Chapter 74: Chapter 74

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Rain’s gaze slowly shifted from the bloodstains to the fat balding head councillor, his eyes luminous yellow with intensity.

“Why are there Kobold scales on your table? You have until the count of three to answer me.”

“Curious, this sub-sapient monster actually has expectations of us, I have never come across such an impudent beast before. To think it seems to believe it holds sway in any other matter than its death.”

“Er, that’s ah, it might not be such a bad idea to answer the monster this, ah, one time,” said Lixiss. She had surreptitiously moved herself away from the table and more importantly further away from Rain. Her hand was holding her fan in a white knuckle grip.

“One.” said Rain, his voice like dark iron. “Tell me what happened. Tell me where Lyra is.”

He felt Opal snuggling up against his chest. “I love it when you’re so commanding,” she murmured softly.

Rain carefully ignored that and continued to stare at the head councillor.

“Your master is out of your reach monster, there is nothing you can do but submit, lay your head upon the table and wait for our instruction.”

Rain tilted his head to the side.

“Two.”

The armoured leveler with a wide brim feathered hat abruptly hauled his feet off the table and sat up. 

“Seems to me your plans have crumbled about yonder ears dear leader and I for one would rather be done with this farce sooner rather than later. If you want to sit around talkin’ all day that’s fine by me, but I’ll be taking dibs on all the experience and levels this here monster gives.”

“For once you say something of reason Haldir, to try and use a monster to avoid our current Ranker inflicted situation was folly from the very beginning, the gods would never bless such an endeavour, even against such a creature of raw hellish sin as a succubus. Monsters exist to make us stronger so we may do battle, not to fight our battles for us. You look upon your food and ask it to protect you from demons when one should eat said food and quickly grow strong, anything else is cowardly vice.” The priestess seemed like she was letting off a pressure valve as she spoke, as though she had wished to speak on the matter from the start but had been commanded or threatened to hold her tongue.

The head councillor rubbed some greasy grit from his eye with his index and then rolled it between finger and thumb.

“It’s not particularly complicated. Would you rather be in front of a succubus, naked and vulnerable to her draining of your precious invaluable levels and life’s work, or would you rather have a sub-sapient meat wall in front of you, actively protecting you from her touch, her kiss.”

This seemed to get a reaction out of the others despite themselves, the priestess shifted uncomfortably before an expression of fury crossed her face.

“That- That doesn't matter! The inheritors of the gods gifts should fight for the gods, fight against hell’s demons as the antithesis of the gods, we have a responsibility!”

“Even if that means losing your levels, the gods gift?”

She scowled. 

“If that what must come to be, then so be it,” she managed to grit out, although she still visibly paled at the thought.

As they spoke Zack was becoming more and more agitated, practically vibrating on the spot, his breath accelerating, his eyes dancing between the councillors.

“Y-you’re all just sitting here so c-calmly, when a succu- when a-!” he shook his head as though trying to clear it, his normally perfect hair becoming ruffled, a strand hanging limp across his sweaty face. “She can come and take our fucking levels at any fucking moment! Sucking them away, stealing them, taking them all for herself! My levels!”

His maddened gaze darted to Rain. “She can't take them all, she can't, not if I have more, if I have more levels then she can’t take all of them, there would be too many, too many.”

He licked his lip and thrust his hand out to the side. A spray of sparks spat from his palm along with a few dripping globules of something molten. Glowing red material oozed from his skin and then extended into the air, swiftly growing in opposite directions in a long thin sinuous shape until one end capped and the other swelled into a growing magma bulb before bloating out to the side, thinning, arcing, becoming a vicious looking black and orange-red blade, a molten scythe. Zack flipped the scythe around in his palm, lava hissing as it dripped from the edge and splattered across the ground. 

“Now this is more like it,” said Haldir with a wide toothy grin. He set his feet and kicked back his chair away from the table, one hand grabbed at something below and he hauled out a large rectangular chest. He rapped his knuckles against it and with a clockwork click the box pulled apart, wooden panels smoothly sliding away.

As that was happening Zack lunged for Rain, the scythe swinging around in a great arc.

Rain was quite aware he was in a difficult situation, being surrounded by enemies, and worse, being made especially vulnerable due to having a half naked Goblin girl wrapped around his hips. He needed to cut down on threats swiftly if he was to have any hope of getting out alive and saving Lyra.

He slammed both paws up against the underside of the table, his biceps bulging, and with a bass roar sent the entire massive hall spanning oaken thing spinning skyward. The vast spread immediately flew in every direction and the air was filled with hundreds of falling objects. 

Zack flinched back as plates and cutlery and food crashed over him and Rain took his chance, launching himself forward, his long arm reaching. Zack tried to move, to shift out of the way, but it was far too late. A massive paw wrapped around his hand and he was dragged right off his feet, his scythe useless up close. Rain’s jaws came down on his shoulder as though it wasn’t even there, instantly snapping together like a steel bear trap. It all happened in only a fraction of a moment and Zack was left stumbling away not quite sure what had just happened. 

He turned his head and looked down, he seemed fine. Then his gaze shifted right and he found his shoulder was just… gone, his boney clavicle sticking from the crater of gore that exposed part of his lung, his pectoral muscle twitching and trying to pull at an arm bone that was no longer there.

His lip trembled and he fell to his knees, his wide eyed uncomprehending gaze moving to Rain just in time to watch his arm disappear down the wolf monster’s throat. 

“But... my levels?” 

Then the table landed on him. 

BOOM. The weight of the thing sent the recently landed plates, cutlery, and food flying into the air once again with the impact.

Rain was already moving, but Haldir hadn’t been idle. A ballista bolt a yard long ripped through the air with a blast of wind straight on target, the black steel razor head punched through the side of Rain’s coat and went straight out the other side.

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A moment of pure horror crashed over Rain as he looked down. He hadn't been hit, he would have felt it, but…

Time felt like it slowed to a crawl and his heartbeat became sluggish, almost painful, he raised a paw hesitantly, no, it couldn't be? 

“...Opal?”

But then his coat shifted and a small head poked out of the hole the bolt had torn and blinked up at him. 

“Hey, that was a close one!”

Time returned to its normal flow and he let out a desperate breath of relief. 

“Oih, look aht thaaat, that wolfs got a Goblin on ‘im!”

Rain turned his head, his heartbeat racing, this time with white hot fury, his lip lifting in a bone shaking snarl that shimmered the air and sent plates and cutlery vibrating across the flagstones while Opal let out progressively louder and louder squeaks at the sensation.

Haldir was there, one foot up cockily on a chair, a massively oversized crossbow hanging from straps harnessed around his shoulders, the weapon more like a siege ballista than anything. The tip of the ballista was cast metal, an ornate silver lion, another bolt poking from its open mouth. 

Rain leapt for him, bounding forward.

Haldir clicked his tongue and the magically empowered winch doubled its speed, pulling back the bow’s metal arms. “Hey, priesty, little help here?!”

A flash of light and a rectangular golden barrier barred Rain’s way. He crashed into it hard, barely having enough time to twist to the side, making it a painful shoulder check rather than a head-on collision and just protecting Opal from being crushed. The impact was jarring and set his teeth on edge, the barrier making a ringing sound like a pure church bell as it was struck. He stumbled backwards, taking a moment to find his balance. As he did so a second barrier flickered to life beside him, then another behind, separate, floating in the air.

A blindfolded cherub was sitting on the priestesses shoulder. All of the cherub including the blindfold was made out of the same transparent golden material as the barriers. Rain narrowed his eyes and watched as the cherub made shapes with its chubby hands then shrunk down by about an inch in height as another barrier flickered to life, then grew smaller once more as once again a barrier materialised, this time above him.

Rain reached out for one of the barriers, a rectangle floating in front of him, and curled his paw pads around it, then he set his feet and heaved backwards, digging in and grunting as he leveraged all of his weight to haul on the thing.

It didn't move in the slightest. The barrier remained as it was as though nothing was even touching it, no matter how much Rain hauled on it the barrier remained static, immutable, solid.

“Fool of a monster, you cannot move my barriers.”

Haldir pulled a lever on the side of his ballista with a Ker-chunk and locked the strained taut bow rope into place. 

“Just hold it there while I line this up aye?”

Rain quit trying to pull down the barrier and placed a paw up against it. The thing wasn't going to be pulled down, and pressing his claws into it didn't even scratch the surface. It seemed invincible, indestructible, unbreakable.

He opened his slavering jaws.

But it wasn't unbiteable.

The priestess made an outraged squawk as Rain put his maw around the top corner of the rectangle and brought his jaws together, his teeth pressing up against the transparent golden glow.

“Wha- what in the gods holy names is that thing doing to my barrier? Such blind stupidity, like a trapped dog gnawing at its binds, pointless, nothing can touch my god given-

Crunch. Rain ate the barrier. Fractures were sent shooting across its surface, breaking it apart as the section he had just bitten into went down his throat. 

The priestess’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. 

“S-stop that! Stop eating my barrier!”

The cherub on her shoulder let out a groan and clutched at its chest.

Rain ignored her and continued to devour, the barrier rapidly failing, each fractured section becoming unanchored in space and drifting away. The priestess in a panic thrust out her palm and the cherub on her shoulder mimicked her. The undamaged barriers around Rain started to fade away and the cherub rapidly grew in size.

That is until Rain ate one more chunk of barrier, swiftly digesting it. The cherub froze up, its growth grinding to a halt and its head snapping down, clearly staring through its blindfold at something inside its transparent body, a mote of darkness. 

Then the cherub began to scream, thrashing in pain, its skin rippling and bubbling.

Rain’s paw snapped down and wrapped around a long jagged shard of the shattered barrier as the other unbroken barriers around him started to fade into nothing. Without hesitation he leaned backwards and in the same motion twisted his hips, then with a savage snarl torqued his upper body, his paw whipping around, the jagged shard flashing forward. The shard left his pads and slipped through one of the gaps between the fading rectangular barriers, ripping through the air like a terrible golden dart.

Haldir barely had a moment to draw breath before the shard embedded itself in his chest, cutting through his armour and harness and piercing straight through his heart. A ragged wet gurgle left his lips as he looked down in shock at the thing that had just appeared in him.

“...b-bloody hell.”

He slumped back dead, his ballista falling against the chair with a crash.

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