin, they cringed back prepared for death. Silas couldn’t allow that.
“Fancy people seem to like snakeskin! You’re worth a fortune!” Silas yelled. He didn’t know why he chose those words over simple screaming, but they felt right.
The snake realized what was about to happen and jerked around to stop him, but Silas could cover five feet faster than it could cover twenty. He rammed his sword into the scales of its arched back. The tip glanced off the spine and slid through several membranes. Most likely the stomach and other lung. Air was still important after all.
He wrenched the blade up and down like he would use a paddle while canoeing. The mantis blade was only single edged and didn’t do much when he pushed. However, when he pulled, it slid through the body with the scaled skin working as a fulcrum.
The centi-snake tried to bite him, but he was too close to the neck. It could get close, but the spine would only twist so far.
Silas laughed at the monster’s impotence, “I cast you down evil serpent!”
Maybe poorly parroting God was a bad idea because at that moment the snake remembered that it could roll over. He was forced to leave his weapon behind as he scrambled to avoid getting crushed. Avoiding the bulk of the snake was difficult in such a confined space, so Silas jumped to the wall.
Handholds were plentiful but also put Silas facing away from the snake. Which was why he missed it when the tail came around and smacked him off the stone. It caught him on his abused pauldron, cracking the bone and throwing Silas a good twenty feet forward. Breathing became substantially more difficult as Silas’s already broken ribs shifted.
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Flesh Lord was amazing. Broken bones were easily reset, and the healing part of the sigil could turn a break into a bad fracture in a day, so long as he had food. He hadn’t had the time to heal. The week it would take to get back to one hundred percent would be far too long for Arabella and Samantha.
The snake thrashed, trying to get the metal shard in its lung out. Silas was knocked into the wall a few more times and something inside tore. That wasn’t good. He needed to not only kill this thing but be healthy enough to win against the dragonkin. Glancing at them, he realized it might not be that much of an issue. They were getting just as battered as he was, but they lacked a sigil that kept them going at full power.
A serpentine head slammed into the wall right beside Silas. It wasn’t trying to hit him, just flailing around. The more that it flailed, the more it appeared to be in its death throws. Its lungs were either collapsed or filled with blood. Death was inevitable, it just hadn’t accepted it.
It was similar to what happened when he had watched Abby’s father take a shovel to put down a rattlesnake. It had wisely fled from Jay, as the man did not tolerate anything dangerous to his animals or children on his property. Despite being ruthless with his boundaries, Jay was not a cruel man. His first strike had nearly cut the rattler in half. The snake writhed, exactly like the centi-snake was currently doing. A second strike from the shovel ended the snake, and it was promptly fed to the chickens.
Silas was not in a position to end this in a single blow. He was in a position to get smeared across the wall, so as soon as the head jerked away, Silas ran. It was difficult, scaly coils and dozens of legs thrashed, buffeting Silas in random directions. He kept pushing, the tail bashed into the ravine walls, sending sprays of stone down on his head.
His sword came into view and he contemplated trying to get it. A stray coil almost smooshed him and Silas decided that grabbing it later would be prudent. He ducked under a tail sweep and was free of the mass of flesh. Silas took as deep of a breath as he could manage, feeling the pricking of ribs on several delicate membranes.
Did a body of two make his lungs harder to damage? He felt that it should, but the centi-snake should have a much higher number, and it hadn’t stopped either him or the dragonkin. Flesh was still flesh, regardless of how much it could lift. Silas had hoped he could one day be invincible, but that looked unlikely. At least he had a way to augment his durability with armor, most other people would not be as lucky.
He wasn’t out of this yet. Both dragonkins had the same idea and were making their way out of the centi-snake’s coils. He still had a few moments before they arrived. Looking around, he spotted their makeshift femur clubs. The long bones came from something tall, the ball joint attached to the hip was positioned to work like a primitive war hammer.
Silas had assumed they weren’t very intelligent, but without any wood, they would struggle to refine metal into usable material. They could make fire, but it wasn’t hot enough to melt metal. Bone Crafter was also not a skill they possessed, making a femur a particularly effective weapon. Silas was once again reminded of the existential threat these creatures posed to Earth.
He molded the ball joint into a spike and then moved a bit more material to the reverse side of the spike. This needed to be fast, Silas was confident that he could win but wasn’t willing to prolong the encounter.
The first dragonkin staggered out, blood leaking from the corner of its mouth. It was limping and the horn that Silas had chopped into was broken off. Silas did not let it recover, he brought the spike down on the dragonkin’s neck. It collapsed to its knees, not completely gone. Silas had to club it another two times before it finally went down.
Notice: You have made contact with spirit manifestation Schemat Accendo. Would you like to purify the taint of Nimrod?
Silas nodded, the dragonkin would come back good as new in ten minutes, so he couldn’t afford to wait.
Notice: You have taken action against a Scheming Acolyte of Nimrod, Master of Schemes, he will no longer grant you titles or accept your allegiance. You have not gained his attention.
Silas’s eyes widened. These gods were real? That was a terrifying prospect. He had started to think of them like labels. This monster was from the Fenrir genus or the Demiurge phylum. If the dragonkin were organized enough to have a religion centered around a god of schemes, Earth would be in trouble. At least if these deities functioned as any myth portrayed them, which he suspected from the master of schemes title. The only good thing was that it said master of schemes not god of schemes. Masters could be beaten, gods, well Silas had no idea how that could be even possible.
While the topic of extra dimensional Babylonian deities was important, Silas needed to handle the second dragonkin. Hopefully killing a second acolyte was not enough to draw Nimrod’s attention. He was not arrogant enough to think he could handle the master of schemes with a bone club.
The final dragonkin was glaring a Silas, as it fumbled its way out. A loss of attention that saw it bounced off the wall a few more times. The expression of rage took Silas by surprise, he had watched the lead hunter abuse the youngsters he was instructing. They had been grievously injured and instead of being given the time to rest, both had been forced to do hard manual labor. He didn’t think the members of the tribe actually cared, and maybe they didn’t. Silas remembered a time where he disliked his younger brother, but if anyone so much as touched the little guy, Silas would beat the daylights out of them.
As soon as the dragonkin was free, it charged at him immediately. It lacked a weapon, giving Silas a substantial reach advantage. He stepped to the side, bringing the spike into the dragonkin’s knee. The knee buckled as he finished his step and the dragonkin toppled over. It tried to catch itself but was unable to with one arm.
This was the first time Silas questioned the morality of what he was about to do. He knew that these creatures followed a religion, that meant human levels of intellect. They were relatively young and was one example of abuse enough to justify writing off an entire race as evil? Silas could think of some times in his past, that if taken out of context, would make him look evil. However, he needed that sigil, both Arabella and Samantha needed one on the very real chance the other died.
Was Silas willing to let his journey home be stained in the blood of children? He had said no before, but he had already killed one. It all depended on where he drew the line between human and nonhuman. Sighing, he lowered his hammer. It was foolish, he knew he should take the final blow his hands were already stained.
“Go on,” Silas took a step back, leaving the way to the tribe clear.
The dragonkin would go back to its tribe and bring the adults back. They would have no idea where to start looking for Silas, there was a good chance he would never be found. Was it foolish? Yes, he had an objective calling for the eradication of this dragonkin’s hive. It was the only way to hit the mysterious ten in capacity.
The dragonkin had other ideas. It didn’t run, it lunged at Silas like a wild animal, making him second guess everything he had just thought. There was intelligence in its eyes, but it was paired with madness, not anger. Its leg was injured, reducing its accuracy and mobility. He was easily able to evade it.
“Yield, I don’t want to hurt you,” Silas said, knowing the juvenile dragonkin wouldn’t understand.
This dance went on for ten minutes before the dragonkin became too tired to lung again. Silas took a step away, leaving the juvenile behind. Humanizing the enemy was always the first step to being unable to face them in battle, but it was also the only way progress could be made. He scooped up the sigil he needed, it was a purple silhouette of a dragonkin outlined in fire.
A coughing growl caused Silas to whip his head around. At the other end of the ravine, a third dragonkin strode out of the shadows. It did not glare with hate, simply with disappointment. That gaze wasn’t even directed at Silas but at the downed dragonkin. It held a staff with a spike at the bottom and the juvenile stared at it in fear.
Silas blinked, the juvenile was afraid. The elder should be here to save it. Silas was unsure of what to do, he was outclassed by this dragonkin even on his best day. So he slowly backed away.
What came next was a surprise that took away most of Silas’s doubts. The elder kicked the juvenile over onto its back and placed a foot on its gut. With an ease that told Silas it had done the same thing a hundred times before, the elder stabbed the pointed butt of the spear through the juvenile’s skull. A clawed hand plunged into the chest of the corpse and extracted the fresh heart, which was placed in a rawhide bag.
The elder then turned his eyes on Silas. Those eyes were calm, the elder did not fear Silas and was going to kill him. Nothing personal.
Silas ran.
It didn’t help. He had only made it three steps before something powerful struck him on the back. Silas heard something in his back crunch and was launched fifteen feet forward, halted only because the centi-snake was in his path. How could that much power be packed into a human sized frame?
He scrambled over the faintly twitching body of the the centi-snake. Glancing back as he vaulted a coil he saw the elder right behind him. It was fast, much faster than the centi-serpent. Fear gripped Silas, he didn’t want to die. Regardless of his bold words of taking enemies with him, it was just bravado, he wanted to live.
He only saw one way to do that, defeat the dragonkin elder. A clawed hand closed around Silas’s shoulder, punching five holes into his skin with ease. He reached his target at the same time. Surprise was the only chance that he had, so when the elder spun him around, it was quite surprised when Silas whipped his mantis blade across its throat.
The force of the spin was great enough to send Silas around a second time. He felt a bit sick as centrifugal force pulled on his injuries. The elder staggered back, shock clear on its face. There wasn’t enough coil for it to retreat and when it stepped back only empty air supported its foot. Silas let out a sigh of relief at the dragonkin’s fall.
He hadn’t been sure that would work, the surprise attack only worked because the elder had just arrived. Silas paused to catch his breath and settle his nerves. A flash of fire and heat filled the area where the dragonkin had fallen.
“No way I’m letting a phase two start,” He sprinted off the centi-snake.
Leaping he brought the mantis blade straight down into the prone figure’s chest. Holding the weapon in a double handed reverse grip, he pierced the dragonkin’s heart. Its eyes bugged out as it stared at the length of metal shoved. Silas pressed, not willing to let the elder rise again. With a jerk, the blade pierced its back and hit the shallow bedrock. That probably wasn’t good for the tip.
Now that he was back in control, Silas took the time to see what the dragonkin was doing. The light and heat were centered around the edges of the cut which was cauterizing the neck injury closed. That shouldn’t be possible, at least not possible to do and survive. Thankfully it was weakened, at least to the point a knee on each arm was sufficient to keep it pinned.
The dragonkin bared its needle teeth and growled. Silas didn’t know what else to do. He had stabbed it and slit its throat, what else could he do? His lizard brain had the answer. The dragonkin’s throat started glowing, so Silas grabbed the largest rock within reach and smashed it in the face.
It seemed stunned that he would do that. Silas smashed it again and again. Each strike did minimal damage, but they added up. Slowly the glow died down as the dragonkin’s eyes went hazy, then blank. Silas didn’t stop until he got the expected notice.
Notice: You have made contact with spirit manifestation Humilis Schemat Pugnator. Would you like to purify the taint of Nimrod?
The first thing he noticed was the different species name. He had no idea what the words meant, though the humilis made him think humility. Yeah, this elder was not humble. Still, elders were rare and powerful, one less was a good thing. A second notice arrived, though he expected it this time.
Notice: You have taken action against a Lesser Scheming Fighter of Nimrod, Master of Schemes, he will no longer grant you titles or accept your allegiance. You have not gained his attention.
Silas felt dread in the pit of his stomach. Lesser. This was the inferior model. Silas had felt the strength in that grip, he had no hope of resisting it. What would have happened if an average fighter had arrived? Hell, he had a whole tribe of them to deal with. He felt the panic start to rise again. What could he do? He was alone, save for a grieving mother and young child.
“Survive, get home, find Abby,” He hadn’t needed to use this mantra in over a month. He pushed the panic down, only to find that he couldn’t. Another hundred lesser fighters, he couldn’t handle one without the element of surprise? What if it had bashed him upside the head with its staff instead of attempting to grapple him?
Notice: Your body is in critical condition, Flesh Lord can no longer keep you in peak condition and process your healing. Healing prioritized.
Silas sagged as a wave of exhaustion washed over him. Critical condition? He surveyed the state of his body. Blood was leaking from his mouth, he had a concussion, several broken ribs, his forearms were heavily burned from the lesser fighter’s flames, a shin was fractured, and that wasn’t even including the cuts that had yet to heal from the Terra Ursa.
The sudden change in energy levels cleared his mind enough to get moving. He picked up the second sigil, it looked identical to the acolytes one. Silas also took the rawhide bag, in the future, he would attempt to make a better one but for now it would stop him from dropping the sigils.
He paused when he dumped the heart out. This had belonged to a juvenile, or an acolyte. That was not a creature ignorant of its cultures ways, it was a creature being trained to lead it. Unless the dragonkin were a culture that idolized fighters, this acolyte was on its way to being a priest or something similar.
So his initial worries were misplaced, this creature was not an innocent child. However there would be some in the tribe. He opened his interface and reread the objective.
Objective: Exterminate a nest of dragonkin/ Reward: Capacity raised to ten
He clenched his fists. There had been some hope that it had said destroy or disperse. Exterminate was final, every last one. There might be a way around it. The portal was stabilized somehow, did he need his capacity raised to use it?
A sharp pain cut through his chest as a rib popped back into place. Further thought was for a future Silas, one who wasn’t so hurt. With great effort he rose to his feet and started limping back to the camp. Hopefully anyone who found the dragonkin would think the snake did this.
