Unbound

Kevin and Shadow ran for their lives.

The Dwarves weren't a problem. The Corrupted ones had a bit of zip to their attacks, but the Ironclads were nothing more than tin cans in their way. Shadow dispatched them through eyeholes, shoulder joints, and knees—anywhere there was a gap big enough to fit an arrowhead—while Kevin swarmed his targets with his own brand of power.

His dual sickles were almost as fast as his life magic, and he met sword and spear with a Strength that the Dwarves could not match. The twins had grown greatly since the Omen Path, and Knowledge’s advice had only made these hours of warfare all the more beneficial.

Kevin was positive he and his brother were neck and neck with the other Unbound, minus Felix and Gabby. It wasn’t a contest, of course. That’d be silly.

Still. After witnessing Archie’s Core Manifestation, Kevin wasn’t about to get shown up.

"Hey, Kev!” Shadow loosed an arrow into a crowd of the Corrupted. It burst, shadows and poison spearing through all of them like ribbons of liquid light. It didn't kill them, but it harried their lines enough that the Legionnaires they were fighting were able to throw out their Elemental strikes. "Your girlfriend's fighting for her life!”

Kevin's head whipped around. Gabby was hard to miss. The Titan stood in glowing golden armor, bent by the weight of her enemies.

"She's not my girlfriend!”

But Shadow wasn't wrong. Gabby was being piled on by Golems and Elementals. They pounded down against her armored back relentlessly, giving her not even a moment to breathe. Kevin took two steps toward her and stopped as Makos and Paol cut him off, their weapons gleaming with unspent Skills.

"Come, Wyrm Lords!” Makos called as he passed. “Join the fight!'

They immediately clashed with the Ironclads nearby, nearly diving into their ranks along with two dozen others. Kevin groaned, putting his attention back to their fight.

The Wyrmkin, the crew they'd built up within Jaast, were with them. They ran distractions, their Skills dazzling Dwarven eyes and tripping up the unwary as their hammers and axes ran afoul of tricks that had killed bandits across the jungle. Makos was the strongest of them, but his kukri found no purchase on high-Tier Dwarven armor. Bandit slayers or not, the Wyrmkin were amateurs, and the Rimefang Dwarves were professional soldiers. Their ruthlessness was on great display as they moved in solid lines, their weapons slashing without pausing, defending one another's flanks. All the Wyrmkin had was him.

As far as Kevin was concerned, that was enough.

“Ascended Growth!”

Mushrooms and flowers rose from the ground, each as big as a car. They speared upward at speed, lifting every one of his Wyrmkin up into the air and away from the Dwarves' immediate attacks. Flashy Skills splashed against the stalks of reinforced mushrooms, denting but not breaking them. The Ironclads shouted something Kevin couldn’t translate. The mushrooms wouldn't stop them for long, and already their axes bit into the greenery as mages hurled bolts of ice up onto their tops.

A few even turned to Kevin, aiming their Shadow Cages at him.

“Try this, then! Thorned Upheaval!”

Vines coated in thorns tore up from the earth, snagging onto the Ironclads' legs and arms. Spells went wide, the Shadow Cages dropping onto their own numbers as thorns sliced into any exposed skin, even as it bound them down to the ground. Twenty or so had been locked down in an instant, and if that were all they faced, the fight would’ve been over—but dozens more were beyond them, and they were already rushing around their trapped allies.

“Loose your arrows, lads!” Makos bellowed.

Skills rained down from above, his Wyrmkin peppering the Ironclads with their power. For the most part, the Journeyman Tier force of their Skills merely distracted the irate charge of Dwarven supremacy, but it gave Kevin time.

“Baneberry Infusion!”

White berries on crimson stems appeared across the vines in bunches, each one swelling to the size of a quarter. The berries themselves almost creaked as they filled to capacity. The Dwarves yanked back, some of them cutting themselves free.

Kevin focused. “Germination Bloom!”

His power rolled into the earth, life Mana surging into the hidden roots of his Skills and accelerating the growth of every single one of his plants. The mushrooms and flowers thickened, their sliced chunks healing as they rose a bit higher and the Wyrmkin shouted.

Thorned Upheaval spread like wildfire, thorns expanding from daggers to swords while the vines swept across more than two hundred Ironclads–the full force of the Dwarves arrayed against his friends. The baneberries swelled, multiplying across the expanding vines and ballooning in size.

Kevin snapped his fingers.

Berries burst, releasing a heavy cloud of pale lavender to sink onto the Ironclads. The Dwarves coughed, many breathing it in involuntarily before they started to retch. Blood dripped from their mouths and eyes, and their limbs shook with sudden palsy.

Kevin winced. It was a disgusting death, and he had no interest in watching it happen. “Clot and Stem!”

The Skill rippled out from him, hitting the cloud of poison and thickening it even more. Poison Mana and life Mana intensified, the vapor now a sheet of viscous liquid that splashed across visors and dripped into joints. It ate through leather, skin, and weaker metals in bursts of sizzling smoke. The Dwarves that weren’t retching howled.

You Have Killed A Dwarven Ironclad (x122)!

(x123)!

(x125)!

(x128)!

XP Earned!

As if in answer, more Ironclads emerged from the jungle. A company of at least five hundred along with a squad of Boar Knights trampled burning fronds, and a gleaming layer of magic descended across their front line. The Knights charged, their lances tearing huge furrows into the forest of mushrooms. Two cracked, the fleshy fibers exploding like a tree hit by a bomb, and Wyrmkin screamed as they fell.

Ironclads took them out almost immediately.

“Shadow!” Kevin couldn’t look for his twin, but the guy had just been over his shoulder, and now his side of the fight was thinning rapidly. “Where the hell are you?”

Boar Knights headed for him, and now they trailed streamers of icy shadow. The Dire Boars flickered.

Kevin leapt straight up. A lance skewered through his position a heartbeat later, missing his boots by scant inches.

The Dwarves shouted something. Shadow Cages fell on him, but Kevin’s sickles were already spinning. They sliced through the magic, though it cost him a lot of momentum and frost burns across his hands and forearms.

Warning!

Your Health Has Dropped To 70%!

Kevin fell to the ground and darted away, narrowly avoiding yet another deluge of shadow-attuned Skills. He bent low, upper body parallel to the ground as he slipped past the Dire Boars and lances alike. He lashed out with his sickles but only caught the edges of mithril barding instead of pig belly.

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“Thorned Upheaval!”

Vines writhed beneath one of the Knights, catching their mount in its gruesome embrace. Kevin grinned. He was still within the radius of his Germination Bloom. Sword-sized thorns speared into piggy trotters, and the beast panicked. The Knight was thrown from the saddle before he was trampled by two thousand pounds of pork.

You Have Killed A Boar Knight!

XP Earned!

The other Knights wheeled their mounts around, lances fixed firmly on Kevin. "Mages! Bring the Golem!”

From a hundred feet away, the flash of red-gold metal captured Kevin’s attention. An Orichalcum Golem slammed to the earth, its oversized feet already striding in his direction. A trio of Dwarven mages clung to its shoulders, and spells gathered in their hands before passing through the Golem itself.

One of them raised their voice, and it was sharp as a stiletto. “Kill the lizard!"

"I'm a Kobold!" Kevin backpedaled, mentally going through his Skills again. He had nothing to fight an Orichalcum Golem head on. They were famously shit targets for poison darts.

The Golem closed with him fast, but Kevin wasn’t a slouch. He was nearly Grandmaster Tier. Ducking between the enormous construct’s legs, he threw himself into a roll that nearly sent him head-first into a field of fire. He aborted the movement at the last second, and the cruel laughter of the mage on the Golem’s shoulder told him where the flames originated.

“Die, lizard!”

“Multishot Massacre! Deadly Dark Vein! Piercing Echo! Sanguine Serration! Pinpoint Burst!”

Green gold, violet, bloody crimson, and thick velvet black had collapsed into a streak as fast as lightning. Thunder followed as the thorn arrow duplicated itself into thirty identical clones, each spiraling with their own twisting streamers of power.

The Dwarven mages lost their heads.

The rest of the arrows struck the Golem, blasting it apart at hip and shoulder and driving the Orichalcum menace face-first into the earth. Without mages to control it, the construct’s enchantments winked out.

His brother didn’t stop there. His arrows split again, curving around trees to strike the Boar Knights through their slotted helms. Four of them pitched from their saddles, dead in an instant. The rest fled.

“Lifesbane Turret,” Kevin snarled, and his Skill snaked into the soil. Earth Mana was extremely good at conducting life Mana, and his Skill was no exception. It zipped toward the retreating Knights, until Kevin clamped hard upon his Will. “Rise!”

Stalks sprouted before the Dire Boars with small explosions. The stalks unfurled, revealing large flowers of brilliant pink and gold. Neither the Knights nor their mounts slowed. It was their final mistake.

Kevin twisted his fingers. “Fire!”

From the center of the flower, glistening darts erupted. They shot outward in a cone-shape, a fan of projectiles only four inches long…but coated in a dire poison. The Boars and their Knights cried out, a fierce pain lashing through their Bodies before they collapsed, still scrabbling at the small darts, before that stilled, too.

You Have Killed A Boar Knight (x5)!

XP Earned!

"Ha!” Kevin pumped his fist in the air. “You'll need more than that to take us down!"

A tremor shook the ground, hard enough that it rose up to smack Kevin in the shins.

“Ow!”

Before the rumbling ceased, heat built up. It wasn’t a summer breeze or even the cloying, humid temperature of the sun at noon. This was dry and brutal, filled with the scent of dissolving metal. Without warning, a stream of lava tore across the battlefield. Thick and heavy, it cut across their lines and the Dwarves equally. Ironclads died, and Kevin’s Wyrmkin fell from atop their burning mushrooms.

A muted scream was all the warning Kevin got before Makos vanished beneath a waterfall of molten stone.

Kevin’s breath caught in his chest, and the heat yanked it back out. “Makos!"

Mushrooms shifted, tossing his surviving friends away and damming the rush of lava that oozed across the tilted field. They burst aflame, fibers popping in great sparks of green-gold and orange-brown vapor.

Paol stepped closer, as if he were going to jump through the flames, but Kevin held him back. “He—he shoved me out of the way…”

Kevin couldn’t speak past the ache in his throat. What could he say? That Makos knew the danger before this fight started? That he was brave? None of it was good enough.

“Kev.” Shadow’s voice sliced through the haze of the fungal bonfire. “We’ve got more company.”

He lifted his eyes to the shadow of the volcano and swallowed. “Paol. Take all the Wyrmkin and get them outta here.”

Paol turned to him, the char smudges and burns across his face giving him a wild look. “My Lord! We can’t leave you—”

“Go!” Kevin pushed him back. There was no more time. “Fall back to the safehouse and protect the villagers!”

A quake assaulted the earth as three figures dropped from the Supreme Elemental’s distended limb. Paol’s eyes widened, and he scrambled away, already shouting to gather the survivors. That was the last bit of attention Kevin could spare for him or the Wyrmkin. He adjusted his grip on his arcanite sickles and blinked his dried-out eyes.

“Superior Elementals,” Shadow muttered from somewhere close. Kevin wasn’t sure where, but his brother had Skills for stealth and whispering, so it could’ve been anywhere within five hundred feet. “That’s not good.”

The three figures had begun exerting their influence the moment they’d landed. Frost crackled across the ground, clustering into jagged spikes that rebounded from the upthrust crags of stone, while steaming where it met an aura of indomitable fire. Superior Frost, Earth, and Fire Elementals stood on the pile of ashen fungi, their inhuman shapes bent as if burdened by some heavy weight. Shadow clung tightly to each of them, spreading from their backs like tendrils of dripping syrup.

Kevin sheathed his sickles. “We’re gonna have to up the ante on this one.”

“Agreed. On your right!”

While the other two trudged off into the jungle, the Frost Elemental darted forward, its cougar-like paws slashing for Kevin’s head. He dodged away, moving parallel to the other Elementals and into the remnants of his thorned vines. They bent out of his way, unwilling to harm him. The icy cat followed, its every bounding step freezing and shattering his obstructions.

So much for that.

“Shadow!”

Arrows rained onto the Frost Elemental, exploding against its face and forelimbs. Enough to give it pause.

“I’m here!” his brother shouted from up in the treetops. “Heading down!”

Kevin ran toward him. Their Skills weren't enough, not against this enemy. They had only one choice, and they'd been saving it.

The Frost Elemental opened its fanged maw and spat out a stream of liquid cold. Kevin barely got ahead of it, leaping up into the air just as Shadow dropped from the canopy.

They collided.

"Core Manifestation," they said as one. "Drakengard!"

Hands clasped, their Bodies burst with light enough to toss the Elemental back. Green-gold and green-black rolled together, swarming into an amorphous shape that ate away at the putrid darkness that clung to the ice cat’s back. It yowled wordlessly, eyes burning, and raked them with its claws—only to scream in pain.

Its paw vanished, sliced off at the wrist.

The light had dimmed but not vanished. Now it limned a ten-foot-tall figure strapped with muscle, four arms, and scales as thick as any Dragon. A thick neck lifted a regal head with four burning eyes, while antlers swept back above it all in a deadly promise.

“Song of Poisoned Bounty,” they said, their voices threaded through one another. “First Canticle: Catch These Hands.”

They blurred forward, faster than they ever were alone. Four fists led the way, flashes of scale that pounded into icy flesh with gunshot cracks, each strike multiplied as the Skill surged through their limbs. Eight hits, twelve, twenty four, the Drakengard hit the Elemental with jabs, hooks, and uppercuts in rapid succession.

Ice shattered.

Ichor flowed.

Shadow’s magic joined with Kevin’s. Their scales thickened across their fists, and serrated thorns sprouted from between their knuckles. Each brutal strike gouged deeper, tearing free startled cries of pain from the Elemental.

“Second Canticle: Shatterstar!”

They hit with both of their left arms and sank them into the Elemental up to their elbows. Their Skill scoured through it, a deep, virulent green that exploded into a jagged sunburst of crystalline Mana. With a grunt, they tore their arm free, leaving an exposed hole in the creature’s ribcage.

It staggered, legs no longer working right but snapped viciously at the joined twins. The Drakengard stepped on its neck, seized the sides of its jagged ribs, and inhaled.

“Third Canticle: Scourgeflame!”

A torrent of noxious, brilliant flame poured from their mouth. Bright green and blinding, it scoured through the Elemental’s center, shattering its core.

You Have Killed A Superior Frost Elemental!

XP Earned!

The corpse collapsed, its husk melting swiftly into a puddle of broken bones.

"Next target!"