Hikari leapt high into the air, leaned forward and stretched out her arms and legs. Using her telekinesis to compress the oncoming air below here, giving her the lift to glide a good distance before having to jump again. It was an energy intensive technique, requiring her to guzzle down several potions to travel at ten times the speed of a galloping horse.
The scouts have picked up the cultist's trail. Convoys of wagons carrying steel cages of villagers laboriously dragging themselves along on poor roads weren't difficult to track. Until they disappear into the swamp. Thick undergrowth, soggy ground, deadly swarm creatures lurking beneath the mud. An army would soon be ripped apart and then choke on the disease and filth on the swamps before even finding their foe.
Hikari reached the Rendezvous point. She landed in the middle of a wrecked outpost. There was a huge hole in the wooden palisade. Splinters, musket shot marks everywhere, the faint smell acrid of gun powder. No sign of any corpses or blood. Only the cannons that were too heavy to haul away were left behind.
"Hmm, they have a brute that smashed through the wall. Must be the flesh creatures that attacked us. Cannons and muskets don't do much against them. "
She glanced over the camp a second time. No survivors. But she noticed something peculiar. A lifeless grey plant wrapping itself around the leg of a watch tower. Completely drained of mana, It looked as though it would crumble to ashes.
Odd. If the cultists get their mana from draining plants, she would expect to find more lifeless husks in the area which she doesn't. She has roamed the area enough times to know the local vegetation well enough to say that it for certain did not grow naturally. Perhaps the guards got a new hobby?
Moving on. She focused in and expanded her mana sense.
There! A faint mana marking. Razenheir. The scouts leave these as markings as they are visible to only fellow Razenheirs and beings with heightened mana sensitivity.
Hikari followed the trail in the direction the RazenHeir markings point. Soon the ground below her began to soften, the trees around her became fatter, the vegetation became dense. She was entering the territory of the swamp trolls.
She knelt down, a speck of mana had tingled her senses. A cultist marking. Her hypersensitivity to mana allows her to detect markings of other forms, even those which she has never come into contact with. She has now picked up the cultists' trail.
But first, some rest. She hid in the undergrowth just off the main road. Once she proceeds beyond this point, the cultists are likely to sense her approach. There would then be no more opportunities for rest until the battle concludes.
Reaching into her satchel, she took out a sealed pouch and emptied its contents into her mouth. A bland, compressed mix of herbs and wheat and who knows what else. The scout's standard rations. Its additives reduce sweating and temporarily makes up for a lack of sleep.
She waited uneventfully until the sun set. Once it was utter darkness, she moved.
It was an innate ability of hers to see in pitch darkness even more clearly than during the day, giving her a considerable tactical advantage against most foes.
Unsheathing her twin galvies, sharp blades on a disk, custom made with an inner rotor with telekinesis enchantments, allowing her to telekinetically spin them up before hurling them straight ahead, ripping through the dead falls deliberately placed along the only road into the swamps, allowing her to follow behind them at full speed.
The ruckus she caused sends flocks of birds flying out of the trees. She certainly will not be slitting any throats in bed now. It would have been painfully slow for her to maintain that level of stealth which she could if the situation demands.
She reached the first check point, dozens of cultists hiding in the wood works and the mud. They watched in awe as Hikari's whirling sliced through the makeshift barricades in front of them.
Gun shots were heard. The first volley were flares, impoverished ones which gave a yellowish light that provided limited illumination. Staggered musket shots followed, making a splintering sound as they landed on branches and trunks . The cannoneer amongst them held their fire, waiting for their foe to come into view.
But none did. It was dead silence. The cultists nervously gripped their loaded muskets. Then one of them took out a wendigoo and began chanting. The wendigoo ringed and spread its eerie energy, animating the flesh abominations buried just under the mud.
"There you are."
A thundering glaive ripped from the side through their line, severing the shaman in pieces. The flesh abomination, having their awakening ritual interrupted, returned to the mud.
Hikari appeared, catching her returning glaive and walking casually towards the wendigoo. The surviving cultists aimed their muskets at her but did not shoot. Their instincts scream that it would be their last mistake.
She pinched the wendigoo between her fingers. Even low grade imbibed trinkets will provide her with several meals.
The defenders have been alerted. The growls of flesh abominations could be heard from afar. Her glaives flew again, in their direction. The cultists holdout is close.
The flesh abominations, made from a myriad of body parts. The grey plant growing out of their mouths, wrapping themselves around its body, acting as seemingly both its armour and its puppet strings. Glowing pink flowers bloomed all over their bodies.
They are impervious to everything a common town guard could bring. Swords, spears, muskets. Even cannons and shrapnel struggle to kill them. A whirling glaive whose blades exceed the length of a man's arm tears right through them.
Undeterred, the hordes of mindless monsters converge onto Hikari's in all directions. With a glaive in each hand, she spun them up to the maximum. Then the glaives burned. The Razenheir flames that burn cold steel allows its wielders to create burning weapons without tar or oil.
Hikari released them, hovering them to either side of her for a moment. Then they start to rotate around her. Faster and faster with each spin. As the hordes approach, the glaives fly in an outward spiral, its flaming blades cutting through their flesh like butter.
The entire area was lit ablaze in a sea of brilliant purple flame. The moist flesh and swamp mud kept the flesh abominations alive but did not douse the demonic flames that inevitably consumed them.
The glaives return to her, having lost most of their spin momentum. Hikari walked on. A squishy feeling under her boot as she mercilessly trampled the burning flesh abominations beneath her, leaving the rest to burn.
But where is the cultist camp? The trail of their markings had gone cold, was this just nothing but a trap?
After making her way forward in the same direction as before, she found the abandoned cultist convoy. Rusted iron cages left ajar. The swamp had swallowed up whatever trail they might have left.
She focused in and expanded her senses again. There. The trail of RazenHeir marks. The scouts must have snuck past the first two lines of defenses.
She sheathed her glaives and began trekking through the swamp. Unlike earlier when she was confident that the scouts would never be on the main road, if she rips through the swamp now she could really kill them.
Nevertheless, she hopped through the swamp, using her short sword in place of the glaives. The spots covered by tree roots offered reasonable footing. Even if she lands in mud, her water proof wyvern skin boots keeps her from getting stuck.
It took her some time. But she finally reached the end of the trail.
A chilling sight greeted her. The lifeless husks of the RazenHeir scouts gathered around an extinguished campfire, constricted by a strange vine, glowing pink flowers growing out of their eyes and mouth.
"They thought the thick swamp would hide their campfire. They were careless." Hikari thought. Getting on one knee and using her fingers, she pried their swords from their hands and kept it in her satchel. Then she got up, raised her palm facing them, and incinerated.
"Something's looming ahead."
She unsheathed both glaives, spun them up, holding them in her hands. She then tossed one of them forward, keeping the other for defense. After cutting through some vines and branches, it came back.
Aside from the buzzing of her spin glaives, it was dead silence.
She tossed her glaive again. Again it returned uneventfully.
She advanced cautiously. Her instincts tell her that she was being watched.
The swamp was still. Not even the croaking of frogs nor the chirping of crickets.
The glaive flew again, cutting through the vines as usual.
Hikari thought she imagined it, but she saw vines retreating into the mud.
She advanced. Now that her glaives have cut through enough of the vegetation, she could see the cultist holdout right up ahead. An abandoned stone structure which the swamp had claimed for itself. There was a hint of campfire light on the underside of the leaves above the structure.
She stopped. She could sense an immense presence awaking from below the earth.
Vines shot out from the ground all around here. Her flaming glaive flew. As she primed the second one, a torrent of vines barreled. She stuttered stepped to the side, allowing the mass of plant to fly past her, before pushing her spinning glaive into the thick vines, sawing and burning through the mass, setting it ablaze.
Suddenly, the vine mass stopped, and then burst apart in all directions. Hikari darted back, her still spinning glaive sawing through the oncoming vines that attempted to conscripted her.
Her other glaive returned to her, wreaking havoc on its return path.
There wasn't a moment to rest. A huge cluster of thick vines with giant glowing closed pink flowers emerged from the ground. The flowers bloated and glowed as their mouths squeezed to keep something in.
Hikari dashed to the side. Pressurized streams of acid erupted from the flowers, piercing through several trunks in their paths. Her flaming glaives flew into the thick cluster of thick vines, sawing themselves in, igniting the cluster.
The flowers reloaded and released again, firing in random directions as their prey seemed to have gone missing.
Hikari was standing absolutely still, using a sound barrier to block in the sound of her own breathing and pounding heart.
The ground rumbled as a flesh golem emerged from the mud. Vines growing out of every one of its orifices. It lumbered around, using them as feelers to find its foe. It mistakenly retracted the vines on its back, causing itself to catch fire.
Hikari watched it lumbering around patiently for it does not appear to be able to find her in the pitch darkness. Very gradually, she projected a trace amount of her mana into the glaive stuck in the vines on the golem's back.
She pulled one glaive out and flung it in the direction opposite her.
The enraged golem fired all of its vines and acid in its direction. Then it charged and smashed its arms into the spot where the glaive landed.
"The smiths are not going to be happy about that."
A fire ball hit it from behind, intensifying the flames. The golem turned around, lumbering towards Hikari.
Then a flaming dagger flew at it from the left and stabbed it, disorientating it yet again. Another fireball. Another dagger from the right. And one more from right above it.
It continued thrashing around, chasing an invisible foe. Soon, all of its vines had been burnt, leaving it completely blind. It was just a hulk of animated flesh now.
Hikari waited.
The flesh golem eventually ran out of energy. She walked over to his corpse. The glaive stuck in its back was still intact as it had leaned forward like a gorilla. Spinning it up again, she sawed through the golem's flesh, yanking out its core. It was a decent prize that would probably fetch several months worth of meals for her.
It was dawn, that's how long she had been wading through the mud. The cultist holdout still laid ahead.
Strange. She was well within their cannon range and yet they did not fire.
Cautiously, she approached, her glaive in one hand and short sword in the other. She could clearly see that the battlements were manned yet they made no attempt to even load the cannons. Her mana sense was not picking up anything either.
She heard the sound of rusted chains groaning, the heavy wooden gate creaking open. An abbot appeared. He was in tattered brown robes. An inert cultist rune etched onto his shaven head.
He walked up to Hikari and knelt down. "We surrender."