VP - Book 3 - Chapter 11

The remainder of the Orakh spread out, allowing Dan to approach but cutting Jennifer off.  They formed a rough ring around the hall, blocking Jennifer out but not taking any action against her.  The gigantic Orakh dropped the armored body and hoisted its axe, quickly crossing the ground toward Dan with casual but long steps.

“I can feel the mana pulsing off of you human,” It spoke, its voice a deep rumble that Dan could feel in his chest.  “You feel more like an elf than these animals playing around with their toys, but that shouldn’t be the case.”

“Tell me,” it commanded, hoisting its axe.  “The elves believe that your kind can’t accumulate power past a certain point.  Obviously they are wrong.  Tell me who you stole this power from and I will make your death and the death of your mate quick.  Resist and I will feed your limbs one by one to my men while you yet live.”

Dan let his mana flow into the sword, igniting it.  The purple light illuminated the room eerily, casting the huge Orakh in front of him and the large metal throne behind him into flickering relief.  The creature’s eyes lit up, as it focused on the blade.

“So you’ve killed an archmage,”  its mouth curved into a bestial smile.  “You are powerful, but not that powerful human.  Tell me how you did it.  Tell me now where this power came from.”

“I earned it on my fucking own,” Dan rolled his eyes as he increased the mana to his strength rune.  “By spell and sword, one dead monster and elf at a time.”

He felt some of the anger of the past couple weeks bubbling over.  Days of stomaching overly rushed schedules and incompetence on the part of his employers.  The constant skeptical comments when he spoke of using magic.  The lack of discipline on the part of his new employees that led to their deaths and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

All of that, and here he was once again with an enemy talking down to him.  The same cliche lines and doubts.  Dan was fucking sick of it.

He triggered a fireball into the ground behind him, counting on it to engulf the Orakh surrounding him.  Given an opening, Jennifer could handle ten Orakh on her own so long as she wasn’t surrounded.  WIth any luck, the fireball would provide her that opening and let her leverage her mobility to keep the traditional Orakh off balance.

The Orakh Lord bellowed its defiance and anger at Dan, swinging the axe at a speed the half ton weapon should’ve been incapable of. He hastily ducked under the weapon as it whistled through the air.  Dan gritted his teeth.  Even with his enhanced reactions, dodging was far more difficult than it should have been.

The Orakh moved Elf fast as it stomped on the ground, knocking Dan off balance from the impact as it jumped backward.  In the air, it pointed the gauntlet covering its right hand at Dan.  

He stumbled to his feet and looked up in shock as he felt the dark mana coiling around the Orakh’s hand.  He dropped mana into his temporal rune, letting his eyes track the crude bolt of oscillating darkness that spat forth from the gauntlet.

His sword traced a crackling line of purple light through the air.  The slowed time made the action maddening.  The sword crawled, even with his enhanced muscles only able to drive the weapon forward at inches per subjective second as the bolt of darkness moved at almost three times its speed.

Sweat beaded Dan’s forehead as he pushed with all his might, dragging the tip of his sword infinitesimally faster through the molasses air.  The blade barely caught the bolt of darkness, its purple aura hissing and crackling as it deflected the bolt to the side where it slammed into a disintegrated a stone chair.

Dan gasped for breath, eyeing up the Orakh as it glanced dubiously at the wrecked chair.  His spellshield could have taken the blow but it would have almost entirely wiped out its mana.  Whatever that attack was, it packed a punch. 

A punch that the Orakh shouldn’t have.  To date, their race had divided itself neatly.  The shamans were smaller and weaker, but they could use mana.  Warriors came in different sizes, but they were straightforward.  The only tactic they employed wsa charging toward you with an axe and hoping for the best.

This enemy was different.  It talked, reasoned, and used magic.  Dan had already been preparing to counter attack once the thing over extended itself in the first charge, a common quick victory tactic he’d used against Orakh to date.  Instead it had anticipated his actions and tried to trap him.  A worrying sign that his fighting style was growing stale and predictable.

They circled each other warily, eyes locked on the other.  Behind him, Dan could hear the sound of Jennifer fighting the ordinary Orak, but he couldn’t pull his gaze from the enemy before him.  Even a moment’s hesitation would give it the opening it needed to bring him in range of that axe.

Dan launched a lightning stroke with his free hand, catching the Orakh in the upper right portion of its bare chest.  He sprinted forward, temporal rune pulling heavily at his mana reserves once again as he tried to take advantage of the spell’s distraction. 

Unfortunately, it did next to nothing.  The heat from the electrical arc burned a portion of the Orakh’s flesh but there wasn’t the usual disability for him to take advantage of.  No spastic twitching, no muscle spasms, not even a loss of focus.  Instead there was three tons of pissed off Orakh.

It swung its axe at knee level, almost flush with the floor, forcing Dan to jump over it.  Immediately he realized his mistake as the Orakh used the momentum from swinging the axe to spin around and deliver a backhand straight into his spellshield while he hung helpless, suspended in the air at the apex of his jump.

He managed to create a force bubble in the way of the Orakh’s fist which dampened the blow somewhat, but even with the spellshield he rocketed into the chamber’s wall, leaving a cracked crater in the heavy stone and iron.  Dan shook the fuzz from his vision, tossing a fireball into the air where he suspected the Orakh would be charging while he tried to regain his bearings long enough to escape.

The Orakh, singed but not seriously injured stormed through the fireball just as Dan managed to sprint away from the wall, narrowly missing the axe blow that cleaved through it like it was made of soggy cardboard.  He jumped over the stone table in the hall, trying to ignore the way the floor tipped and jerked under him as his scrambled brain tried to regain some semblance of balance.

It bellowed in anger, once again charging dark mana around its gauntlet.  This time Dan didn’t give it a chance, firing a string of force bolts into it before finishing with a fireball.

Despite its incredible size and strength, the force bolts managed to stagger and distract it enough that it lost control of the dark mana.  It took one step backwards, the closest thing to a victory he’d managed to earn in the battle to date, when the fireball detonated.

Dan sprinted forward once more, the translucent light of force mana glittering around his left hand as he charged.  So far the Orakh had mostly shrugged off his elemental attacks, but at least force mana knocked it around a little bit.  Pummeling it with force bolts might not do much damage through its thick skin and dense muscle, but at very minimum he should be able to keep it off balance.

Once again the axe blurred diagonally through the space that he would need to occupy in order to carry through with the charge as the Orakh burst forth from the fireball smoking slightly. 

Time slowed as the temporal rune gave him the seconds needed to line up and launch a trio of force bolts into the gigantic axe, knocking it slightly to the side.  Dan adjusted his course, twisting his body past the descending axehead as it buried itself in the floor without any resistance from his spellshield.

The Orakh’s eyes went wide with surprise as Dan ducked under its guard.  His sword flashed, cutting deep into the meat of its left forearm, severing tendons and shattering bone before his strength and momentum ran out and Dan had to brace himself to withdraw the blade.

Feeling rather than seeing the dark mana swirling behind him, Dan ripped his sword out of his enemy’s arm and threw himself at its ankles in a desperate spinning roll.  The bolt missed, carving a hole in the room’s floor and creating a torso sized hole into the chamber below.  Then, his spellshield crackled as the Orakh’s shin crashed into him, sending Dan skidding on his back across the chamber.  

Dan stood up, taking in the four remaining ordinary Orakh as their leader bellowed, gauntleted right hand clasped over the deep wound leaking ichor in its left.  Jennifer was partially surrounded but she was holding her own, still without help it would be some time before she’d be able to assist him.

“Duck!” He screamed at her, simultaneously triggering a force bubble over her dropping body and detonating a fireball almost directly above her.  She’d likely end up slightly crispy from the blast, but it was the quickest way he could think to resolve the stalemate.

The Orakh around her staggered back, clawing at the third degree burns that covered their bodies.  Dan turned toward the Orakh leader that was already trying to line up another bolt from its gauntlet at him.  Silently he cursed himself for focusing mostly on flashy area of effect and stunning abilities.  In a battle of pure strength, he needed something more dedicated.  The ability to target the meanest SOB on a battlefield and make them hurt.

Filing the thought away, Dan ran at the Orakh once more, a zigzagging serpentine designed to deny it a clear shot as he peppered it with force bolts.  Silently he prayed that he could finish the monster off before he ran out of mana.  Already he could feel the strain on his reserves from the constant spell and rune use.

A quick stutterstep and another bolt of darkness slammed into the ground about ten paces away from Dan as he changed course at the last second.  This time his sword slashed deep into the meat of the Orakh’s hamstring as Dan sprinted past it.  

Behind him, the creature tried futilely to catch him, grasping at his shadow with the heavy gauntlet that was pulsing with dark mana.  Dan wasn’t entirely sure what that would do to his spellshield, but it certainly made short work of a soldier in full battle armor so he wasn’t inclined to slow down enough to find out.

The Orakh spun toward him, its left arm flopping uselessly.  Dan and it locked gazes.  Both were breathing heavily from using magic to push their bodies past their natural limits, but neither flinched.  A distraction on its part would be all he would need to take advantage of its injured arm and lamed leg, but by the same token, the bolts of darkness moved fast and after the two heavy kinetic blows he’d taken earlier in the battle, Dan didn’t want to push his luck on the spellshield absorbing all of it.

A smile crept across Dan’s face.  The Orakh cocked its head, eyes still on him as it tried to make sense of the change in his expression.  Then Jennifer landed on its back, blades of force adorning each of her hands as she shoved them into its thick hide.

The force magic didn’t penetrate far, the Orakh was far too dense to be easily harmed by such rudimentary magic, but they did hurt enough to distract it.  Enraged, it reached back with the humming blackness of the gauntlet, trying to grab onto Jennifer only for her to drop to the ground.

In that moment, Dan’s blade sunk into its chest, the creature’s splayed arms providing it with no cover as it contorted its body looking for Jennifer.  Its eyes widened and it reached back for Dan, its arm moving at a crawl as it tried to traverse the entirety of its body.  He fired a flame jet into its face, blinding it temporarily as he pulled his sword out and dropped to the ground only to stab upward once again, driving the purple weapon deep into its stomach.

The Orakh fell to its knees, only for Dan to plunge his sword into its chest once more.  Both of its lungs ruptured, it wheezed for breath.  Dan knocked it onto its side with a force bolt.

It still clung to life, insensible but unable to give up its last breath through sheer stubbornness and animalistic impulse. Grabbing its head, Dan sawed with his sword across the creature’s throat.

It took almost a minute, but finally the head popped free and with it came a torrent of mana.  As Dan tried not to enjoy the afterglow too much, Jennifer tapped him on the shoulder and pointed through the hole in the floor blown by the creature’s gauntlet.

Below them was a massive chamber filled with pale bioluminescent eggs.  They surrounded a massive creature.  The size of an elephant, it was a limbless sack of flesh with a mouth that warbled in distress as he fixed his gaze upon it. 

Dan frowned.  In front of his eyes, two of the smaller Orakh brought it a stack of meat, some from gators and some from humans.  While they poured their crude wheelbarrows of food into its endless maw, it laid one of the pale eggs.

A fireball burned in his grip as he stepped toward the opening in the floor.