The woman is fast, jumping to her feet and spinning, both palms raised before the arcing jet of fire reaches them. The air warbles, sounds distorting as I feel my own body tugged downward. The stream of arcing fire is sucked downward, landing several feet short of the two scouts.
Shit.
The big man scoops up a heavy hammer from the ground and charges for me.
Double shit.
I try one more shot, spraying fire for the charging big man, but the woman raises her palms again and the arc falls even shorter this time, sinking to the ground like stones so the fire barely reaches ten feet from where I’m standing.
Is that some kind of gravity power?
She stays in the back, seemingly content to let the big man charge me. He’s on me in an instant, giving me nothing to do but raise my shield and brace for impact. There’s a flash of magic light as I absorb the blow, feet skidding through the snow as my body slides backward. Compared to the giant’s punch, even the hammer of this big bastard feels like a child’s punch.
A node of force settles in my core. The mystery of why some attacks are converted to force while others take more literal forms is one I’ll need to save for later. But for now, I can feel the nodule on my core and I recognize its shape.
I jump backward, but stumble. My body feels too heavy, like I suddenly weigh five times my normal weight. The woman has her palms up again, the air rippling between us. All sound grows deeper and slow, as if the world is moving just a little slower.
Definitely gravity power.
The feeling passes in a disorienting rush and then I’m on my ass and the man is slamming his hammer down on me again. I get my shield up in time, but nearly have my teeth knocked out as the top edge of the shield pivots from the blow, slamming into my face.
The blow was absorbed by my left arm through the shield, but it unfortunately doesn’t stop the attack from knocking me and my shield around like ragdolls.
I see stars, head already aching.
But I push through the disorienting pain and pull a charge from my core to my right index finger. My flesh shifts to form a small cannon-like digit. Just like with the giant, the kinetic force of his hammer blow is ready to come out of my finger like a projectile.
I fire it straight at his neck.
There’s a boom of power. Snow explodes in all directions.
I wince from the kickback, halfway expecting to open my eyes to a gory scene or a hole blown through his body.
Instead of dying or even falling, he just… grows. His body makes a sickening creaking sound as if he’s inflating from the inside. He stretches taller and wider, taking on monstrous proportions. The hammer in his hands is the same size, but now it looks like he could take my head off my shoulders with it.
Oh… fuck.
I crawl to my feet and roll away from another overhead strike. This one hits the ground hard enough to send a tremor through my boots.
I skid to a stop, turn, and aim my finger at him again. I pull the last kinetic charge from my core and fire it.
It catches him in the chest, blowing his shirt to shreds and making his skin ripple like water. Once again, he doesn’t fall. He just grows, body creaking and stretching once again. He’s nearly eight feet tall, now, with arms as wide around as logs. The hammer looks more like a toy in his massive hands. But I notice the skin on his arms and neck is stretched so tight now it’s starting to split, showing pink bloody gashes.
How much more can he take?
He lumbers toward me while the woman trails behind him, halfway looking like she wants to turn and run.
Two blocks left. Two charges of fire. I backpedal, weighing my options as he stomps toward me, each step actually making the ground tremble and snow cascade from the trees around us.
I could spray more fire, but if it works and I kill this asshole, I’ll be left to face the gravity mage with nothing but a single charge of fire she may be able to negate. No… I need what this guy can give me.
I blow out a breath, bouncing on my toes a moment as I convince my body to move. It’s not easy, considering the huge figure coming toward me looks like more of a monster than a man at this point. But I can see the look on his face. The tinge of worry in the way his eyes are straining—like he knows he’s already near his limit, and he’s hoping I can’t sense it.
Time to do this…
I plant my foot, then break into a sprint straight for him. His face shows surprise, then relief. He thinks I’m giving him the chance he needs to end this before it’s too late for him.
He rears back, huge arms swinging the normal-sized hammer at me with enough force to split rocks. I raise my shield and brace for impact. I take the hit, left arm absorbing the huge amount of force, but I’m still thrown through the air. I spin end over end through the air before landing badly with my shield wedged beneath me.
I groan, gasping as I pull myself off the metal edge and try to catch my breath. The banked charge I’ve absorbed is far more powerful than the first, but I still need one more. I stagger to my feet, blood trailing from the corner of my mouth and nose. One of my ears is ringing and feels wet, but I put one foot in front of another and approach the giant man again.
Just one more…
He watches me, seeming confused. “Where is your fire god, trader?”
“Come find out,” I say, wiping blood from my mouth and waiting, chest heaving.
He swings again, slamming down on me this time. I hold the shield overhead and cry out in pain as my legs try to buckle under the force of the blow. They nearly snap in half, but I can feel the new fortitude my levels have granted making the difference.
My shield falls once I’ve banked the second attack, left arm feeling lifeless at my side.
No more blocks for half an hour, then. But the fight will be over long before that.
I raise a finger and point it toward the giant, who almost looks like he pities me now. “Shield is strong. But it will break soon…”
“You first,” I say, making a finger-gun and pulling the kinetic force. A burst of energy explodes outward, wrenching my shoulder socket. It’s almost more than I can handle, but I manage it. Just barely. I’m pushed back several feet, but manage to stay on the ground this time.
Almost every scrap of the big man’s clothing shreds on impact and his hammer flies out of his hand, spinning end over end with so much force it explodes against a tree. His body ripples all over, little nodules of flesh gathering and spreading, morphing his limbs into unnatural shapes. One arm grows to five times its size, landing hard on the ground with a thud. Then his torso stretches and splits.
I look away just before there’s a wet pop sound. The woman screams.
When I crack my eyes open, the forest is painted red. There are pieces of him everywhere.
The woman is covered in gore, and she pulls out a small dagger from her belt, hand shaking. “M-monster,” she breathes.
I shake my head. “You shouldn’t have followed me.” I take a step toward her and she steps back, eyes going wider.
“Stay back,” she says.
Guilt and regret well up in my throat, but I can’t see a way out of this. “If I let you go, you’ll go to your people and tell them what happened here. They’ll send more people, and I’ll have to kill them, too.”
Her throat twitches. “What are you?”
“There’s no other way,” I say, ignoring her question. “I let you go, and it leads to more death. And we both know I can’t trust anything you promise me here.”
Her lips tighten into a thin line, knuckles going white on the hilt of her dagger. She knows it, too.
This only ends one way.
Here and now.
She’s clever enough not to show she’s about to attack, but I still feel it coming.
There’s a small flick of her wrist as she lets the knife go with her right hand and uses her left to manipulate gravity, accelerating it and curving it straight toward me at high speeds.
I’m already firing the last kinetic charge toward her. My body slides back and the dagger hurtling toward me is blasted so hard it reverses direction. But the woman explodes before it even reaches her.
And then the silence falls on me, seeming to weigh thousands of pounds. I sink to my knees, the ache in my shoulder ramping up as exhaustion spreads through my limbs.
Two more dead.
Maybe they deserved it in their own ways, or maybe they didn’t. But they forced me to make a choice, and I have to stand by that. As much as I want to avert my eyes from the red horror of what I’ve just done covering the snow and trees, I make myself look. Not because I’m proud of what I did to them, but because I want to make sure I still feel the cost.
She called me a monster, but I’m not a monster. The people outside my bunker were monsters because they could do something like this and not care.
Bugbug floats out from behind a tree. “Hah. Hah. Hah. Human is less pathetic than he looks.”
“Not the time,” I say, stomach turning as I get on my hands and knees, searching through bright red snow for the dead people’s corestones. It’s not too hard to find them, though the woman’s stone is several dozen feet from the place she died.
Once I have them both, I look around and realize I no longer need to worry about hiding my tracks. If anyone from Merrick’s camp follows them, they’ll wind up here. And if they do, I think the story of what happens to people who try to follow me will be painfully clear.
I run my fingertips over my mark and feel a jolt of surprise. Level 15. The same as Merrick last time I saw him. Five levels from two kills.
As grisly as it is, I can see the marks on our necks don’t just make us a target for our stones. We may be the best source of levels in this forest, and I have a dark suspicion Merrick’s people already discovered that.