Chapter 38: Confrontation

Chapter 38: Confrontation

Carlos leveled a glare of his own back at the sword-wielding woman who had just stormed out of the surrounding forest. "Who the hell are you?" He didn't know what protocols there were for unfriendly high nobles talking to each other, but he figured returning her lack of politeness right back at her was fair.

Her face reddened and she extended her right arm to point a sword at him. "You dare pretend ignorance of the fourth scion of High House Tostral? I will not forgive such an insult lightly!" Slowly, her scowl changed into a smirk, and she pulled back her sword. "Or... Is your house so pathetic as to have failed to properly educate you before sending you out? Perhaps such failure is to be expected from a house to pathetic they couldn't even get you to the third compression with their own resources at home."

Carlos shared a glance with Amber, and frowned as he looked back at the self-proclaimed Tostral scion. "Are you going to tell me your name or not? And how do you know we didn't reach the third compression at home?"

"I am Jamar Tostral, fourth child of High Lord Tostral. And to further rectify your inadequate education, the patheticness of your house extends to your efforts at hiding your nobility. I sensed both of you absorbing mana in the Adventurer's Haven yesterday evening. Do I need to explain how that revealed your mana density and noble soul rank too?"

"I may be ignorant of certain people and events, but I know how soul ranks and absorption of ambient mana work. So, you sensed that a pair of other young nobles was here, and you decided to follow us out and confront us where there are no bystanders. Did I get that right?" Carlos raised an eyebrow and gave her a small smirk.

"Congratulations, you can match the deductive skills of a five-year-old." Jamar casually crossed her swords in front of her. "Now answer my question! What is your house, and why do you dare break the rotation agreement? Do you think you are somehow immune to reprisals?"

"Hmm." Carlos raised a hand to his chin and cocked his head a little. "Colonel Lorvan, what do you think? Should we tell her?"

Lorvan stayed in his guarding posture, spear and shield held ready to strike or block as needed, not turning his head at all as he replied. "Your decision, my lord. She will most certainly inform her house, and you may have to answer for the consequences of that."

In other words, the Crown would not protect them from House Tostral if they provoked a response. Or at least the Crown wouldn't give any additional protection. Lorvan and Ordens would help as much as they could, but two guards could only do so much, however elite they might be.

Carlos shifted his feet slightly as he considered. They seemed to be tingling a little. He smiled at Jamar as an idea came to mind for turning her taunts back at her. "If you are so superior, shouldn't you already know exactly who we are? After all, you said yourself that knowing about each of your peers is part of a high noble's proper education."

"Ha!" Jamar sneered at him. "You think yourself my peer just because you are noble? I am a high noble, you fool. Adamantium rank. Not mythril. Paying attention to all the riff-raff of minor houses would be a waste of my time."

Carlos blinked. She had sensed them absorbing mana, and her soul including the structure that let her sense that was at about the seventh to tenth compression, but she hadn't sensed the rate clearly enough to know it was too high for mythril? How did that work? Did she just not know the upper limit for mythril? Or... What if her mana sense was just part of something broader, instead of having a structure specifically focused on it?

He shook his head, and refocused on Jamar. "We are not 'riff-raff'." He shook his right foot for a moment, trying to relieve a little soreness. "And as for your 'rotation agreement', we have more right to be here than you do. Does Mayor Stelras know that Jamar Tostral is using his local Wilds to advance her development?"

Ordens, not distracted by fending off a wild beast, was better prepared and counterstruck before her opponent even reached her. Her spear lashed out at the arms behind the hammer that was approaching her, and Jamar's guard was forced to divert their hammer to parry the strike. Ordens stepped forward, her spear almost blurring as she attacked again and again, executing a coordinated series of blows with the perfection of long practice. Her enemy's parries quickly grew more and more desperate.

Carlos didn't react quite as quickly as his experienced guards did, and Lorvan was too busy at the moment to intercept Jamar, but fortunately he had a response prepared that he could use very quickly indeed. With only an act of will, Carlos changed the target of his levitation spell to Jamar, and adjusted it to pull down with enough force to double her weight. The mana of the spell screamed feelings of wrongness at him, but he pressed on anyway. His life was at stake, and he did not want to risk the possibility that he might not respawn.

Jamar stumbled under the extra weight, grunting in surprise, but quickly stood up with a strong push of her legs, and firmly raised her swords again. Carlos waited for the precise moment she started taking another step forward, and amplified the pull. She staggered, and fell, pressed down by ten times the combined weight of her body and gear. Carlos could sense her soul pressing against the spell, trying to shrug off the effect, but the extra mana the spell was gaining was too much. Her soul's resistance depleted the spell's mana too slowly.

Safe for the moment, Carlos looked around. Ordens was methodically picking apart her opponent's defenses, forcing parries that drew them out of position and opened opportunities for her to strike through, though she had not yet pierced their armor. Lorvan was trading blows, blocking attacks with unshakeable strength while battering his opposite number repeatedly. Amber was anxiously standing behind Ordens, watching closely and stepping quickly to keep herself precisely on the opposite side of her guard from the nearest enemy. She cast a distant cut, and frowned when the spell broke against her target's protections.

Carlos looked back at his own opponent in this sudden surprise battle. She was struggling just to raise her head to look up at him, her eyes bugging out as she stared. ...And now he could actually see that the ground was shaking. The shaking was even getting stronger. "Stampede!?" He yelled uncertainly. If there were enough other animals running around to shake the ground that much, why didn't he hear them?

He only had a few more seconds to wonder about that, before he did hear them. Thunderous noise erupted into existence, overwhelming all other sounds, and with a tremendous crash of breaking shrubbery, an endless tide of beasts of all kinds flooded into the clearing. More buffalo, some two headed deer, a carpet of rabbits underfoot, and more. They all ran heedless of anything in their path, pulverizing everything beneath their innumerable feet.

Jamar and her guards evidently weren't expecting this, as the one fighting Ordens paused in astonished surprise for just a moment. Ordens smoothly plunged her spear squarely into his neck with an extra powerful thrust, then turned and tackled Amber, pulling her to the ground and covering her protectively. Lorvan wasn't so fortunate, as his opponent didn't falter even for an instant.

In the brief moment he had before the stampede reached him, Carlos realized Lorvan wouldn't be able to break off and cover him, and desperately switched his levitation spell back to targeting himself, using the extra mana it had gained to lift himself above the deadly tide of stampeding animals. Jamar was suddenly freed from being pinned to the ground, but before she could adjust and reorient the stampede reached her. She was pummeled back into the ground by the hooves of beasts that had to weigh at least a ton.

Carlos watched the chaos unfold beneath him as he hovered. A bubble of force had sprung up around Ordens and Amber, and the stampede went right over it without touching them. Lorvan was standing in place like an unbreakable rock, smashing aside any beast that ran into him. Jamar's guard that he had been fighting was on the ground, knocked down by a combination of the stampede and Lorvan's efforts, and his armor was taking a savage beating. Jamar herself had let go of her swords and was curled up, covering her head with her arms and trying to make herself as small as possible. Lorvan looked up at Carlos for a moment, saw him hovering safely out of reach, nodded, and went back to bashing a tiny clear space.

Carlos waited, and watched, but the stampede only seemed to grow thicker. More types of creatures joined it, too. Things with mouths full of sharp teeth, indicating a predatory diet of meat, yet they were just as panicked as the rest, running full tilt and ignoring all the prey around them. He checked the remaining mana in his levitation spell, and gulped. It was depleting fast. Theoretically, he could recharge it by pushing Jamar down again, but the moment he started doing that he'd drop.

Jamar's armor was proving a lot more resistant against blunt impacts than its cloth-like woven appearance suggested, but even so it already showed several dents and depressions. As Carlos watched, he saw a hoof strike her head, and a barrier of mana flared and broke. The beast ran on, but left behind a bloody hoofprint. Jamar loosened her tightly curled posture, likely dazed and disoriented, and more wounds quickly followed.

Gripped by morbid fascination at the sight, Carlos realized too late that he should have used the time his levitation spell had bought him to cast it again. He had only prepared it once, but he'd had the time to cast it the slow way, if only he'd started doing it soon enough. He gulped as the last dregs of the spell's mana ran out, and he dropped.

He desperately tried to roll, to get to his feet and somehow dodge his way to safety, but he was immediately bowled over. Then the trampling began. Unbearably heavy hooves stomped on him, again and again. He tried to cry out to Lorvan, but something smashed into his chest and blew his breath away. He thought he felt some ribs break, too. It hurt more than anything he could remember, and it kept getting worse. When something struck his head and his vision started fading, he almost welcomed it just for the relief from pain.

One last thought crossed his mind. At least he was about to learn whether he could respawn.