Chapter 135. Armed to the Teeth

A horde of airborne constructs darted out of the Death cocoon, screeching in a horrible, grating cacophony. They were misshapen and non-uniform, running the gamut from small birds to flying hyenas. Unlike Ian’s typical constructs, many of them were composed mostly of cartilage with only some pieces of solid bone. All shared mouths lined with large, serrated teeth.

When life gives you sharks...

The constructs carried more shark teeth within their interiors. When they approached the enemy practitioners, they released their payloads from their mouths in a rapid spray. Empowered by the potent soul gems within each construct, the projectiles penetrated the weaker shields and forced some practitioners to change direction.

While their targets swatted away teeth, the seemingly-haphazard constructs dove forward with uncanny grace. The larger, more mammalian or reptilian constructs swooped and shattered shields with large, energy-empowered talons or spines, allowing the smaller, more agile constructs to dive forward and rend.

While the onslaught was powerful, the enemy was largely prepared to handle it: The opposing peak practitioners pulled the brunt of the weight, the Dark practitioner shielding over twenty people and erasing eight constructs from existence. The weaker practitioners weren’t dead weight, though: Weak was a relative term, and they’d been sent to the front lines for a reason.

“The group behind the peak fire elementalist is preparing an empowered Light-Sun plasma beam,” Euryphel cautioned. “At this range it’ll be able to seriously damage the wyrm.”

“Should I send more constructs to attack them?”

“No...the peak fire elementalist is taking care of any constructs sent his way. He’s an area attack specialist from the looks of it, which is an excellent match up against your minions.”

Ian considered the situation. His constructs worked best against large numbers of weak, unprotected practitioners, or isolated powerful individuals. To fully allow contingency F to succeed, he needed a way to eliminate the peak practitioners from a distance. The fact that both sides had Regret practitioners feeding them information from possible futures compounded everything into a tactical headache.

“Ian, that actually will work,” Euryphel interjected.

Ian’s gaze snapped to the back of the prince’s head. Euryphel was still peering beyond the ribcage of the wyrm, his eyes narrowed in concentration.

“What will actually work?”

“Bone whip without revealing too much. The one made out of shark teeth has better results. The fire elementalist can’t do much against it with energy running over its surface and will be forced to retreat. Run the attack to its fullest execution but don’t be surprised if your quarry flees midway through.”

Ian supposed that made sense: Just because he could use a cord of bone to increase his range didn’t mean he couldn’t use the whip solely as, well, a whip rather than a Death energy extension cord.

A trail of winding, interlocking fangs spiraled from Ian’s void storage and slithered beyond the wyrm’s ribcage into the Death energy cocoon. It swelled to fill the cocoon’s interior, coils of teeth crowding like intestines.

“I saw you slaughter an entire rift full of sharks and I still can’t believe how many teeth you have,” Euryphel noted. “I wonder what the enemy thinks?”

Ian ignored Euryphel as he cut off the stream of teeth from his storage, his hand gripping a bone handle made from a small mammal’s femur. A braided row of long, thin, serrated teeth dug straight into the handle, completing the circuit from Ian’s hand to the tip of the teeth whip.

Unlike the first time Ian used the bone whip against Judith, he acted not on instinct but with intention, threading ethereal essence through the whip’s core. He smeared Death energy from the egg-shaped soul gem over its surface and sent it out with a jerk of his wrist.

The whip was chaos as it surged out, zigzagging unpredictably through the air. It was long enough to easily reach past Ian’s range and surge towards the Selejans.

As Euryphel predicted, Ian’s first target–the fire elementalist–ducked out of the way on jets of flame with a snarl, his brow furrowed in fury.

“The Dark practitioner’s going to intervene now, but it won’t matter: She can’t stop the whip.” Euryphel suddenly began to laugh, pulling a hand over his mouth. “No one can. Ian, you’re nearly unstoppable.”

“The riftbeast soul gem is a flame retardant, not a Dark retardant,” Ian pointed out, somewhat disturbed by Euryphel’s observation. “Why do you say I’m unstoppable?”

“Did you ever test it against Dark?” Euryphel asked.

Ian frowned and sent the whip towards the unprotected group of practitioners. “No.”

“Exactly. Remember that we thought the rift was both Moon and Dark aligned? Moon alignment resists both water and flame, while Dark resists itself. The whip’s behavior confirms our suspicions. But they’re already trying some more unorthodox maneuvers...hmm...”

“What?”

“They’re going to bring out a trio of glosSwords,” Euryphel explained. “I think they were going to wait for more reinforcements and then leverage them against us in a coordinated assault, but they don’t have a choice. The glosSword energy will break through the energy of the whip.”

Ian nearly groaned from frustration. Regret was the most obnoxious affinity to fight against, even with a potent Regret practitioner on his side.

“What do you propose we do next, then?” Ian asked, hands gripping the wyrm’s ribcage, his head pressed between two bones.

“I’m still working on it...I think if we try contingency M we’ll be able to disable the glosSwords.”

“Eury...”

“M is where I go out with Bluebird as my wings and automatic, personal turret,” the prince reminded him. “Dangerous, but if I see myself getting in over my head I’ll just withdraw.”

“Go for it.”

Euryphel nodded and pointed to his arm. Bluebird hopped from Ian’s shoulder to the prince, its socketed soul gems glowing bright cyan in the dimming light. The duo had flown west at a fast enough speed to remain in perpetual sunset, though now that they were reaching Selejo dusk would begin to creep up on them.

Bluebird climbed onto Euryphel’s back, its small feet walking crossways across his arm and shoulder. Bluebird hooked itself on the prince’s back upside down, unperturbed by the reversal in orientation.

The bird rotated and expanded its wings. Energy extended out of them like transparent feathers, Euryphel’s wind blowing gently around them. He gave Ian a side smile as the necromancer opened the ribcage, allowing the prince to exit. He flew unimpeded through the bone-strewn Death cocoon, fragments of white and clouds of pseudo-wraiths parting before him.

Ian continued his assault with the whip, wielding it more like a heavy, segmented flail. As Euryphel predicted, the fire elementalist in his primary crosshairs fled after a few seconds of teeth-grinding struggle, likely told to abandon his position by his superiors. He still sent out a wave of fire with his retreat. The flames ignited the whip in a blaze of blue and red, though the burning was superficial, like burning oil atop water. In a way it almost made the whip even more dangerous, the flaming flail closing in on a now-unprotected group of elementalists.

Euryphel’s thoughts jolted through his mind like lightning, nearly interrupting his concentration: “You can’t go easy on them.”

Ian steeled himself, replying, “I know.”

The whip smashed the practitioners from the side, allowing them no time to prepare a defense. It wrapped around them like a thorny lasso and whipped them against the water, snapping some of their necks on impact and killing the others by crushing their throats.

The whip never lost its momentum, hurdling back to the other practitioners higher in the air. It dripped bits of blood and flesh, though the still-present flames turned most of the gore to gray ash.

Ian caught sight of Euryphel tangling with the Dark practitioner, Bluebird sending out twisting blue-black blasts at the three other peak practitioners coming close for the kill, surrounding the prince. Ian suspected that they wouldn’t be ganging up on Euryphel unless they had a good chance of killing him, a fact that set his nerves on edge. The fact that three of Euryphel’s four adversaries drew glosSwords as they flew close didn’t help matters.

Ian didn’t waste Euryphel’s distraction, the fang whip surging through the air and smashing another unprotected group of practitioners to the water. This group had been mustering a defense of frozen water, water elementalists pairing with a single Dark practitioner to form a turtle shell bulwark, but the whip melted through the defenses like a hot knife through butter.

“Ian, I’m going to withdraw,” the prince transmitted. Ian’s eyes searched for the prince’s form, noting that he’d sustained injuries to his left arm and torso. “We’re almost at the mainland; it’ll come into view in half a minute. Bluebird was able to blast the hand of the peak wind elementalist, dismembering her. I was able to grab her glosSword.”

It’s better than nothing, Ian supposed. They wouldn’t be able to use the enemy glosSword, but at least it couldn’t be used against them.

Two of the peak practitioners pursued Euryphel as he pulled away, but they gave up their chase after a few seconds, likely receiving orders that they’d be unable to apprehend the prince before he entered Ian’s protective sphere of influence.

“They’re going to come for the whip. Focus on avoiding their blasts and separating them from one another. They’re going to be doing their very best to stay together, but if you can get them separated your constructs will be able to force the other practitioners to retreat.”

Ian saw the Dark practitioner brandish a glosSword in the direction of his whip, a ripple of green light echoing out. Ian flung the whip out of the way, but the wide attack caught part of the weapon. The affected links of teeth vibrated and began to dissociate as though afflicted by powerful resonance. Ian sent a surge of his own Death energy to the affected area, forcefully binding the whip together.

When Euryphel returned to the bone wyrm’s ribcage, Ian immediately set to work repairing the damage done to his arm and torso. The prince’s forearm was covered in a wicked burn that turned his skin to bloody pus, cloth armor melted flesh. His torso was simply missing a solid inch of matter as though it’d been shaved off by a scalpel, the telltale injury of a Dark practitioner.

“Eury...these aren’t minor injuries,” Ian murmured out loud, his eyes creasing with concern, brows raising.

The prince winced and smiled, holding his arm away from his body with care. “I’ve had far worse. Don’t hold back: I can handle the pain of healing.”

Ian blinked and took in a deep breath, but heeded the prince’s demands. He had more to work with for the arm, the dead and dying flesh serving as excellent substrate for new growth. The torso injury, on the other hand, was a bit of a nightmare to deal with. The very edge of Euryphel’s flayed skin had just started to die, but Ian needed to speed up the process or he wouldn’t have anything to build from. The prince began to pant as Ian worked, letting out a quiet, involuntary whine as Ian used a layer of dead cells to stimulate tissue growth around his torso.

After setting the healing in motion, Ian put most of his attention on fighting the Selejan forces, slowly whittling them down while expanding the breadth of the Death cocoon. Each person that fell dead only served to fuel Ian’s onslaught, their bodies fetched by swooping constructs and delivered to the cocoon for disassembly and integration.

Ian almost missed the Selejan mainland peeking out behind fiery blasts and geysers of water.

“Remember that for entering the mainland, we’re going with entry plan A until I say otherwise. Even if you can bring yourself back to life, we don’t need to reveal that first thing.”

Ian nodded absently, still focused on corralling and deflecting the attacks of their assailants. It seemed that for every few he killed, more Selejans joined as reinforcements, constantly wearing his whip and Death cocoon down.

“Ian, a peak Remorse practitioner is coming,” Euryphel stated with a grimace. “You managed to prevent any of the other Remorse practitioners from getting in close, but this person has enough range that it won’t matter. You know who he is: Coronus Kiehl.”

“Haven’t I killed enough of their wind elementalists already? How are all these peak practitioners keeping up with us for so long?”

“Kiehl has his own glosSword equivalent, something even more potent. He’s using it to fly at the moment.”

Ian felt like cursing. “What about everyone else?”

“There are still...twelve or so wind elementalists in play. They’re the largest portion of the reinforcements. Just worry about reaching the mainland: Once we find Ari, these hanger-ons are going to scram or face the descendant’s hammer.”

“When is Ari supposed to arrive?”

“Not within the next minute, at least; I don’t have anything more specific than very soon.”

Ian sighed and prepared himself to face Kiehl. “I’m going to set the bone wyrm on a fixed course and direct all the constructs and Bluebird to attack Kiehl. I’m telling Bluebird to listen to your commands while I’m incapacitated. I might be senseless crossing into Selejo, so even if the plan doesn’t work, I won’t be able to help.”

The prince nodded. “Who knows, you might surprise yourself by how well you do against him.”

Ian narrowed his eyes and gave the prince a doubtful look. “I almost died against Kiehl last time. His attack was all-encompassing.”

The prince snorted but remained silent.

“You’re going to be incapacitated in three, two...”

The last word never arrived, Ian’s head filled with a grating buzz. The world was a black void deprived of all sensory input.