PreCursive

  I wao grit my teeth in frustration at Kazuma’s ultimatum. Thankfully, I had better trol over myself to let a tell like that through, if only thanks to Ag. Holy though…

  I’d been expeg something like this from the man for a while. I think we had all been expeg it. He had never hidden his iions from us. In the end, I couldn’t fault him for being patient and waiting for the right opportunity.

  Even if it ain in my ass.

  As rain fell from the shrouded heavens all around us, I met his eyes calmly. “We’ll see. After all, there’s still a ce we’ll get to the mountain in time.”

  Behind Kazuma’s back, I saw Azarus make a doubtful face. He didn’t get a ce to speak, though. Not before Venix abruptly stood up from our little huddle, pushing my cloak aside as he did.

  “Enough,” He announced. “We ot linger here. Every moment we waste speaking is ahat the Wyrm grows in strength. A decision on our course wait until we reach the spire of Gorenzan.”

  We all stood to join him, and I dismissed Kazuma’s ‘proposal’ for ter sideration. Venix was right.

  We had to keep moving.

  Together, we sed the ridgeline, and when we found a stable enough path that didn’t seem to be ied with Oni, we set off on it.

  Well.

  It wasn’t currently filled with the giants.

  I didn’t expect it to remain that way for long.

  …………………………………..

  It was uedly exhausting w, hiking through these mountains. Our impromptu paths along the ridgelines were narrow at the best of times, and hair-thin at the worst. Occasionally, we would enter rger, ft-topped areas that seemed to be ag as arenas for the feuding Oni. These battlegrounds, whenever we came upon them, all seemed to have seen fightily. The st of Miasma hung heavy in the air on those ft-tops, and cracks and craters pockmarked the surface from blows that had been thrown and flung. However, we had yet to run into any of those batants on our march. From what Venix told me on our st few breaks, the fighting in these feuds started oskirts and moved inwards, like the closing of a circle. It acted as an almost…tour, for the Oni. Stronger and more worthy monsters cshed with each other stantly, seeking ever mightier oppos in their path toward the Wyrm.

  We were moving just behind the battle lines of the impromptu war.

  I didn’t have time or attention to worry about that, though. The footing along the ridges was already treacherous enough, from the ossible stone was likely to slip out from underh you at any moment. But it was only made trickier by the rain that fell stantly, never oting up over the few hours of careful travel.

  Frankly, I think a climb like this would have been impossible for anyone who wasn’t an Awakened. Even the lowest level person with a Status had a certain degree of enhanced physical acuity that was necessary. I think Renauld was the least physically able person in our party, ae that, he was able to rea time to save himself from many potential falls. The rest of us did the same, carefully bang our way along the precarious parapets of this rocky cascade. At times, the path along the ridges was so narrow that we had to hold out our arms to act as balst, if only to maintain our equilibrium. It was almost equivalent to games I would py as a child, carefully skipping through squares etched on the sidewalk in chalk, ughing and pying with long-gone and distant friends.

  There was no ughter to be found here, though. Only focused determination, tense physical trol, and a silence broken only by the occasional rest on battle-scarred mountain pnes.

  It was there on one of those battlefields after several hours of careful traversal, that Azarus edged up to me. I looked at him from the er of my eye as I repced the y travel teen. I’d beeing the rain refill it when he sidled my way.

  He…had some bad news for me.

  “I think it’s already too te,” My dwarven friend murmured to me, barely audible over the rain and thunder.

  I took a deep breath at that, my eyes flickering over the rest of my panions. From the way Liora’s ears twitched, and Venix’s head turned, I think their Perception might be high enough that they heard him, despite the distance. Bel, Renauld, and Kazuma seemed oblivious, however, from how they didn’t react.

  I sighed that breath out. “You sure?”

  Azarus nodded, his long crimson hair, drenched from the rain, swaying with the movement. “Yeah, pretty sure. I’ve been keepin’ an eye on the rivers below,” He said, nodding to one of said mountain rivers raging off into the distao my yman’s eye, it almost looked more furious than the ones we’d seen hours and miles previous. “I don’t think the elevation markers on that map were accurate. I’m thinkin’ this range is steeper than it said. Whoever made that map was a dumb sack of shit that wouldn’t know preographiotatin’ if it reared up and bit ‘em in the ass.”

  “And what does that mean for us?” I asked him quietly, eyes on the horizon. I think I could see another Oni battle happening a few miles away from us, but the sight of them had ceased to surprise me.

  “Means they shoulda hired a proper dwarven map-maker fer these mountains, that’s what it means,” Azarus said grumpily. At my look, he held up his hands and sighed. “Rivers are flowin’ faster, which means more water toward the inner bowl, which means we’re shit out of luate. Only way we’re gettin’ in that bunker is with help, with the dragon dead, or by waitin’ for all this shit to blow over and drain away.”

  My eyes flickered over to Kazuma where he was watg over Renauld, and frowned slightly. “How long do you think it will take, for the ino drain?”

  The former Savoy tilted one broad hand bad forth. “Hard ta say. But, I’m guessin’ about two months or so? Shit, Nate. I aily a trained prospector. I just picked up a thing or two livin’ in the mountain holds.”

  I frowned, and after a moment, just shook my head. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose. We’ll take things o a time.”

  At that, the versation died. Our break was over, judging by the way Venix had nearly started pag.

  We packed back up, and got underway.

  …………………………….

  Our luck had to run out eventually. We were pushing hard despite the precariousness of the climb, and the sequence of that haste was incaution. With the pace we were setting, it was only a matter of time before we pushed straight into the advang battle-lines of the Oni flict.

  I just…didn’t expect for our luck to tank as hard as it did.

  With ht obscured by both the fading light of the shrouded sun, and the increasing thiess of the storm, we didn’t see them until it was too te.

  We edged our way straight into a full-on war.

  Here, on this mountain top much rger than any we had yet to set foot on, more than simply two different violences had found each other.

  It looked like there were four of them out here. The result was that there must have been hundreds of different Oni iing this mountaintop. Easily the rgest grouping of not only Oni I had ever seen, but the rgest colle of monsters, in general, I had seen, sihe Break Stones had bee off ba the mainnd. The cacophony of their chaotic battle was loud enough to drown out the storm that raged on above us. Roars and cries crashed alongside the fsh of thunder and lightning, both artificial and the product of Vereden itself. Mud and Miasma were thi the ground from the stamping of feet and the sundering of the defeated, f a treacherously unstable footing, obscured from sight by a thick bck mist.

  From what I could see through the chaos of battle, there were reds, blues, yellows, and a type I had yet to enter yet here on this field.

  Greens.

  This type of Oni specialized in wind element, if not in a different mahan I’d seen it used before. I was only able to catch a single glimpse of a green juring gales that swept oppos off the mountain face, before that Oni was crushed by a furious, burning et of a red elder that crashed down upon them with a roar. Simir ses abound all across the field of war, in the brief moment of shock we were allowed.

  A blue, g a yellow upon his horns, Miasma p forth from the wounds to coat the victor in a cloak of murk.

  A yellow, smming his open palms upon the head of a red, a shockwave emanating from the point of impact that shattered the skull of the defeated.

  A monstrously huge green elder, sweeping his hands in wide, dramatic gestures. Each swipe geed winds strohaorm that raged overhead, sending oppos flying from the mountaintop to fall, screaming, in the flooded, raging gutters and valleys below.

  And then we were noticed.

  A pair of yellow juveniles, so simir in appearao the one we had ambushed out oony pins, bounded out of the thick of battle in our dire. The gait of the juves almost reminded me of nature dotaries I had seen in my youth, of gorils charging down challeo their thrones.

  I was at the front of our party, and I’m not sure my friends and panions had even noticed the dahat was bearing down on us. We had only just set foot otlefield, and noere being charged. With the way the ridge sloped down behind us, each of them in a single file behihey might not be able to rea time to the approag danger.

  That didn’t matter, though.

  Knuckles down, ing the mud and Miasma, blood-shot eyes trained upon us with murder apparent in taut muscle of their thick frames…

  We were forcibly inducted into the Oni rite of supremacy.

  I grit my teeth and drew something that I believe would have fused my old self. I didn’t draw my bow, to pick off the chargers. I didn’t draw Terractus, the side-arm I had so painstakingly fed, half as a status symbol among the Kawamarans, half in desire to emute my mentor. I didn’t draw my unnamed extendable daggers, which had so loyally seehrough so many flicts I couldn’t put a o.

  No.

  Instead, I drew the staff I had bee by a Lich I had known for such a short time. And through it, I eled the Skill that had bee the erstone of my fighting style.

  The Stilnt Bde.

  A spark, deep in the core of the topaz crystal, led within a basket of pitch bck, ebony wood. That spark grew into an inferno that rushed forth from the stone in a billow of rainbow fme. In only an instant, however, it suddenly sharpehe fire of my racial ability hardened, shaping itself into a facsimile of the form that I had used to sy the soul of a Camity.

  A long, thin, razor-sharp bde, the definition of its fiving no doubt as to its purpose.

  Death.

  You see, I had made a discovery, in these months sihat dramatifrontation within the cord. At the time, I had been incredibly shocked at how The Stilnt Bde had maed in that realm of spirits. The Skill was only supposed to work upon the edge of a bde, from prior testing. But there, it had bzed first into a beaot uhat of a lighthouse, and then into the form of a gargantuan bde, se I hadn’t even o swing it to sy Rhazal. The first time, I had eventually chocked that up to shenanigans on behalf of the Great Spirits. Somehow, someway, I think I had been prepped to act as the key to a lock that dehem Rhazals spa that realm. I don’t know when, or how, or even if I cared. In any way, they had saved both me and Vereden as a whole. Tarus had even hihat before he left the cord, acg Elys of meddling. But it didn’t matter.

  What did, was what else I’d discovered.

  I could replicate the formation of that sword. Not to that extent. Not by far. I think the incredible power and size of that bde had been from the equalized strength I’d been granted from the Rite of bat. What I could create was instead a long, thin bde of the fire from The Stilnt Bde, half-crystalized into a form that it would accept. It sprouted from the Aetherically charged crystal of the staff, attached to it as if the stone was a crossguard that cradled the bde. The result was what I could only call a sword-staff of sorts.

  And it owerful.

  I stepped forward, calling uporength of Vis Maledicta Exactoris as I did.

  I swung, just as both juveniles reached us, leaping forward with outstretched palms to rend us limb from limb.

  Both juveniles died, falling always into pieces, su the trunk.

  As the startled juves fell into pieces around me, I gripped my bde-staff with two, scaled, chiropteran hands, and called to my party. “To arms!” I shouted, as they joined me on the mountaintop. As bdes and Skills and Spells and Arts were readied at my back, I fred my wings wide.

  And charged into the fray, my panions a half-step behind me.