Chapter 6:
‘Who is more powerful? The mage- Or the Warrior?’
‘The Mage of course. Warriors are brutes; nothing more.”
“Then, why is it that it’s warriors that kill so many more of our kind?’
Lügner remembered those words from long, long ago, back when he was still nothing but a nascent demon. Barely even a mage himself, learning magic for the first time from the warlord he served under.
In short: warriors, while brutish and simplistic, were not to be underestimated. Under the right circumstances, they could be just as dangerous as any mage, particularly up close.
Close being, a distance of three meters.
Within three meters, a warrior was at his most dangerous.
And so, the strategy was simple.
Stay beyond three meters.
He watched the pale giant, but his eyes were drawn to the man’s axe.
Mana lingered along the surface of the weapon, tightly bound and powerful. Once he killed him, he’d have to examine it further.
“Bluterei!”
His blood slipped free of his body, tendrils forming jagged blades that crisscrossed in a dizzying pattern to form a multi-angled attack.
But then, faster than he expected, a Zoltraak beam lanced out of the girl to his right, the beam hitting straight onto the primary splinter point. With but one blast, a half dozen of his tendrils were annihilated.
And the Warrior had his opening.
The pale giant roared, a sound that felt like it physically rattled the bones in Lügner’s body, before he charged at the blood manipulator.
He’s quick.
The first of Lady Aura’s lieutenants threw up a shield to block the man’s advance, the strongest he could muster. The rushing giant, however, simply lowered his shoulder, barely slowing down before he smashed straight through it with strength that was irresistible.
Lügner backed away, his feet floating off the ground as he flew backwards, kiting the rampaging bull as Linie attacked the boy in red and the other two focused on the girl, the only mage in their party.
He kept backing away, waiting until the girl had her hands full before he sent out another attack; this time, she wouldn’t be able to stop it.
“Bluterei!”
The lines of blood moved up, around and straight ahead, surrounding the warrior that tried desperately to close the distance.
Fool.
The tips turned to points, hard as diamonds, lancing forward to gore the giant man from every angle.
He didn’t even bother trying to defend himself, he just kept running.
The man’s insa-
The thought died a still birth as the man’s body struck the bramble of blood blades- and plowed straight through it.
The blood, suffused with Mana, harder than steel, broke apart like delicate glass. And Lügner, who had slowed down, sure that the charging fool would gore himself- was suddenly within reach.
And that axe was coming down.
The surprised Demon’s eyes widened, and all of his blood, all of his Mana quickly coalesced into a red shield around his left arm as he brought it up to try and defend himself.
The axe came down- and even if his shield survived the axe blade, and the impossible strength that drove it, his arm did not.
The sheer force shattered the limb beneath the shield. His forearm broke in two, and then his bicep broke off from his shoulder. Pure desperation had his blood lash out in an uncontrolled mass attack that, if nothing else, blinded the pale monster before allowing Lügner to take to the skies with as much speed as he could muster.
His heart pounded under his ribs. Pain radiated through his whole side as he panted with deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart now that, in the air, hovering above the castle’s inner wall, the warrior couldn’t reach him.
The axe that came sailing upward nearly cleaved his head open; as it was, even dodging it, the wind that brushed against his face from its passing felt like he’d been solidly punched as the axe blurred by.
He turned, sensing for the first time the boy’s magic in flux; he was a mage too- not just an archer.
Shit-
“Linie!” He called, watching the young Demonette chasing the boy in red, who was bloodied and beaten, but not dead.. “Quit playing around! Hurry up and kill that boy!”
That’s when he heard the rattling of a chain.
—
The bow in Atreus’ hands was unfamiliar, heavy in its draw, and too large in his hand.
He’d taken it from the body of a guard they’d passed by along with the man’s quiver of arrows.
It made him feel… off. Unsafe. He didn’t have his weapon; and right now, staring at these four, horned demons, even with his father here, he wanted that feeling of safety, of control, back.
Atreus had seen all manner of creatures in his relatively short life: draugr, ghosts, gods, trolls, valkyries, witches, giant beasts and more; but none of them really felt as… wrong, as these people felt.
It was like there was something absent- something that wasn’t there that should be. Even when staring right at them.
Then, the one in the center moved first.
Tendrils of blood leapt from his wrist, spearing through the air in jagged, zig zagging patterns to skewer his father, only for a lance of light from Fern to break apart the opening volley in a flash; the two Demons behind the first rushed to attack her, and his father charged towards the blood manipulator as Stark intercepted the one with pink hair.
His first instinct was to go to his Father. They always fought together afterall, but then, seeing two of them bearing down on Fern, his conscious mind arrested the reflex mid step as he turned, nocking an arrow into his pilfered bow before releasing it.
The shot whistled through the air, the bow’s draw weight snapping up and down his wrist as the Demon turned. A thrum of magic veiled the air between the two of them before his arrow was sent careening off to the side.
He went to draw another arrow, only for Fern to turn, her head snapping to look over her shoulder at him before a beam of white light cut through the space between them.
Atreus froze, confused and thinking he was about to be hit, before the beam turned, winding itself around him to crash into something behind him.
As he turned to look, he found what might have been the shattered remains of an earth spike.
Turning back to Fern, he tried to shout out a warning - seeing a ball of crackling lightning coming her way from her blind spot - only for it to immediately disperse as it struck a translucent barrier. An instant later, nearly half a dozen light beams lanced out of glyphs hovering around her, striking at the two attackers.
“She’s fast,” he heard one of the Demons say. “Focus her down-”
Atreus ground his teeth, nocking one more arrow. ‘No you don't.’
Gold lightning crackled from his fingertips, bathing the projectile in flickerning forks of energy.
The two demons that had been ready to ignore him and focus on Fern both turned towards him. He caught the look of surprise on the closest one. “Ljósta!”
The arrow sailed straight and true; this time, when the wavering haze came to knock his arrow aside, it didn’t waver. Like a bolt of lightning through the sky, it pierced straight through.
The Demon barely avoided the fatal hit, diving to the side at the last moment, the tip digging into his upper shoulder instead of his side.
Fern bombarded the wounded creature with a mass hail of light beams, her attention seamlessly switching between attack and defense as she kept the pressure up on the injured enemy. She defended both herself and Atreus from the other, the demon's magic bouncing harmlessly off of the barely there barriers she formed in thin air around the both of them.
Atreus pulled on the eddies and currents of magic within him- magic was tied to the land, but even here, the spirits answered him.
“Úlfr Hlaup!”
The wolves howled.
Seven of them came, emerging from alleys and rooftops, their bodies glowing with yellow lightning. They barked and snarled before charging forward, rushing past either side of him towards the two demons.
The injured one, already struggling to hold off Fern’s rapidfire bombardment, tried to encase himself fully in a sphere of defensive magic.
Several of the wolves rushed towards the second, who took to the air, trying to fly to escape their reach.
He was surprised when the wolves followed after him anyway.
Blood rained down from above as teeth of lightning bit into flesh, the stink of burning meat permeating the air.
With the other, the wolves battered their bodies against its barriers, snarling and clawing, snapping and biting. When that didn't work, their bodies burst with lightning before reforming again, putting all the pressure they could on his shield.
And then, like a needle slipping through cloth- Fern found a gap.
One demon died, screaming. The other never had a chance to make a sound, the narrow beam of light punching clean through his neck.
—
The instant he heard the rattling of chains, every sense in Lügner’s mind told him he was in danger.
A second later, as a blade came rushing up, burying itself into the castle wall, he understood why.
Staring at that blade, every instinct, every fibre of his being recoiled. That blade was magic. Magic so ancient, so primordial that it defied all reason. His body was physically repulsed by it, and his mind struggled to even comprehend what he was looking at.
And then the Warrior pulled himself into the sky.
He leapt off the castle wall, his foot cracking stone and breaking masonry beneath the sheer force of his leap as he catapulted himself straight towards Lügner.
There was another blade, a second in the man’s fist-
Get away!
The thought was a desperate one, and his attack a wild thing: too much mana, too little control. Tendrils of blood spread through the skies like a fungal bloom, emerging from his body in every direction.
But there were too many- enough for the warrior to grab hold of. The blade with the chain coiled around one, before his foot leapt off another, and a hand grabbed a third. Every movement allowed him to slip through, drawing closer and closer, and Lügner’s fear only grew as those abhorrent blades came ever nearer.
He didn’t know what they were, what magic had made them- but he knew he could not let them touch him!
He moved to fly further away, to try and escape once more as the Warrior lunged, roaring with wild rage, a shield unfolding along his forearm-
Then he felt the wind driven from his lungs, his back seizing up in agony as the axe came racing back and dug into his spine.
Blood burst from the wound like a fountain. Instinct made him try to stem the bleeding, even as the magic in the axe froze the blood in his veins and contested his mana, preventing him from manipulating it at all.
That’s when the shield cracked into his skull, and Lügner was sent rocketing down into the castle wall.
—
Kratos landed amidst the rubble, dust and grit choking the air. He heard his son's voice nearby, and the familiar howling of his spectral wolves. He would check on him shortly, but he did not believe these creatures a match for his son. The boy had faced far greater dangers than this.
No: the other one, Stark - and the small one that had gone off to face someone else - those he needed to check on. He did not have Stark’s measure, and whatever Frieren had flown off to face was an unknown.
But first, he would make certain this one was dead.
He marched through the rubble. He’d quite literally punched a hole into the castle wall, a vertical crater along the base of it. Even now, the upper walkways threatened to collapse in on themselves, held together only by the weight of what stone was still intact.
With barely a thought, he recalled the axe. With its head still embedded in the creature, it pulled the body along with it, the meat tumbling through the air before its broken form fell in a heap in front of him as the haft of the axe fell into Kratos’ hand.
Bones were broken, blood leaked from wounds, its clothes were in tatters and one horn had broken off. Yet still, the Demon’s eyes shone with lucid thought; it was still alive.
A condition that would soon be rectified.
Its body twitched, trying to move. The blood pooling around it writhed like a lake swimming with tadpoles. Kratos ignored it all, stepping closer.
“What are you?” It whispered through blood tinged teeth.
He didn’t need to understand the language to understand what was being asked.
Even so, he would give the beast mimicking the form of a man no answer.
The axe simply rose, and then fell in a single swift chop.
As the deed was done, the body, just as before, began to dissolve in flakes of black, proving definitively that it was no human he’d just killed.
Off in the distance, he heard the howling of Atreus’ spirit wolves. After so long, he could interpret the sounds: excitement, bloodlust. His son was not in danger.
So he turned away, running as quickly as he was able towards the other boy, Stark.
He ripped and battered his way through obstacles, even homes, reaching the very edge of the walled city.
When he found Stark, the boy was battered, wounded, but he was still standing. More than that, he was charging the girl.
Kratos pulled back his arm, ready to throw the Leviathan Axe at the back of the girl’s skull, but even with his strength, he might be too late to affect the outcome.
Stark swung wide, his form completely exposed as the girl went to drive her axe across his stomach.
And then-
“Lightning strike!”
Like a bolt from his Father Zeus, Stark’s axe came down with strength and speed that should have been impossible for a human. The force of it created a shockwave of earth and rock that exploded outward, a flash of light momentarily blinding him as the axe head seemed to split the air itself.
And when the dust cleared, the bloodied, half dead boy was the one still standing as his oponent dissolved, much like the other Kratos himself had killed.
Stark fell back, his backside hitting the dirt as he panted like a winded dog, exhausted. As he struggled to catch his breath, he looked up, finding Kratos about a hundred steps away.
“Hey,” the boy struggled to smile. “I take it you beat the others?”
“Father!”
“Mr. Stark!”
Atreus and the girl, Fern, rushed in a moment later, Fern floating right above Kratos’ head to reach stark as Kratos took a moment to look over his son.
“Are you hurt?” He demanded.
Atreus shook his head. “No, father.”
He nodded, then cast his eyes towards the bow in his son's hand: too large for him, but his son could still use it. He would not be able to fight at his usual skill level, however.
“Stay with them,” he demanded, before turning to walk away.
“Are you going to help Miss Frieren?”
He grunted as an answer. He’d attacked the elf earlier, in reflex. He would make amends for that slight.
He heard the rustle of cloth, and looked up to see Fern beginning to fly in the direction of the still ongoing chaos.
He held his axe up, grasping it by the end of the haft so the head of the weapon could sufficiently bar her way.
When he spoke, he did so in her tongue.
“Stay.”
The command made the girl hesitate. Stark, for all his surprising strength, did not seem able to fight. Atreus himself was using ill suited equipment. Fern was the only other still fit and capable.
She watched him, seemingly weighing the choice in her mind before she quietly nodded.
Kratos took proper hold of his weapon. Then, he ran.
—
“Get away! Everyone! Get away from her!”
“She has the Graf! We can’t just leave him-”
“Into the keep! Everyone run! Don't get within range of those scales!”
Aura the Guilliotine.
The Seven Sages of Destruction were powerful beasts, gaining their names and reputation for a reason.
Aura had always been the weakest of The Seven in Frieren’s eyes.
But even now, she could see exactly why she was so feared amongst the humans.
Because as she descended down into the courtyard, Aura was surrounded by her army of undead, headless knights- but more than that, hundreds of new additions stood before her.
An army of living shields.
Townsfolk, guardsmen, knights. Even children.
Their cries of fear, desperation; the sheer terror of it all…
“Oh,” the Demon Lord smiled as she caught sight of the elven mage- Graf Granat struggled to move under his own will as he was forced to stand at her side. “So you are here after all.”
The unaffected humans ran, only a few brave souls remaining in the area.
“Lady Frieren!?”
Her eyes darted quickly to the side, where she caught sight of Monica, the guardswoman, shakingly raising a sword in her direction.
She didn’t let the image affect her. Right now, she needed to focus-
Aura would die.
“Aura,” she finally spoke. Her feet touched the ground as the army of thralls readied their weapons to fight her.
She met the demon's eyes through the crowd. “You truly are disgusting.”
(X)(X)(X)
The extra third chapter will be posted on wednesday for you all :)