Rotten Æther

//Author Note: I would strongly urge you to read Bloody Æther | Scribble Hub alongside this story. Shared world and setting, with crossovers coming!//

 

What separates a knight from an ordinary person, is the same thing that separates a great bear from the rabbits that scurry about in the clearings. Strength and power. Even the hunters scurry in the shadows, where he stands untouchable.

To be a knight one has to have visible æther veins, which means you must have well over a thousand veins dedicated to the one magic. Necromancy is my strongest and it isn’t even at two hundred. Even forcing them open with my special talent, I can’t cast anything as powerful as he can.

As my blades clatter against his armour, sliding uselessly off his helm without leaving even a dent, moving his head to the side by the breadth of a finger, I know that I can’t win.

I spin around kicking off his breastplate before I can even reach the ground. His arm snaps up to grab me as he swings his sword with the other. His fingers graze against the soles of my shoes as his sword whistles past my cheek. Neither of us has any speed magic, but my body strengthening lets me move just fast enough to escape him.

I need to learn speed magic and weight magic. It’s too late for that now. I need to use what I have.

“You’re either brave or stupid, elf,” the knight says, raising his sword. “Either way, you will be dead before dawn comes.”

“No,” I shake my head, stepping away from him. I need distance. He hasn’t attacked from a range yet, and he doesn’t have speed. Distance is my advantage. “We’re escaping. We’re going to live, and you won’t stop us.”

“You can try,” his armour and sword shimmer in the low light of my flaming swords. Something is strange about them. His helmet should have been damaged by my attack, at the very least, there should have been a scrape over his helm, but there’s nothing.

“Enhancement magic?” I ask, stepping back as the knight walks toward me. It’s something that Alice taught me back in my lessons. It’s something similar to my strengthening magic, but it works on gear instead of a person’s own flesh. His armour is harder, his sword is sharper, and worse still, the enchantments in his gear are more powerful.

“Oh? Smart little elf, but not smart enough to start running,” he quickens his step, his legs pounding against the ground faster and faster as he charges at me.

He moves like the crimson-streaked bears, fast and agile, unlike how he was moving a second ago. I leap away from him, kicking off a wall and scrambling up onto the roof of a nearby building. If I attack him from above, I’ll just scrape off his metal armour again.

The knight pauses at the ground down below, looking up at me, but he’s not the one to act. If it weren’t for Crow I probably wouldn’t notice the shadows moving behind me, a dagger flies through the air and I barely catch it with my sword before running along the rooftops.

The robbed warrior protecting Anna and Olive is retreating deeper into the slaughter that we were trying to escape. The hunters are in pursuit but seem more interested in keeping them moving than killing them.

Strengthening my body to gain what speed I can squeeze out of my flesh, I rush after them while the knight slowly walks after me, cutting down the people who are chased from their homes by the hunters in the shadows. A deep pit of darkness fills the road between me and the others, but I easily leap out and over it.

“Syr!” Anna cries out.

I steady my hands on my swords slowly backing away, trying to keep close to them. The knight follows only slowly, keeping back far enough that the people escaping from the nearby homes stay ahead of him, but he watches me closely and clearly, wants to give chase.

He doesn’t have the same feel as the monsters do. He’s dangerous, and through the small slits of his helm I’m sure that I can see æther veins glowing with power, but he doesn’t move like them. He’s not undead, which means I can’t use my trick on him.

My swords can’t scratch his armour, and none of my magics will work on him. I can’t beat him.

I burn a path through the shadows that seem to be forcing me back to the knight. My fire-dedicated æther channels are already burning from use, and if I push much further they’ll collapse, I have to conserve as much fire as I can to use against the undead hunters.

Most of the people who flee from their homes survive, though they could easily be killed. They sprint for us, and then past us, pursued by illusions and shadows, too weak to fight back. None of us here can put up a proper fight against these enemies.

I only realise the weight that was pressing in on my chest as it’s expelled by the light around Olive and Anna. They’re still shivering in horror at the scenes around us, but they’re still looking for hope where others are starting to lose even that.

Countless more people join us every second and it’s impossible to see if there might be a hunter hidden among them, the robbed man can’t stab that many people with his enchanted splinter. So even the safety of the light is being intruded upon by the encroaching darkness.

“Syr, what’s happening? Where are we going?” Olive asks, staring into the streets ahead. Other robbed warriors and armoured fighters that have survived this long lead groups onto the same road pursued by shadows and illusions. We’re pushed onwards, when we try to resist the illusions, the hunters come at us with daggers and swords.

We are being led somewhere, and that can only mean a trap. We can’t fight through them, the knight is too strong and I just know he’ll be the one beating us down if we try. The best thing that we can do is scatter and hope that a few of us might make it through this, but I don’t like that answer. Olive and Anna wouldn’t be fast enough.

We can’t hide, the hunters can find us.

We can’t run, they’ll catch us in the darkness.

We can’t fight, the knight is too strong.

All we can do is let them chase us down this road deeper into the trap. All we can do is let them lead us to our deaths.

“Syr, what do we do?” Anna asks, staring at our surroundings. Her face is pale and her hands are clutching tight to her dress. “What do we do?”

I still have my two puppets, which are just now catching up after I left them behind, but they’re not alone and where they walk, others run.

Some screech, others sprint in utter silence, but all are pale-faced from having seen the other side of death. They sprint so fast that they stumble over themselves, but even when they fall and roll along the ground, they throw themselves back to their feet and start sprinting again without a moment wasted.

They throw themselves at the living, diving on them with a ferocity and hunger that I’ve never seen in nature. Even the most desperate of starved predators aren’t this mindless in their violence.

A pale-faced corpse leaps on a young man nearby, digging its teeth into his neck and draining away the blood much faster than should be possible. I’ve bled out my prey before, it can take minutes even when you slash all the right parts. These people are pale and dry in seconds, their blood sprayed out so fast that the undead can’t drink it all fast enough.

Others aren’t as successful, cut down by the warriors in our number, or even thrown back by terrified survivors. As soon as they reach the light, the undead lose much of their power and are easily thrown back.

The hunters and the knight don’t seem to care either way.

I couldn’t find a way out before, and now it’s just getting worse.

I catch an undead woman as she leaps at Olive, threading her through with my æther and claiming her as my own, placing her and the other two puppets between us and the armies that are rushing at us. The mindless undead don’t care, pushing around my puppets to get at us.

I can use my necromancy. If I can command the undead hunters, and force them to my will, then I might be able to create enough of a distraction for Olive and Anna to escape. I’ll need to push myself as I’ve never done before. I’ll have only a minute at full power, and then I’ll fall over and be easy prey, but it’s better than letting them lead us to a dead end where they’ll kill us.

“I’m going to gather a few people…” I say, stepping out of the light. “I’ll give you a chance to escape. When the moment comes. You have to run. You have to run fast.”

“Syr?”

“Wait for the chance, shine a bright light, and run,” I say, stepping out into the darkness. I need to gather the dead before they’re all killed. They’re weak and I’ll need as many as I can for this plan to work. Hopefully, this will gather the attention of the smarter hunters, too. They don’t seem to realize that I’m using necromancy and find it strange for other reasons, but so long as I have their attention it might give Anna and Olive a chance.

I rush around our group of survivors, grabbing the mindless undead before they can kill anyone more, or get themselves destroyed. Wrapping them up in my magic, I gather the puppets together, walling in the back of our group, standing them at the edges of the light.

They only walk slow, I can only channel so much æther through my necromancy streams before they collapse, and I need to gather a strong army for the final distraction.

I catch a dead man just before he can leap at a young woman, commanding him to stand down. She shouts and screams, running faster to escape us. She doesn’t see necromancy, at least not anything that she would blame me for, but even if my secret does escape, it doesn’t matter.

I need to fight with everything I have.

Crow helps me to find the puppets before they reach us, they aren’t quiet and they don’t hide. They sprint at full speed seeking something to kill, something to eat. So, it’s easy to find them, and easy to catch them when they come for us.

The hunters are watching me gather my small army, ducking out of the shadows just long enough to prod at puppets, but they retreat before I can catch them. They still attack people, driving them on, but they’ve turned most of their focus onto me instead.

It’ll give the others a chance to run. It has to.

A few reaching shadows try to catch me while I race around, but I chase them away with the dead that obey my commands. Olive and Anna watch curiously but I doubt that they see much through the chaos and darkness, and what they do see they won’t understand.

“Who are you?”

“What are you?”

“I’ll claim this one?”

“You? No, this one is mine!”

The hunters’ greedy gazes watch my every move, their fangs shining through the darkness as some dare to reach for me. I flash my swords at them, keeping them away long enough to escape.

The knight behind them remains silent, his bloody sword an inspiration to keep us moving. None of us can fight him head-on. I can barely even use my new swords for anything other than the most natural of strikes, I need to learn the new weight magic that works with them, and I need more time to practice.

Even then I probably couldn’t win.

“Gather here! This is where we make our stand!” The shouts come from a robed man, the ugly one that I saw before all this started. “Gather here and survive with us.”

The robbed warrior stands at the head of a group much larger than any other, thousands stand at his back. They are gathered in the walls of the noble’s estate, surrounded by countless lights summoned by the many average people that are hiding here, desperate to survive. Some cry, some sing, and some clutch whatever weapons they can reach.

Small fires burn in a circle around them, summoned by the few mages with enough talent and power to keep the fires burning.

“Come, come quickly now! Gather here with us!” He shouts, standing at the gap in the circle of fire. One of the mindless undead reaches him through the chaos, but before anyone can run in to help him, he waves a hand over the creature.

It falls to the ground, returned to death by the simple motion of his hand. The sight is enough to draw the rest of us to him.

The ugly man is powerful, and more than that, he is a guardian and protector. I saw him before this all started. He brought the robbed warriors here preparing for this, he knew it was coming and he came here to save others. Looking at him, I feel warmth in my chest.

I want to be like him.

I want to be the hero saving everyone from disaster.

“Syr,” Olive tries to pull me into the circle of fire, but I step back. This place is surrounded. The hunters gather in great numbers and beside them are others.

I’m not the only one controlling the mindless undead. The hunters can do it, too, and they have many, many more.

This is where they wanted us trapped, but it’s not too late.

I can’t defeat them all, but I don’t need to. I just need to create an opening. The robbed warriors can fight against the shadows, but no one here can stand against the knight. I’m the only one who might be able to distract him.

Thirteen puppets stand by my side at the edges of the fire, the fire reflects off of his armour as he sets his feet, preparing to charge. I raise my swords and spread out my puppets.

I need to distract him.

“I will not die,” I whisper, sprinting into the darkness.

 

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