Four Horsemen: Chapter 2 Part 2 of 2

Thunder cracked and holes appeared in the heads and chests of a half dozen, Mya snapped a smoking cannister out of her weapon as Desari smacker her hands together, a lance of air tore through three fighters, she wiped her hands across their front, the air turning to a scythe the took down the remainder.

The wind and flames in the room were drawn to her as faint vapors collected in a ring of Mya’s, causing the black stone to glow a brighter blue.

Valter tore through two others, standing and panting.

Petor drew level with him, then reached out to his armor and pushed mana over to heal and help him recover.

Valter turned to him breathed in through his nose and released it, focusing on the enemy ahead.

Fire weaved across the battlefield, swarming archers, sinking into their helmets, screams filling the air with smoke and cooked meat, tearing their helmets off.

Petor hefted his spear, he and Valter ran forward together.

Petor smacked an enemy spear away from Valter. Valter’s glowing blade cutting through a carved breastplate. He turned under Petor’s spear and stabbed the would-be attacker Petor fended off.

Petor moved around Valter like a dance partner, slicing through a woman’s arm and taking off her head on the back stroke before she had time to scream.

Each movement was done with the minimal consumption of mana, trained into him from battlefields long since turned fallow.

His movements suddenly turning faster or slower, stronger or weaker. Disrupting his attackers, it only took one slip. His spear a second hand as he had to reinforce it to withstand the other’s strength.

Dead fell behind him with wounds through openings in their armor, or through it where an opening wasn’t available.

The tang of warm iron blood, clawing at the back of his throat. The foul smells of death, gritty weapon oil.

Mya relied on her pistols while Desari used throwing darts, her face drawn. Mya’s might be as well, but looking half undead it was hard to tell.

Petor stabbed through the opening Valter made, twisting his spear.

The armored man only saw it at the last moment, his attack so focused on Valter.

Petor’s spear drove through his side into his chest. He reversed the spin and drew it back.

Red flecks like sand appeared at the edge of his core and settled in its middle, all of the flecks together filled about a third of his core now.

Desari’s spells slipped through the slightest gaps around Valter. He never flinched, he never paused. Mya’s undead wounded their attackers bringing them to the ground.

A section of wall detonated, spraying the room in rocks.

“Karenthal I call upon thy blessing!” A woman in armored robes called out. Orange light wrapped around a dozen fighters, their speed climbing as they ran into the melee.

Their blades met the fighters against Petor’s group. The fuck is going on? Not one to let the surprise or the battlefield turning in his favor. Petor’s spear took the life of one distracted by the new arrivals.

“Unspoken Ithram, power my strike!” The man with the hammer cried out, runes blazing like the sun as his eyes and body glowed blue. Valter grunted, his runes flaring, shouldering the hammer.

A rune-empowered shockwave threw two fighters away, Valter staggered as the hammer-user lost his weapon. A look of alarm filled the man’s eyes.

Petor pivoted on his foot and drove his spear forward, under the arm raised to cover the man’s face, it glowed with hungry emerald green flame as it drove into the man’s armor and pierced his core.

Mana manifestation.

There was a tension in his core as it filled halfway with orange flecks and continued. Petor’s control over mana and the amount he could produce jumped. The center of his core now orange, stretching to fill the rest of the red core.

The woman that blessed the new arrivals raised an arbalest, leveled at Desari.

Petor released his spear, drawing a knife from his medallion and threw. “Desari, front right!”

The blade hit a barrier around the fighter right on target for her throat and shattered it, thrown to the side as the startled fighter fired.

Desari half turned, the crossbow’s strength spinning her.

Mya’s weapon cracked, the crossbow woman was flung back, painting the dust covered wall in red. Mya rotated, five more shots, five more bodies.

“Here,” Valter tossed Petor a spear made of metal. His mana flowed through his hands into the weapon, alighting the magma runes, the spear head’s edges lined in red and heat.

Valter stepped back into the fight. Mya muttered spells, dead rising from the ground to the alarm of the fighters.

Less than ten remained.

Desari was wounded, possibly badly. They needed to finish this quickly and check on her.

Petor yelled wordlessly, trying to pull power from some unknown place, those he fought yelled out as he drew power into his hand, empowering him. He drank deep, a heady experience as he shot forward, the gain and loss burned his veins something fierce, like water falls at war inside his body, tearing him apart.  He jabbed forward, his prey’s shield turning his spear as they stepped forward with pre-natural speed, swinging a mace for his head.

Petor dropped, kicking the ground and headbutting the armored soldier, stunning and kicking him away with the force to dent his armor and send him into three of his fellows. Dead rose around them, blades stabbing between the armor plate.

His armor fell from around his face and his arms. His spear becoming more shadow than real. He gritted his teeth against the pain.

He parried another attacker, turning his attack, Petor’s  spear cut back, finding an opening in the man’s gut and tearing free with the smell of burnt meat and a pained grunt.

Shadows, like veins shot through the spear, dragging the man’s life force away and adding it to Petor’s own.

Valter stabbed another brought low by an undead’s attack to the leg. Hurling his blade into a caster, the blade sunk into her chest. She screamed as power rippled through her body, her eyes turning between colors before that power ripped free of her body, killing her and four others around her.

An arrow of white slammed through the helm of another.

The dead groaned, as the last screams of the living succumbed to their ministrations.

Petor coughed spitting blood on the floor, wiping it away with his hand. Green veins ran up his arms, throbbing like acid, burning him from the inside.

He used his spear to push himself upright.

Valter’s armor showed fresh scars upon it. His shoulders heaving with exhaustion as he grabbed the sword he’d thrown. He picked up other weapons and stored them away.

Petor turned back to the others, Desari was holding her shoulder and Mya was reloading her weapons. An undead reached up with a coin purse, it disappeared into one of her several rings.

“How are you?” Petor moved to Desari.

“Hit me in the shoulder, this body is weak,” Desari spat, her eyes flicking to the groups on the floor.

“Let me,” Petor reached out.

Desari flinched and glared at him.

“Oath remember?”

She grimaced and turned her shoulder forward.

“These are three different groups, has to be gods or goddesses to get blessings,” She muttered as Petor checked the wound.

The armor had worked but her rib was broken. Mana flowed through him, pressure leaking out.

She barely grimaced as her bones grinded back together fusing to one another.

“Most are Reds, the woman with the arbalest and the dude with the spear were halfway between mixed and solid Oranges,” Valter said, efficiently looting.

“Need to get a move on. Whatever this is, its not going to be clean,” Desari said.

“Never is with gods,” Mya said, her dagger removing pouches and gear.

Petor removed his hands.

“It’s not fully healed, bones are back in place and well on their way to getting fixed.”

Desari moved her arm around, testing and judging, someone used to pain, figuring out their new limits.

“Good,” she nodded her head once.

Petor retrieved his spear, pulling off coin purses and jewelry from the fallen, coin was always useful and the dead needed it no more. And I’m broke as hell.

“Valter,” The man turned, Petor made to toss him his borrowed spear.

“Keep it, you use it well.”

Petor lowered it. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

He checked his core, his red core was heavily mixed with orange.

The entire room shook, several explosions rang out, the ceiling cracking and raining dust and stone.

“Well fuck me sideways with a rusty dirk,” Mya coughed.

“Time we were leaving,” Desari said.

Valter nodded and headed down the corridor, over the dead, the shaking building ever-more.

Petor jogged after Valter, tightening his grip on his spear.

The cracking grew and sections broke free, falling down.

“Well fuck a donkey with a hot poker, move those buns!”

Petor pressed forward, grunting, his legs burning pitch, his head a banging drum. A section of roof started falling, to block him in. He squeezed power out into his spear driving it into the stone, wincing for his spear.

He altered the block, turning it out of his path pushing on.

The Desari grabbed his toga as he started lagging.

“Not today Petor, not today.”

“Got all the souls I need, don’t need to collect yours boyo!” Mya slapped him on the back as the corridor opened up into a tomb, filled with more of the armored dead, priests and nuns in robes wearing a different symbol from the armored horde lay among the tombs, crypts broken by the fighting.

Valter took the stairs two at a time the cracking turned into a rumbling as sections of the crypt began collapsing. Rock dust rolled out of the opening in the sheer wall they’d come from, creating a cloud that rolled through the crypt over Petor and his group and up the stairs.

Petor held up a hand, unable to see anything as he stumbled up the stairs.

“Valter,” Desari hissed, grabbing onto Petor.

“What?”

“Grab Mya.”

He grunted.

Petor’s feet spun, going for another step but not finding one.

“You can see through this?” He whispered.

“Yes.” She guided him with a hand through what might have been a hall and down some other corridors. Voices called out as they kept jogging.

Light shone through the dust. As she climbed over a broken wall, the sounds of voices could be heard rising in volume.

“This way.”

Something landed in the distance, breaking timber and tumbling stone.

Petor climbed over, blind from the dust, she guided him with a hand on his back. He used the rear of his spear sweeping before him, hearing rock shift as Valter and Mya climbed over the wall. The dust thinned as they caught up with him. He looked back, the front third of a cathedral reaching to the heavens above stood a testament to the faithful’s devotion. The rear two thirds, hidden in the dust.

He knew they were gone, that they had collapsed into the crypt below the cathedral and the mountain it was shoved up against.

“The city is on fire.” Mya said.

Petor blinked away the dust, thick smoke rose over the city, the stone buildings close to the cathedral giving way to the dilapidated slums below. Stone cut through the smoke and over the wall, landing in the slums, fire pots cracking against buildings.

“Its under siege.” Valter said.

“Time to get running, not gawping,” Desari said.

They stole through the streets, passing people dazed people covered in dust and blood, diving into the maze of alleys filled with the waste and detrius of the city. Valter shed his armor, wearing just the toga underneath.

Desari held up her hand as a group of guards rushed past the alley towards the cathedral. She checked the road with the reflection off her dagger.

“Lets go.” She stole across the street.

The city was a series of slums that led to a few stone buildings showing markings similar to the cathedral they’d escaped.

Desari slipped into the alleyway, Petor and the others following her. The stench of unchanged straw leading them to a stable.

“This should be good enough.” Desari glanced at the surrounding windows. One of the building’s had lost its roof and part of the wall, the stone projectile still lodged inside.

The smell and the number of flies and rats in the area told Petor that at least some of the residents hadn’t been lucky enough to avoid the stone.

“What are we doing?” Petor asked as they slipped into the stable.

“Clean off the dust and change into something that’s not a toga.” She hissed back, moving to one of the stalls.

“Want company?” Mya propositioned.

Desari merely pointed to another stall, not breaking her stride.

“You know those back buttons are a real pain in the butt,” Mya pouted and slouched off to her own stall.

Petor stared at his rings and he could see inside of them, potions, herbs, books, filled with water, seeds and food, sleeping gear and other useful items. He drew out fresh clothes.

“Do you have any extra?” Valter asked.

“I don’t think I have anything that would fit you too well,” Petor drew out the largest shirt, pants and undergarments he had.

“Thanks.” The big man had tattoos that matched the runes on his armor running over his body. Petor moved to use the water from a trough. Maybe not. He pulled out a canteen instead of wondering what floated in the trough and washed off the dust quickly, passing it over to Valter.

“Thanks.”

Petor shrugged and pulled on his clothes.

“DEFILERS!”

The voice rang through the mountains and down the slopes. Petor glanced through the hay loft window above, spotting a grey and white horse cutting through the black smoke and fire stained city.

“Going right for the cathedral,” Valter took two gulps of water and passed it back to Petor. Petor drank from the canteen.

“A champion of the gods.” Desari lips twisted into a sour expression, coming out of the stall she’d used.

Petor stilled, his heart leaping in his chest, his stomach swirling with nausea. He pulled on the shirt in his hands, using action to refocus his energy.

“Fucking blow hards,” Mya grumbled, wearing her sailors garb, complete with hat, sword and exploding weapons. “Time to make like a tree and fuck off.”

“Agreed.” Desari said.

“You know trees don’t move,” Petor muttered.

“Maybe the ones you know.”

Petor opened his mouth and closed it. Sure, moving trees, yup totally reasonable.

“So, what’s the plan?” Mya asked.

“Get out of the city, meet up with Limos and get our mounts,” Desari said.

“The city is under siege,” Petor said.

“Good, they have other things to worry about,” Desari said.