27 Chapter Twenty-Seven - The Purge Begins (1/2)

The Unseelie Nymph and her cohort of needlemen and minotaur love-slaves died first.

Actually, it turned out she had a werewolf lover. The power of the moon easily healed away any damage her presence did to him, leaving him a besotted lycanthrope who wasn't reduced to a glittering idiot by her touch.

It didn't save him from a sword in the back of the skull when he came slinking out of the dead copse and I dropped down on him from thirty feet above. His skull smashed into the ground, Tremble pinned him there, and he began to burn away with vivus.

I noted with professional interest that the vivic flames were drifting in the direction of the dead trees. I smiled slightly as I flitted into the forest with a stealth modifier in the +30 range, not touching the ground.

There were fifteen needlemen remaining, scattered throughout the corpse of the copse. Fifteen minutes later, there were none left, and they hadn't even managed to shoot off any needles and alarm anyone.

My guess that there was a pool was spot on, a rivulet of a stream coming down from the canyon wall, and draining away through a crack in the rocks.

There was nothing living there, although skins of beasts and creatures were scattered here and there to lounge in, and the stink of minotaurs was definitely in the air.

Getting past the first guard was a function of getting his eyes to look in the wrong direction. Since all he wanted to do was look at the nymph and not be on guard, that wasn't hard. I flowed past him in silence, avoiding the second guard dozing off to one side, and circling around the pool.

She was truly lovely, if you liked skin whiter then milk and hair the color of blood. I could feel the impact of her beauty on my Null, which promptly diluted it into a rather horrifying kind of ”oh gods, that is pure damn poison” as I looked at her.

I could feel magic here and there, which meant she was a spellcaster, especially if she could keep her silks that clean while in the wild.

She disrobed casually, and the snorts of the minotaurs, so laden with lust, brought a knowing look to her eyes. She walked towards the pool of water for her morning bath, and then paused.

White flames were flowing through the dead trees in the distance, silent as flowing mist, but as they ate away the wood that had been leached of life, the crackling of trunks and branches beginning to collapse started to echo down the passage, and raised the alarm.

All their attention in that direction, I moved.

Tremble was whisper-quiet as I glided behind her and cut with Blooding up, and severed her spine below her neck. She barely felt it, starting to turn her head as she felt a moment of pain as a long red line cut across her neck… and then she fell down as her body refused to obey her.

The giant constrictor in the pool might have been a surprise if I hadn't found the remains of its meals over here, and recognized them as snake vomit. As it lunged out of the pool with gaping fangs… whisk, its head and neck parted ways.

The nymph wanted to scream, but she had fallen half into the pool with a splash, and made no noise. I circled the pool, going for the hapless minotaurs. Their eyes turned from the strangely quiet conflagration eating the copse-corpse, and the first one's neck was severed half-through.

The one supposed to be guarding hefted his axe, and his arms warped and swelled in size and reach. The massive axe came down, but I juked and slid, crouching down, skating over the last ten feet between us before rising to drive Tremble up under his ribs and into his heart with enough force to send him stumbling back, a torrent of blood flowing out from the fatal wound.

He couldn't believe someone my size could punch a sword through all his hide and muscle, but it didn't matter, as his life poured out him as quickly as his friend staggering and gushing out his gallons of red stuff behind me.

I left them to stumble about and fall. The vivic flames were coming this way, and would soon consume their corrupted bodies just like they were the dead trees.

I hauled the Unseelie up out of the water. She could breathe water, so she was in no danger, but the wound wouldn't heal even if she shape-shifted, so she'd be paralyzed regardless. I passed my hand up and down her hair, and half a dozen charms that probably had some really nasty stuff worked into them fell off with the locks they were tied to.

”You, you dare touch me?” she spat out, unable to process what was happening. I turned her head around to look at my face, let her eyes rove over the side of my face, neck, and shoulder. I grinned to show my double canines to her, and she gawked despite herself.

”A Hagchild?! How…where...who is your mother?” she demanded of me imperiously.

I jammed an intestine baggie into her mouth and slammed her jaw shut. It didn't taste too good, but I just held her mouth shut, and the potion did its thing even if she didn't really swallow it.

And she began to shrink.

She wriggled in my grasp as I began to get a lot larger in her eyes, and I kept looking in her magnificently twisted eyes as she went from being almost six feet tall to about ten inches tall in under ten seconds. Naturally I could hold her in one hand now.

”I've been told that I'm guilty of killing a nymph out there,” I said in perfect Fey, as my lips spread wide. Cue the double set of canines. ”Killed her and her sylph friend, and ate them. Entirely possible, what a Hagborn will do as she's dying. Here, I thought I'd even out the balance, you know. Enjoy yourself.”

My Vajra extended inside and out. Yeah, she was big to just swallow, but she went down as easily as an eel, hit my gut which was pumping out a level of acid you don't see this side of a dragon, and managed to scream for almost a full minute down in there before she died.

My Vajra whisked the solids away. I held my breath as the unneeded water mass of her came surging up my throat in gradual decompression, and puked it all over my Sword and down into the pool, which began to burn white, and feed on the cursed energy here that had kept her defilement hidden.

The meat and bones and stuff, well, my genetics had things to learn from them. We'd see how it went. Fey were creatures of magic, and magic made them tougher and stronger than mere humans.

What magic could do to a body, a Diamond Vajra could emulate, with a whole lot of Soul to help the process.

Tremble smashed those trinkets of hers one by one, drinking in the magic happily, storing it up to refine, purify, and help power it up with. The shadow of a familiar hymn began to caress the air, and I smiled despite myself.

What jewelry and tokens from admirers she had would be over in her sex chamber over there, I'd use Tremble in Firephasing form to melt them down and bollox up any scryers. There were things I could do with them, of course, but no way I was going to take something from a spellcaster, especially a witch, without totally reforging it to fuck up scryers.

One witch down, probably not a member of the coven. What was even more fun is that the flames from the vivus were unwhite, not bright, and almost invisible in the mist and fog with any distance. They weren't going to know she was dead until something came up here to investigate and found the entire area and all the bodies burned down to pure white ash and dust.

It was time to be killing.

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I went after the wolves.

They were joined by a couple of barghests, goblin-wolf demons from the Fires of Gehenna. Obviously Summoned in to provide some real intelligence and fun and joy to the proceedings. It was only a square mile of territory, most of it swamp, surely they could find anyone in it quickly enough.

My Null crushed their Summoning and sent them howling back home. All they saw was a blur of black in wolf fur.

The wolves with them were taken care of by more direct methods. They did manage to yelp and snarl a bit, and keen ears not too far away heard them.

By the time they got there, the wolves were already on vivic fire, skulls cracked open and half dusted.

There were no tracks. There was no scent. The wolves' jaws were clean, no blood. There was a splash of whiteness there and there, where the barghests had vanished abruptly. They'd been young ones, getting sent back to the Fires effectively doomed them as prey or slaves to stronger ones of their kind.

Within a day, there were no more wolves moving around the valley.

---

Naturally enough, my antics had all of them on edge. Quite sensible of them, as I planned to kill every damn unclean thing living here.

I took out The Tent next.

The ogres could only cover so many angles around the thing, and anyways weren't exactly concerned about the thing. The undead skins would moan at the presence of any intruders, animate to attack and kill them, and so basically The Tent guarded itself.

However, normal intruders couldn't walk up to The Tent, and look the chained and tortured spirits in the eye, raising a Sword burning vivic, and state in Necrus, ”Remain silent, look elsewhere, and I will set you free.”

Phantasmal eyes stared at me in shackled multitudes, ready to cry warnings, to writhe and reach for me, and then they all turned around and looked in the opposite direction.

Vivic fire touched unliving skins, and unwhite fire burst into life. Two vials of alchemical fire joined in, and the two flames mixed and flared. In seconds, a thee-meter square of The Tent was on fire, yet not a sound was heard from the spirits as they vanished into the flames.

I walked into the back end of The Tent here, some sort of storage area for alcohol of the cheap and potent kind, and began to steal my way through the interior as red-white flames jumped from skin to skin, and trapped spirits finally began to scream in ecstasy as they were set free.

The ogres certainly weren't expecting their tent to be on fire, or someone to start killing them inside it. Two ogres sleeping received tonics to their spinal cortices via way of the throat, a third almost stepped on me, and I ran up his side and inserted Tremble into his ear. He crashed down as the first deep bellows of alarm rang out.

Ropes burned through, the support poles faltered and fell down, and the unliving tent began to collapse in sections, covering those beneath it in burning undead hides who might or might not have begun to throttle them in flaming flayed skin.

I hamstrung two more ogres, and left them to bake as the tent came down on them, and furs and crude wooden furniture added to the conflagration, as well as taking away any oxygen. I scooted out the side, right behind an ogre hurrying to the back side of the tent to see if anyone was there. I was out into the darkness and sliding into the swamp waters before anyone caught sight of me, and watched from the cover of a bunch of slimy algae as the ogres, including Dear Brother, stood around staring haplessly at the fire.

Well, I'd be damn stupid not to take advantage of them being all spread out and staring at the fire stupidly, wouldn't I?

Dripping lots of dark slime, I exited cover and made my way to the most isolated of the remaining six ogres, who were laughing as one of the ones I'd hamstrung managed to crawl out of the burning tent, severely burned all over.

Their attention focused on the seared hide of their unfortunate associate, ridiculing him mercilessly, I hopped up and drove Tremble through the backside of one of them at about forty kph, dumping all my momentum into my Sword with Spirited Charge, and took him down instantly.

He stumbled and fell forward, only feeling something punch in from behind and slide coldly through his heart before I kicked off him, flattened down into his shadow and sliding backwards out of sight as he fell down awkwardly.

It took the ogres a few breaths to notice he was down, as fire and entertainment had their attention. Hagbrother mine noticed first, being a wee bit smarter and more alert to his brethren, and shouted out to the fallen one aggressively. The ogres snapped all their heads around, staring at the one who wasn't moving.

I hit the one in back, just as one of the barrels of booze lit off and contributed more noise and blue flames to the sight of flames red and white leaking spirits like smoke. Tremble went into the back of his thick neck, making sure he didn't make any weird noises as I heaved back on his greasy hair. His knees went out, but I shifted his center of gravity back, and he didn't fall forwards, more straight down rather heavily, and I got off my ride smoothly, vectoring around as the ogres turned back to look around, and gawked at the sight of the one sitting there kneeling, his broad gut keeping him in place as blood gushed down from his throat. He was still alive, his bulging eyes moving frantically, but bleeding out like a sacrificed cow.

Four left, plus brother mine.

Number Four got it in the groin, severing the major arteries and driving up into his guts. He made a curious sound as I moved away from the things that began to pour down out of the hole reaching from his anus to his balls under his weight, and I slid past Three, crossing his back under his armor, and severing his spine. His instinctive attempt to turn instead sent him falling over into number Two awkwardly.

There was an instant and reflexive dust-up as Two caught Three and heaved him away, and I came up his back and opened his throat right under the eyes of the last two.

The fountain of blood jetted over three meters into the air as he gurgled, clutching at his throat instinctively as I dropped down behind him.

Hagbrother roared, spiked tetsubos rose, and I slid around the side of Two, ducking under the descending smash of One, and was suddenly right in front of him without actually taking a step.

I carved open his bulging gut from north to south, slicing through the thick hide, layers of fat, and bands of muscles with a whisper-smooth slash just under the edge of his patchwork breastplate. Huge bulges of intestines began to spill out almost instantly, but disemboweling wasn't going to kill this thing anytime soon. However, tripping over his own guts was definitely going to slow him down.

Hagbrother charged at me, but I kicked to the side, spun around One's legs as he tried to decide between grabbing his guts and swatting at me with his log-sized tetsubo. Hagbrother added to his woes by literally chopping off that monstrously thick leg with one swing of his great Halberd. Obviously, he was the ruthless and decisive sort who realized that One was going to die anyways, no need to be nice to him.

However, that delightfully put his Halberd down low with an ogre falling over on it. He had no choice to pull it back, and I was coming over his buddy's backside as he toppled, Tremble humming proudly as I lunged out for his face.

He jerked back, but not far enough, and my blade slid through his thick neck… and did absolutely nothing, as red energy spurted into the air behind the path of my sword, instantly closing the wound, and leaving naught but an angry red scar behind.

Health Qi. Wonderful, first time in this world. My feet met his chest, and he didn't budge, glaring at me with his yellow eyes, and then blinking in surprise as I smiled and revealed the same pairs of canines as he had, although much smaller. Then before he could grab me, I was kicking off him, launching myself back into a full layout somersault, hitting the ground and sliding another five meters backwards over the rough, stony ground like it was ice.

His yellow eyes narrowed. ”Hag?” he asked, his voice way deeper than human, bringing that Glooms-Pattern Dire Halberd up.

”Your little half-sister,” I replied in Jotun, staying low, Tremble raised to my shoulder with both hands.

He blinked again in shock, understanding what the words meant, but not what they implied. ”You have come to kill Mother?” The ridicule in his voice didn't have to be feigned.

”And all my aunties and grannies, too,” I replied evenly, keeping his eyes without effort. The unnatural steadiness of my Sword, locked in place with my Ki, started a flower of fear in his eyes. He had a lot of experience with dangerous females shorter than his three-some meters of armored self. ”I'm also going to kill you, Hagbrother, so don't worry about being surprised. It's not going to matter long.”

He growled, sounded like someone trying to start a car, and the Halberd spun with power and control. ”You think it will be so easy?” he asked proudly.

I tilted my soles marginally, and slid to the left without moving my feet. He watched me drifting sideways, and massive knuckles creaked on the haft of his poleaxe. Rather than watching me circle, his feet braced and readied to jump forwards.

I was absolutely sure he could reach me with one jump, and timed it perfectly as he pounced, whipping up his massive Halberd for a massive cross-cut.