Fort Defiance 2

Li Sung Won and Bubbles slipped into the fort in a rush, silent as ghosts. There was blood everywhere, but no bodies. With a glance to the side, Li Sung Won directed Bubbles to the stables. The scent coming off of it was wrong. The scent of dung, sweat, and hay that came from the stables was almost non-existent. There was a cold wrongness, the scent of cold metal and graveyards, the scent of deep caves and unsealed tombs.

Bubbles opened the stable door and slipped through to the right, as Li Sung Won moved as the door swung fully open to slide through the left. They both froze at the sight. This stables held the sixty horses of their company, or it should. What was left were skin drawn tight over bones, looking like they had been dead for hundreds of years in a place too dry to allow even a corpse to rot. Around them were hundreds of dead flies and crows, as if everything that came to feast upon the dead had been sucked as dry of life as the horses.

Since coming together, Bubbles had learned a mastery of her body that was beyond what her childhood tutors had taught was possible for even spirit cultivators below the Yang stage, and it was only that control that kept her from emptying her stomach as the nausea filled her as body and soul reacted to the strange anti-life she was seeing. Not simple death, but a denial, a refutation of life itself.

Looking at Li Sung Won, she shook her head, indicating that whatever caused this, they had no business facing it themselves. Swallowing his own bile, her Sgt and lover nodded. His desire to do his duty by solving he mystery of Fort Defiance as dead as the life drained corpses in front of them, none of them with a single mark of wound, disease, poison, or any rational cause of death.

They faded from the stables to return to the courtyard only to find a hundred of their former comrades. They bore the wounds that killed them, unhealed, unsealed, and yet no blood fell from them. Through torn throats they panted like starving beasts, and their eyes glowed in the night with the red of a fire’s embers. They bore no weapons, but their teeth had grown into fangs, and their fingers had grown into bone-claws long and sharp as any tigers. They were hunched and moved more like beasts than men. Black jade talisman hung upon their chests, each bearing the sigil of Demon Sui.

Behind them, four tall proud figures in ornate robes, those of high-level administrators from the old dynasty stood, their faces drawn tight over the bone of their skulls, their limbs stiff as the centuries old corpses they were. Upon their foreheads was branded the sigil of Demon Sui, clearly the masters of the new made corpses of Fort Defiance.

“We were left because of you. My master was concerned that not all of the soldiers were accounted for, and because of your tardiness, we have fallen a full day’s march from the Master’s main army. Others will have the chance to distinguish themselves under his eye, others will have the chance to be chosen for elevation to the exalted, to eat the souls of powerful cultivators and absorb their cultivation and make it their own. Others will ascend beyond simple undead servants, and into the realm of deathless immortals. Because of you, we will forever be slaves. Your deaths will not come soon, and death will not end your suffering. It will not restore our hopes, but someone must suffer for our despair.”

Li Sung Won and Bubbles fell back to back as the hundred undead lesser vampires closed on them, under the will of the four master vampires. Fear ran in every drop of blood in their body, but before their lover they would show no weakness. Alone, they may have given in to despair, and sought to end their own life to at least spare themselves a bit of torture, but together, they would fight until the last drop of blood to defend each other.

“I told you skinny dipping was a good idea.” Bubbles said, sadness in her voice.

“You were right. You usually are. If I can, I will open a path. Try to get to the robed bastards. They are the real danger.” Li Sung Won said, knowing it wasn’t going to be possible, but as a soldier, determined to enter this fight like any other, fighting to win.

He surged forward, and the hundred vampires collapsed on them in a wave. Only Bubbles unnatural strength cleaving limbs off the vampires rather than simply cutting into them, prevented Li Sung Won from being dragged down in the first rush, so many bodies drove onto him.

His sword cut one cleanly in half at the waist, but the top half gripped his legs as it fell, fouling them. His return stroke cleaved the head from a second, causing the body to fall again lifeless, but two more fell upon his sword arm to bind it. They were going to be buried under the press of bodies in moments.

Astrella stood upon the walls and looked at me. I had been waiting until the meat shield of the lesser vampires had been withdrawn from around the masters. Even for the two of them, that many vampires would be enough to bury them in bodies.

It was time to make an entrance, and you know what, this cultivation world had reminded him of some truly terrible movies he loved too much. He looked over at his dearly beloved Ogress and gave his plan.

“I am going to kill one of the master vampires and eat his core. That should cut the link to the demon essence keeping the talisman forged lesser vampires alive. To do it, I am going to have to kill him in one blow and that means pouring all of my power into a single strike. I am going to try to stun them all for long enough to buy me time to finish the kill. After that, you will have to hold the other ones off until I can process the demon core and recover enough strength to fight.” I said, because shock and awe was pretty much the soul of the ambush, and I would ride it to victory or die trying.

Astrella looked at me quizzically, “How are you going to stun them? They are undead, centuries old demons. They don’t really scare, unless you have a dragon willing to help out.”

I grinned. “Ask me about Big Trouble In Little China sometime. It is an epic legend from my homeland, and I am about to introduce them to the three storms, even if there are only two of us today.”

I took my spear, and I poured my mana into it, along with my mana, I drew the elemental essences of my body into the spear, and made of it a living conduit. The elements were pure essences, but inside the body, as inside nature, they worked together.

I filled the wood chi of the spear to enhance its strength and its connection to life. Into this I poured the water chi to sustain and strengthen it. Together water and wood chi were the force of healing, the power of life. I balanced the water chi with an infusion of fire, used in healing, fire burned away the unclean, destroyed the corrupted for the healing water and wood to fill, but fire also enhanced the destructive power of the other elements. I drew upon the earth chi and pushed it into the spearhead, filtering it through the burning fire chi. Fire and earth made the metal fusion, into this I fed air. Air and metal summoned the celestial element, the hammer of the gods. Lightning.

I threw the spear, targeting the central master vampire, and when I went to throw, the elemental essences reenforced my body as I threw with a force great enough to shatter mountains. There were powerful talismans born by the master vampire, able to stand off strikes from even low tier Yin cultivators spell forms, or high tier physical Yang martial techniques with the best forged enchanted weapons.

The problem was, my throw was not simply my attack. I had set up an imbalance, and called lightning from the sky. My spear lanced to the earth with the power of a falling mountain, the metal and wood called to the earth and the earth reached up to answer. The lightning I had infused called up to the sky, and the sky answered.

The gap between my power and a master vampire was the gap between a dagger and a sword. The gap between a master vampire and the sky was the gap between a tree and a mountain, and the mountain was already falling.

I could see in that most perfect instant, three powerful protective talisman, one a necklace, one woven into the robes, and the third oddly in the ridiculous court hat the vampire bore, all burst into black flames as they failed before the power of the never missing spear. Gunginir, Odin’s never missing spear. I grasped now that he had guided me in creating this effect. His spear could never miss because it was not simply a weapon, it was a union of sky and earth, a rebalancing of the universe to correct a violation of heaven’s laws. It could neither miss nor be resisted because nature inevitably returned to balance, and once started, the process could not be resisted.

The spear punctured through the vampire from back to crotch, pinning it to the ground in an odd inverse impaling. The lighting lanced up from the ground as soon as the spearhead struck earth. A rising pillar of cyan rage that raped the night with its purity and power. I could not stop my forward motion, all strength leaving my body, and I fell from the wall, too weak to stop.

I reached out my hand to the living rope of lightning and caught it. It wrapped my body, and I descended slowly with my hand in the living lighting as the master vampire screamed and shook. I rode that lighting as it ravaged my body in pain and power, ransacking me for the mana and chi, the elemental essences and the very life that it was using to destroy the master vampire, the demon forged undead impaled on m spear.

I landed lightl on the ground, and one hundred sets of eyes fixed on me, every vampire turning from the fight to see. Grabbing onto the neck of the master vampire because I was too weak to stand unassisted, I punched my hand through his back, the flesh soft and weak from the essences of life and destruction both at war with his undead essence.

I ripped out his heart, the demon core blazed with black fire that shone against the living lighting like a denial of light and life itself. It burned with demon essence. I could feel nine enslaved demons inside me screaming as I took it into my mouth, and bit down.

The essence filled the places inside me that I had spent calling my attack, but it was not enough. There was not room inside me to contain all of the power that I was consuming. This was not a fresh demon summoned to implant, this was an ancient demon, with centuries of murder and malice, the accumulation of impurities refined until they became almost elemental corruption.

It tore into me, and the nine chained demons fed, and as they fed upon it, so did they feed me. My body’s meridians shifted, finally reaching the stage of true unity with my heart and I felt my soul bring not simply my meridians and mana heart into unity, but my whole body and all the elemental essences imbued in my flesh and blood. I broke through into Nascent Soul, and as I drew the last of the power from the demon core, twenty five lesser vampires collapsed. Their talisman simply shattered, and they returned to being simply corpses.

For precious seconds, no one moved. Then the master vampire to my left jumped back a good twenty meters like some sort of undead bureaucrat grasshopper, and screamed. “Kill him!”

Astrella is the only Ogress in the world for me. She understands my sense of drama, my need to break my enemies, not simply to kill them. She is happy just to kill them, but when she chooses to indulge me and buy into my bullshit, the woman is a slaughter princess, a spear maiden out of legend, an apex predator. She could make an entrance.

A second spear shot down from the sky, and the Master Vampire on my right who had turned to face me was suddenly impaled by a spear even larger than my own. I got to see his black lifeless eyes blaze with blue fire as the spearhead hit the ground and the metal chi striking the earth called lighting from the sky, and for the second time that night, the sky answered.

Astrella had never seen a strip club, and had no idea how many of my fantasies she was fulfilling. To her it was just like controlling your descent in a fast rope insertion like we used to do from helicopters or in roof assaults. Astrella normally did this from trees in the jungle, but today, she did it from the walls of Fort Defiance. Not riding a rope, but a lightining bolt.

One hand grasped the lightning bolt, and one powerful thigh and calf wrapped around it like a stripper on a pole. I use this analogy rather than a fireman’s pole, as the lightning lit up underneath her skirt, and two facts imediately became clear. She was indeed a natural redhead, and she hadn’t bothered with underwear today. Gods but I loved that woman.

She did not descend slow and majestic like me, mostly afraid I would shatter both knees as my body was too weak to control my landing. She landed like a tigress, and as the master vampire sizzled and screamed, his stiff arms reaching towards her in his dying rage, she grabbed him by the neck and rammed her fist through his chest and ripped out his heart and core.

I opened my mouth to scream. I only could do this because I had a fragment of a god inside me. I had Odin to teach me to eat demons. If a mortal ate a demon core, the demon would devour her soul, wounding her at minimum, and transforming her at worst. This was no simple demon like he ate when he was summoned. This was a master vampire, a demon with centuries of cultivation. She had just doomed herself.

She bit into the heart and her fangs crushed the core inside, even as the black blood spilled onto her snowy white breasts. She smiled and her eyes blazed as the lightning leaked from her eyes in jagged mini bolts. Twenty four more lesser vampires fell, one having already been killed by the struggling soldiers.

“If you want to kill him, you will have to get through me first.” Astrella said and black veins of demonic corruption writhed under her skin. Good gods, she was going to die or worse because I never explained that I could only do this because Odin, Lord of the Mound, the Feeder of Ravens, literally a god of death, was sitting in a corner of my soul.

With a roar, I set out towards one of the surviving master vampires. I ignored my control and set my mana out in a wave. I called upon air and fire, I called upon rage, and I drew deep upon my link to the god inside me, the god that had failed me, the god that was going to make me watch my lover die because I had to play the fool on the battlefield and she would die trying to imitate me. I called, and the Battleglad answered.

Odin’t rage flowed into me, into Astrella, into Li Sung Won and Bubbles, and with the matchless power of the Berserker, we tore into the vampires. Four against fifty, and two of them master vampires. It should have been a slaughter. It was.

I opened myself to Odin, and let him see through my eye. The Victory Father, the raven that soared above the field and looked for his next meal, the corpse wolf who feasted upon the fallen, who looked upon every war as a feast and every warrior as food looked out through my eye. Let him see for me, let him think for me. I was going to watch my love die in front of me because of my foolishness. All I wanted was death. I wanted to kill and kill and kill until I could not feel anymore, until I could not think any more. I wanted to bathe myself in enough blood I might wash myself clean of this, worst, of my sins.

I saw wyrd branch before me. Nine branches, nine paths, nine choices. I saw the weaving of fate as I charged towards the enemy. Nine choices and their result were before me. If I move thus, I will strike, but my spear will be bound too long and the second will reach me. If I slash I will kill the first, but the third will be able to reach me as the second hurls his body to drag down my spear. If I strike at the leg, the first will fall, fouling the second, and I can slash to catch the third to stop thrust through its open mouth.

I moved through the battle, an icy rage filling me. The elements flowed into my flesh, granting me speed and power. The earth shaped itself to anchor my feet, the wind solidified for me to push off it. Wood chi caused my spear to wind like a serpent around a blocking arm and stretch to lance my point home. Fire and lighting blossomed around the point of my spear as I drove it home.

Li Sung Won was a fury, chopping limbs like a storm of steel, his blade in one hand, his fist or grasping hand hurling bodies where they could block other charging attackers. He carved forward without thought of his own safety. He did not have to, for he had a shadow. Smaller and faster, she stayed low in a crouch and her sword did not sweep in the great sweeps of her lover, but short sharp utterly economical cuts as she cut legs and hands to open the path to necks, accomplishing with precision what her lover accomplished with fury. They were filled with rage, but they were close as any two souls could be, even in fury, they fought as one.

Astrella frowned as this new corrupt power filled her. It was like the feeling she got when she dual cultivated with her lover. Bolverk, the evil worker he named himself. He gave his essence to her as they made love, and she took it. Took it and made it her own. The power of corruption and death filled her from the demon core, and she reached out to take it. The power was too much to contain in her meridians, she could feel it tearing them open, ripping them wide and slamming into her crystal mana core. She was being torn apart. She didn’t understand, could not think. That was fine. She was an Ogress, a Maiden of the Mountain. If she could not think, she could kill.

With a roar, she opened herself to the rage that flowed over the courtyard. Rage that stank of Bolverk and the thing that lived inside him. She drank it deep, and roared back her answering rage. Letting it burn inside her like a purifying flame, she gave herself to the battle.

She needed to clear space, as the lesser vampires were trying to bury her under a rush of bodies. Undead or not, they were only human bodies. She had never been human. She called upon fire to infuse her muscles, wood to strengthen her bones, air to speed her, water to allow her to flow before every attack, allowing none to harm her, and she went to war.

A great sweep of the blade cut legs from two charging vampires, a kick blasted a third back through the ranks like a charging bull through a china shop. Given the room, she extended her spear and whirled in a full circle, feeling half a dozen bodies resist as her strike shattered what it struck with shaft, and severed what it cut with blade.

She did not try for kills, she did not care. This feeling inside her, this hunger, this all consuming hunger, she felt it from the other master vampire. She was dying inside, her body tearing itself apart because the energy inside her had no place to go. It was tearing her channels wider, clearing the path to her mana core, but not fast enough. She had too much of this demonic energy to survive, but not enough to live.

Throwing her spear, she nailed the master vampire by his shoulder to the back wall, and in a lunge that would have shamed a hunting tiger, landed in front of it. She took a punch from one of its stiff arms, and felt a cold clawed hand close around her throat, but she did not care. She hammered her fist into the chest in front of her, and tore out a second heart and its embedded demonic core.

I was broken from my rage, as I saw Astrella tear out a second demon heart and core and raise it to her lips. I screamed out at her.

“Astrella, you can’t!”

She closed her fangs on it, and black blood cascaded down her breasts, more than could possibly have been contained inside it. Power roared around her. Vines rose up from the earth and raised her to the sky only to be consumed by fire. Fire was torn away by sheets of hammering rain that were split by the a bolt of lighting. As she fell from the sky, the earth rose up to meet her, and a pillar of stone lowered her gently to earth. Her aura flared, a domain of her will flowed out from her as her meridians finally came into balance with her core, and her Nascent Soul consumed the demonic chi like straw thrown in a raging furnace.

“Bolverk dear, it turns out I can.” Astrella said as a dozen bound vampires suddenly fell. A dozen vampires and my jaw. This was not possible.

The last master vampire was of the same mind and screamed “Impossible!”

I turned to him, he stood alone as the last half dozen lesser vampires were trying, and failing to hold back the two raging soldiers who were also trying to cut a path to the last master. I let Odin’s vision claim my eye again as I charged him. This time the vampire had no bravado. He pulled forth paper talisman and burned them one by one, as walls of stone rose up to block me, spears of fire reached towards me, vines from the earth reached up to grab me, shards of ice sharp as a thousand swords lashed out at me.

I saw nine paths for every attack, as if I had all the time in the world to choose. I picked the path among the futures that got me closest to my goal and followed it. The master vampire watched me weave between his attacks and chose at last to flee, fearing my wrath more than Demon Sui. He called forth a spear of earth to keep me away while he jumped the walls to escape. I knew he had a teleport talisman, he just lacked time to activate it. I saw that in at least three futures. He knew I had no choice but to slow to avoid his spear of earth. I could not reach him.

There is a lesson every swordsman, every spearman learns eventually. There will come a time that there us no choice but to sheath the blade. I did that now. I jumped and let the fall of my body drive the spear of stone deep into my belly, my breath blasting out in a whimper as it finally grated upon my ribs as I came to rest.

Blood leaked from my wound, and I could feel the cold in my legs arguing all was not well below the bleed, but I was within reach. The same charge that had impaled me, had allowed me to impale the vampire. I had shot out my right arm at extension, extending my spear beyond the reach the vampire expected. It had thundered into his skull. He twitched uncontrolled as my spear and the elemental chi I channeled through it lanced through his mind and denied it the chance to control his body. He would not die, but he was a string cut puppet while my spear was in him.

I dragged him close. With my left, I tore up through his stomach, and pulled out his core. I held it in my fist and jammed it in my mouth. As I crunched down on it and felt its impossible power fill me, I screamed as Astrella pulled me brutally off the impaling stone.

I looked up into her impossibly blue eyes, so full of love and smugness, and asked in a voice so soft only the god inside me could hear.

“How is she still alive?”

Odin laughed. “You should know. We have both been inside her every night since you met. I wouldn’t be much of a god if I couldn’t be in two places at once.”

Astrella couldn’t survive eating a demon core because only gods could do that and not be consumed. I had a god in me, so I could. A god could be in more places than one. He had been inside her too. He could give others the ability to eat demons. I did not have to fight this war alone.

With his aid, I could build an army.

Astrella turned me to face the two soldiers who fell upon their knees in front of me and offered their swords, hilt first to me.

“I am Sgt Li Sung Won, this is my second Bubbles Chang. You have saved us, and avenged the deaths of my fellow Jade Falcons. Our lives are yours.”

I looked down at them. A cute couple. He seemed a bit over serious, but she seemed like a good balance for him. I smiled, and considering how blood spattered we all were, it probably wasn’t as comforting as I wanted.

“I am Bolverk, this is my second Astrella. Kids, how would you like to learn to eat demons, and save the world?” I asked, as if this was a job opportunity they needed to leap on, rather than run away screaming from as a rational person would.

Inside me, I could feel the Victory Father, the Battle Glad, the one eyed bastard Odin laughing. Fine, I was a fool, and his tool, but for the first time, I didn’t feel that the war with the demons was impossible.