Operation Lifeline Part 2
The hooves—or rather, the massive, three-toed claws of the mountbeasts thundered against the hard-packed earth of the mountain pass, a rhythmic drumbeat of urgency that echoed off the canyon walls. The wind whipped past, carrying the scent of pine and impending rain, biting at exposed skin despite the speed of their travel.
Karl leaned low over the neck of his mount, a sturdy, rust-colored flightless raptor-bird resembling Ornithomimus commonly used in the Ardenian lowlands for its speed and cheaper price as alternative for horses. The beast, affectionately named "Meathead," let out a shrill screech, its powerful legs eating up the ground in long strides.
"Stark!" Karl yelled over the rushing wind, his voice raw. He spurred Meathead forward, pulling up alongside the squadron leader. "Can we make it?! The sun's been gone for an hour! If the intel was right, those freaks start their 'evening service' right about now!"
Stark was riding a heavier variant of the mountbeast—a creature that looked like an Oviraptor on steroid or 5 meter tall Gigantoraptor, plated in steel barding, didn't look back. His sallet helmet was locked down and his posture rigid.
"We ride until the beasts drop or we hit the wall," Stark's voice was muffled by the helm but carried the undeniable weight of command. "Keep the formation tight! If anyone lags, leave them!"
"Man, I got a bad feeling about this!" Karl gritted his teeth while adjusting his grip on the reins. His stomach was doing somersaults, and for once, it wasn't from a hangover. "That bird-voicemail thing said twelve hours, but that was assuming the cultists were gonna play nice and wait! Since when do lunatics wait?!"
Stark finally glanced over, the visor's slit revealing nothing but shadow.
"They won't wait. That's why we aren't stopping!" Stark signaled to the standard-bearer behind him. "Double time! Push the mounts! We need to hit the Western Ridge before midnight!"
Behind them, a column of 120 riders surged forward. It was a motley collection of cavalry—Castalia's disciplined lancers, rugged outriders from the Coalition mercenaries, and even a few heavily armed bandit riders who looked like they were fleeing the law rather than charging into war. Dust kicked up in a choking cloud, shielding the rear from view, but the thunder of hundreds of clawed feet was a promise of violence hurtling toward Roake.
Karl looked ahead into the darkening gloom. Somewhere over that ridge, his friends were trapped in a pit with monsters.
"Hang on, Asep. You slippery bastard," Karl muttered, whipping Meathead's flank. "Don't you dare die before I can get my money back from that card game."
____
-West District - The Kill Zone-
"Dump it! Now!"
At Adeline's scream, three militiamen on the rooftop of a ruined bakery tipped over massive wooden barrels. They crashed onto the cobblestones below, shattering on impact and unleashing a torrent of slick, noxious sludge. It was a vile concoction—a mix of rancid oil, alchemical waste scavenged from the mines, and something Asep had ominously called "soup from the sewers."
The front line of cultists, charging with religious fervor and spears raised, hit the slick surface and immediately lost all dignity. Boots slipped on the viscosity. Robes became tangled. Zealots went down in a flailing heap of limbs and weapons, sliding uncontrollably into the jagged caltrops the resistance had scattered further down the alley.
Screams of frustration and pain echoed as the "faithful" piled up like discarded laundry.
From the windows above, archers and slingers rained down arrows and stones, turning the bottleneck into a chaotic shooting gallery.
"Hold the left flank! Jerry! Don't let them climb the rubble!" Adeline commanded. She reloaded her crossbow then firing a bolt into the shoulder of a cultist trying to crawl out of the sludge.
"Hah! Slippery little bastards, ain't ya?!" Jerry roared, swinging his massive sledgehammer like a golf club. He caught a cultist mid-air as the man tried to leap a barricade, swatting him back into the crowd like a fly. "Come on! The Great Eclipse ain't gonna catch you if you fall on your ass!"
For a moment, it seemed to be working. The sheer absurdity of the trap had broken the cultists' momentum. They were confused, disorganized, their formation shattered by slime and insults.
Then, the ground shook.
BOOM!
A section of the stone wall near the barricade exploded outward. Dust and debris showered the defenders, forcing them to cover their heads. Through the choking cloud, a massive, hulking shape emerged.
It was a Thrall. Swollen with corrupted Lumite, its muscles bulged grotesquely, veins pulsing with violet light. It roared, the sounds like grinding metal, and swatted Jerry aside with a backhand that sent the massive foreman flying into a pile of crates.
"Jerry!" Adeline screamed.
The Thrall ignored her. It grabbed two militiamen—one in each massive hand and crushed them. Their armor crumpled like tin foil. Bones snapped with sickening clarity. It tossed their broken bodies aside and kept walking, shrugging off crossbow bolts as if they were mosquito bites.
"Target the head!" Brenda shouted, leaping from a roof. She landed on the Thrall's shoulder, her rapier glowing with moonlight. "[Moonlight Sword Art - Crescent Guillotine]!"
Her blade flashed, striking the creature's neck with perfect form.
... and it bounced off.
"Ghh!" She grunted.
The creature's bones was as hard as iron, reinforced by the crystalline growths. Brenda's eyes widened in shock. Her technique, capable of slicing through refined steel armor, had barely scratched the blackened hide.
The Thrall swatted at her. Brenda dodged, backflipping away, but the wind pressure from the blow alone nearly knocked her off balance. She landed gracefully but grimaced.
"It's too dense!" Brenda yelled to Adeline. "My blade can't cut deep enough to sever the spine! It's regenerating faster than I can damage it!"
Indeed, the cut on the Thrall's neck was already knitting itself back together, purple light sealing the wound. Behind it, three more Thralls smashed through the wall, their glowing eyes fixed on the defenders. The cultists, emboldened by their monsters, began to rally, scrambling over the debris.
The line was breaking.
And in the middle of the chaos, Asep watched.
He stood atop a pile of rubble, breathing slowly. The clamor of battle seemed to fade into a dull roar in the background. His eyes tracked the regeneration of the lead Thrall. The way the purple light pulsed from the center of its chest outward. The way its movements were sluggish but unstoppable.
Rawa Rontek, Asep thought, the old legend from his world surfacing. Invulnerable as long as they touch the ground. Regenerating heads. Immortal warriors.
Except these things weren't warriors. They were victims. Tortured souls trapped in a cage of invincible meat.
Can't cut the head. Skin too tough. Bones too thick.
He watched Brenda's rapier bounce off again.
External damage is useless. You're just hitting a rock with a stick.
Asep closed his eyes for a second.
Should I use it? Right now?
His mind drifted away to the past. To the time when he was fooling around. Abah Dudung had taught him back in the silat dojo, before the gangs, before the prison. The old man, wrinkled like a dried prune but hitting like a freight train, would smoke clove cigarettes and lecture him about "Breath" while Asep tried to catch his breath after a hundred pushups.
"Listen, Asep," Abah had rasped, smoke curling from his nostrils. "You hit a brick wall, your hand breaks. The wall laughs. But if you breathe... if you push the air inside the strike... you don't hit the wall. You hit the space behind it. You shake the water inside the clay."
Tenaga Dalam. Inner Power. The vibration that bypasses the shell.
Asep opened his eyes. The world looked sharper now. He was aware now. No matter how dense muscle, no matter how thick your skull, inside that armored skull, behind the crystal bone... was a soft, squishy brain piloting the meat suit.
"Adeline!" Asep shouted, dropping from the rubble. "Get everyone back! Clear the lane!"
"Asep?! What are you doing?! It's suicide!" Adeline cried out, reloading her crossbow with trembling hands.
"Just do it!"
Asep sprinted, he ran directly at the lead Thrall.
The creature saw him. It roared, raising a fist the size of a wrecking ball. It swung down, intending to flatten the insignificant insect rushing toward it.
But he managed to slid.
Like a baseball player stealing home, he dropped to his knees, sliding under the massive fist that smashed into the ground where his head had been a second ago. The impact shook the ground, but Asep was already moving.
He scrambled up the Thrall's back, digging his boots into the jagged crystal protrusions on its spine, using them like a rock climbing wall. The creature roared in annoyance, flailing, trying to reach behind itself.
"Hold still, you ugly bastard!" Asep grunted, securing a grip on a thick spike near the creature's neck.
The Thrall thrashed wildly, bucking like a rodeo bull, trying to dislodge him. Asep gritted his teeth, his vision blurring from the violent motion.
He took a breath, inhaled deeply, filling his diaphragm and holding the air and compressing it. He felt the heat build in his chest, spreading down his arms and into his fists. His heartbeat slowed. The noises of the battle, the screams, the clashes, all became distant echoes.
He released the breath in a sharp, hissing exhale through his teeth. His right hand clenched into a fist. Not too tight, but not too loose either, ready to snap on impact. He focused the space inside the Thrall's skull. The grey matter floating in fluid.
"Sleep," Asep whispered.
Then he struck.
His fist connected in between occipitial and parietal bone at the back of the creature's skull.
There was no crack of bone. No shattering of crystal. It sounded more like a heavy thud, dull and uninspiring.
But the effect was immediate.
A shockwave rippled through the Thrall's head. The creature's eyes bulged. The violet light in its sockets flickered violently, then snuffed out completely.
For a split second, the monster froze. Then, like a puppet with its strings cut, it collapsed forward.
Asep rode it down, jumping off at the last second as the multi-ton behemoth crashed face-first into the mud. It didn't twitch. It didn't regenerate. The light in its veins dimmed and died.
Dead.
Asep landed in a crouch, panting. He coughed, a harsh, racking sound, and spat a glob of blood onto the ground. His right arm felt like it was on fire, the muscles trembling uncontrollably. Using that technique... it felt like he'd just redlined an engine without oil.
"One down," he wheezed, wiping his mouth.
He looked up. Three more Thralls were advancing, stepping over their fallen brother without care.
He took another deep, painful breath.
"Alright," Asep muttered, forcing his shaking legs to stand. "Who's next?"
While Asep was dealing with the heavy hitters, Idia was standing in front of the person responsible for this madness.
Crimson aura flared around her, crackling around like electricity.
"Oh my... It's you, Idia. How delightful." Estella Aria said, her tone playful yet condescending. "Have you finally decided to join us? To be one with the Eclipse?"
"Go fuck yourself, bitch!" Idia snarled. "I'll never forget how you killed my crews! I'll never forget how you turned Elesia into a stone!"
"How rude~ I'm merely doing a favor."
"I said: FUCK. YOU!"
Idia launched.
The ground beneath her feet shattered into a spiderweb of cracks as she pushed off, a crimson streak blurring through the smoke. She was fast. Impossibly fast. The sonic boom trailed behind her like thunder, shattering nearby windows.
She closed the distance in a heartbeat, her fist cocked back, wreathed in the malevolent red glow of the Blood Lumite. This was a punch meant to liquefy bone, to turn a human head into mist.
"Die!"
Her fist connected.
But it didn't connect with Estella.
It stopped six inches from the Overseer's face.
There was no sound of impact. No shockwave. Just... nothing. Idia's fist hung there, trembling against an invisible, impenetrable barrier. The crimson energy flared uselessly, pushing against a void that refused to move.
Estella stood perfectly still, her hands clasped.
"Like I said, I'm merely doing a favor. You hate seeing your loved ones living in poverty, don't you? You hate seeing them struggle day by day."
"Shut up!"
Idia retracted her fist and unleashed a flurry of blows. Left, right, uppercut, hook. Each punch was faster than the last, a blur of red light that should have torn Estella apart. But every single strike halted inches from her skin, stopped by the absolute distortion of space.
"[Inviolate Domain]," Estella murmured, her teal eyes glowing softly.
She watched Idia's rage with the detached interest of an entomologist studying a particularly aggressive beetle. Idia was screaming, pouring every ounce of her hatred and the Blood Lumite's power into the assault, but she was fighting infinity itself.
"You really don't understand, do you?" Estella sighed, shaking her head. "You cling to your pain like a child clinging to a broken toy. But I can fix it. I can fix you."
She raised her hand. Just a gentle flick of her wrist.
"[Purging Repulsion]."
Gravity reversed. Space unfolded violently.
Idia felt the air compress around her, then explode outward. A force like a divine hammer slammed into her chest, launching her backward faster than she had arrived.
She crashed through a stone wall three buildings away. Dust and debris billowed out.
"Ngh..."
Idia groaned, pulling herself out of the rubble. Her chest heaved, blood trickling from her nose. The Blood Lumite pulsed erratically, demanding more, *burning* her from the inside.
"Is that it?" Estella floated gently above the wreckage and descended slowly. "I expected more from the vessel of the Cursed Stone. Or perhaps... the curse is too heavy for such a small soul?"
Idia spat a mouthful of blood and grinned with a savage, broken grin.
"Small soul? Bitch, I'm just getting warmed up."
The crimson light exploded around her again, doubling in intensity. She ignored the tearing pain in her muscles, the way her veins felt like they were filled with acid. She pushed the Blood Lumite to its limit.
She vanished.
She reappeared behind Estella, aiming a kick at the Overseer's neck.
Estella didn't even turn around.
She simply extended her hand backward, palm open.
The space around her warped. Idia's leg slowed, then stopped, caught in the infinite distance between "here" and "there."
"Predictable," Estella said.
She clenched her hand and space contracted.
Idia screamed as unseen forces crushed her leg, snapping her the bone with ease. Before she could fall, Estella spun around gracefully and placed a palm against Idia's stomach.
"Let this be a lesson, Idia." She said "[Void Pulse]."
A shockwave of pure spatial distortion erupted from her palm. Idia was blasted backward again, skidding across the cobblestones, crashing through a market stall and tumbling into a fountain.
She lay there, gasping, the water turning red around her. Her leg was bent at a wrong angle. The Blood Lumite flickered weakly.
Estella walked towards her, dodging puddles of blood with elegance in her every steps.
"You see?" she cooed, looming over the broken gang leader. "Resistance is pain. Acceptance... is peace."
She raised her hand and gathering violet energy.
"Let me elevate you, Idia. Let me give you the peace you denied Elesia."
Idia lay in the shattered fountain, the cold water soaking into her clothes, mixing with the blood pouring from her broken leg. It was unimaginable pain, but it was distant, muffled by the overwhelming burn of the Blood Lumite. It whispered to her, louder now, the sound of seductive whispers in the back of her mind.
Let go. Give in. I can save you. I can kill her.
She gritted her teeth, forcing her eyes open. Through the haze of pain, she saw Estella. The Overseer looked like a goddess of death, untouched, serene, terrifying. The violet light gathered in her palm, a singularity of destruction waiting to be unleashed.
"Peace?" Idia rasped, coughing up blood. She pushed herself up on trembling elbows. "You call turning people into statues... peace?"
"Statues don't bleed, my dear," Estella said softly. "They don't hunger. They don't grieve. Elesia is pristine. Perfect. Forever."
"She's dead!" Idia screamed with cracking voice. "She's dead because of you!"
"Death is just a door I opened for her," Estella replied, tilting her head. "And now, I open it for you."
The violet light flared.
Idia squeezed her eyes shut, the heat of the impending blast washing over her face.
Sorry, guys... I couldn't stop her. I'm sorry, Elesia...
Then, out of nowhere, a sharp whistling sound cut through the air, then slammed into the invisible barrier inches away from Estella's face.
Estella blinked, the energy in her hand dimming slightly as her concentration wavered. Hovering in the air, frozen in suspended space was a crude metal sphere. It sputtered and hissed, a small fuse burning rapidly down to nothing.
"A toy?" Estella frowned.
Then the fuse ran out.
And her world turned white with a loud bang. A blinding flash of magnesium white light exploded right in front of her eyes, accompanied by a deafening, concussive boom.
"Gah!" Estella recoiled and covering her eyes immediately, her spatial barrier wavering for a split second a because of the sheer sensory overload broke her focus. It wasn't a lethal attack for sure, but it was bright enough to burn retinas and loud enough to rupture eardrums. Her barrier can only block physical things. Against light? It was her own weakness.
"Idia! Move your ass!"
A drawling voice shouted from the rooftops.
Estella, blinking tears from her eyes, looked up just in time to see a dark shape plummeting towards her from the sky.
It was Asep.
He was falling with the graceless velocity of a man who had just jumped off a three-story building, clutching a heavy iron chain in both hands. At the end of the chain was a massive, rusted grappling hook utilized by miners.
He swung it in a wide arc as he fell.
"GRAAH!"
With the momentum of his fall adding centrifugal force, the heavy iron hook smashed into Estella's barrier.
But this time, the barrier wasn't perfect. Estella was disoriented. The space around her rippled like a disturbed pond.
The hook punched through the weakened distortion.
"Gah! Damnit!"
The iron struck Estella's raised forearm, shattering her concentration completely. The force of the blow knocked her sideways. She stumbled, her perfect poise finally breaking.
Asep landed in a heavy roll, absorbing the impact, and came up in a crouch between Idia and the Overseer. He was panting, sweat dripping from his nose, his knuckles white around the chain.
"Yo," he wheezed, glancing back at Idia. "You look like shit."
"You..." Idia stared at him with bewildered gaze. "You jumped off a roof."
"Fastest way down," Asep shrugged, though his knees were shaking. He turned to face Estella, who was regaining her balance, her expression shifting from serenity to cold annoyance. "Besides, I hate bullies. Especially the floaty, preachy kind."
Estella rubbed her bruised arm. The skin wasn't broken, but the impact had clearly stung. Her teal eyes narrowed, losing some of their maternal warmth, but immediately she caught the attention.
"Oh? Such a strange specimen. I can't detect any traces of Lumite from your blood. How interesting..." She smiled, but her mind was reeling.
Something is wrong with this man... Someone who could live without traces of Lumite? That's impossible. Unless....
She knew this type of person. He supposedly didn't exist in Rodinia naturally. Someone who came from beyond the vight.
An otherworlder. Like the ones from heterodoxy she read about. The myth about otherworlers summoned to Rodinia in the time of the First Radiant War
Hehehe... How interesting. I was always fascinated by the idea that someone like him existed. I thought it was merely a myth... Hmm... If I can have him, pass down his genes through mine... I will create a new species of human.
She licked her lips. Her eyes glowing with a mix of lust, curiosity, and malice.
Looking at her, Asep visibly shuddered.
He knew this type of scenario. Andy had made him watch some anime with a Yandere character once. And when the girl had that expression, someone usually ended up tied up in the dark, damp basement, and milked dry until he became a husk.
Fuck. My chastity is literally in danger. If I get captured, I won't be able to marry Adeline. He thought. Wait, why the fuck am I thinking about that?!
"Idia," Asep said, not taking his eyes off the crazy cult lady. "Can you walk?"
"My leg is snapped," Idia gritted out. "But I can fight."
"Good. Because I have a plan," Asep whispered.
"What plan?"
"Plan B," he said, grabbing Idia's shoulder by the uninjured side. "Run away!"
He threw a second sphere at the ground—a smoke bomb.
Immediately, a thick, grey acrid smoke exploded outward, enveloping them instantly.
"Don't let them escape!" Estella commanded, but she didn't chase immediately, wary of more traps.
By the time the smoke cleared, Asep and Idia were gone, vanished into the labyrinthine alleys of the West District.
Estella stood amidst the dissipating smoke, staring at the empty street. She touched her cheek, her smile widening into something genuinely unsettling.
"Run, little mouse," she whispered. "Run as fast as you can. It just makes the catch so much sweeter."