Chapter 128: Wraith Vessel

Will was still shaking off the fog of sleep as his body shot to its feet.

Three big blinks and Will was back, orienting on the sound of combat.

It wasn’t coming from the brush-cutting vanguard, but the rear.

Something smart enough to attack from behind, but dumb enough to think they could get away with it.

Climbers? Will thought, spinning and juking around his bedding atop the wagon, leaping off the wagon and sprinting through the air, creating a staircase upwards to give himself height.

Two Ria were faced off against six men with ragged armor, warding them off with claws while a third Ria took the opportunity to split into more reinforcements, forming a wall of flesh between the attackers and the civilians.

The parties guarding the sides of the caravan were then attacked in the moment of distraction as they turned to look at the sound.

BOOM!

Nukers joined the fray as an explosion caught half of one of Will’s combat Parties. Their amor diminished the damage, but they retreated behind a wagon to heal rather than suffer another blast, leaving that side of the camp uncontested.

A flood of Climbers emerged from the woods, aiming for the wagons and the civilians therein.

Mason jumped up on top of a wagon wielding his Staff of the Warmage, and in a flash of superheated air, the flood of climbers driving towards them was dispersed.

Something’s wrong. Will realized, running through his Memory Key.

That wasn’t it. The assault continued unabated, with none of the typical smearing of broken mind-control. Whatever was happening was really happening.

Will saw a mote of flame rise in the shadow of the jungle and send his middle snake to slap it out of the Nuker’s hand.

The resulting flash of light highlighted three more Nukers and at least a dozen more Climbers of various Classes charging stoically forward through the shadowed underbrush, completely heedless of the fact that there was a Tangled replicating in the center of the camp, and that their bretheren had been slapped down by a powerful Nuker.

That would give most people pause.

Matter of fact…Are they the same people, too?

Will took a close look and sure enough, some of the Climbers charging suicidally in shared faces with others.

Tangled?

Then Will spotted it.

One of the attacking Climbers was skewered by the party that had taken shelter behind the wagon. Once Mason had told them it was clear, they charged forward, slamming into the approaching enemies with the force of an avalanche, impaling them on their weapons.

The mortally wounded Climber unraveled into pale, glittering dust and Miasma.

“The Abyss are they?” Will muttered. They were obviously the creation of some Ability or other, but-

BOOM!

Will’s caravan of thought was hijacked for an instant as the opposing Nukers got a shot through, and Mason countered with the opposite element, creating an explosion of superheated steam about halfway between the two.

But they’re using Abilities.

Aside from Tangled, Will had never seen a summoned creature using Abilities of a Climber. Tangled could do it because they were flesh-and-blood, and they only had the one Ability.

Will heard a shriek from the vanguard as Alicia scrambled backwards, Reggie guarding her retreat with his tower shield against multiple Abilities the bounced off of it in rapid succession.

“..can’t see them!” Will faintly made out her voice in the midst of the battle.

So they’re definitely not real. Is there a real one? A summoner?

Will dashed over to where Alicia was backing away from the fighting, her expression haunted as the people around her fought invisible enemies.

“Alicia!” Will said as he landed beside her.

“Y-Yes!” She replied, forgetting her shy whisper in the midst of combat.

“Can you scan the surrounding and pick out a summoner?” Will asked.

She glanced up at him and nodded.

“Try not to die Reggie!” Will shouted, looping a snake around Alicia and flying her over to the vantage point atop the central wagon, where Mason was unleashing blast after blast to cover their ground-based guards.

“The Abyss do you think I am!?” the Tank’s voice faded with distance as he shoved three of the attackers back with a feral roar, opening space for the rest of the vanguard to step forward and impale the attackers.

“Tell me what you see!” Will said to Alicia, gesturing to the surrounding chaos.

Alicia could see through the fake Climbers, through the woods, through the smoke and explosions rocking the entire camp.

She wobbled in place for a second, adjusting to the sudden acceleration and finding herself in a different place. Once she got her bearings, Alicia did a quick spin, her eyes wide and glowing brilliant blue.

“No summoner. There are three civilians being dragged through the forest. That way.” She said, pointing to the rear-right of the caravan.

Will was running before she finished the word ‘that’.

He sped past Ria and tapped the Tangled on the shoulder as he passed. “Push this way!” he shouted to her, dozens of feet ahead before he finished his sentence.

Will dove through the line of expressionless Climbers attacking them, his footsteps sending out rings of churning earth higher than a man that scattered the dolls aside, clearing the way for Ria to fill the gap with more of herself.

Will caught up to the kidnapped settlers in a heartbeat, driving his tomahawk through one illusion before throwing it at a second. Will’s phantom snake yanked the blade out of the man’s dissolving skull and buried it in another, freeing the third civilian.

Will glanced down, his skin going cold as he recognized one of Eolande’s sisters, a horrifying puncture wound in the center of her chest, clearly lethal. Eyes staring.

It’s only been a handful of seconds, Will thought, kneeling down. The body didn’t just instantly shut down.

“Get the others!” He said as several Ria rushed past him, tossing her some spare healing potions.

Sourdough.

82 Charges remaining.

Will dumped half the greater healing potion into her mouth, the rest on the puncture wound.

The staring eyes blinked and a wretched gasp of air filled the air as the girl came back to consciousness, clawing at her still-healing chest.

“Get her to the healers,” Will said, keeping her hands away from the wound long enough for Ria to pick her up and sprint back to the caravan with the young girl, along with another two kidnappees. One of which was a mangled corpse, not breathing like the other two.

Who is…was that?

Think about it later.

Will stood up and looked in the direction the summoned Climbers had been dragging their victims. The summoner didn’t seem to care if they were alive or dead. Wore valuable relics or not.

It’s not Mark Wyrd, or any Climber for that matter. People have value to people. Relics too. If a Lord’s men or any other human Climber were attacking, they would conduct a raid in a businesslike way. Attack the strongest member of the caravan for a minute or two, offer a deal if they won, rob us, take a few slaves.

Even if they accidentally killed some civilians they would just leave them where they died to loot on the way out.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

These things just wanted the bodies. The meat.

This was not human.

With that in mind…Will glanced up in the direction the civilians had been being dragged.

Is this thing clever enough to drag its food to it in a roundabout way? I doubt it. I’ll bet it drew a straight line.

“Ware to the rear!” Mason’s voice cut through the jungle, prompting Will to look over his shoulder, spotting a rush of bodies as the summoned Eidolons redirected their aggression away from the tight lines that were defending the caravan, to rush towards where Will and Ria had made a seemingly weak protrusion in their formation.

…Or is it a knee-jerk reaction because I figured them out? Will thought, glancing into the dark jungle, following the imaginary line.

Will broke into a sprint forward, and the summoned Climber’s faces showed emotion for the first time since they’d begun the assault, their lips peeling back in feral snarls as they charged after him, only to meet Ria’s claws as she literally bloomed outward in every direction.

Ria was living up to both her ideal of heroism, and her Class’s reputation as a monster, flooding the battlefield with some three hundred of the statuesque, nigh-indestructable young woman, each of whom used phantom claws from the Relic Jean was wearing to great effect, protecting the innocent and helpless with savage ferocity.

Seeing the person she’d used to be in each of them. Seeing Frederick Wyrd in every face she tore off.

And I thought Bee had anger issues. Ria had purpose. A terrible will to right wrongs that could no longer be righted. And that could eat away at someone.

I should probably talk to her after this, Will thought, glancing behind him.

The illusory humans began to blink out of existence behind him, even ones that hadn’t been torn apart by Ria’s claws.

They’re repositioning.

Will dropped into a slide, the air above him turning into a skin-melting furnace as a Nuker tried to get the drop on him.

Will kicked the ground, sending up wave of earth that crushed the offending eidolon against a tree before throwing his axe at the most distant summon, burying it in his chest.

Will caught the closest summon’s sword-arm and drove his own weapon through his face while a phantom snake bit deep into the neck of one trying to strike him from behind, yanking it backwards just enough to cause its swing to go wide while Psychic Venom tried to find a hold on the non-living creature.

Another of his phantom snakes grabbed Will’s axe and began laying into the enemies on the sides, creating a straight pathway of unwounded summons charging toward him, with a cluster ahead, seemingly climbing out of the ground to assault him.

Will whipped his foot forward, creating a ripple of earth with a leading edge at knee-height, with a crest that pushed and a trough that pulled.

It was designed to break legs.