This was also expected but other than killing them all there was no real counter to such a reaction. The particular group was almost a dozen strong and I couldn’t tell how close the others were even with my vampirism. With so much death and increasing carnage around me, the vampire was becoming distracted and it was taking most of my willpower to simply hold it at bay. At that point there was nothing that I wanted to do more than be unleashed as it had those few times before and utterly destroy every single one of our enemies. I couldn’t smell my companions over the amount of spilled blood and with the bandits and the villagers huddling in their huts I couldn’t differentiate between my companions, the locals and those we needed to kill as the vampire considered them all to be little more than prey.
Some of the lit torches suddenly began sailing through the night as those holding them tossed them onto the nearest huts or raised them to ignite the semi-damp thatch roofs. Our only saving grace was like it had every afternoon we had spent in the marshes it had rained and ensured that setting the village ablaze was not an easy task.
Defeating the bandits was unfortunately just as difficult despite their poor equipment and dispositions. Almost to a man, they were equipped with a varied collection of bows and my darting figure was unfortunately too easy to spot within the shadows of flickering torchlight. Within the first seconds of bursting from cover and sprinting towards them as fast as I could, I found myself facing down at least two of the bandits drawing back hard on their bowstrings. A poorly thrown torch sailed through the air and bounced off the wall nearby and even if I wasn’t fearful of discovery of my true nature I was suddenly unable to call up my ability to merge with the shadows. I was also illuminated which ensured that when I roared and urged my body to even greater speeds to attempt to cross the twenty metre gap between me and the group.
An arrow buzzed past me and despite myself and my battle cry I winced at how close it had come to hitting me in the chest. A second followed the first in close succession and despite myself I managed to twist to the side and narrowly dodged its owner’s better accuracy. by now the skin and flesh of my face was tightening under my mask and I could feel my fangs sliding from my gums even as I mentally beat and thrashed against the growing shadows seeping from the core of my being.
Before I could finish crossing the distance between me and the band of cutthroats there was a darting figure appear from one of the rooftops to their rear who dived, struck the ground as lightly as an acrobat in a tight roll in their midst and came up with sword in hand. To my left there was an earth shaking roar that was as solid as a punch to the stomach, making itself felt from its primeval intensity and startling the bandits even more than myself and the rolling figure in their midst did.
As I rushed to join the sudden melee that had erupted in the packed street I saw how one of the bandits dropped with his throat cut away with a single contemptuous slice. Another lost a hand before being stabbed in the heart, his dagger being ripped from a sheath on his chest as he crumpled and being thrust into a shrieking woman’s groin as she tried and failed to strike the nimble opponent slaughtering them. One of the bowmen screamed as he turned with a drawn bow only to have it cut in half with a slice of a thin bladed rapier that also severed the bowstring and his fingers without any effort at all.
Detane killed with all his usual scorn and disgust for everything and everyone around him and he was killing the bandits without mercy or hesitation. At some point in the few short minutes since we had burst from the hut he too had clambered up onto the huts and had used this height to outflank the group that we now faced. Without any hesitation on his part he had made the leap from the roof to the ground, rolling as skilfully as Viconia could and proving that beneath the poison of his personality was an extremely capable fighter. His sword flashed in ways that had only been hinted at during Viconia and my brief viewing of his training and none of the bandits were equal to the task of killing him.
The bellowed roar from the other direction announced the towering Falid purposely stomping his way down the street with the inexorability of a landslide. Unlike the rest of us he was incapable of jogging or running in his armour, at least not quickly and had to settle with a fast paced march. Although with how large his stride was, it ensured that he walked almost as fast as I could jog. He was enormous, undeniably powerful but what none of us were expecting, myself included was just how intimidating he was in battle.
His size and bulk, combined with the way that he stood a full two and a half metres tall in his winged helm was terrifying enough but now he appeared as though spawn from the depths of Oblivion itself. Smoke was billowing out of every gap and seam in his armour and a burning flame licked and swirled out from every joint and from within the darkness of his helm. It was as though the towering Redguard had somehow channelled the burning fury of a flame atronach into his very flesh, igniting his skin and leaving his armour filled with the roaring embers. It illuminated him from within and turned his visage into a truly horrifyingly daedric one.
Those who looked upon the towering Black Knight striding towards them lost themselves to fear and more than one attempted to turn and flee from him. Instead they found themselves trapped with a pair of master swordsmen in their midst and armed with nothing more than mallets, bows, daggers and spears they were completely outmatched even without our skill. I killed three before Falid managed to get them within reach of his sword, and Detane was killing with impunity despite being in the very middle of the group
I caught one hand holding a military pick as it swung toward my chest, spearing the owner through the chest and blocking the only shortsword in the group as it tried desperately to cut my arm. One of the bandits shrieked in terror as the flame wreathed visage of Falid lifted his sword high above his head and brought it down with earth shattering force, cleaving him in two in a way that only the Light of Dawn could match. Detane twisted aside from a blow of a mallet that would have broken every rib in his chest and almost contemptuously cut the woman’s throat as easily as breathing before she could redress and attack again.
One of the last surviving bandits, terrified at the prospect of approaching death had taken advantage of Detane’s attention being drawn away from him and thrust forward with a steel tipped spear in a last do-or-die attack. Against someone like myself or Falid it would have been wasted on armour unless it penetrated a joint or seam, but against Detane in his rusting, decaying armour it was a mortal blow. With the vampire thundering in my veins I slipped my sword out of my own dying foe, grabbing Detane by the shoulder and wrenching him backwards in a way that almost pulled him entirely out of the way of the spear.
Instead of smashing in the centre of his chest and impaling him through the sternum, the wicked point ripped through the brigandine along his side. Several of the armoured plates were torn free, chiming as they stuck the ground but instead of tasting flesh and blood the spear didn’t even cut the tunic he wore underneath.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
The bandit had just enough time to realise that he had failed before one hundred and sixty centimetres of ebony blade chopped down hard and bisected him from shoulder to thigh as easily as he had been a strip of bacon. The spear clattered to the ground, the wooden shaft splintered as a result of Falid’s blow but the tip with its metal prongs were left trapped in Detane’s leather.
Gripping it tightly and twisting this way and that, the diminutive Breton began swearing with such violence and emotion that it put most legionaries, and many sailors to shame. After a second or two of infuriation he managed to rip it free and he turned in rage.
“Don’t you ever deign to touch me again!” he snapped, using the tip of his rapier to underline his words as he pointed it at my throat.
Stepping back as though I had been slapped I too felt my anger rise “I was helping you out, you arsehole! I didn’t think that you were going to appreciate a spear tickling your lungs!”
The anger remained but there was a sudden and inexplicable shadow that passed his eyes so quickly that I was left wondering if I had seen it in the first place. He spat on the ground near my feet, sneered with a potency that even put Viconia to shame and ran off without a further word towards the sounds of further fighting. There was a feeling that I had just seen something that I should have had more understanding of and I found myself playing the snatches of the fight in my mind as it tried to make sense of the usual post battle confusion.
A gauntlet almost as large as my head came to rest on my shoulder and snapped me out of my jumbling thoughts and the pounding of blood and adrenaline through my veins. Falid stood at my shoulder, his armour no longer smoking and a pair of glints in the depths of his visor that were no longer consumed by flame.
“Are you hurt Sir Desin?”
“No. I’m fine.” Feeling the tingling in my teeth and the growing metallic taste in my mouth that was not of blood at his presence, I gave the towering knight a quick glance. “Illusion magicka?”
“An enemy broken by fear is an enemy already defeated.” Came the deep, yet muffled reply from the depths of his great helm. “Come. Further foes await.”
Following in the pounding boots of the giant in midnight black plate, I felt strangely uneasy at Detane’s actions and reaction. Before we were jumped by a trio of terrified and desperate bandits I was left wondering at the strange way how a man of such skill had turned to face the onrushing spear front on. He had demonstrated an incredible ability with the sword, and reflexes that easily matched my own and Viconia’s and yet it was almost as though he had purposely let the bandit’s attack to succeed.
Further thoughts were quickly pushed out of my mind as the fighting in the centre of the village took all of my attention. Our two Argonian guides and Viconia had been forced to climb off the roofs of the huts as the bandits began using their bows and loosing arrows at anything that moved. Over half of them had already been slaughtered in the village but the others, having been forewarned of the threat we posed were doing their best to extricate themselves from the situation. As carefully as they could they were trying to fall back through the narrow streets and finding themselves stuck and crowded by their own numbers. This was a situation that the members of our party were pressing to our advantage which in turn made it even more difficult for them to flee.
“Kaius! Glad to see that you made it to the party!”
An arrow flicked out and punched into the wall near where I stood and I hurriedly ducked around a corner of a hut as another two joined it.
“Seems a little too excitable for my tastes. I wish to complain to the organiser.”
Alexi’s laugh was loud and audible over the shout and cries of pain and the sudden thunderclap that echoed through the village as Viconia threw a bolt of magicka in the direction of the remaining bandits.
We were in the centre of the village near the towering Hist but on the side opposite to the river. Now whittled down to the last dozen or so, the band of cutthroats were trying their best to move through the confining streets in the direction of the forest. Every step they made was being hampered not only by ourselves but by the rocks and other objects being pelted at them from the handful of villagers that had gathered the courage to strike back. Their need to continue to loose arrows in our direction to keep at us bay, while effective was also keeping them almost entirely stuck in place.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the hunchbacked shaman cavorting about the enormous tree in the centre of the village, hissing and chirping and otherwise acting as excited as a skooma user after draining an entire bottle. He was completely oblivious to the handful of arrows that buzzed angrily through the darkness in his vicinity and instead seemed utterly focussed on pulling down as many of the bowls from the branches as possible.
“What in the gods’ names is he doing?” I called out, seeing the way that Weebam-Na twisted his head in the direction of my gaze before turning back and shrugging.
“He said something about ‘asking for help’ before running over there. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Another thunderous crack of magicka and proceeding shriek of agony ripped through the night air as Viconia loosed another blast in the direction of the archers. She was alternating between swearing bitterly and mumbling the words needed to call upon her magicka but she had enough breath to spare me a withering glance.
“Where’s your bow?” A ball of lightning flickered into existence in the palm of her hand and she threw it in the general vicinity of our enemies as quickly as she could.
“Back in the hut. It wouldn’t do any good as getting into a two-way archery contest isn’t a good thing when you’re outnumbered.”
There was another collection of drowish curses, but as she threw another blast down the street a collection of arrows punched into the corner of the wall that was providing her cover and a handful more flickered down the street.
“Iblith! That was a little too close for comfort.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shaman continuing to prance about at the base of the Hist but my attention was dragged in its direction. The bowls that it had pulled down were filled to various levels of the sluggish sap but as I watched he proceeded to tip them all into a much larger urn shaped container. Earlier when he had used the sap to ‘commune’ with the Hist the sap had been thick and vicious like tar but now it flowed as easily as water which was something that made me feel strangely concerned.
“What in Oblivion’s name is he doing now?”
Weebam-Na had been standing with his back to a wall of the building across from where Alexi, Viconia and myself were standing and he turned his gaze back at the shaman. First there was confusion on his face, and then an expression of horror as the other Argonian picked up the urn and proceeded to dump the entirety of the sap over itself.
“This could be bad.” He called out, flinching away from the storm of arrows that filled the air and left the corners of our buildings growing small clusters of feathered shafts.
“How bad is bad?”
Unlike when he had simply consumed a small amount of the sap, the sheer quantity that Greejan-Ze was coated in was overwhelming. He immediately fell onto his back, thrashing about with such force that droplets of sap were thrown as far as the surrounding path and walls of the nearest huts.
None of us were expecting to see him rise again, but we certainly weren’t expecting to see the way that his body was shifting unnaturally as he did so, or the sheer power that throbbed in time to his racing heart emanating from him. All of the previous tics and shakes were gone and instead he rose up to his full height with the hunch in his spine straightening as though it was a heat softened wire. There was nothing else that revealed the indescribable magicka that he suddenly had under his control but we could all feel it, a crushing pressure unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
