Four Horsemen: Chapter 2 Part 1 of 2

Chapter 2:

“-four horsemen, but two of us are women!” Mya yelled as Petor’s hearing went from distant, snapping into crystal clear.

The light was blinding.

“Who put a sun in my skull?” Mya yelled.

The light dimmed into runes along the inside of a pyramid, stretching down the walls in lines and formations before crossing the floor to four pedestals under each of their feet.

Petor looked at the others.

Desari and Mya were unchanged other than the togas they wore.

“You have a face.” Petor looked at Valter, he’d been the tallest in his village, but Valter was built like a low-lying hill, twice as wide as Valter made of packed muscle and a head taller. He had short black hair with grey and white threading in, making him handsome instead of aging him. His eyes burned like magma, slowly fading into brown.

“Of course I have a-“ Valter trailed off and grabbed his head. “I have a face,” he said in quiet wonder.

“Right,” Desari raised her eyebrow, disregarded it and looked around.

Inscriptions scrawled up the walls. “Some kind of teleportation formation? Lots of focusing going on here. Then drawing in power from somewhere, a lot of power.” She sunk into mutterings and her own thoughts, holding her chin.

Petor stepped off of his pedestal, coughing from the dust that rose up. He nearly fell, his strength disorientating him.

Only had essence and mana for a day. Heck he didn’t know that there was essence or mana. Everything came through Yaaseen, power came from her, not from within one’s core.

The others moved oddly and slowly unused to their bodies. Petor turned his gaze inward. His core reformed, a steady simple white sphere at the center of his mana channels. No golden Celestial power tearing him apart from the inside.

He grabbed the storage medallion.

Thank you Kalix, you fucking bastard. Looting was a soldier’s livelihood. He ran a hand over his toga.

Nothing else.

Valter held up his hand, moving it and studying it. His head snapped to the ceiling.

“The mountain’s shaking.” He nodded to himself and started running for the only door in the room between him and Desari.

“Well this day is going great!” Mya grumbled and started after Valter.

Petor felt it then, a subtle shaking through solid stone.

“Are you trying to eat the backside of your toga, or you just holding onto it between your ass cheeks like it owes you a month worth of dock dues?” The redhead cackled. “You coming Petor?”

“Gods.” Petor cursed, chasing them out the corridor they were running.

“I was going to get a nice quiet beer down at the swinging lass and lad, then those fuckers had to shoot on my ship. Now I gotta deal with some devil trader, and get shoved in a pyramid temple. What a fucking day huh? Good view though.”

“Door!” Valter’s words a frustrated snort.

“The light is going out.” Petor noted the runes down the hall were dying.

“Move,” Desari flicked out her hand, conjuring a small flame using it to look over the door.

“So you can control fire?” Mya asked.

“Yes.” Desari’s attention focused on the door. Her finger traced over sections speaking in tongues and languages that passed over the Petor’s head.

“Here.” She stood back into a stance, grounding herself as if a monk and slammed a palm into a collection of runes.

The runes flared, stuttered and died.

“No you don’t.” He voice deepened into power, the runes flared to life, spreading across the door, through the runes, cracking them.

“Umm, Desari?” Petor’s voice raised.

“Break.” The door shattered and blew outwards into another hallway.

Distant yells bounced through hallways.

Ah fuck.

Petor winced as Valter ran into the room on the other side.

“Nice work, lass” Mya patted Desari on the back and ran after him, Petor right behind. Desari pushed herself on next to him. He glanced back as a section of the pyramid crashed into the ground, breaking it and disappearing below.

“Great, pedestal room with a big ass hole underneath,” Petor muttered as he checked his storage, he pulled on his vest, still roughed up from his last fight. His armbands and helmet followed. Desari threw a robe around her and pulled on a wrap that covered all but her eyes.

Mya threw out boots, stepping into them somehow and pulled on a vest covered in those tube like weapons, followed with a falchion and her wide-brimmed hat.

Valter’s feet thudded on the ground in his toga that was about three sizes too small. Valter led them through the corridors and halls without pause.

The shakes and shudders were getting worse, dust falling from the seams in the ceiling.

He charged down a hall that ended in a wall.

“Valter,” Petor’s voice rose.

“Get ready,” Valter said, slamming his shoulder into the wall. And went through.

“Stop in the name of Karenthal!”

Mya burst through, Petor followed.

The room was covered in carvings, paintings items sat in venerated spaces along the walls.

“Kill them!” The man’s voice came out in a strangled scream.

A dozen men wearing identical armor, helmets, chestplates, shin and arm guards were in the process of drawing weapons.

The man yelling slashed at Valter.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Valter set his feet, raising his arm. Armor engraved with living magma wrapped his forearm, then up his arm, more pieces, his chest, his back, his feet, legs.

The blade sparked on his armored arm, even as the pieces’ edges turned molten fusing with one another.

He swiped the man’s blade and hand to the side, a blade, flaring with the same molten runes appeared in his hand, his helmet, the hellish thing with red eyes closed around his face.

It wasn’t wrapped up in a snarl or raised in anger, but a cold removed expression of one doing a duty. One that had done it a thousand times before.

His blade tore through armor, stomach and chest.

This morning Petor died, for midday he had made a deal with a devil. Now he was reborn. All had passed quickly as if in a dream. Things he barely had control over.

He drew his spear from his storage medallion. He might not be good at dying, and wasn’t intending to update that skill, nor was he good with contracts or dealing. But fighting.

His face became grin as he smacked a blade away and drove the spear head through the attackers throat, turning and tearing it out, spinning his spear, to crack another man’s knee, a jerk and the spear cam back, a thrust and it went through the man’s eye.

He was good at fighting.

His white core filled with flecks of red that spread to fill it entirely.

His essence, doubled, then tripled then nearly doubled again, spreading through his body, changing him, everything slowed around him, where things had blurred they were fast but not beyond his sight.

He’d broken free from a white core into a red core. Five times the strength, the speed and the mana.

[Core-Solid Red]

He stepped forward, adapting to the new strength. Already well on his way to catching up to his old cultivation.

Four men charged him, small shields at the ready.

“Petor, move right.”

He moved to the side at Desari’s call.

A book of patched black and purple, flared in her hand.

Burnt air and frizz of lighting without the rain set everyone of his hair’s on their end as it passed him and slammed into the four men as if a physical force.

Mya pointed one of her weapons at a man, it went off in a cloud of smoke that would have rivaled the lightning if Petor wasn’t half-deaf, a second following right after.

Two men fighting Valter dropped with a hole through their armor.

His blade claimed another life, flicking it clean and pointing it down the hallway where the fighters had come from. “That way to outside.”

“The faster we get out of here the better. Less time for them to get organized,” Desari said.

“And the fact that everything behind us is falling apart,” Mya said, storing the two weapons she’d fired and replacing them with ones on her back. She started in the direction Valter pointed.

“True,” Desari followed her.

Valter took the lead once again, Mya behind him with Petor and Desari trailing.

They advanced into the corridor, it was littered with broken stone, opening into a room with an altar of carved silver in the middle.

Fighters in the room turned to face them. Their armor was different, weapons in their hands, several bodies wearing armor similar to the ones they’d already fought lay around the room.

“Ah, just what I need,” Mya said.

Her eyes turned milky white with a blue flame as cold as glacier waters  at their core. Her fingers withered like a corpses, she flicked two fingers, pale blue flames shot out, boring holes through two attacker’s necks.

She clicked her ring covered fingers, the bodies rose and fell as if under one heartbeat. A moan reaching from beyond the pale veil ran from the base of Petor’s spine spreading goosebumps.

He might’ve stepped back in fear before. He reflected the hungry smile that danced on her lips.

Valter crashed into them, runes of molten iron ran through his armor like the fires of the underworld, flaring as a shield appeared in his off-hand.

“Ahh!” He threw back three grown men with a yell, his sword killing one before the exited his range.

To do or die.

Petor’s blood sung in his veins, bringing his spear to the ready, lowering himself, power coiled in his muscles, a treacherous smile plastered across his face as he surged forward.

A fighter wielding a runed hammer connected with Valter’s shield. The resulting shockwave pushed Valter back several paces.

The dead rose, white fire in their eyes.

“Too slow old man!” Petor laughed passing the burning monstrosity. His spear point thrust out at the man with the hammer before he had time to wind up another attack. Forcing him to shift his bulk to avoid his spear-point.

Another fighter slashed down with a halberd. Petor fell backwards, his spear cutting back out, the halberd owner’s eyes widened as Petor’s spear cut through his leg.

Power flooded through him, essence charging through his channels, his red core becoming flecked with Orange, like embers floating on the sunset’s last breath. That initial heady rush of killing those above his own level now abated at the same core strength.

Its about how you use that power, not just how much you have! A sergeant’s voice snapped in the back of his head, a lifetime and a half ago.

Petor turned in his fall and hit the ground, cracking the tiles as he threw himself to standing.

Each muscle was filled with power, his mana a roiling storm in his mana channels. Torn from those that lay on the floors, being drawn in by his core.

His breathing came easier, the power in his body running through him in a constant circulating stream.

The hammer user was flanked by two sword users as the halberd fighter staggered back, his leg pumping blood, each pump Petor felt mana drain from the fighter and into him, refilling his reserves.

Leech. Such words to be spoken as a curse, now came with more questions.

Valter chuckled, a dark and low thing, standing beside him. No matter what else he was a skilled fighter, the likes of which he’d rarely seen.

“Kill the faithless!” The man with the hammer yelled.

The twenty or so fighters surged towards the group.

Valter’s blade work a bloody masterpiece as he deflected blades, turning attacks into openings, he used his armor and shield in tandem, turning blows without flinching as he got among them, a wolf among sheep.

He bashed one off of his feet with just his shield, driving it rim-first into another’s face, his sword following through their neck seconds later.

His eyes were alert and focused in a terrifying way. Panic was left well behind, each movement chained with the next, reading the fight he was in and the others in the room.

Petor recognized the skill, the deadly focus.

Petor redoubled his attacks, each new wound to his enemy drew mana and essence from them. Increasing the power of his core and healing his wounds. His felt the tension of the push and pull in his channels, pushing forward.

He turned two attacks, sensing a third attack from his blindside.

He didn’t have time to turn all the way, darts of wind cut around him, piercing through the openings in the third attacker’s armor.

They coughed and dropped, confused. He drove his spear into their neck.

The Orange flecks within his core continued to grow. His mana fed his muscles, wiping away fatigue, giving him strength beyond the realm of mortal.

He turned so fast it raised the dust around him.

His would-be attackers trying to dislodge their old comrades who’d jumped on them. Lowering his spear he swept the feet of two, dropping them to the ground, the undead using teeth and hands to get to their flesh below the undead’s waiting hands.

A bolt glanced across his chest armor, throwing him back. He stabbed the base of his spear into the ground, staying upright, the bolt stuck into a wall. His head snapped in the direction it had come from, his hand dropping to his sling.

He stabbed one of the attackers on the ground, pulling their last mana into his muscles, their essence added to his core as he accelerated towards the crossbow woman reloading behind two allies.

The roof shuddered, they looked up, the roof dropped ontop of her and her allies. Blood and viscera sprayed between the openings of the perfectly square stone. Petor glanced at the Desari, her hands and eyes glowing.

He nodded to her in thanks, settling the mana in his muscles, drawing it deeper.

More fighters rushed in from the corridor their armor and gear had come from. He smacked an arrow away with his spear.

The archer’s eyes grew wide as he backed up.