PreCursive

  We were perhaps three hours into our journey when Liora brought us to a halt. The Gnoll woman dropped out of the treetops in front of Venix, nding in a croud log eyes with the point man. “Stop,” She said suddenly, sounding out of breath.

  He did, and the rest our procession followed. “What is it?” Venix asked her seriously.

  Standing up from her crouch, Liora took a moment to take a swig of water from her teen. “Monsters ahead,” She breathed.

  The tension in the group ratcheted upwards, and I frowightening my grip on the bow in my hands.

  “Bout damn time,” I heard Bel mutter in front of me.

  Guess she’d been itg for a fight. I suppose it was a ge of pace from monkeys watg us from tall branches, squealing hogs, and silent, stalking cats.

  Not to mention the damn bugs trying to drain me of blood.

  Venix nodded sharply. “position?”

  Liora straightened up at his tone, nearly ing to attention. I guess old habits died hard when you’d spent most of your life as part of a paramilitary anization. “About a dozen strange, snakelike creatures that I’m unfamiliar with,” She summarized. “I stumbled upon them on my path and had to retreat rapidly, so I was uo Observe them. As soon as I id eyes on the beasts, they reacted as they could sense me and began to search.”

  Venix sheathed his clearing bde and frowned in thought. “Tell me, did they possess fs and wispy white hair?”

  Snakes with legs? , yoing to tell me about fish with wings.

  Wait.

  Wasn’t that a thing? Nevermind.

  Liora nodded. “Yes, they did. I take it you’re familiar with them?”

  Venix sighed and responded in a mahat was on with him.

  “Wyrm’s breath, twisted spawn,

  Crawlis in dragon’s guise,

  Howl to false heavens.”

  Nobody even fli the sudden Haiku. We were all used to Venix’s peculiarities by now.

  “Yes, sider them the spawn of Tatsugan,” He said patiently. “Proto-Revenants, if you will.”

  That caught my attention. I stepped forward, my demeanor intensifying. “Like Rhazal’s?” I asked sharply, drawing Venix’s gaze.

  I don’t think I would ever fet the strange mohat had id siege to Elderwyck upon Rhazal’s ing. The stra-dinosaurs had spawned both from thin air, and the corpses of those they had sin. The result had been an unending tide of them rolling over both of the twin cities and nearly sc them of all life. They would have, too, if it hadn’t been for the st-minute save from a source I’m sure the cities hadn’t been expeg.

  The Lich living uheir feet. If it hadn’t been for Tzo and his ‘assistants’, I’m not sure there would have been cities to save when I killed Rhazal.

  And noarently Tatsugan had some of his own.

  Venix was unfazed by my regard. “ly,” He said evenly. “The Camity you syed must have been specialized towards army creation, during the War in Heaven.”

  I furrowed my brow. Yes, I supposed Rhazal had referred to himself as ‘the father of monstrosity’. It ossible that he’d had a specialty, for all of his otherwise impossible might.

  “Tatsugan is different,” Venix tinued. “The specifics of the process elude me, but his creations are entirely indepe of him. He does not trol them. They are merely monsters whose birth is influenced by his Aether that enpasses the range he calls home. They mih the Oni, flowing down from Mt. Gorenzan and f packs. They act as hounds at their bed call. The Wyrmkin are, in essence, sgers following at the heels of the Oni hordes.”

  “What are they doing here, then?” Renauld asked with a frown, befesturing out into the distance. “We’re a long ass ways away from the mountains.”

  He was right. Despite trekking through the jungle for hours, the distant peak of the mountains didn’t even seem like it had grown any closer. I don’t even know if one of those mountains was the one we sought. Mt. Gorenzan could be farther in thahose rocky s. It was going to take days and days of hiking for us to reach them.

  “The Wyrmkin ihe whole of the isnd,” Venix said, shaking his head and causing his anteo sway. “This is uo be the first time we enter them. This shall be a good introdu to their peculiarities. Ready yourselves.”

  I stepped back, satisfied.

  I was totally fih that. I’m not sure I would ever have problems with putting down Camity spawn.

  As Venix drew all four of his swords, the rest of my panions did as he’d said. Azarus drew his hammer and shield, while Bel did the same with her cutss. Meanwhile, Renauld just tightened his grip on the Healers staff he’d already been using as a walking stick, and Liora…did nothing. The noll fought with her fists and cws, and was already limbered up from her sprint back to us.

  I merely drew an arrow and id it along the string. I was still guarding Renauld as far as I was ed, so I would just provide ranged support for the rest of my melee-focused panions.

  Seeing we were ready, Venix advahrough the brush.

  It didn’t take us long to enter the Wyrmkin. They were…pretty odd, I have to say.

  I threw out an Observe at the first one I saw.

  NameDevout WyrmkinLevel 174Age3 months, 12 daysSpeciesMonsterAbilities Plea to the Father, ???Strong. Just barely in the range I was capable of seeing with Observe. I wasn’t really worried, though. Instead I was just…looking at the beasts, in the moments before they noticed us.

  Liora had been half-right to call them snake-like. The Wyrmkin possessed long, thin, sinuous bodies covered iric blue scales from snout to tail. What made them even more snake-like was the rattle they possessed at the end of it, which occasionally flicked out aed a clig hat was where the serpentine resembnded.

  As Venix had said, they each had four limbs, not too dissimir to what you might find on something like a regur lizard. Each of these legs terminated in four-toed feet that possessed a single promi cw, akin to the raptors I’d seen in films from my youth. But it was their heads that diverged the farthest from that of a snake.

  Their skull was almost like that of a dog. They had long, wide muzzles that terminated in promi nostrils that sted the air stantly. Enormous, nearly bulbous front-fag yellow eyes gazed out at the world hungrily from underh a shaggy mane of dirty white hair. Jutting out of that wispy mass from their extended brow were two stubby-looking, dull horns.

  They still had at least ohing simir to shough.

  Forked tongues stantly flicked out of their open, panting mouths, tasting the air. And if I knew anything about snakes…

  The moment we saw the Wyrmkin, they saw us. I don’t know if it was the tongues, or the nose, or hell, it could have evehe rattle that zeroed them in on us. But when they saw us, the pack of eleven Wyrmkin threw back their heads and howled. At the same time, aire pack's worth of rattles began to ctter from the tip of their tails, almost eagerly. It was a strange call, not at all like the f howls of my absent lupine panion. They warbled and hissed and rattled, all at once, in a distinctly monstrous manner.

  Well, at least until I shut them up.

  I’d taken the ce they preseo infuse my arrow with Grinding Crimson Sunder and loose it into the throat of a g Wyrmkin. His call cut out, and he crumbled onto this wide snout, almost immediately dead.

  Te.

  When his howl died, his brethren ceased their caterwauling and charged our position as one, bounding hungrily over the fallen brush of the jungle floor.

  Venix aepped forward to meet them.

  Three of the Wyrmkin tried to verge on Venix, only for him to almost ptuously halt their charge with his whirling bdes. One serpentine hound was bisected ly at the waist with the Antium’s upper left bde, while another was skewered by both the left and the right lower. The third beast thought to capitalize on Venix’s distra by lunging for his chitinous throat, only to be spped out of the air by the ft of his upper right bde. The monster loosed a hissing yelp as it flew through the air.

  Right at Bel.

  The Pirate Captain had already dispatched one of the Wyrmkin that had charged her by that point, but she didn’t waste the ce Venix had given her. With a shout of effort, her cutss sprouted a swirling haze of pure storm. Crag clouds that emanated wind, rain, and lightning ran all up and down its length.

  Bel cleaved upwards with her chaotic bde, right in the oning path of the falling Wyrmkin. The razor-sharp edge of her sword left behind a brilliantly crag echo ht blue lightning in its wake as it ripped right through the shoulder of the monster. As the Wyrmkin fell into two pieces around Bel, her arm shot upwards through the clouds of dissolving Miasma, pig out the beast’s Core. She grinned and pocketed the jewel, and then got back thter.

  Six left.

  Renauld and I were providing ranged support for the frontline, and hadn’t stopped casting and loosing sihe battle had started. My Gnoll friend and Healer was casting quick bolts of butter yellow Mana out from the head of his staff, and where they impacted, they sizzled and bur the scales of the Wyrmkin. They didn’t often kill any of the monsters, but they sure distracted them. Meanwhile, I hadn’t stopped with my own barrage. Since I’d gained General ons Proficy upon maxing out my on Talents, I’d found it easier to wield a bow in open bat. My arrows were more likely to hit their target these days, and enhanced as they were with my Skills, they were deadly.

  Together, Renauld and I killed ahree of the Wyrmkin.

  Three left.

  Two of the remaining serpent hounds reached our position, only to promptly meet Azarus and Liora. My dwarven friend didn’t bother with fancy Skills or Arts to sy his quarry. Instead, as the Wyrmkin lu his throat with a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs, his simply blocked the monster with his shield and repelled it. The Wyrmkio the jungle floor below, stunned, and before it could react, Azarus brought down his hammer.

  And crushed its skull.

  Two left.

  Meanwhile, Liora was locked in a dah another one of the creatures. This one was more y than its fellows and amming what must have beeher Skill their kind possessed.

  Some kind of projectile of poison.

  Every couple of seds, the Wyrmkin’s cheeks would bulge and fill with a disgusting purple liquid. Ohey were full, the monster spat that wad of corrosive junk at the former Noe Division member.

  She dodged every one of them.

  The foul wads of loosed poison missed her every time, to nd upon the bark of the trees around us. It only took seds for their wooden surface to begin to corrode, a testament to the strength of these thing’s poison. Not that it mattered.

  It holy looked like Liora ying with the thing, it was so outmatched. But the look in her eye wasn’t pyful.

  It was calg.

  She was taking its measure, and she found it wanting.

  Eventually, the Gnollish womaired of the near dand vanished forward in a haze of bck wind. Instantly, she appeared in front of the Wyrmkin that was far too slow to react, and using cws coated with the same darkness of her Skill, simply ripped its head from its serpentine shoulders. Almost ptuously, she tossed it over her shoulder to thump onto the jungle floor, where it dissipated into a cloud of Miasma moments ter.

  O.

  At least, there should be. I’d ted eleven of the Wyrmkihe battle started, and I’d kept track of everything that had been killed in the moments sihe exge had begun. I didn’t see the st ohough, nor its corpse. I must have lost track of it, though.

  Oh no, whatever will I do? Surely I’ll never be able to rea time to the beast that must even now be stalking Renauld and I, as the bae of our little trouple. Our unprotected backs were surely wide-open!

  My c told me to stop being a stupid sarcastic asshole and deal with the movement we’d both spotted out of the er of our eye.

  Man, don’t be such a downer. Let me have my fun.

  Oh, whatever.

  I activated Might of the Wyrdwood at fifteen pert, and with my newly enharength and reflexes, dropped my bow and drew Terractus in one smooth motion. I promptly pivoted on oo my left and lunged forward.

  Directly meeting the pounce of the Wyrmkin that had thought to circle around the fight and attack our rear fnk. In the seds before my bde met the scales of the rabid beast, I let The Stilnt Bde fsh into being over the length of my Oninite sword.

  Just in case.

  The brilliant burning bde sheered through the scales of the monster effortlessly, meeting a all. The entire serpentine mass was bisected horizontally dowrunk of its body. Briefly, before the monster burst into Miasma upon its death, I saerfect cross-se of the innards of a Devout Wyrmkin.

  Very…ribby, I have to say.

  I burst through the crowd of Miasma, nding in a crouch. Luckily, I had long since growo the pure stench of the mist, so I didn’t immediately vomit.

  I did make a face, though. Still, that was the st of them. I stood up and sheathed Terractus, meeting the startled gaze of Renauld.

  The Gnoll bli me. “Damn, I didn’t eve. Thanks, man.”

  I shrugged. “Eh.”

  “No problem.”