[Omen of the Witchblade] Chapter 102 — Day of the Dead

Heath was terrified.

It wasn’t just that there were literal monsters on all sides, but that his party members and friends were attacking them with the reckless abandon of little kids whacking pinatas.

These people are insane.

He kept pumping his daggers, tossing the unending supply of throwing daggers and then using his long-bladed knives when the monsters came in close for the kill.

Though he was the weakest member of the group, he thought he held his own well enough.

With all the ease of a ballerina, Mel twisted into his view, slashed with that odd twinblade thing of hers, and parried a blow that Heath hadn’t even seen coming.

How could he possibly compare to a High Copper? His reaction speed was sluggish next to Mel’s. Even the heavily armored guy with the mace was faster than Heath.

Before he could utter a word of thanks, Mel continued her turn and stabbed into the creature with the other side of the twinblade. She gave it a savage twist. Pale blood blasted out of the insectile creature’s wound, only to be gathered up by Mel’s bloody coat.

Huh, looks a bit like a cremesaver now.

When she ripped out her weapon, the powerful mantis monster fell to the ground, twitching.

Heath knelt and stabbed into its compound eye to finish it off. He looked up at Mel, but she was already gone.

She seemed like an entirely different person among the Magi than the one he had met in that frozen cave. There, she seemed unsure and worried. Here she was in her element.

How could anybody seem so alive when death surrounds them on all sides?

It didn’t make sense to Heath, but he didn’t need to understand her to be her friend. He admired her more than she could ever know.

Her legend continued to grow in his eyes as he watched her twist and spin through a hail of slashing claws the size of catcher’s mitts, snatching, barbed hooked appendages like fishhooks made out of chitin, and magical attacks without taking a scratch.

Heath tried to mimic her unique fighting style. Dual wielding two knives allowed him to approximate her attacks. He could slash up toward his shoulder with one knife and down low with the other. It was a poor man’s twinblade, but as he stepped through the motions that he observed, the effect was difficult to discount.

The monsters that attacked him seemed to recognize the style. They backed away, seeking easier prey despite the fact that he was the only Copper among High Coppers.

Gaining more confidence, Heath pressed deeper into the throng of monsters. They came like the tide. First high, then low, then high again. Stronger, fewer monsters were followed by a wave of countless weak creatures, a brief pause, and then stronger monsters.

It was like the cave was breathing. Inhaling when the weaker creatures were sent out and exhaling when the strong creatures were summoned from…wherever they came.

He didn’t expect he would understand, even if Thomas explained it all to him with visual aids.

Like a lot of things, Heath didn’t need to know how things worked just to use them to his advantage. He was so tired, but he couldn’t let himself be the first one to tap out.

Everybody was working so hard. They were doing so incredibly well. Heath checked the standings every chance he got. He didn’t think anybody else realized that they had slipped into the first spot yet.

[Convocation Standings]

Time Remaining: 1:33 (0:31)

===(1) Mel + Gwen + Thomas + Heath===

(2) Charlie + Adam + Almace

(3) Jacob/Fenris + Camilla + Shrubley/Smudge

(4) Sylvie/Komachi + Miranda/Sose + Cal + Hal

(5) Yok’sal + Semthra + Shae’kathoth

(6) Ashera + Solomon + Victor + Aegis

(7) Cooper + Noah + Zoey + Sofia + Flynn

(8) Louis + Jean-Luc + Claudette + Simone

(9) Bertram + Alexander + Bocar + Karim

(10) Kolkab + Urkath + Cesseli

It was amazing to see his name up there with the Magi. It was almost enough to give him his fifth wind. He doubted Mel even saw the golden points of light that anointed her brow like a proper crown.

It looked nothing like the tawdry thing they had all been given at the start.

Heath needed to make sure she kept it. He slashed out with a dagger at a lean tarikan. The blade raked the otherwise preoccupied creature across the muzzle. It snarled and turned to him, murder in its eyes. Heath staggered to the side to avoid the counterattack and took a hit to the gut for his sluggishness. It felt like somebody had sucker punched him.

The wounds were mounting. Health tried his best to ignore them, to keep up with everybody else, but that last one left a mark.

The tarikan even turned its head and found better prey, as if Heath was already dead.

Charlie, the beautiful Necromancer, descended amongst the group. She had an air of darkness about her that went past the aura of power all High Coppers radiated.

The skeleton minions shuddered, giving warning to the Magi about what was going to happen. They collapsed into piles of bones. The Magi filled in the gaps the minions left behind.

A wave of [Vital Harvest] went out. Charlie never seemed to use the two aspect skills at the same time.

She called out something, but Heath couldn’t make out the words. His ears rang as his legs gave out from under him.

He tried to make them move. To make anything move, but his body wouldn’t listen to him. Heath looked down and realized that the sucker punch from the tarikan had been a little more severe than he thought.

His black armor was slick with blood, and he was pretty sure he could see red muscle within the three long serrated wounds scoring his middle.

Huh.

Charlie knelt above him, skull and bones glowing darkly through her skin. She reached out with a hand altered in black and white, fingers dripping pearlescent energy.

Aspect Skill: [Premonition of the Reaper]

Once again, Heath was terrified. He definitely didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to be helped along by a personification of Death.

Aspect Skill: [Lifeweave]

Despite his overwhelming fear, Charlie pulled him back from the brink of death. The countless wound markers shrinking his health bar to a sliver faded away, although his health didn’t rebound like he feverishly hoped it would.

Instead, another health bar overlaid onto his own.

Support: [Life Shroud]

[Life Shroud]: Erects a galvanizing Shroud of HP proportional to the number of wounds healed by [Lifeweave]. Cannot stack with self.

Heath wasn’t familiar with healing. He liked to avoid getting wounded at all costs. The few times he took even a minor wound, he limped about for hours until it slowly healed on its own. Then again, that was before he was Copper and the blessing for wound recovery vanished.

With this latest crash course, he realized how devastating wounds actually were.

This isn’t like a game at all, he thought frantically. She can close the holes in my stomach, but she can’t restore the health I already lost.

A shimmering shell of ethereal bones covered him. They were thickest where his wounds had been most severe.

Without [Life Shroud], I’d be one stiff breeze away from death’s door.

The fluttering of wings in the darkness above presaged another attack. Heath, already on his back, pointed up at the fluttering shapes, trying to warn them.

Eerily calm, Charlie looked over her shoulder, then back at Heath. “You good, dude?”

He nodded dumbly.

“Good.” She stood up, dusted her hands, then put her index and thumb into her mouth and whistled loudly.

Heath watched in confusion as Almace and Adam reacted immediately, shifting to the higher shelf. Charlie hopped up and landed on her staff as it lifted her higher to join the others.

She raised a hand to the side of her mouth. “This is where we part ways, my friends! May the best group win. Which is us, as we’ll have the better hunting spot! Ta-ta!”

Mel, blood dripping from several small cuts on her face, glared at Charlie as gravestones rippled along the higher shelf, preventing access. The betrayal was further cemented when most of the condensed [Vital Harvest Orbs] bounced past the gravestones on strings of [Faedust Weave].

“You bitch!” Mel shouted, then added under her breath, “Call me.”

***

In all the confusion, a face full of gnashing teeth and grasping claws broke past the preoccupied Mel and Gwen, aimed at the only person still wearing a [False Crown]. Thomas hardly even saw the creature. He pivoted on the balls of his feet, whipped out his wand, and swiped it up.

A hemisphere of light flashed as the creature’s dagger-like talons raked across the shield of magic inches from Thomas’ face.

Aspect Skill: [Bastet’s Aegis]

Continuing the motion, Thomas came up and backhanded the creature’s long lizard-like snout to stun it. He may be a Warmage, but he had trained in hand-to-hand combat for lifetimes. He was no helpless man in a robe, unable to defend himself if his mana ran out.

Condensing his mana into a single point at the end of his index and middle finger, Thomas jabbed beneath the creature’s jaw and let loose a tiny bead of glowing light.

“Incoming!” he shouted up to Charlie’s group on the higher shelf. It was the only warning they would get.

Applying his overriding will to the Summer aspect, Thomas kept the condensed bead of fire in its smaller form. An interesting side-effect of being condensed was that it acted like a much larger, heavier force despite the compact size.

It scorched the bottom of the lizard’s jaw, but the force of its launch was such that it dragged the creature dozens of feet into the sky as if it was a fish on a hook. That is until Thomas released his hold on the skill.

Charlie, still riding her staff, swerved out of the way just in time for the lizard man to pull his head off the bead of flame. Thomas detonated the attack as soon as the creature got an eyeful of its doom.

Aspect Skill: [Vulcan Fireball]

The flames blossomed and expanded like a rising sun. Flying creatures were roasted alive. Thomas cast his golden gaze to the ceiling high above. “Shit.”

Swirling high above in the darkness were countless flying monsters. Revealed by Thomas’ fireball, they chose that exact moment to attack.

They dove like a rain of arrows toward the group’s only undefended side, the top. Wicked beaks, razor-sharp talons, and screeching fanged maws dove toward the separated groups.

Mel threw up a heavy barrier of [Hidden Mist], raising it above them to screen their position and illuminate the diving creatures.

Thomas threw another [Vulcan Fireball] out, dismissed his wand, held up a bar of sunlight in his hand, and tossed a javelin of streaking power into the thickest group of monsters.

The creatures hit first turned to ash, but that wasn’t the most impressive part of [Sunspear]. The fiery ashes spread to the nearest creatures, burning them and spreading the flaming damage across the entire group.

Every creature that perished turned into a miniature bomb of flaming ash, spreading the pain further.

Aspect Skill: [Sunspear]

Thomas shook his head and continued the assault. [Thunderbolt] and [Sunspear] went out whenever he could manage it. Fireballs lit up the sky, and were soon joined by what few ranged attacks Gwen and Mel possessed.

Black ravens rushed through the screen of mist, but they only took out a few of the monsters. Though Heath had far more ranged skills, they were significantly weaker.

Charlie’s group, higher up and closer to the monsters, took the bulk of the kills even with Thomas and Mel’s superior area-of-effect skills.

There was no need for a barrier when the rain of destructive attacks from both groups formed a field of destruction just as effective and ten times as devastating.

Thomas’ face lit up with prismatic light as the monster wave was vanquished. The air turned into an aurora of lights from the attacks and the ribbons of colorful runes that twisted through the darkness toward them like currents of air.

Which was why Thomas never saw the knife that came for his spine.