Technocide // Chap 18

By the time we’d crept up on the tent my gut was screaming that we were making the wrong choice. Before I could say as such, Brook crept low and slipped into the tent from the back, disregarding the entrance which was facing toward the rest of the camp. I thought to myself, why would they keep their loot so far away from the center. Only having a singular guard did not make any sense to me, my apprehension was rising. 

I could feel that I had notifications from my interface waiting to be read, it felt like a dull pressure behind my eyes. I wanted to read them, but I couldn’t spare even a second of attention or it may cost us our lives. The back of the tent opened again, and Brook tossed me a sack which I threw over my shoulder. Instead of coming out, however, Brook ducked right back in. The weight in the new sack over my shoulder felt like it would align with a book or two and the shape confirmed that theory. What Brook was still looking for, I didn’t know. 

I looked over my shoulder from where I was crouching in the shadows cast by torchlight. Sophie stood at the border to the camp, staring at us with her eyes that were reflecting the firelight. I could see the disapproval in her eyes, and agreed wholeheartedly, but Brook was still looting. A crack rang out from the other side of the tent and I tensed up, ready to sprint forward and save Brook. I couldn’t see who was approaching but the heavy steps told me that it was most likely the chieftain I’d seen earlier. 

Without slowing for a second, the chieftain walked straight into the tent. Either he was checking up on his valuables or he’d noticed that the guard stationed in the front of the tent was missing. I started to run forward, only to stumble and fall backwards when Brook came flying out and caught me in the chest. She was holding tightly to a familiar looking blade with her other hand on her neck as she coughed. If I wasn’t mistaken, she’d been grabbed by her throat and tossed straight out through the tent wall.

The large mutant with the purple wolf headdress strutted out slowly, pushing the torn flap out of his way. The dismissive look he gave me told me two things. One, he knew that there were two of us from the start. Not a hard assumption to make when your prisoner is set free and your guards are missing, but it still meant he had some form of higher reasoning. Two, it told me that he didn’t consider me anywhere close to a threat.

“Big mistake,” his voice was low and scratchy, matching the scarred look he was rocking. The man did not draw a weapon but flexed his muscles. His biceps and pecs were visible, swelling and swimming around like snakes in a shallow pond. His skin was a dark green, darker than the leaves in the trees surrounding us, and he had several scars that crisscrossed across his chest and arms. He smiled at me, showing me his mouthful of dagger-like teeth and long, needle like tongue. 

“[Entangling Roots]!” I cast my spell aggressively, but quietly. I funneled the mana necessary and pled the trampled grass around his feet to come to my aid. There was no brush, no trees close enough to lend me their roots, and all the grass had been stepped into the dirt. I needed a miracle, because I knew that if we didn’t get away soon, we would be swarmed by the smaller mutants, and that was if this one didn’t rip us in half first!

The grass started writhing, as if it were placed in a pot of boiling water, and several large blades of glass shot out from beneath the man. Long stalks of grass wrapped around his calves and worked their way up toward his waist, twisting compressing like a boa with a deer. Within seconds, the large green man was cocooned in grass. I pumped more mana into the grass, layering my [Entangling Roots] with a second cast while pushing my intentions of a snake strangling their prey. The grass tightened and the man was immobile. 

“Brook, are you okay?” She’d been coughing for the two seconds it took for all that to transpire but was slowly getting back to her feet. Her neck was red, but it wasn’t really noticeable when you combined it with the fact she was already bruised, beaten, and scraped everywhere. Blood trickled down her cheek from where it was escaping at her gums. She wiped the trail away with her arm, smudging mud and dirt and not really making the situation any better for herself.

“Yeah, let’s kill this bastard. There is no need to leave a man-eater on the run if you’ve already got him all tied up.” I could see the hate in her eyes and knew this was a lot more personal than just handling a loose end while we could, but I couldn’t help but agree with her. This man was a monster, a man eater, and would definitely hunt us down in the future. It was currently restrained by the grass that had grown longer than two men on each other’s shoulders and was tied but straining to be freed. The only area still visible was his mouth, filled with those wicked teeth, as he was biting away the grass before it could suffocate him. His entire body was shaking, as if he were sobbing heavily. 

I approached him closely, stopping about 3 feet away from him. ‘This is too easy,’ I couldn’t help thinking to myself. How could the boss of a tribe who had successfully raided an entire human group possibly die because of a single spell that wasn't even at novice level yet. Surely, they had at least one mage with them. I mean, I knew that mages were statistically pretty rare, but that was just referring to those with the mana capacity to succeed as a mage. There were thousands more who were like me, born with a low mana capacity but still with the capability to learn magic.

Welp, either way we need to finish this up and get out of here. I struck out with the stolen spear, aiming for the mutant’s jugular vein, or at least where it was on a human. He was a humanoid, so it should be pretty close. Either way, if I could behead him, he wouldn’t be moving much. Assuming his brain was in his head… I was thinking about it too much. The creature was humanoid, which meant it would share at least part of our physiology. Neck it is. 

I braced my back foot, shifting my weight so that I could throw it all with one strike, and struck out with the spear at his neck. The green man stopped his shaking as the spear approached his neck, as if he could sense his incoming death. My stomach dropped and my blood went cold, something was wrong here, but it was too late to stop my stab. On my left, Brook was swinging at his waist with the sword, for all intents and purposes, this thing should be dead, but I knew something was wrong, so I braced myself to dodge.

The spear struck his neck and was held steadfast, as if I’d stabbed it into a crack in boulder. The grass restraints snapped, and Brook’s swing was blocked with a hand. With the restraints on his right side snapped the spell seemed to give way, all of it wilting and falling away as the creature started shaking again, this time accompanied by an audible reaction. He was laughing and had been since I thought I ensnared him. 

Dark blue ichor dripped out from the hand that stopped the sword swing and the spear was lodged in the purple wolf headdress, which was as metallic as it looked apparently. The sword was shoved to the side, and a fist accompanied the motion, catching Brook in the stomach. The small framed girl flew a few feet backwards and tumbled, somehow keeping a hold on her weapon and not eviscerating herself as she rolled away. The laughing tapered off as the creature glared at his right hand, now bleeding profusely. If my assumption was correct, it had assumed the blade would be unable to break skin and was unpleasantly surprised.

I was still three feet or so away from him, trying to back off but unable to dislodge my weapon. The chieftain finally remembered my existence and reached up, grasping the spear that was steadfast before ripping it out of his headdress and out of my grip. The crazed look in his eyes told me he was no longer playing around. He snapped the head off my spear and chucked the pole at me, clipping my legs as I tried to retreat. With the spearhead in hand he looked down at me as I scrambled backwards. 

“Stupid humans always think they can fight back. You lost this land long ago, this is our home now and you shall be punished for trespassing.” The giant man picked his teeth with the spearhead, okay so apparently not quite done playing around, before chucking it at me overhand. Although the head wasn’t balanced for throwing, it didn’t really matter at such a close range. It caught me in the left shoulder and caused me to writhe in pain. All this adventuring in the last couple weeks and I still wasn’t used to pain, go figure. 

An iron grasp caught my ankle and dragged me over to Brook, where it grabbed her as well. The beast as along stronger than I’d thought, but there was never really a chance for us to run away anyways. Even if we’d escaped, we would have been hunted, our only chance was to take out their leader before making a break for it. That or not trying to loot in the first place, we could have at least gotten a head start. My backpack, as well as the sack that Brook had tossed at me, kept catching on rocks, causing me to have a bumpy ride. 

Every catch or bump was another jolt of pain that shot through my body, the spear head still lodged in my shoulder shifted from time to time and sent flaming signals of pain all around my chest and arms. With tears streaming through my eyes I realized that I was being dragged to the fire, the feast had not ended apparently. I didn’t know why the man had saved Brook previously, but it seemed like his decision had changed. She was to be killed as well, if the direction we were headed was any indication. 

Since escaping, I’d had several near-death situations where I’d only escaped due to luck or outside interference. I knew when I set out that it would be difficult, humanity hadn’t resettled west of the Mississippi for a reason after all, but I never realized that my quest had been suicidal in the first place. I wanted to discover something to allow me to become a mage, it had been my dream since I was a child, but I didn’t want to do it at the cost of my life. I’d thought the entire time that I was well equipped, that I would be able to avoid trouble, that I’d be able to dodge death. I was wrong.  

The closer we got to the fire, the more of the tiny disgusting green people that appeared. They spotted us being dragged and screeched, running over to us and dancing their horrible caper over our soon to be dead body. Their clothes had been shed next to the fire, so I was greeted to the side of wrinkled green skin in all manners of shape and sizes, sickening me to my stomach even more than the smell of burning flesh and impending doom had already. 

My mana felt tapped out and I could feel a headache coming on. Blood trickled down my chest, warming my body while at the same time making me feel colder than I ever had before. At some point I must have struck my head, because my mouth and forehead were also bleeding, I wouldn’t be surprised if my tears were also crimson at this rate, my entire body seemed to have given up on holding in my lifeblood like a waterskin that had been attacked by a porcupine.

My vision started darkening, not from bloodlust but from defeat. Defeat of the heart. I didn’t see how we would get out of this alive. Strangely enough, I didn’t regret dying to try and save Brook, and only regretted that I allowed her to risk her life for material gains. If I had left here there tied up, it would have eaten away at my soul for the rest of my life. No matter how betrayed I’d felt by her, I couldn’t deny that I’d developed feelings. Not the logical, ‘oh she left so fuck her’ kind of feelings either. 

My eyes slowly closed but I did not black out. Thanks, new resistance, as soon as I want to stop being conscious it kicks in, go figure. My mind wandered and I started considering the effect of resistances on things like drinking. Would it be impossible to get drunk and blackout with corresponding poison and blackout resistances? Things like this weren’t taught in my town, we had a serious lack of adventurers so things like resistances and combat skills weren’t really common knowledge. Even the little bit I scraped up about magic was from non-magicians and really questionable.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up again, strange because I didn't realize it had gone down, and my eyes snapped open. I was still being dragged through the dirt, but I felt something was wrong again. My heart started beating faster and faster before slowing instantly to a snail's pace. Time seemed to slow, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on at first, then I realized it had gotten quiet. Outside of the sound of soil being pushed to the side by mine and brooks body, and the cracking of the fire, everything was silent. I somehow tuned out the screaming midgets on either side of me and realized that there were no hoots of the owls, no chirping crickets, no swaying branches. Silent.

My eyes widened and I had a slight premonition of what was to come, a storm of feces. I tried to cast entangling roots and kicked out at the steel hand that held me tight, trying to squirm loose and get out of the way. I didn’t have the mana necessary for the spell and my kicks did nothing but annoy the goliath that was dragging me. This needed to work, however, so I pulled on a source of energy I hadn’t used before, a source that wasn’t mana.

I felt the blood along my face and chest evaporate as well as a bit more from inside of my wound. I felt, rather than saw, the moist blue ichor that was dripping out the giant’s hand also be consumed by my spell, and I cast. I cast with my blood and mana, my heart and soul, the strongest entangling roots I possible could. I didn’t cast it to hold the giant, however, I cast to distract him, to make him drop me so that I could roll out of the way.  

“[Entangling Roots]!” The words spilled out of my mouth clumsily, like trying to spit out a lugi with a parched mouth. Something about the spell felt wrong, which I attributed to the fuel source of blood, but something felt right at the same time. I got a piercing headache and the world was brightened for a second, like the sun decided to flash for a fraction of a second, and the spell was cast.

Vines thicker than an oak branch shot out from the ground at a breakneck speed, aiming for the green giant dragging me. They were a sickly reddish green and covered in wicked looking white thorns that dug into his skin to gain purchase. Wherever he wasn’t covered by the leathers, so his chest arms and lower legs, the vines managed to pierce through his skin by the slightest amount, then they started pulsing. I couldn’t pay attention much longer because I felt like it was time to get the hell out of dodge, so I kicked. Combined with the distraction of hundreds of thorns giving him an involuntary and very amateur session of acupuncture, he didn’t bother to hold me much longer, dropping both Brook and I so that he could tear away at the vines.

I grabbed Brook, who was still holding the weapon even though she didn’t have the strength to swing it and ran towards the woods. She scooped up the second bag she’d looted form the tent but dropped when she was thrown and kept up. Behind me I heard the enraged giant break free and start charging towards me, but in front of me was the real problem. Out of the bushes stalked a giant wolf, with black leather wings and a tuft of rabbit fur stuck to its cheek. Bloodshot eyes stared me down, the wolf from earlier had found me.

So close, but so far away. I instinctively feel that I did not have the mana nor excess blood to cast another spell, so I stood my ground and stared back at the predator that had made this one of the worst nights of my life. It stared back at me before looking past me and locked eyes with the chieftain behind me. The wolfs eyes stared at his face and it started snarling. Somehow, I realized it wasn’t looking at his face, but the dark purple wolf headdress adorning his scalp. The wolf recognized one of its kin, however distant, and was enraged at the transgression. With a howl, it lept straight over my head and brook and I started sprinting forward again, Sophie catching up to our side quickly.