Chapter 407: Book 6-22.3: Desperate Sortie

The colours of the planar Veil shifted and stirred. The hues flowed towards the ground but the groves in between hid at which point they focused on. Yuriko's quick glance turned into a stare. The shifting of the Veil could only mean one thing, that something was coming through the Tidelands.

From the size of the disturbance, and the breadth it expanded to, she thought that whatever was coming would take much more time to enter. The stronger the Anima strength, the longer the Veil revealed the walker’s passage. The entrance pulses haven’t started yet, so she assumed it would take more than a few hours to days.

Putting it out of her mind, Yuriko hurried towards the battle. They emerged out into a clearing and nearly five hundred paces away, the Colossi fought against the behemoths. There were more of the things than there were Colossi, and they were larger too, nearly three or four times taller, and nearly five times as broad. A couple of them beyond the initial battle line were still flinging boulders towards the outpost.

They each looked different, each an abomination in its own right. The one that attacked them on the cliffside had a singular huge throwing arm and dozens of lesser limbs on the opposite side. One of the behemoths still throwing used both hands to fling the boulder. Afterwards, it stabbed its limbs into the ground and pulled up, drawing a boulder out of the earth. It was a drawn out process and lasted several minutes before the behemoth could throw.

Yuriko could see more boulders flying towards the camp beyond the behemoths she could see. There were also barbarians in a loose formation some distance from the battling giants, and from the red stains and mangled flesh in the snow, more than a few had been trampled.

“We need to support the Colossi!” Areena said.

Veran looked over at them, frowned for a few seconds then said, “Engage at will, keep close and support each other.”

Yuriko nodded and made a beeline towards the nearest behemoth, the one with the giant right arm and a dozen tiny lefts. It was punching at a Koinos Colossus with its right, while the multitude of lefts were flinging Chaos fortified snowballs. Sparks and ripples formed over the Koinos’ armour plates as the Animus protection sought to counter the enemy’s attack.

Yuriko, along with a couple of Knights, Sheamus and a Decanus named Mitre Lacona, who had a metal spear clutched in his hand, engaged the behemoth. She sent her sunshards towards its eyes, of which there were at least five, placed evenly at the top of its torso. It didn’t have a head at all, and she wondered where its feeding orifice was. The eyes had yellow sclera and slit pupils, with no irises to speak of. No eyelids too, apparently, since it didn’t even blink when her shards struck the sclera. In fact, it didn’t seem to mind getting blinded. The eyeball boiled with the sunshard’s extreme heat, and burst soon after. It ignored her and continued punching the Koinos.

A moment later, a new eye appeared, a bit lower on its torso. It oriented towards her and glared. Almost at once, Yuriko felt an invisible impact on her Anima. It tried to worm into her, but the Radiant energy prevalent in it, as well as the dense layers, stymied the attack. She sent another shard at that eye, and at every eye she could see. A moment later, she was close enough to strike.

Like the left side of its torso, the behemoth had nearly a dozen spindly legs, though they looked like giant spider legs than anything else, with long hairs that were even taller than she was. The entire thing was grotesque, as though someone attached those arachnid legs onto the stump of humanoid hips.

Boom!

One of its punches struck the Koinos square in the chest and knocked it flying.

Mitre Lacona kept at a distance of ten paces, just out of easy reach. When he stabbed with his spear, a pale image rushed from the speartip and stabbed into the creature’s waist.

Skrink!

The metal tip skidded across the hide, drawing sparks but nothing else.

Red plasma bolts splattered on the eyes, fired from Sheamus’ weapon. He kept well back, but his shots were accurate and potent. It took three or four shots each to burst an eye but he was firing nearly five bolts every three seconds or so.

‘I hope he doesn’t run out.’ Yuriko thought worriedly.

Fri’Avgi, coated with the third dance’s edge and Roaring Volcano’s fiery sheath, slammed into a leg, and sheared right through it. It took a few seconds to go through Roaring Volcano’s third form, untenable in the middle of a fight, but since she wasn’t the only one fighting, it was well worth the effort. Of course, since the behemoth had twelve legs, it didn’t so much as wobble. She half expected another limb to burst out of its hip, but the only thing it did was shift its center of mass and throw a laughably obvious and slow punch at her.

She dodged it by a hair's breadth, but didn’t account for the displaced wind. Her Anima took the beating and she staggered to the side. Then, the full force of a swat struck her side and she went off flying. Midair, she tucked into a ball then flipped herself so that she landed on her feet and facing the direction she came from. As soon as her Anima touched the snow, she compressed it to absorb the force, then propelled herself back to the fray, though her cheeks were aflame from embarrassment.

“Ah!”

She yelped as the behemoth’s fist appeared in front of her. Only a hasty shaping of her Anima allowed her to twist her trajectory under the around. She managed to grab hold of the forearm and stabbed her sunblade into it. The tip sank a couple of inches in the hide then stopped. It was barely enough for her to regain her balance.

Flipping herself back on top of the limb, she launched herself towards the torso, kicking off from the bunched muscle. She left the sunblade where she stabbed it, called Fri’Avgi to hand, and slammed the greatsword onto the shoulder joint.

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Crack!

The sound of bone snapping rolled off onto the plateau. Yuriko had the feeling that everything froze for a timeless instant, and then, the creature bellowed in pain. From the center of its torso, its maw appeared, a vertical gap lined with razor sharp teeth. The rotten, carrion stench made her gag and when the behemoth shuddered, she almost lost her footing if not for hastily using her kinesis to grab on to its fur.

Gritting her teeth, she reared back, condensed her Anima as close to her body as she could, and boosted her savage downward swing. Fri’Avgi bit into the shoulder and sank a couple of paces inside, snapping bone and tearing muscles and organs. Radiant energy blasted into the wound and made everything inside sizzle and pop. Acrid black smoke billowed out, covering her field of vision.

Something struck the behemoth and it fell backwards. Yuriko reflexively held onto her artefact, which was firmly embedded into the torso. But as the creature fell, she thought better of staying and getting crushed. She leapt off her perch and landed easily on the ground even as the snow sprayed into her back from the behemoth’s fall. The Koinos Colossus drove its mattock into the creature’s chest, following its movement to the ground. Then it repeatedly slammed its weapon onto the hapless creature, pulping its muscles and bones. The sickening wet splat, along with the gristle and blood, dyed the snow dark blue.

Yuriko called Fri’Avgi and her sunblade to her hands, before they could get damaged from the Colossus’ frenzied attack. She leapt away from the splash zone, and surveyed the battlefield.

Three of the Knights were attacking another behemoth, while the other four attacked the barbarians in the distance. Streaks of lightning, gouts of red flames, as well as a fusillade of plasma bolts, rained down on the barbarian position. But unlike with the usual rabble, these ones had the sense to hunker down behind cover, an earthen berm that rose about a couple of paces.

Opting to help put down more behemoths, since they were the reason the camp was in danger, Yuriko launched herself at the closest one, a creature that had four legs, a relatively humanoid torso, and two limbs that were just a bit smaller than the first behemoth’s. This one had a head, which was covered in bony plates culminating in a tall crest that was at least a pace high. It was also covered in brown fur which easily absorbed the blows from the Colossus’ maul. The Koinos’ forearms had produced a couple of long spikes each, which it used to poke holes into the creature. It wasn’t that effective, Yuriko thought, although there were dozens of spots on its fur that were stained with purple blood. Since she couldn’t see the puncture wounds she assumed that it had some measure of combat self-healing.

The Koinos angled its shoulders and limbs so that whatever blows headed towards it, they deflected off the limbs and avoided the torso and head. After every swaying deflection, it either slammed the maul to the behemoth’s slide or punched it with the spike gauntlet. The pilots avoided using the maul to block, no doubt wary of the haft breaking or getting caught.

Fri’Avgi slammed into the behemoth’s back leg, and while she didn’t shear through it, it caused the limb to crumple and pop. She ducked the other leg’s kick and slashed into the knee, creating the same pop and crunching sound. This behemoth was just barely taller than a Koinos Colossus, four paces high, but it was nearly nine paces long. There was more than enough space underneath its belly for Yuriko to stand and strike.

On a hunch, she used the first dance in ascendance. Certain points in the creature’s anatomy seemed to draw her attention and she directed her blows at those points. The fur parted more easily to her attack and the angle of the blade allowed it to penetrate all the way to the hilt. Only when she ripped Fri’Avgi away did the spray of bluish red blood spatter against her Animus. The behemoth shrieked and dropped down on her, catching her by surprise.

The weight on her back made her drop to her knees, and who knew how many MiJin the thing weighed? Her Anima flared and she pushed with it, adding the strength of her body a moment later when the deadweight didn’t shift. Something smashed into the thing’s side, causing it to rock sideways. Her labours caused it to shift a bit, and she used the gap to slide out from under the thing.

She bounced back to her feet and had to summon Fri’Avgi back to her hand. The sunblade was still embedded into the flesh so she left it there. Instead, she swung Fri’Avgi at the behemoth’s crown, and split its head open.

The Koinos nodded at her and charged at another behemoth. The closest one that wasn’t engaged in battle was a round, pudgy looking one that looked oddly malleable. It morphed its mass around a boulder, flowed in an arc towards the outpost and used its momentum to fling the projectile. The Koinos’ maul slammed into its side, but other than a ripple that ran around its blobby flesh, nothing else happened.

Then it sprung at the Koinos and enveloped it within its flesh. Its top and lower halves twisted in separate directions and before Yuriko could do anything, there was a loud crunch!

She flung her sunshards and the recovered sunblade at the creature, and when both struck the body, its flesh boiled away. With no visible mouth, the behemoth nonetheless let out a high pitched squeal. It convulsed as more of its mass burned and melted. A few moments later, it abandoned the engulfed Koinos and attempted to flee. The sunshards burned within it, and it didn’t get more than a couple of dozen paces away before it melted into a pile of sludge.

The Koinos had been ripped in half at the waist. The runescript lines sputtered, their light fading to glimmers then nothing.

“Oh no.”

Yuriko gasped as she hurried to the fallen war machine. The Koinos barely moved, but the small wiggles of its torso managed to get it off its back, leaning slightly to the side. A hatch popped off and two people crawled out. One of them doubled up and vomited while the other looked just as nauseated, but had his mouth set in a grim line. He moved his hand over another part of the Colossus’ back, purple Animus glowing in his eyes. Then he sighed, a mixed expression on his face. He grabbed something from his satchel and shoved it into a chamber along the same compartment.

The runescript lines along the Koinos’ frame flared to life, though only along the torso and upper limbs. The splintered wood slowly drew together and reformed. However, there was nothing to be done about the severed bottom half.

Seeing the pilots mostly in one piece, Yuriko sighed in relief and returned her attention to the ongoing battle. Another Koinos had its right arm ripped off, and a third had most of its armour in splinters. The Certus, being larger and more powerful than the common kind, was mostly unharmed. As for the behemoths and the barbarians, about half of the monsters had been slain, while most of the barbarian force lay dead.

A couple of Knights were wounded, but it didn’t look too grave.

Things were going well, weren’t they?

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