Chapter 248 – Battle Through the Jungle

Feng continued to lead the way, looking grim. Another oniwyrm howl echoed through the jungle. When Mirian glanced back at the lesser titan corpse, it was shrouded in abnormally dark patches. Light eaters. At least they’d be too busy scavenging the corpse to bother with them.

Her father had told her about what would happen next. For far too many creatures in the Jiandzhi, two things meant food: loud noise and strong magic. The creatures needed a lot of food, but as she’d seen deep in the frostlands of the Endelice Mountains, powerful souls were an even more important source of energy for most myrvites. Something tossing around powerful magic just meant tastier prey.

Mirian scanned the forest, her active detect life spell overwhelmed by the abundance of soul energy. Still, through the misty souls of the trees, she could see the first oniwyrm approaching. There was something else moving, though. It was like there was a cloud of souls moving toward them from the south.

She turned to Gaius. “What’s that?” she said, pointing.

“Hmm.” He scratched his head. “Ah. Probably a swarm of some kind. It looks like its moving towards the lesser titan, but if it crosses our path it might attack. Could be leech beetles. No, that’s not quite right, those swarms are smaller. Acid ants?”

“What?” Gabriel said, slightly shrill.

“But there’s some above the ground,” Mirian said.

“Oh, acid ants can fly.”

Gabriel started shaking his head. “This jungle. This bloody fucking jungle.”

Mirian looked to the other side. Another of the oniwyrms. “They’re all going to hit us about the same time. Atrah, can you deal with the swarm?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Mirian’s years on the battlefield returned to her. “Ibrahim, take the oniwyrm coming from the west. I’ll take the one coming from the east. Gabriel, if anything aims for the caravan, get its attention. Until then, veil the group with light and sound suppression spells—don’t give me that look, I can see the wands at your belt. Feng, you and the caravaneers keep the marusaurs under control. Jei, shields and minor combat spells to protect the group. That searing fire spell of yours will be useful if the ants get through.”

Feng looked about as tense as a taut cord, but he nodded, grim determination on his face. Jei nodded. Mirian hated to see the fear in her face too. I’ll protect them, she vowed. My actions will give them hope.

The crack of branches grew closer. This time, the howl of the oniwyrm felt like it was right on top of them. From out of the green came a spiraling serpent body, crashing madly through the brush, pieces of it vanishing as it coiled through the fourth dimension.

Mirian levitated in the air, spellbook hovering open before her. She opened her palms to the sky.

The oniwyrm was moving fast. Its strange mask-like shell opened up, revealing its five jaws and the terrifying hooked teeth. It lunged.

The time for silence was over. Mirian hit it with a fully powered greater lightning. Bolts splashed out of it into the trees, setting trunks ablaze. The oniwyrm reeled back, flesh charred and jaws ripped off. A tree, trunk shattered, began to topple, and Mirian grabbed it with lift object, bringing it smashing down on the oniwyrm’s head.

She prepared another spell, then realized she didn’t need it. The oniwyrm was dead. As she shackled its soul to her repositories, she turned to Ibrahim. As the western wyrm lunged at him, he leapt right at the mouth. As the mouth moved to close over him, he was already inside it, blade slamming through the soft tissue on the inside, driving right into the brain.

The creature was dead before it finished hitting the ground.

Her attention shifted to the thousands of small souls to the south being snuffed out as the swarm of acid ants arrived and met Gaius’s killing field. Mirian joined in, casting mass kill alongside her father. The foliage wilted before their eyes as the insects died by the thousands. Flying ants rained down from the air, and the leaves and soil sizzled with the acid dripping from their pincers.

Then, Mirian watched in fascination as the swarm began to resist the death curse, tendrils of souls reaching out to each other like threads spontaneously forming to become a tapestry. A spirit construct, she realized. It would be fascinating to study.

But right now, she needed them dead.

As the swarm began to cross past Gaius’s spell, Mirian made a force wall in front of the group, then dropped an inferno spell on the other side of it. The air thickened with the smell of burning bugs and smoking leaves.

Within minutes, it was over, and all that was left of that section of forest was wilted and blackened jungle. The trees still stood, but they were dead.

The caravaneers had frozen, looking at the section of deadened forest in fear. The marusaurs had all gone and sat down next to different bushes in an attempt to hide.

“Move!” Mirian said. Not exactly the emotion I’d hoped to inspire, she thought.

Feng hesitated, then signaled for the caravan to keep moving. They gathered up the marusaurs and got them moving again.

The mist jellies hit them next. Mirian almost didn’t see them; fog was hanging just above the canopy, and the tentacles dripping with glass-like needles were nearly on top of them when she noticed the glare of a strong soul just above them.

“Above!” she called, and sent a lance of fire searing through the creature. The beam pierced it, but that hardly slowed it down. The creatures had de-centralized nervous systems. There was no weak point. They had to be destroyed entirely.

As the tentacles continued to descend, Mirian used burning force blades, then sending them out like a storm. Dozens of burning blades scythed through the air, cutting the tentacles into pieces. As they fell, she hit them with force blast to send them flying away.

She missed one. It came down nearly on top of the group, still writhing. The poison-coated needle hit one of the caravaneers and his marusaur. “Ga—Atrah! Can you deal with the poison?” Mirian snapped out. She put up a massive force barrier across the canopy as two more mist jellies floated down. Fog spilled out across the barrier as Mirian filled the air with burning blades.

The air started to smell like carcasses rotting on a beach. As the last pieces of the jellies came down, Mirian tilted the entire force barrier sideways. Fragments of mist jelly rained down to the left of the caravan, squelching as they covered the branches and splattered onto the ground.

“Third oniwyrm,” Mirian snapped. Ibrahim had drawn his sword again and was already moving towards the beast. Seeing Mirian’s attention on it, he opened his palm. To Mirian’s surprise, the sword flew towards the beast on its own, but not using any kind of force spell she was familiar with. It slammed into the oniwyrm, just below the shell-mask, cutting it in the neck. Mirian followed up with shatter stone. The powerful force spell cracked open its mask, sending the oniwyrm’s head snapping back. As Ibrahim summoned his sword back to himself, Mirian sent a modified force drill into the exposed neck. Blood splattered outward as she widened the hole, and then she sent an enhanced force blade into the gap, having it snap outward like spring-loaded blades. The head fell to the ground, while the body writhed for a moment, blood painting the leaves and trunks, before the body collapsed to the ground.

Her father watched her coolly, done healing the poison. “Impressive, but inefficient. The Jiandzhi isn’t dangerous because of a single myrvite, or even a group. The Jiandzhi is dangerous because they’ll keep coming. When I had to retreat, it was because of attrition.”

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it’s taken without the author’s consent. Report it.

To punctuate his words, they heard another roar in the distance.

“Understood,” Mirian said. As she landed back on the ground, she said to Ibrahim, “You didn’t tell me about that dervish form.”

Ibrahim gave her a toothy smile.

“I know you have to be extending your aura outward, but then there must be some sort of transformation effect to turn that into force of magnetism. How? Without a catalyst….”

He shrugged. “It works. I don’t need to know the why of it.”

The necromancer shook his head. “If he was purely manipulating aura, he would need a catalyst. There’s no way around that. Perhaps he’s sending out threads of soul energy. Given the right flows, you could have them degrade into a chosen energy type. I don’t doubt the Triarchy’s dervishes were clever enough to come up with a method.”

Gabriel looked at them both. “You’re both seriously discussing arcane theory right now? God’s blood, you’re all insane.”

“Sanity is relative,” Atrah Xidi said.

“Sanity is defined by those that rule. It becomes a shackle that binds the masses into subservience,” Ibrahim said.

Gabriel threw up his hands and stormed off to the head of the caravan.

More roars echoed through the jungle.

“If we can pick up the pace, we should,” Gaius said in a low voice to Mirian. “If we encounter a mating pair of lesser titans, that can be a serious problem.”

Mirian levitated herself forward, landing next to Feng. “Can the marusaurs move any faster?” she asked.

“They can, they just won’t. You’re welcome to see for yourself how difficult it is.”