Vraxious—The Forsaken Lands, Godsbane Room 1

  Vrax cringed when he realized it was a Lifedrinker. He had never seen one in real life because he hadn’t ventured very far into the forsaken lands yet. Even his new capital was only around a fifth of the way to the old capital in the center of the forest. But he had certainly heard stories about them.

  They tended to lurk in large ruined cities anywhere that had barrows or crypts for them to settle into. They would roam around at night looking for food and sucking the life from anything they could. The worst part, though, was that in every story he heard, it was never just one of them; they roamed the barren, ruined streets in groups of twenty or more. A writhing, all-consuming horde. We have to fucking run...we aren’t ready for even the first room yet.

  Torvald winced as another two Lifedrinkers ambled from the shadows, wrapping their many, many arms around nearby trees and joining their companion to gaze at them hungrily. There were still more shapes moving through the trees towards them too. “Soooo, plan?” Torvald asked in concern.

  Vrax nodded and angled slightly to the right. The portal had spat them out here, but there wasn’t a teleport anchor in sight. “We run until we find a teleport anchor...they...they are all at least level seventy-five.” Vrax said with a tense voice.

  “Ahh fuck.” Jonathan grumbled.

  Torvald nodded quickly. “I’ll clear a way; you two run interference?” Vrax and Jonathan nodded back. Torvald charged in a series of booming steps that blasted divots into the earth, hitting a tree to the far right of the Lifedrinkers in a shower of bark. Before it could explode in his face, he redirected its momentum and threw the top half of the tree at the nearest ones. It exploded midair in a cloudburst of splinters that gouged into the surroundings and made the Lifedrinkers pull behind their cover.

  Everyone else rushed behind him, following the path Torvald was clearing. The dense trees were an oppressive obstacle, and Torvald couldn’t just bulldoze all of them, or he would be leaving behind a primed explosion for his friends to run into. So, he was blasting between them, trying to rip free the tangles of vines and random thorns, making the overly dense path at least navigable.

  Vrax consumed the unbroken plants left behind by Torvald, with violent hand gestures rapidly filling his cistern to overflowing. He waved his arm towards the rapidly increasing pack of Lifedrinkers. A new line of trees exploded from the ground like a tangled wall. Vrax could see the Lifedrinkers slam into the new growth, with their massive weight visibly rocking the wraithwood dangerously.

  Vrax turned back towards Stereos, who was quickly starting to fall behind the others. “Get on the murder horse!” He shouted at the same time, sweeping his hand upward to thicken the wall of vegetation between them and their enemies. He then ripped The Thresher from his garden, wilting the ground just ahead of the stereos.

  Stereos nearly fell face-first in the slick muck left behind, grabbing onto the twitching thresher for support. “I, uhh...I am not comfortable with this solution!” Stereos stammered, slipping and sliding; his was past the mount.

  “Get the fuck on, slowpoke!” Jonatha grumbled, roughly grabbing Stereos by the back of his robe with both hands and heaving him onto the back of the thresher. He leapt on afterward, grabbing the undulating feathers along its spine like a vile horse’s bridle.

  “Heyaw! Giddy up, abomination!” Jonathan yelled, slapping the thresher's flank. It looked at him incredulously for a moment, showing no signs of acquiescing to his commands. Jonathan went slack momentarily as he stupidly met its eyes.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Vrax ripped a hunk of jerky from his pack and waved it like a flag. “Over here! Snacks!” That worked; the thresher's talons dug deep into the caldera's soil, and it nearly threw the two passengers as it excitedly bolted after Vrax and his promised snack.

  The first Lifedrinker breached the impromptu wall as they ran around a patch of smelter moss. Vrax cursed and threw the jerky ahead. The thresher leapt over him in excitement, a dozen retrievers launching into the air after the jerky to the horror of its barely hanging-on passengers.

  Vrax shoved his fingers into the smelter moss; his mana had already taken a hit from using the cistern. He poured everything he had without risking mana exhaustion into it. He had made smelter moss like this before, so he at least knew how, but the speed he forced the changes made his head swim. Vrax staggered away after his friends. The thresher caught the jerky and was reeling it in while loping after Torvald in weird bobbing motions.

  Does that fucker think we are playing? Sure, if that works, chase the big flappy one!

  A life drinker threw itself from the boughs of a tree and thudded down between Vrax and his path to escape. Ahh well…here we go…

  [Mana 12/204] Yeah, smites aren't happening.

  Vrax faked left, then pushed off his front leg, shifting right just as the Lifedrinker's black stone emitted a cold, calculated beam of grasping shadow. It carved a furrow over the ground Vrax was just in. Stripping every bit of vegetation down to the soil, leaving nothing behind. Where Vrax’s cistern and stigmata drained life, it also left the essence of rebirth behind. This was something final, something greedy meant only to feed its wielder's never-ending consumption.

  Vrax landed from his lunge softly, powering forward; he leveraged over a fallen branch, trying to move fast enough to avoid the creature's next attack. It easily turned towards him, stone trained over his body. It bunched its powerful legs, about to throw itself wholeheartedly at him.

  The smelter moss washed over it like a living tide of fire, wrapping the creature wholly in its sizzling embrace. Vrax kept running; the beast's unholy silence behind him was the opposite of comforting as it was burning alive. That won’t kill it.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  It did buy him enough time to mostly catch up to the others. He glanced back when the sound of sizzling flesh suddenly stopped. In its place the ray of darkness was consuming the smelter moss everywhere it touched; it was as if it had never even existed, and the Lifedrinker's charred, cracked flesh shifted back together, pulling tight and sealing wounds. Ahh, wow, okay, the reports that they had regeneration were in fact correct. Great.

  “Torvald, did you find the teleport anchor?!” Vrax shouted, then rushed slightly up the side of a tree before flinging himself through a gap in the vines to gain some ground on the abomination. He rolled into a square artificial clearing just as Torvald answered.

  “Yeah, but we have a problem! I need your special brand of kill it with rot,” Torvald said in a resigned tone.

  Vrax swept his helm across the surroundings. If Torvald was asking for help here, then it was something weird. The square clearing was ringed by low ruin walls that ranged from knee to head high. The ground was a tumultuous tempest of snakelike blood-red roots writhing all across the white lily-covered ground leading from the centerpiece of this artificial arena. A creature in the rough shape of a mighty gnarled beech tree.

  The entire trunk was bent like a hunched man wrapping slightly back around itself. A wound of a mouth faced straight down from the bent trunk, trailing what looked like spined intestines that pulsed as they probed around looking for flesh. The teleport anchor was nestled slightly underneath its sprawling trunk, the edges obscured by the flailing roots before they dove into the ground past it.

  “Whoah….okay…. Uhh…fuck Torvald, we should have brought your plant-melting cannon of a bear.” Vrax quipped a bit, at a loss for how to deal with that while his mana was nearly out.

  “Not helpful!” Torvald boomed while charging straight at a Lifedrinker that had somehow made it to the edges of the ruined walls. He went through the wall in a concussive explosion of shrapnel stone that ended with his hammer snapping its leg brutally from the side. Torvald leaned away desperately as its gem fired a ray of destruction. Jeff wrenched Torvald past the ray with a creative use of the vein wings as leverage to swing the Lifedrinker under Torvald's legs and vault its many limbs.

  Surprisingly, Jonathan stepped forward. Stabbing his halberd into the ground in front of the innumerable writhing roots. “Ehh, let me give it a shot. I think Jonathan Junior here is finally ready to join the party, aren’t you, buddy?” Jonathan said while fondly patting the halberd he made from a houseplant in hopes path. Its grey- and red-tinged leaves quivered happily in response. Vrax raised an eyebrow, curious where the hell this was going.

  Oh, do I finally get to see what a me-themed Kingsguard gets to do? If he fails, worst case, I can probably summon Duchess… But I still don’t want to give Malaketh, THAT monster copy, ally or not. Also, I don’t really know if an eldritch tentacle tree is her ideal prey or just something she would just nope out on fighting, like the damned soul renders.

  Jonathan's halberd began to unwind itself; it was a mystifying spiraling display, wood and plant fibers coming undone before quickly weaving themselves back into a hollow hole filled with the impression of a humanoid figure made of layered leaves and fragments of stem. It looked like a plant framework version of Jonathan, complete with a halberd and a beard made of leaves. It gazed in awe at its own hands before nodding almost appreciatively to its master. What the hell? That plant awakening skill is awesome!

  Jonathan gave it a fond pat on the shoulder and nodded back before they both exploded forward in synch. Halberds whirled around them in impossible intertwining patterns as they fought in utter sync. It was like watching a dance of death as they spun into the mass of roiling roots like lethal harvesters. Roots filled the very air as their weapons screamed through bundle after bundle of hungering flesh and sap.

  Well shit, he can definitely kill me in one-on-one combat whenever he damn well pleases now.

  They both leapt into the air in an astounding display of acrobatics, landing in tandem with massive sweeping blows that looked like the end of a pirouette; the slashes cleared an entire circle of ground in front of the teleport anchor. Jonathan cupped a hand over his mouth. “Hurry the fuck up and get on!” His awakened halberd waved at them to hurry up.

  Stereos flew past Vrax as the thresher took Jonathan’s wave as a cue for snacks. ”AAAHHHHHH” trailed desperately past Vrax as stereos held on by a handful of feathers and a prayer. Vrax jogged through the now clear ground, looking back to make sure Torvald didn’t need help.

  Torvald had one hand across the face of a Lifedrinker, brutally gripped into its actual eye socket; his hand was covered in a brackish blood. He was moored in place and using his death grip to keep its gem pointed away from him. He rained blows into its side with his elbow; heavy, deep thuds rang out until something gave, and the beast's visible ribcage sagged inwards as bones broke.

  Torvald was far from unscathed; its clawed hands had ripped across his arm and back, leaving vile gouges that were then blackened with necrosis wherever the suckers gained purchase. Jeff's regeneration was working overtime, keeping him from bleeding out and trying to close wounds, but it wasn’t enough. In this battle of attrition, he was going to lose badly.

  Torvald finally saw Vrax waving at him and kicked the abomination back as hard as he could, squarely booting its face, using his space mooring skill to ignore the weight difference. The beast careered end over end through a nearby tree. Torvald’s skills flashed as he accelerated impossibly fast, charging past Vrax and nearly pasting him on his way to the anchor.

  Everyone spilled onto the teleport anchor while Jonathan and Jonathan. Jr. held off the barbed feeding entrails dripping down from the tree above. Stereos jumped off the mount, placing an unsteady hand on the cool stone. “Hopes Path!” he said and channeled mana into it.

  A slight flash overtook everyone’s vision, and they found themselves in a jarringly peaceful meadow. Sparrows looked at them curiously from a nearby bramble, and a single cabin trailed smoke into the sky above. Stereos violently threw up into the field before laying down slowly in the tall grass. Jonathan high-fived his halberd excitedly before it returned to its previous form, and he placed it on his back.

  Vrax looked around at his battered party. “Okay… So Godsbane is solidly in the after-level-fifty category?” he asked a bit sheepishly.

  Jonathan looked at him while wiping some of the outer layers of grime and guts from his face. “Man, I really am either going to die really quick or end up a fucking legend working for you.”

  Torvald nodded dramatically in agreement. “That’s what I keep saying! I just really hope I don’t die because one of his pets eats me; I’d be really pissed about that.”

  Jonathan looked at the thresher for a moment. “Hey, have you ever tested if he can make stuff, and then we kill it for essence?” He said towards Torvald and edged a bit closer to the thresher jokingly.

  “Ha ha…is everyone good?” Vrax said and laid down in the grass himself; he was tapped out and needed three baths, a nap, and a bottle of wine after all that.

  “Define ‘good?” Stereos said miserably from his pile on the grass.

  “Bah, we are all fine; that was one hell of an adventure.” Torvald smiled through bloodstained teeth. “What’s the plan, oh great Paladin?”

  “Level up, Bathe, Go upset a bunch of orders of hoity-toity knights and pull a dramatic stunt at the dragon's maw to piss off the paladins even more, drink. Preferably not in that order.” Vrax grumbled as he pulled himself to his feet and started trudging towards the distant city walls of Hope's Path.