Demon Wolf

Wolf dulled his senses, nearing the point of sensory failure. He cupped his ears with his palms and wrapped them with Qi screens for good measure. He shut his eyes and hid behind a tree, doing everything he could come up with to shield himself so close to ground zero.

Then it came.

A bolt of lightning, thicker than a hundred-year-old oak, struck the center of Brilliant Gate’s camp. The earth twisted and bent beneath Wolf’s feet. Despite his preparations, the deafening explosion sent his head ringing. His shielded eyes still flashed white, however, the damage was minimal. More so compared to what the unsuspecting Brilliant Gate disciples had suffered.

Move. And Wolf did. He rounded the tree, meeting his first victim. With a leisurely swipe, he relieved the terrified, blind sentry of her life.

“I wasn’t certain those ropes would last long enough to summon lightning. The runes scribed on paper were fine, but the rope, working as a medium to rid this area of lightning, started smoking the moment I activated the Spell Formation.”

While his second Mental Aspect grumbled about Wolf getting lucky with the Spell Formation gamble, the first one controlled the body, dashing towards the center, ignoring the nearest group of ten patrolling women.

Seven of them lay prone, one gripped an adjacent tree, shaking like a leaf, while the remaining two sat, covering their faces in a blind daze. Wolf did not awaken his senses. The enemy was stunned, blinded for several minutes, while hearing had become useless for everyone.

An instant of surreal calm followed the lightning strike. Then the jungle exploded with wails, pained screams, and roars of distant beasts. Wolf smiled. He could use the commotion to slaughter as many enemies as possible before fleeing.

He sprinted towards the camp’s heart.

“The odds of anyone seeing me is zero.”

It’s not zero. It’s never zero. And even if they are, I shouldn’t say stuff like that.

A bare second had passed since the explosion. Wolf dashed, burning Qi and straining his legs, nearing the limit of tearing muscle. Suddenly, he clashed with a wave of thick, scalding mist. The dense fog rolled over the forest and swallowed him.

What?

“The soil is soggy. In On Natural Phenomena, Perucian states he estimated lightning twice hotter than the sun. When that bolt struck ground, it evaporated tons of water, turning it into steam and releasing a secondary explosion from the sudden pressure increase.”

This Spell Formation is a scary weapon.

“It can’t distinguish friend or foe, the Scribe needs to make it huge enough to draw a thick column of lightning, and it’s usable only once. In arid areas it has even less utility.”

Despite Mandy telling him to stop with the detrimental practice, Wolf listened to his father’s advice from years ago. He downplayed his achievement, focusing on his plan’s faults; on what had gone wrong, and what he had left to chance.

Still analyzing his situation, Wolf saw a human outline. He swung both his swords. Against blind, deaf enemies who had packed themselves into tight quarters, he kept his senses dormant and plowed through them with brute force.

***

Am I alive?

Gongs clashed in Marie’s ears. Her head pounded, following the rhythm of a focused, furious blacksmith working iron. However, that pain was the only proof she needed to know she had not reentered reincarnation.

Despite that confirmation, she saw only white. She willed her eyelids up, but nothing changed. Marie could not tell whether her eyes were open or closed, whether she had lost control over her body.

Her skin burned like she had jumped into a flaming hell. Nausea announced a likely concussion, but she suppressed the queasiness, and inhaled only to find she had difficulty breathing. Fire singed her nostrils, and something soft pressed her chest and back, pinning her.

Am I standing? No. The cramps and pain told her she was in an irregular position. Right. There was an explosion, and I blacked out.

Marie recalled she possessed hands and moved them. Soft and smooth. My robe feels the same.

This should be hair or thread. She gripped a thin bit of squishy leather and pulled, but a sudden, flailing blow forced her inquisitive hand away.

We’re all deaf and blind. Marie’s shallow breathing quickened. How did they do this? What did they do? There was a bright flash and an explosion. What was that?

Bits of jumbled memories crawled at the edge of Marie’s conscience. She focused on them, unaware of her frown. The shuffling and movement drowned most details in her recent memory.

Right. I ordered everyone to regroup. Francine bitched about not being able to cultivate, then everyone’s hair… Marie’s mind struggled to piece together what had happened, but her effort proved futile.

She had no idea when the explosion had happened, nor whether she had blacked out for an instant or an hour. Even worse, time in her white world of thought stretched into infinity, threatening to devour the few bits of composure she had gathered.

I can measure time using my heartbeats. Marie focused. Thanks to her years of training and circulating Qi, she sensed the flow of blood. The beating she sought clashed with the pulsating headache trampling her attempts at thinking.

She screamed at the top of her lungs, trying to hear herself, but she caught nothing. The din of the explosion still resounded in her ears.

In frustration and panic, her guts churned. If she had eaten anything in the last few days, she would have retched it. However, with her stomach empty, only bile stirred within, forcing her throat to clench and saliva to flood her mouth.

Trapped in the cell of her mind and sensory deprivation Marie spent an eternity.

Agonizingly long three minutes passed. After running in circles, seeking unknown answers to questions birthed by panic, reason finally won against animalistic fear, and Marie’s considerable intellect spawned a useful idea.

Heal yourself. A pill appeared in her hand. She could feel the hard, tiny orb against her sensitive skin. With some fumbling, she found her mouth, and popped in the grape-sized globe.

Rather than swallowing the medicine, she crunched it like a candy. What was supposed to be a slow circulation of medicinal energy from her abdomen, became a healing explosion right in her mouth. The violent release changed the soothing, warm flow into a burning wave which first saturated Marie’s skull.

Her vision snapped into focus, and Marie found herself in a gray world, half-laying on a squirming body of her apprentice sister, with yet another laying prone atop of her.

Collette. She recognized the woman digging her shoulder into her abdomen, before focusing on the skin of her hands. I’m not burned.

As Marie took stock of the situation, she noticed the blistering mist prevented her from seeing more than a meter away. The medicine then healed her ears, helping the maddening tinnitus disappear, which gave way to an equally deafening tempest of screams and wails.

Marie pushed the screaming Collette off herself and stood. She summoned another healing pill and fed the flailing woman, infusing her hands with Qi to clamp her mouth shut.

Collette stopped resisting, and five seconds later her eyes focused on Marie.

“Get up and start feeding everyone healing pills. Once they calm down, have them follow your lead. Understood?”

Collette nodded. “Thank you, Senior Apprentice Sister Grundhoffer. You’re a genius.”

Marie ignored her ass-kissing and moved to feed Francine her medicine. Unlike the thrashing Collette, Francine had enveloped her body in Qi, disregarding the damage she might have caused to her apprentice sisters.

Self-centered bitch. Marie gripped her face and moved to open her jaw, but Francine clamped it shut, glaring at the mist straight before her, radiating defiance.

Oh, for the love of… Marie moved to slap the cultivation fanatic, then decided to vent on her. She clenched her hand into a fist and coated it in Qi, before smashing it into the woman’s eye.

Francine opened her mouth to scream or shout at her, and Marie used the opening to ram the healing pill straight down her throat. As Francine choked, a slight, satisfied smile dawned on Marie’s lips before the gravity of her situation banished it.

We must heal as many as we can. Ten know how long I was out before I regained my senses. Marie expected a hundred attackers, not believing Honorine’s claims that Wolf acted alone. We can use the mist to our advantage, pretending we’re helpless—

No. That won’t help. They have the element of surprise, and they must have expected we would rally. Where did the Earth Pavilion find such a concussive weapon? Was it someone else?

Marie’s hand shook as she moved to heal her third junior apprentice sister. How much time did they have? How many have they slain already?

As Inaya opened her eyes, Marie finally realized how terrible her circumstances were. She kept herself busy. She had to heal, to take stock of the situation, and to find a solution to the immediate problem. Only with those out of the way did she face the overall issue.

Their attack is still ongoing. I’m in danger.