Chapter 91. The Concerto: Exposition

Chapter 91. The Concerto: Exposition

With a sigh, I approached my latest kill. The body of the young wermage was lying in the alien grass, his head — gone. A testament that even wermages, despite their magical resilience, had a breaking point. Especially when taken off-guard. A quick search yielded three Emanai braids — my late challenger wasn’t new to battle but not a seasoned veteran either. The strongest warrior of a small tribe.

I had to give him credit where credit was due, however. Up until his death, he knew nothing about me besides that I was a murk and had balls big enough to challenge him. He didn’t power his runes nor his protection tattoos, but he stopped well beyond the reach of my visible weapons before shouting his taunts. He was also expecting some sort of trickery from me as I heard him muttering about the potential poisons.

He probably would’ve used his runes if I was carrying a bow or even a sling. Alas, the people of Tana weren’t familiar with the throwing technique that I used. Considering that it dislocated the elbow and the shoulder on each throw, would break non-augmented bones, and required the thrower to be rooted in place, I had a faint idea why. What they also weren’t familiar with was the profound law under Heaven and Earth called ‘mass times velocity squared, divided by two’. Werbows hurled their arrows with considerable kinetic energy, sure, but it was still comparable to that of heavy crossbows or even light ballistae. They could pierce a reinforced pavise and kill the murk that held it too close to their body but that was their usual limit. The arrows were leaving werbows with a kinetic energy in low hundreds of joules, and losing quite a chunk of it flying downrange. They were still deadly — the main use of werbows was saturation fire, after all — but not devastatingly so. Mages could also hurl boulders of a considerable weight but they were trading speed for weight and those projectiles were quite inefficient at transferring said energy to their target. A murk might get injured no matter if he was hit by an entire boulder or by a part of one, but a wermage might shrug off a glancing hit.

It was much harder to predict, deflect, or withstand a fist-sized hunk of metal flying at your head at Mach two. That wasn’t a few hundred joules. It was five hundred thousand.

Ignoring the shouts and cheers from either side, I picked up the braids while making sure that no one saw me plunging my hand into his flesh. While the raw DNA collection was extremely useful, and I’d already collected clippings from every single ‘liberated’ braid so far, that alone would never provide a whole picture. Terrestrial life came into existence within a primordial soup and carried that chaotic nature within it ever since. It wasn’t intentional — evolution simply played with the cards it was given, but if I were to ever crack the secret that was the wermage magic, I would need proper samples. I would need to see the parts of the building itself and not just the specifications for individual bricks used in its construction. And if I had a choice in the matter, it would be much better if those samples were taken from the magically well-endowed specimens.

While I had no plans to intentionally seek out the strongest wermages just so I could kill them and harvest their flesh, I wouldn’t leave a potentially good sample rotting in the field either.

The earth bubbled around my feet and I lunged backwards, dragging a large chunk of stone fused with my ankle. I could hear my scales creak from its grip.

“I should’ve known that your kind knows no honour!” I hissed, breaking off the makeshift fetter on my leg. “To barge into a fight like a coward!”

The feline wermage, not a sheyda, roared back. “Says the cur hiding his magic like a craven fighter with a poisoned blade wrapped in rags! Speak quickly — what trickery did you use to hide your song — and I will make your death quick!”

I didn’t bother with taunts once I’d gotten free. Twisting my body like a spinning top, I whipped my hand loose and sent a chunk of rock downrange. This time, I missed. With inhuman dexterity, she shifted sideways... no, she used a giant floating rock as her magical anchor to throw herself sideways and it — into the path of my projectile. The rock shattered with a loud snapping sound, sending shrapnel in the direction of enemy forces but missing my attacker.

I tsked as I reached for the lashes, dodging the stone spikes whistling past me. Having killed a wermage with a single hit due to his complacency, there was no way I was going to repeat his mistake and just assume this mage was peppering me with harmless to my skinsuit projectiles. For all I knew, she might have some momentum or inertia magic imbued in those rocksickles and they would just refuse to stop as they reached my armour. There were precedents for that kind of thought — some of our ballista bolts were runed to make them magically lighter during launch and regain their true mass mid-flight. I didn’t know where they were gaining that additional momentum but it was likely harvested from Newton spinning in his grave.

I wasn’t here to earn glory, merely stall for time while Aikerim pressured the other Pillars from presenting husbands to my wives, but if I could get an opportunity, I would test it against non-vital parts of my skinsuit first.

She scowled as my lashes unfurled with a hiss. “Another trick?”

I blinked then shot myself forward. Another wall, but I was used to punching them through by now. My lash whipped around as soon as I emerged from the other side and met her drawn sabre, causing a loud grinding sound as the segments of my lash came into contact with the shifting rocky surface of the enchanted weapon. It wrapped around the blade only to get entrapped within a chunk of stone in turn.

Without skipping a beat, the wermage discarded her weapon and charged at me.

Sparing a quick glance at her enchanting another sabre with the liquid rock layer, I yanked myself to the side and whipped the entombed lash like an enormous makeshift flail of death. Now it was her time to duck and dodge as the boulder came around full circle, with the lash howling and screaming as it cut through the air.

The boulder loosened as it passed above her and I was forced to grip it in order not to loosen it back at my own damn maniple. Half a turn later, and the chunk of stone flew off to greet the ranks of our enemy forces in person.

That move cost me, however, and her sabre slammed into my chest, causing yet another clang as bronze met steel.

“Why did you rush to put the helmet back on, cur!?” The wermage spat as she grabbed it by the handle of the previously-lodged sabre and yanked it off. “To hide your...”

I turned towards her and watched as she went pale in multiple spectra with the five front-facing eyes of my skinsuit. I let one of my vents open so that I could hiss, “You look but you do not see.”

“You pissed off the wrong cougar with your assault, my cougar” I murmured.

While Irje wasn’t an exceptional archer by any means, at least not yet, she was visibly eager to shoot that wermage dead by the scowl on her face and fire in her eyes. She also had plenty of arrows, sharpened by me, to pierce any stone defences. Something that the wermage had discovered for herself since she was now limping and clutching her blood-soaked thigh.

“Keep her busy while I wrap this up,” I whispered to my wife as if Irje could hear me.

Rather than slapping away my latest victim, my lashes used him as a pivot point. The hapless wer was chucked further than the others while I launched myself over the enemy ranks. Right at the wermage carrying the battle standard of her unit.

From the beginning, I didn’t come here to kill and slaughter. The task was always to win.

A wave of magical force slammed into me, but I still got close enough to my target and dragged her into my spin. A quick game of tug and wrench and the screaming wermage was sent barrelling into her own forces while I was now in possession of the enemy vexilloid.

“The standard is down!” I yelled to the roiling mass of people around me, shaking the now-upturned staff with a carved palm on its top. “Trampled down by the celestial cow, Kiannika!”

And then I Immediately legged... lashed from there; before the confused masses could put two and two together and swarm me in place. Luckily for me, the wall of spears finally reached the enemy. Our fingers didn’t smash into them at full charge like cavalry lances, but they got close enough to reach the front lines, dropped their pavises into the ground, and formed temporary bastions from where our wermages could enact their deadly strikes at a point-blank range. The thundering thrum of feet stomping the ground that rivalled my spinning buzz was now replaced by the sounds of steel meeting steel and wood rapping wood. The sounds of screams and shouts, spell swooshes and arrow twangs had remained but grew in intensity.

The smell... The pungent smell of shit and piss was ever-present for a while — once the forces were in battle formations, the notion of toilet breaks didn’t exist for either side — but now there was the unmistakable sulphuric scent of burning hair. The scents of blood and burning flesh were too faint in comparison, but they were present nevertheless.

The spears wielded their weapons with experience, fencing with them as each spear was nothing more than a rapier — stabbing where they could and pulling away when the enemy was about to smash the wooden shaft and render it unusable. It was an entire martial art in itself. Alas, no martial art was unbeatable and that was why Emanai maniples left small gaps between the finger spear walls. Not to lure the enemy in but to allow our wer and wermages to spill out and engage in the melee with an already pressured enemy.

Pressure was the name of the game.

One of those gaps was my destination. The whole area was engulfed in chaos and there was very little left of my yellow Emanai kaftan for me to be recognised as ‘possibly friendly’ at a quick glance. My brigandine was also caked in mud, blood, and soot, making the original golden hue of the aramid silk impossible to discern. If I were to launch myself deep into our maniple, I would likely be skewered by our own spells and arrows. Or mauled by one of our werewolves. Muramat would certainly jump at such an opportunity. I was also carrying the enemy standard with me — a juicy target for every member of our rank and file.

At least the undead hordes of Kishava were located in the centre of our army, protecting our supply train. I knew a thing or two about automations without feelings of fear and pain and had no intention to engage with arusak-at any time soon.

But I wasn’t the first Emanai soldier with such a problem. Retracting my skinsuit mid-flight, I landed in a small open spot, burying myself ankle-deep into the ground that had been already trampled into mud. “With her lightning horns, she strikes enemies and cowards alike!” I shouted one of our passwords, watchwords, once again alluding to the namesake of our arm. My yell was hoarse from the strain of fighting, previous yells, and, most importantly, from the residual heat that was dumped into my body by the retreating skinsuit. Not all of it — I kept the skinsuit around my torso where it was covered by my brigandine — but enough to be an issue if I didn’t address it soon.

Almost immediately, a clawed hand grabbed me from behind and lifted me into the air.

“You’ve fought well,” Lita’af growled in her werewolf form, dragging me inside our maniple.

“Thank- Lita’af? What are yo- No, stop! I am married!”

She stopped unbuckling one of my belts and looked at me like I was an idiot. “Erf... Your armour is burning.”

“It’s only sizzling, I know that!” I huffed, modestly covering my chest before she could see the artefacts inside.

Stupid wermages. No sense of propriety!