Suiteonem Prime, Grail Beach, Suiteonem V, 20137

  Anger healed.

  Rage healed more.

  It hung in the air around Sixty-eight.

  Everything to her left was still black.

  It appeared that it wasn’t enough to heal a ripped out eye.

  She poked her tongue past her teeth and tasted air through the jagged opening in her left cheek. She spat warm iron.

  The syaruman’s blood pooled in the little crater in the floor where what was once his head lay smeared like tomato sauce.

  More crimson filled the tiny house’s only hallway. More than what the child-sized syaruman’s body could conceivably contain.

  Despite the red-gold haze over her remaining eye Sixty-eight knew not to look behind her.

  She staggered forward.

  Pain throbbed.

  There wasn’t enough rage left in the house to heal.

  There was rage close by, just outside.

  The cold, gray hallways met in a larger intersection like spokes in a wheel.

  Her lochos battled the syarumen ambush.

  Fifteen and Thirty-two were backed up against a wall behind the former’s magic shield as a trio of syarumen magic-users poured spellfire.

  The latter cowered. He was close to useless without his usual complement of hand-crafted items and artifacts. The toys he had hastily converted weren’t nearly enough for this level of battle.

  Eighty roared, swinging her axe at the hooting syarumen that bounded around her like hyperactive monkeys. She was like a giant amid regular-sized people. Her sleeves and pants were slashed and wet, but her red-gold eyes blazed as her axe swings hastened.

  Seven dueled a single syaruman.

  Two blades against three.

  The woman cheated with a third blade wielded with her tail quicker and with more deftness than her hands.

  Seven’s face was a gold-flecked crimson mask thanks to a wicked gash on his forehead.

  As Sixty-eight watched, Seven parried a blurring attack with his two blades.

  Unfortunately, the woman had that third blade to lay his cheek open.

  She controlled the duel, forcing Seven farther into a different hallway away from the intersection and the rest of the lochos.

  Eighty suddenly caught a syaruman in the side of his arm.

  Instead of cleaving through his thin arm and body the blow sent him flying past Sixty-eight like a ball.

  She caught a quick glimpse of the pain and anger on his bestial face before he disappeared into the gloom.

  She felt the syaruman’s anger as streams of smoke trailing in his wake.

  She healed just a little bit more and kept the fire boiling her pot lit.

  “Sixty-eight! Take that one!”

  She trusted Seven when it came to battle tactics, so she charged down the hallway.

  The syaruman tumbled with her on his heels.

  She aimed a charging punch at his hairy cheek with all her divine-enhanced strength.

  Stinging pain flared in her knuckles.

  Distraction allowed the syaruman to draw blood with a two-footed kick that snapped her head back and sent her head over heals back the way she had come.

  His armor was scratched and dented, but it still shined in the dim crystal light from the ceiling. Much like his dark hair, which puffed out like a quilled ground snuffler. The points glinted and dripped with gold-flecked crimson.

  Despite her pot boiling over, Sixty-eight took a moment to think.

  The syaruman flashed bloody canines and beckoned her on with a rude gesture and that infuriating hoot-laugh.

  Sixty-eight reached for a weapon and found an empty belt.

  Oh… right.

  She’d lost her bag of holding and everything else in the brutal fight with the first syaruman.

  “Cursed child with cursed blood that consumes you. How many years until it hollows you out? Your death here is a mercy. For you and for all your future victims. Like my entire clan!” the syaruman snarled and snapped a hand out like he wanted to throw something.

  Sixty-eight raised her arm over her face.

  Stinging pain pierced her partially burned flesh.

  The types of pain were starting to blend together.

  “Hair Expansion.”

  Pain flared again, fading into a dull throb at the elbow.

  She spared a glance at her arm.

  Red meat with wet ivory peeked up at her like children hiding behind a curtain. Skin hung intertwined with the tattered cloth of her sleeve.

  She grabbed a handful of the syaruman’s hair, now each as thick around as her finger.

  They did make good stabbing weapons.

  She roared, thrusting out as the syaruman leapt.

  His armor turned it aside, but the impact threw him into the wall.

  Her right arm hung limp.

  Her left eye was a smear on a dead syaruman’s palm.

  It made it difficult to aim the stab at the syaruman.

  She meant to bury it in the armpit, but skidded off the side of armor instead.

  The rage roared.

  She stoked it like a forge fire.

  In her and in him.

  Coherent thoughts slipped from the syaruman’s grasp.

  Instead of using his Skills he fought like a rabid animal.

  His shot his tail around like a serpent.

  She caught the tip between her teeth rather than let it wrap around her neck like before.

  Hairs hardened and sharpened into spines by a Skill didn’t matter to her.

  Hot, wet iron flowed over her tongue and down her throat.

  His? Hers? Did it matter?

  He shrieked as she bit down like a bonecruncher.

  Instinct didn’t serve him well as it made him pull away reflexively.

  Sixty-eight jerked back and, working together, they ripped the tip of his tail off in a shower of hot crimson.

  She spat the chunk out and pounced on the syaruman.

  Spiny hair stabbed but he didn’t have much of it on his face.

  She stabbed fingers in his eyes and began slamming the back of his head into the cold, hard floor.

  The rage flowed in one direction.

  The syaruman couldn’t think to activate any number of abilities that would’ve hurt her and stopped the onslaught.

  Thuds gave way to cracks as he flailed and beat at her instead of grappling.

  With his strength and proportionally longer limbs he could’ve gone for an armbar or a triangle choke. The latter would’ve been a cinch with the help of a tail, injured or not.

  Eyes burst hot, slimy juice all over her fingers.

  The syaruman’s shrieks reached a fever pitch as she pulled his head up and slammed it back down with all her weight.

  The final crack resounded across the gray hallway.

  A nearby door opened. An old woman peered out with a kitchen knife in hand. One look at Sixty-eight’s ghastly visage and the syaruman’s last twitches in a spreading pool of crimson and she slowly closed the door.

  Sixty-eight roared to the ceiling.

  The red-gold haze pulsed with blazing heat from farther down the hallway.

  The rage of her half-siblings and the syaruman.

  She understood that she needed to seize hold of it all to heal her gruesome, debilitating injuries.

  She charged down the hallway in a flash, barreling through syarumen swarming around Eighty.

  She seized the rage from the enemy.

  Muscles in her arm slowly knit back together. New skin began to grow, shedding the wet strips like a snake shed its scaly skin.

  Her left side remained dark.

  Eighty snarled at the thievery and swung her axe.

  Sixty-eight ducked the slow— to her— swing.

  Her body hummed with power, with the rage. More than she had ever taken and used before.

  A syaruman caught her with a blade to the side.

  It stuck in her armor, nicking through the shirt to kiss her flesh.

  Eighty roared a horizontal slash aimed at the both of them.

  Sixty-eight gripped the syaruman’s arms and spun him around.

  The meat shield did his job well, taking the blow on his back with a loud crack despite his armor.

  The blow sent the two of them careening into the wall.

  Wind escaped her lungs for a moment, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle in her super rage-charged state.

  “My legs,” the syaruman groaned.

  She didn’t care as she stole his blade and kicked him down a different hallway.

  “Help!” Thirty-two pleaded with voice and eyes.

  Eighty swept her axe, occupying the bulk of the syaruman, while Seven’s personal duel with the blademaster had carried farther away into yet another dimly lit hallway.

  Sixty-eight charged the syaruman magic users pouring spells into Fifteen’s cracking shield.

  The hairy, child-sized men and women ignored her, trusting in their own protections.

  She struck at their backs with the stolen blade.

  Each strike sent bright sparks shooting as their magic shields flashed in half the colors of the rainbow.

  One abandoned her attack on Fifteen’s shield to face Sixty-eight.

  “Conjure Flower: Lily of Peace.”

  A large white leaf shaped like a scoop appeared in her hands. At its center stood a pale yellow stalk that reminded Sixty-eight of wheat or maybe corn.

  Whatever it was the conjured flower began to sap the rage flowing through her.

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  She moved, left, then right, zig-zagging to get out of the flower’s face, but the syaruman turned with her.

  “Enough of this! You! Charge them! I just need a few more seconds!”

  “What! Me? No way, Fifteen! I don’t have my usual tools!”

  “There’s so much anger floating around that I’m sure you won’t die if you eat some flames… right way… probably. Just get out there. Flail around, be my me— shield. Sixty-eight has the right idea, see?”

  “She got fucked up!” Thirty-two shrieked. “She’s got no skin on her arm and I think only one eye left!”

  “I’ll heal you after.”

  Fifteen grabbed the back of his neck, dropped her shield and threw him at the syarumen magic users.

  Thirty-two did indeed eat a fireball to the face. And Fifteen was right. It didn’t instantly kill him. Burned the top layer of his skin though, but it started growing back even with his poor, compared to Sixty-eight, ability to harness the rage in the middle of a fight.

  Fifteen filled the space with magic missiles.

  Bright red orbs the size of a fingernail arced in chaotic patterns, seeking ways past the syarumen’s protections.

  Divine energy converted into spells more efficiently than mana, which meant that Fifteen actually had more in the tank then mages twice her age.

  What she lacked was the automatic spellcasting that classed magic users had. They could just say the spell, think it or will it, depending on their level, Skills and proficiency. She had to shape it from scratch, imaging the spell formula in her mind with the same accuracy that she had once written into the spellbook with her mother.

  The spellbook that had been destroyed by their birth father.

  Thus, she was still limited to the more basic spells.

  The only saving grace was that she could pour more energy into them.

  Magic missile was a starter spell, but she pumped power into them making them hit with the same power as a fireball.

  Dozens bombarded the syarumen magic users, cracking their shields and bringing them to the brink of destruction.

  Meanwhile, Sixty-eight’s mind cleared.

  The red-gold haze bled away like her partially-healed arm.

  “Poor child. The father’s sins are always hanging swords above innocent heads. Accept this peace for it is a mercy you shall not find in your world.”

  The syaruman mage raised her other hand, coalescing harsh light in her palm.

  Sixty-eight sagged without the rage fueling her body.

  Limbs became as heavy as iron weights.

  Distant pains drew close, throbbing with each breath.

  Her stolen blade clinked against the floor.

  “Oh, come on!” Fifteen snapped. “You’re going to let a monkey beat you! You owe me! Immolate!”

  The syaruman shrieked as she became the center of an eruption of magic fire.

  Fifteen paid the price of dropping her magic shield as two spells slammed her into the gray wall.

  Thirty-two, on fire, screamed as he clattered into the two syarumen magic user’s shields, bouncing off into a heap.

  The sweet, sweet rage returned to Sixty-eight.

  She roared, words having fled her once again, as she charged the burning syaruman.

  Divine strength and a sharp blade sheared through the syaruman’s child-like wrist.

  Before she could follow through and bury the blade in the syaruman’s chest the magic user burst into a cloud of beautifully colored butterflies.

  She slashed through a handful and even bit one, but the swarm fluttered past her, disappearing into the dim hallway.

  She carried on toward the remaining two syarumen magic users with an incoherent battle cry.

  One shoved her back with invisible force while the other absorbed a blinding barrage of tiny explosive orbs from the half-burned and broken Fifteen.

  “Retreat? We are winning. No— more? Then we kill them as well… the grail ones? I see. So long as these godspawn perish. I care not who does the deed.”

  The syaruman flicked Sixty-eight into the wall with bone-crushing force.

  “That one killed two of our kind,” the other syaruman magic user snarled.

  “They were the weakest.”

  “They must be avenged!”

  “They were not even from our world.”

  “Does that matter? We were all made one in the Gods’ slavery.”

  “Do as you wish, but the leader has spoken and she has my respect.” The syaruman vanished. One moment he stood there the next he was gone.

  The remaining syaruman bared sharp canines and let out an angry huff.

  “Shadow Bounce.”

  He hopped into his own shadow, sinking into the floor as if it was water.

  The rest of them retreated from Eighty’s axe, swinging along the pipes in the ceiling faster than she could give chase.

  The rage drained like air let out of a balloon with the battle’s end.

  …

  “Heals...” Thirty-two croaked.

  One side of his body was burned black.

  Fifteen, sporting her own burns, was too busy casting her basic healing spell over herself.

  “Selfish,” Sixty-eight muttered.

  She hadn’t even asked for healing.

  Seven’s face had been partially flayed by the three-blade syaruman.

  Red strips and flaps of skin hung and swung as he pressed them closed and applied the substandard medic items they had stolen from the general purpose shop.

  The clear liquid was essentially a chemical glue, whether or not it was meant to bind human skin, Sixty-eight didn’t know.

  Regardless, nothing they had solved her missing eye and arm skin problems.

  Eighty’s armor and clothing were soaked red, but she had a huge grin on her face.

  “I think I got a couple of them!”

  Seven pointedly glanced around the intersection.

  “They took their dead with them,” she shrugged. “Warrior cultures often take the bodies.”

  “Sixty-eight?” Seven said.

  She remembered.

  Unlike most of her half-siblings she didn’t forget what she did when in the red-gold haze.

  “I killed two. The second one you can take a share, Eighty. You’re the one that hit him over there.” She gestured down the hallway where an unmoving lump the size of human child lay in a cooling pool of crimson underneath a dim, flickering light crystal.

  “Great! Points for us is good! I guess I don’t really care that much if I get the individual points. Nice one, Sixty-eight! Smallest and youngest, but taking first blood!” Eighty’s smile grew wider. “So, how do we get credit? Do we have to bring the bodies with us? Cut off their ears? I’ll grab them. Where’s the first one you killed?”

  Sixty-eight pointed down a hallway.

  “It— he’s inside a house.”

  Eighty dashed off with thudding boot steps.

  Sixty-eight remembered the syaruman’s half of his conversation with his leader.

  She told Seven.

  “We need to relocate.” He regarded at Thirty-two. “Your burns are skin level. You can still run.”

  “Heals...”

  “Shut up,” Fifteen croaked.

  “Your legs look fine.”

  “They are outstanding, Seven. And, yes, I can run, so be quiet. I need to concentrate.” She cared only about her own pain.

  Sixty-eight regarded her arm’s weeping red flesh.

  Her legs looked fine, so she stood.

  Eighty returned with the two syarumen corpses.

  “You really smashed these two!” She grinned down at Sixty-eight. “Now what?”

  A tear in space opened.

  Gold light blinded for a moment.

  When their vision cleared a towering eidolon loomed in front of a golden portal.

  She pulled the corpses from under Eighty’s arm onto a floating platform of gold light.

  “Two kills witnessed for your lochos. Two kills witnessed for you, Sixty-eight. Well done.”

  She walked into the portal, vanishing with the dead syaruman in tow.

  “Awww,” Eighty pouted. “I’ll get the next one!” She brightened.

  Seven finished gluing his face back together, giving himself a patchwork stitched doll’s appearance.

  “Can you run?”

  Sixty-eight shrugged, rising to her feet.

  Her limbs felt like they were encased in solid iron weights and it seemed like every muscle had been torn and every bone had been cracked, but she could move, so it wasn’t that bad.

  “Alright. Let’s keep heading to where we were going before they ambushed us. If that old map was close to accurate there’ll be a place we can hide, rest and,” he glanced at Fifteen, “maybe heal. Eighty, please help Thirty-two.”

  “Easy.” She picked the tall, half-burned scarecrow up like a sack of straw, tossing him gently over one shoulder while keeping her axe in hand.

  “What about me?” Fifteen said.

  “You can run. And I don’t want to hear any more complaints. My face is in pieces. Thirty-two is burned worse than you. Sixty-eight only has one eye left and I can see the muscles in her arm. Eighty is… fine.”

  “Well, you really should bandage her arm.” Fifteen huffed, but her usual haughtiness was covered in a veneer of pain. She had taken legitimate burns that her basic healing spell had only managed to turn into angry red blisters.

  “I don’t want bandages to stick,” Sixty-eight muttered.

  “We still have to cover that up,” Seven said.

  “Why? It’s not like I can’t deal with infections.”

  “You’re dripping. We don’t want to leave a trail at least. And I believe syarumen have a keen sense of smell. We should minimize the scent of our blood.”

  “Fine, we’ll do it when we get wherever you’re taking us to.”

  …

  Seven poured an unpleasant smelling dark orange liquid over Sixty-eight’s arm of exposed muscles.

  “It’s supposed to be good against bacteria. We’re strong against infection, but another layer of protection can’t hurt.”

  She begged to differ for the liquid stung.

  “Do you want to bandage it?”

  She already had a bandage over her gaping left eye socket.

  It had been painful to push the hanging thread of meat back in and it continued to feel strange as it moved around in there whenever she moved her head.

  “Wrapping it will create issues if you get more rage to heal. Your skin will partially heal over the bandages and you’ll have to rip it out.”

  “You said I couldn’t leave a blood trail,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, I did, but I’ve thought about it more and I don’t think droplets are going to make a big difference to us being tracked. I’m almost certain the syarumen can smell us just fine. And that grail magistrate clearly has superior tracking abilities. We’re in this place illegally. Any law enforcement classes will have those abilities.”

  “Leave it then.”

  “Nice! You’re like the hardest of the Gods of Metal!” Eighty grinned down at her.

  She clenched her fist experimentally and watched the muscles flex and relax.

  “That is metal!”

  “Eighty, please don’t encourage her,” Seven said. “Alright, your as good as we can get you. Eighty, you’re next.”

  “What? Nah, I’m alright.”

  “Good. Then it’ll be quick to close up all your cuts. So, off with your armor and clothes.”

  “This isn’t some pervert shit, right?”

  Seven sighed.

  “I do not find the opposite gender attractive, Eighty. And we are half-siblings. So, no. It isn’t some ‘pervert shit’.”

  Sixty-eight tuned them out as she picked up her bag of holding, which Eighty had kindly retrieved for her when the much bigger demigod girl had retrieved the body of the first syaruman she had killed in single combat, and went in search of a little privacy.

  The lochos had taken temporary shelter in some kind of administrator office.

  There were three small rooms behind a marginally larger lobby-type space crammed with desks and chairs that clearly indicated work stations.

  The fourth room was the largest, serving as a meal room complete with a refrigeration unit filled with water in strange, flimsy bottles that made crinkling sounds when handled. The cabinets were filled with a variety of sweet and savory snacks, which Eighty had emptied into her bag of holding as soon as she had spotted them.

  Sixty-eight passed a small room where Fifteen was casting her healing spell over the groaning Thirty-two.

  “Can you be quiet?” Fifteen hissed at the boy sprawled out on two desks pushed together due to his height. “You’re basically barely burned. Sixty-eight’s burns are just as bad as yours and she’s lost her eye and a bunch of skin. And my burns? I haven’t even healed them all just so I can take care of yours,” she grumbled.

  Sixty-eight went into the next room.

  She dug into her bags.

  Bloody clothes needed changing and she wanted weapons ready for the next time.

  Her raw arm dripped blood on everything and she reconsidered leaving it.

  “Bandage,” she grimaced.

  The Grail Beach people didn’t have enchanted all in one bandages like she was used to from her homeworld.

  She had to place white squares over her exposed muscles first before wrapping her whole arm in the white bandage, which turned a light brown color quickly from the mixture of her blood and the dark orange liquid Seven had slathered on a few minutes ago.

  That taken care of, she changed out of her bloody clothes. Next, she belted on a short blade, a knife and a short gun before pulling out the poor excuse of a rifle.

  The ammunition came in bandoleers that she threw across her chest. She added some loose ammo into a couple of pouches she added to the weapon’s belt.

  The last thing she pulled out was a battered steel open-faced helmet.

  Armed and armored in substandard gear, she headed back to the meal room in search of sustenance.

  Fighting always made her famished.

  …

  A voice burst from a voice box in the ceiling.

  Fifteen yelped and blasted it to bits with a snap spell, forcing them to move to another room to listen.

  “This is Grail Magistrate Gyrtroodes Mylofort. By my authority I command the residents of Ivy Oaks to remain inside your apartments. There are dangerous individuals roaming your halls. Do not attempt to escape or engage. You will die. Barricade your apartments. Do not obey subsequent commands from any other authorities to evacuate or otherwise exit your apartments. Stay away from your doors and windows, if you have the latter. Stay low and away from doors and windows. I am entering Ivy Oaks to apprehend these criminal trespassers. That is all.”

  “Is that a good or bad thing?” Eighty said.

  “Why would she command them to ignore other authorities?” Seven mused.

  Fifteen snorted.

  The rest of the lochos looked at her expectantly.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she scoffed. “Look at this place. It’s a rat’s hole. And I saw a sign outside. The owner or owners are clearly planning to renovate and these poor people must be standing in the way. There are usually laws protecting the poor from forced eviction, so that leaves no other recourse but voluntary departure. Our battles with the syarumen will provide that excuse. Building damage is good for the owners, but dead residents are even better. Based on that stuffy woman’s words, I expect that kill teams, either in disguise as local authorities or local authorities in disguise as local gangers, are going to use the opportunity to cull residents.”

  “That’s corrupt,” Thirty-two croaked.

  Fifteen had healed him enough so that he could move and run, but his pale, sweaty face said he still suffered with his raw, cracked skin.

  Fifteen shrugged.

  “It is merely the business of lords and ladies.”

  “Alright, we need to move deeper into the building and away from the outer layers,” Seven said. “Be ready for another ambush. Assume the syarumen will know we’re coming before we spot them. If we run into other armed people we have to strike first. If what Fifteen says is true we can’t take the chance that they’ll try to talk and detain us like that grail magistrate.”

  “What if we run into her first?” Eighty said.

  “Let’s hope she runs into those kill teams, then the syarumen, in that order first.”

  Sixty-eight grunted.

  She had a rifle in her hands.

  It sucked, but it was familiar.

  The rest didn’t really matter.

  “We’re hunting syarumen for now, but if I see an opportunity we’ll try our secret plan,” Seven said.