Blood Shaper

Book 3 Chapter 62

“Brace!” Kay bellowed out as he thrust his arms forward, sending a wave of blood forward at the incoming wave of enemies. He made swirling whirlpools that sucked the first few beasts into the red tide, then solidified it into a crimson bulwark covered in spikes that held a few of the creatures in place.

The rest of the horde of onrushing monsters ignored the pained cries of their brethren as they clawed their way up the temporary walls. Some used the other monsters as hand-holds to pull themselves up the wall without getting impaled by the spikes, and a few even stopped to start eating the trapped monsters. It wasn’t enough to stop most of the horde, though, and Kay and his Blood Guard slammed into the horde, with the defensive and close-combat Classes leading the counter-charge.

The monsters were a literal horde, completely unorganized and constantly getting in the way of each other, often injuring each other with each attack, but they seemed endless as the onslaught continued, even as more and more corpses began to pile up at the feet of the defenders of Avalon.

Giant sloth-like monsters with wicked claws dashed forwards in brief bursts of movement that let them get in a single lightning-fast slash before they slowed dramatically, moving the speed of regular sloths, leaving them open to devastating counterattacks as long as the first strike didn’t land. Waves of voles the size of dogs threw themselves bodily at anyone they could reach, the bony plates on their heads leaving deep bruises and breaking bones if they hit less armored limbs. Six-limbed lizards with mouths that dripped a strange orange liquid tried to bite down on anything in range, trapping their victims with the sticky good in their mouths and dragging them out of formation to be devoured.

The swarm of monsters was made up of an impossible variety of creatures that would normally avoid each other or even attack each other on sight, all pressed towards Kay’s forces in a single-minded effort to kill everything they could reach, all sporting the same blood-shot eyes, twisted limbs, open bleeding sores, and total lack of self-preservation. Their completely unnatural behavior was driven forward by whatever corruption had taken over their bodies, evident in the disgusting feeling Kay could sense in each drop of their tainted blood that pooled across the ground as he and his forces slayed more and more of them.

The original approach to the village had been uneventful. There had been a few monsters here or there that had been stupid enough to attack the force he’d gathered to deal with the potential Vampyr threat, and he’d begun to think they’d actually brought too many people. Surely they wouldn’t need an entire army to deal with one Vampyr? The Shatterplate Order felt they could take it on with only their group of hunters, so surely the small army Kay had gathered would be enough.

And then the wave of tainted monsters had thrown themselves at his force as soon as they got within sight of the abandoned village. They boiled out of the trees and began a massive battle for Kay’s people’s lives.

Kay cursed as he saw one of his Guard get dragged back by some strange beast that looked like a cougar with pincers and blasted the thing’s spine in half with a pressurized spray of blood. He swept the crimson line across the next wave of monsters crossing over the barricade and cut them to pieces, limbs flying in different directions and spreading more of that foul-feeling blood around. He watched with a moment of relief as he saw the Guard get dragged back to safety and sent to the rear with the rest of the wounded.

Even as he helped to save one of his people from death, more fell as the tide of monsters pushed in closer, seemingly unending. He saw combatants fall or get dragged off among the section made up of his Blood Guard and heard screams and cries of pain coming from where the Sentinels were fighting further down the line and a few from the Shatterplate Order as well.

“Dammit!” Kay turned to Lauren and shouted to get her attention, “Commander!”

“My Lord!” She released her bowstring, and a massive red arrow pierced through a giant sloth and exploded, sending out a wave of blood that flattened anything nearby.

“Keep them off me! I’m going to try and take out a bigger swath!”

“Of course!”

The disgusting sensations rolling off of the blood of the corrupted monsters kept Kay and his forces from really steamrolling this battle like they usually could. If something could bleed and he made it bleed, he could kill it as he used more and more of its own blood as a weapon against it. But with this horrible corruption staining the blood the monsters shed, he could barely hold onto it, let alone fight with it, and his Blood Guard was faring worse than that.

Barely holding onto something was holding onto it, however, and the stink and decay of the tainted blood felt familiar. It wasn’t the same as the feeling he got from the blood of the eldritch being worshiper cultists that Kay had eradicated to protect Avalon, but it was similar enough that he thought it might be of a similar origin.

He gathered the blood from the ground into a swirling ball he raised over the battlefield, and a trail of his own blood floated up from his arms into the spiraling mass. He began pumping mana into his Purify Blood Skill, trying to remove the eldritch corruption that filled the blood these maddened creatures attacking them had bled. He expected it to fight back, to resist him like the corruption inside the Lesser Eldritch hunger he’d battled, but it just passively melted away without a struggle.

Key didn’t stop to argue or doubt his good luck, and soon the entire sphere had the taint burned away by his Skill. He grabbed more and more, streamers of it filling the air like an old English maypole as they swirled up and spiraled into the growing ball. He started to run out of blood to gather as the ball reached a size bigger than most houses, and his people were being pushed back without his help. With a gesture and force of will, Kay sent the ball spinning like a soccer ball into the main concentration of monsters that were still trying to push their way over the wall he’d made. The bulwark was starting to crumble as the weight of corpses stuck in its spikes began to crush it, and greater numbers of monsters were starting to make their way over.

Most of the monsters were still behind it, though, and Kay used that opportunity to kill as many monsters as possible. As the sphere crushed a portion of the horde, he forced it to become a flat disk with serrated edges and spines covering the flat parts. Slowly at first and then building up more speed as the momentum of the already moving blood let it spin faster and faster, the giant spine-covered saw blade began to tear through the mass of creatures. As monsters were torn to shreds and their blood spattered about, it was gathered into the blade ad purified, letting it stretch out further and kill larger swathes of the horde. The monsters, completely ignoring their own deaths, threw themselves into the meat shredder Kay had made without pausing, their entire focus on Kay’s people that they were driven to kill, even though they could no longer get within striking range.

With the monster’s reinforcements cut off, Kay’s Blood Guard, Sentinels, and the Shatterplate Order had the breathing room necessary to finish off the enemies right in front of them. Within minutes the tide of the entire battle turned, and it quickly went from a desperate fight for their lives against a wave of enemies to a clean-up operation.

“Lauren!”

“Here, my lord.” She jogged up next to him with a contingent of Blood Guard on her heels.

“Send out a few groups to deal with any stragglers. Whatever the Vampyr did to make them attack us like this seems to have killed any self-preservation instincts they have, but that doesn’t mean every single one of them attacked us. I want to make sure it's actually safe to bring people back here to live.”

She quickly saluted, “At once, my lord.”

“And be careful, there were way more monsters in that wave than should have been in this area, so there could be even more waiting to ambush us again.” Kay turned to face a runner who came up next to him.

“My lord, the blood-based healers are asking for as much of the blood you used as possible to support their efforts.”

“Of course,” He broke off half of the blade and sent it floating toward the healing camp that was being set up. A few figures waved, and he felt another source of mana try and take over the blood. He let it happen and dismissed the runner back to their duties.

“Tyuah!”

“Sir!”

“You’re with me. Bring a squad or two; we’re going to inspect the village itself.”

Tyuah paused, looking nervous. “Is that… wise? We haven’t found the vampyr yet; we shouldn’t put you at too much risk…”

Kay took a moment to grin at her, “Eleniah get to you?”

“Um…”

“I’m one of the strongest people here; we can’t afford to have me sitting back out of the fray. If the vampyr’s in the village, then we fight it.”

“Yes, sir.” She started shouting orders and gathering up the two least-injured squads she could get a hold of. Once they were ready, they followed Kay deeper into the village proper.

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