Chapter 76 - The Beginning of the End.
Every one of them watching from around the podium had still not fully taken in what had just happened when the vile monster appeared out of nowhere, leapt onto Kelo and tore him apart right in front of the champions, Eveline among them.
It turned and straightened to almost seven feet, with thin forelimbs drawn out of proportion and a hunched back.
Built out of a mass of shed flesh and bone, it told Lucia at once what it was.
In the next moment the monster leapt at Eveline with a roar, and she was still holding the cup.
Time slowed in her eyes, and she had none left either to react or to take in what was about to happen to her.
Aren bolted from where he stood, but for him it was already too late.
It was not too late for Abelion, who threw the thing into the far wall with his tail.
Understanding finally began to reach everyone as screams and wails went up across the stands.
Aurelius and the others raised their heads: hundreds of the things were climbing onto the stands from the outer side and starting to tear and devour every spectator.
"TO ARMS!" Aurelius shouted, and he surged into the air at once, a rock of light energy forming beneath him.
Energy spikes then formed in the air around him, ready to be loosed into every one of the things.
He went still.
Not one of the things was devouring its prey. The bodies of the dead were starting to grow over with thick biomass and knit into new ones.
In this way the hundreds of things in the stands grew into thousands of deformed monsters that spread through them all and began jumping down onto the course.
With his teeth clenched he began firing energy projectiles into the creatures, as a brutal battle broke out beneath him.
The students packed into the center of the ring as Lucia activated her light sword and threw herself forward, tearing every turned victim into small pieces in an instant.
Where did this filth come from?! How did they get into the city?! , ran through Lucia's mind, and after that she went on cutting into the oncoming wave.
The creatures leapt in from every side, and the unarmed Gray barely dodged one of them before the next was already coming at him with its claws.
Suddenly a sword stroke took its leg off and then its head as well.
Gray jerked his head around in fright and saw his father.
"Get up!" he shouted, and his son was up on the instant.
Peals of thunder and a shudder of the earth rolled out behind them, thrown off by Abelion's heavy blows as he smashed apart every stand around him and crushed dozens of the things.
Some of his volleys of lightning, though, landed not only in the things but in the survivors as well.
Eveline saw it and called out to him.
"REXY! STOP!" she shouted, and Abelion stopped, only to see another of the things running at her from behind.
He swung one of his six gigantic limbs and drove it into the thing with such force that cracks split the earth all around, and Eveline was thrown up off her feet by the impulse, lost her balance and went face-first toward the ground.
Aren caught her in time and rolled with her.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Y-yes," she answered.
Aren straightened and watched Abelion fight the things, and below the beast-god the Warriors of Light and the other Archons could barely find anywhere safe to move.
"Damn it, he isn't used to his own size and strength yet. At this rate he's going to hit his own people," said Aren, and then turned to Eveline.
"It's too dangerous here, so I want you to get up on him and help him with control! Can you do that?" he added.
"Y-yeah," she answered.
"Good, run!"
Eveline ran for Abelion and shouted his name, while Aren looked down at his own hand.
He tried to focus energy in it to make claws or white-stone armor.
Nothing came.
And he understood why at once.
The powers of the creatures I absorbed...
Aren raised his head to Abelion and took in the six limbs that had come to the beast-god from Ursus, the four spiked tails from Doomhorn, the electrified wings that had always been his, and all the rest of the abilities that had passed across to him from Aren himself.
He clenched his fist and looked around.
Through the chaos and the fighting he saw Artus and Olen standing shoulder to shoulder and covering each other, while their fliers fought behind them.
Then he turned his head the other way and ran through the cloud of dust Abelion had thrown up.
Light flared all around, and roars, tearing flesh, wails and blows went past him together.
Once he was clear of the dust he saw Revareus Flare, the Archon of Science, who held an activated sword in a shaking hand and did not know where to look.
One of the things leapt at him from the side, and he put the sword up at the wrong angle with a shout and fell straight onto his back.
The thing bore down on him from above and chewed through the sword he held up in defense.
Aren hit it with his whole weight and knocked it off Revareus.
"THE SWORD!" Aren shouted, reaching out a hand, and Revareus pushed the blade into it.
The thing came up off the ground and threw itself at Aren.
He stepped aside and took its head off in one movement, so that the body dropped and slid to a stop right at Revareus's feet.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
"Get to the others!" said Aren, before he turned and ran on.
This thing... it didn't get absorbed... and I know that shape far too well... don't tell me this is... Aren thought as he picked out Lucia in the distance, covered in blood that was not hers, with hundreds of corpses and a mess of creature flesh left behind her.
Suddenly another of the things landed in front of her.
This one was different, though. It was larger, and the flesh across its whole body was drawn tighter. That made it no less frightening.
Lucia's brows drew together and she launched herself forward on an impulse from underfoot.
The monster swung its massive muscled limb.
Lucia cut it down in a second, then ran a net of lightning-fast slashes over the whole of the creature and came out behind it.
A rain of blood scattered above them, but the drops stopped dead in the air, then drew back into the monster's body, and its flesh knit shut.
At the last moment Lucia caught sight of a core inside it, and the flesh closed over it immediately.
Shit...
A second thing dropped in behind her, just as massive, and struck her from the side.
Lucia got her sword up to block in time, but the momentum threw her into a wall.
The first thing went straight after her, but Aren was there beside her and struck its head clean off, then kicked the rest of the body away.
The second monster began building speed toward him, and an instant later Lucia burst out of the wall on a heavy impulse, like a comet.
She punched clean through the monster, came out behind it and left its core exposed.
Lucia whipped around with her swing ready for the core, but the first thing came in from the side and knocked the blow off line.
They went down together in a roll, and in the middle of it the Archon of War cut the monster apart with another net of fast strikes; this time she punched through its core, which then began to gather a light inside itself.
Lucia understood what was coming, so she got up on an impulse and threw herself clear.
The core detonated and drove an energy wave out around it.
When she took away the arm she had put over her eyes, Lucia saw the patch of dead zone that had formed on the ground.
Fuck... this is bad, she thought, and looked over to see Aren cut the second thing into several pieces.
The core came clear, and Aren punched through it, then kicked it aside, and it detonated there.
Lucia's eyes widened when she saw it.
How does he... know?... she thought, and then had to defend against more of the creatures leaping in.
Aren, meanwhile, looked out at hundreds of other monsters jumping down from the stands and coming in like a wave toward everyone below.
Aren lowered his gaze to the dead zone that had formed off to one side, where he had kicked the punctured and detonated core.
So my fears were right after all... these are the same things as the one I met in the Cursed Forest... but how... how did they get all the way here?... he thought as he kept driving forward and killing the things one after another.
Most of them have no core... and they die without coming back...
Abelion's massive shadow passed over him and then came down on a hundred of the oncoming things.
He let out a deafening roar that rolled across the whole ground as a wave of sound, and then he wheeled and swept every thing in reach away with his tails.
Then he rose onto his hind legs and drove the front pair into the ground so hard that the earth shuddered with one heavy jolt.
The things in front of him dropped into the cracks that opened, and some of them burned away instantly under the volleys of lightning that broke over them.
A few of the things had cores, so dead zones formed from them.
Eveline sat astride him and watched all of it.
"What are these things..." she muttered, and then a magic projectile flew past her.
She spun and saw Aurelius racing through the air, and he then jumped down off his rock of energy and drove his fist into the ground.
His arm went in deep, and thousands of energy spikes came up out of the earth under the things in the stands and under the ones below.
Most of the monsters were torn apart and run through, though the rest kept coming forward.
Some of the ones struck also detonated and left dead zones behind them that spread as a dark substance with the air trembling above it and that same matter giving off a black aura.
"HOW MANY OF THEM ARE THERE?!" Olen shouted, fighting the things off.
"NO...IDEA!...BEHIND YOU!" Artus shouted, throwing his sword past Olen's shoulder so that the blade went into another thing's head.
Varian, meanwhile, had already killed a dozen of the creatures and was searching the raised dust while Gray, the Archon of Intelligence Aphira Ray and Revareus Flare held position at his back.
A massive broad-shouldered creature landed in front of Varian.
Varian got a block up when the monster struck him with its fist, and the blow threw him aside.
Gray turned to Aphira, who was hanging back with shaking hands.
"WHERE IS YOUR SWORD?!" Gray shouted.
Aphira looked at him in bewilderment and horror, then dug into her pocket in a panic and brought out a small photocyte meant to materialize a knife.
Her hands shook so badly that she nearly dropped it, but Gray caught the crystal in time and ran for his father.
Varian got up off the ground, and before he could raise his head a clawed limb was already coming down at him.
He threw himself out of the way in a roll, and the limb slammed into the ground.
Varian was up immediately and faced the thing, then lunged and drove the blade straight into its neck.
This thing did not die, though. It only turned its head toward a bewildered Varian and hurled him aside with one heavy blow of its limb.
Varian rolled along the ground and hit a wall, coughing with the pain of it.
The monster started toward him with the blade still standing out of its neck.
When Varian raised his head, the creature's massive body hung over him, throwing a frightening shadow.
Varian breathed out with a rasp, already accepting his own end, and in that same moment Gray drove the knife into the back of the thing's skull.
The monster did not so much as stagger, and it was already about to throw Gray off its back when he jumped clear and caught hold of the grip of the sword that jutted from its neck as he went.
Gray put both arms into it with a roar and cut the blade through all the biomass, taking the thing's head off.
He sprang back to his father and watched the monster's body stay standing, even with the head already on the ground.
Tendrils of flesh then spilled out of the severed neck, took hold of the head and drew it back.
Gray and his father stared in a mixture of horror and shock as the creature stood before them whole again.
Then a hail of blows came down on the thing and drove the whole massive bulk of it into the ground, and all the flesh was cut into small pieces.
It was Lucia, who punched through the exposed core and kicked it away to detonate at a distance.
"WE NEED TO GET OUT! NOW!" she shouted, turning to Varian and his son.
At that moment Aren put a blade between the eyes of another monster, then raised his gaze to thousands of turned creatures running in again from the other end.
He looked back and saw every survivor running for Abelion.
Eveline had come down to the ground and was waiting for all of them to climb onto his back, and Aurelius and Aren were still on the front line.
Then Eveline saw the cadets running with her father and Uro, and Gray coming in from the other side with Varian and the other Archons.
Once everyone without a flier was up on Abelion's back, Eveline turned toward Aren.
"AREN!" she shouted, and he swung around and then called out to Aurelius.
Aurelius was trying to break through the oncoming armada of the things to save the survivors at the other end.
The things did not run out, though.
When he heard Aren he broke off and understood that there was no other way.
He called his flying whale, and it came down out of the sky.
Aurelius rose into the air on his rock of energy; the things began piling up together and climbing it like an anthill.
The Archon of Light jumped onto the whale and dispersed the magic energy, so that the mountain of massed things collapsed.
Aren sprang onto Abelion's tail and then onto his back, to come down among the rest of the survivors, while the cadets sat on their own fliers.
The beast-god surged into the air before the wave of creatures reached them.
While Abelion climbed higher, the eyes of everyone on his back were still fixed below.
Every stand and the whole course had been destroyed; all of it lay under blood, flesh and dead zones.
Thick dark smoke rose above it, and the noise of those vile roars carried clearly even at that distance.
Then they raised their eyes and went still.
In horror.
Aurelius did not want to believe what he was seeing.
Nor did any of the rest of them.
The whole of Midar was burning.
The screams and wails of its people carried past the walls, and from up here they could see the same things running through the streets and leaping onto townspeople and other magical creatures.
The Warriors of Light could barely do anything at all, with the things outnumbering them many times over.
There too everything was awash with blood and flesh, and towers were coming down here and there in the background.
"W...we have to help them!" Olen shouted.
"We can't," Lucia said from where she sat among the others on Abelion.
"A lot of those things create dead zones when they die. The more of them we destroy, the more we destroy the city itself..." she added.
"To hell with the city! We have to save the li—" Artus began, and then coughed up blood.
"The dead zones act on you just from being near them. We won't survive if we go in there now," Lucia told him, before she looked across at Aurelius, who had not taken his eyes off the city from where he stood on his whale.
"We need to get back to Solum immediately and gather every force we have," she said.
He did not turn, still looking at the city with clear pain on his face.
"... do you know what this is?..." he asked.
"... I do... and it seems... I'm not the only one," Lucia answered, and her eyes went to Aren.
Aurelius looked at Lucia, then at Aren, then turned the whale without a word and set off toward Solum, with Abelion and the rest following after him.