Esme gave Lennox a small shove between the shoulders, sending him stumbling a few steps toward the clearing while she remained safely behind him.
Her grin got wider as the bears began spreading across the grass, their hungry looking eyes latched on the two recruits and electricity crawling around their bodies.
“Go ahead, Lennox. Show ’em what you’re made of.” Esme said.
Lennox caught himself, immediately turned around, and reached back to shove Esme toward the animals in retaliation.
She staggered several steps, nearly losing her balance before planting herself again. “HEY! HEY!”
“Hell no! You go!” Lennox said.
“No! I’m not getting in the middle of a bunch of horny bears!”
Lennox looked back toward the creatures and instantly knew their entire profile.
The size, red eyes, swords, and unnatural thunder surrounding their bodies brought back something he had heard during his travels, although his memory of the details was not scholarly at all in a way.
These were Northern Storm Bears, a species originally found in Vindríki, the northern kingdom where storms practically ruled the land and the entire lands of wilderness could spend days beneath the skies.
They were infamous for hunting in groups, but there was something unusual about the way they prepared for those hunts, because the bears mated beforehand and received an increase in strength from Ifreiti’s blessing.
Lennox remembered hearing that Ifreiti, goddess of nature, fertility, and beasts, had blessed certain creatures so their bodies could thrive in environments where ordinary animals would struggle, granting them greater vitality and making their instincts far more potent during reproduction and hunting.
He wasn’t completely certain he remembered the theology correctly, and he certainly was not about to pretend he had spent his childhood studying divine blessings, but he had killed Northern Storm Bears before and knew enough to recognize the problem standing in front of them.
“They’re Northern Storm Bears! They’re from Vindríki, that kingdom where it does nothing but storm all the damn time! They mate before every hunt, and Ifreiti’s blessing gives them a boost afterward. I’m not completely sure how all the blessing stuff works, but I’ve killed some before. Their stomachs are the weak spot. It’s fragile around there!”
Esme looked toward them, then back at Lennox, immediately finding something amusing about the situation.
“Should’ve brought that Parley girl with the green hair out here, she would have a feast.”
Lennox’s head turned toward her. “She’s a Parley?”
The bears answered the question for them in a way; several of the creatures dropped their bodies toward the ground before racing across the clearing, and the ground shook beneath the combined pounding of their large paws.
THOOM’
THOOM!
Thunder came out around them with every stride, branches tore from nearby trees, and blasts of electricity ripped through trunks and scattered chunks of bark across the floor.
Their snarls grew louder as they closed the distance, jaws opening wide enough for Lennox to see rows of teeth before several bears began gnashing at the air, each bite releasing another blast crack of thunder.
More came from behind them, turning the first group into a moving wall of destruction and lightning that threatened to tear apart everything caught in its path!
Lennox’s attention looked toward his temporary weapon as the runes glowed against the approaching storm.
Nepherel had explained how the recruits were meant to activate their weapons during their training at the Sanctuary, and the method had been strangely simple: each rune possessed a name, and speaking that name called upon the ability contained within it.
Suo, Sen, Hej, and the others were more than markings placed along a weapon, because each represented a portion of Alpam’s language and divine authority, translated through the nature of the god himself.
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Alpam was the god of Light, Truth, Revelation, Justice, Divine authority, Knowledge, and Oaths, so the runes were expressions of those principles given a form that mortals could actually wield without immediately being overwhelmed by the presence of the deity behind them.
The recruits had been warned that their weapons were temporary and that repeated use of the runes would eventually destroy the weapons itself, which still made little sense to Lennox because giving someone a weapon only to make that weapon fall apart from being used seemed like a spectacularly irritating idea.
“…Suo.”
Light covered Lennox from head to toe, turning his hair, eyes, skin, and clothes white as the rune answered his voice.
‘Whoa….’
The world seemed to open around him as his body became faster and stronger, his durability increasing alongside the power behind every movement.
Nepherel had also explained that the runes nearest the top of the weapon carried greater authority than those farther down, meaning the strongest abilities could wear through the temporary weapon more quickly.
Lennox had no intention of burning through his weapon before he even understood what it could do, so for now he chose the first three runes he had available, beginning with Suo and following it with the next two.
‘Maybe it’s a test to see how smart we are to use Alpam’s power…? Maybe to see how we distribute it and all that, because once we become Paladins, Alpam will give us power, and anyone else who has magic because of another god, their power gets drained out. After all, Alpam is one of the strongest gods.’
“RAGGHH!”
The first bear reached him. Lennox vanished from its path and reappeared several strides closer to the center of the pack, his body moving with such overwhelming speed that the creature’s jaws snapped shut on empty air.
Lennox spoke the second rune while passing through the opening, and Sen answered immediately, creating a glowing white afterimage behind him that copied his attack as faithfully as a second fighter could.
Lennox’s first strike cut across one bear’s body while the second followed the same path against another, and both creatures crashed aside as blood scattered across the grass.
Before the pack could recover, Lennox called the third rune, and his body carried him through the air while a constellation-like arrangement of glowing white symbols formed around him. He dashed through the air as he used his body to create the large constellation of runes in the air.
“Hej!!”
‘This is amazing….! I’m so badass! I can only imagine what the other runes do…no, don’t think about it. Just fight…’
Lennox drove his blade into the center of the newly formed rune in the sky, and a massive beam of white light descended into the clearing with enough destructive power to tear through the ground beneath the bears.
VROOOM!!!
Four of the bears had gathered into a circle formation, thunder surrounding their bodies as they attempted to attack together, but the beam struck among them before they could coordinate their assault.
The impact ripped apart the ground and sent fragments of soil flying in every direction, while giant glowing white swords blasted from the devastation of “Hej” and tore through the four creatures from multiple sides.
Blood splattered across the grove as the bears were thrown apart and ripped to shreds, their thunder breaking into chaotic flashes that struck trees and sent branches crashing to the ground.
Lennox landed among the destruction already searching for the next threat, completely absorbed in the fight now that his instincts had taken over, because whenever Lennox fought, something inside him became frighteningly focused and everything outside the battle ceased to matter.
“Wait for me, dammit!” Esme came racing into the clearing before Lennox could answer, and the gold colored runes surrounding her scythe began circling around the handle as the weapon expanded to an enormous size.
“Haha! Look at this shit!” She continued as her scythe became at least 40 feet long, and 40 feet wide and super heavy, but not to her. It felt like a feather in her hands, while to others, the detection would be the complete opposite.
She swung it through the nearest group of bears, the enormous blade tearing through several bodies and smashing others aside while thunder erupted around her.
“Die! Die! Stupid bears!”
Trees splintered beneath the force of the attack, more of the ground split apart beneath the sweeping weapon, and blood sprayed across the ruined area as the bears struggled to survive the assault.
Lennox saw the opening and used it immediately, zipping toward Esme as she completed the sweep before jumping over the massive blade while she continued her attack beneath him.
Five bears had formed another circle nearby, their bodies surrounded by that same thunder as they prepared to strike together, and Lennox reached the air above them before invoking Hej once more.
His body formed the constellation of runes in the air while the four bears looked toward the disturbance overhead, and once again, Lennox stabbed his blade into the center of the formation, and another massive beam descended through the trees and struck the creatures below, followed by a storm of enormous glowing swords that slaughtered many more bears across the clearing.
The bears were battered from every direction as the thunder around them scattered just like them, destroying nearby trees and scorching the earth while Lennox passed through the destruction and came down near Esme.
Esme looked toward him with excitement, that smile exposed that she was having considerably more fun than she had expected, but neither of them had time to exchange another insult because the forest beyond the area began filling with movement.
“More of them?!” Esme exclaimed. “Let them come!”
Have Lennox say, “Why won’t you use your other runes?”
“Really trying my hardest to fight the temptation. I never felt this strong ever in my life. But I wanna hold onto it as long as I can since I know these weapons are on a fucking limit.”
“I never felt this strong either.”
More glowing red eyes appeared between the trees, followed by the heavy sound of paws striking the ground, until entire waves of Northern Storm Bears emerged from the wilderness and started advancing toward the two recruits!
The first group had been bad enough, but the second seemed way more vicious.