Runeblade

B2 Chapter 249: Bonefields, pt. 3

From where he was sitting in the autumn sun, Porkchop lurched to his feet—head snapping to stare out over the cliff at the far end of the plateau, into the Bonefields.

“They’re coming. I can hear them.” he said, voice broadcast widely so that Ianmus would hear him too.

Kaius was on his feet in a second. It had been nearly an hour since they had used an alchemical tonic to make their bait rapidly decay, and after the first ten minutes they had relaxed as the smell had stemmed partially with no sign of approaching beasts.

He grabbed his helmet from where it was sitting beside him, the thick plated steel cold through the leather interior of his gauntlets. Slamming it on his head, he tightened the strap that would hold it in place. As it settled, he felt the set enchantment activate—his armour becoming just that little bit lighter. The helmet narrowed his vision—but only just, having been designed to maximise as much of a viewing angle as possible. _{𝔫𝖔𝖛𝖕𝖚𝔟.𝖈𝖔𝔪}

A Father’s Gift was out of its scabbard in a flash, held ready in a mid-guard as it caught the light, bands of steel caught between crystal glinting a subtle red.

Looking up to Ianmus, he found his teammate standing ready—staff held firmly in one hand as he gazed out far into the Bonefields, the same direction Porkchop had been looking. Following their eye line, he took a look himself.

Kaius might have lacked Porkchop’s ears, but he had the best eyes in their team and spotted their foe quickly. One of them at least, just a pale cream and pink blur, dashing between the red stone monoliths as it raced off to their left. It was impossible to track it for long—the winding shadowed passages of stone and bone remnants of titans obscuring it in seconds.

“I saw one—only for a second.” Kaius said, confirming Porkchop’s alert.

Turning back to the entrance he knew the biters would come from, Kaius readied himself. He widened his stance—loosening his muscles so that he could react at the slightest warning.

“Do you know how many there are?” he asked, still keeping his eyes trained on the passage that the biters would enter from.

“Not perfectly,” Porkchop replied, his ears swiveling to track the distant sounds coming from the wider Bonefields. “But it sounds like a lot—maybe more than twenty.”

Ianmus snorted above them.

“I’m starting to see why everyone treats the reports we get so skeptically!” he called down.

That drew a laugh from Kaius.

“What? You thought farmhands and caravan guards would be masters of scouting and surveying?” he joked. Even if Ro and Rieker hadn’t taken the time to hammer it in that they had to come prepared for any eventuality, they would have figured it out eventually.

There were only so many times that he could run head first into a confrontation that vastly outstripped their mission briefings before it wasn’t impossible to avoid drawing conclusions.

Apparently, it hadn’t always been that bad—but even before the rapidly changing dynamics of the phase change, it had been something that happened with unfortunate frequency. The guild did its best to assume the worst, but there was only so much they could do without sending dedicated scouts to check themselves—at which point it was far more efficient for delvers to do that leg work themselves.

He still wasn't too worried. There was almost no chance that any given one of the biters had anything more than the equivalent to a rare class. That meant both he and Porkchop would outweigh them in raw stats—even if his were spread widely. Their numbers would be an issue—but he had plenty of experience with fighting large groups. Hell, in the Great Warren, he and Porkchop had gone up against groups of goblins forty strong again and again, and that was as unclassed.

Plus, the biters outleveled them significantly. Every drop of blood they spilled, and every beast they slew, would bring with it strength. Their levels would rise, and the difficulty with which the next creature was felled would fall.

They could do this.

Standing and waiting, Kaius flowed through a series of slashes and stabs—warming his body as his heart pounded in his chest with rhythmic intensity. There was a tightness at the back of his throat—a tension that built at the pit of his stomach, winding tighter with every moment.

He was ready.

He could hear them now—the sound of snapping teeth, clacking plates of bone, and scratching feet on stone. A far off biter snarled—vicious and low.

It was a brutal sound. One that dripped with hunger—with the strength and arrogance of a creature who knew it had no betters. That it sat at the pinnacle of power, and prowled through the seat of its sovereignty.

All of his worries about tracking down his father’s killers, gaining the strength they needed to move with some degree of freedom, and working to progress the integration flooded away. In its place was a honed focus—everything focused on how they could pass this next challenge.

There was an immediacy to battle that he loved. A flow of motion and mind that centred him directly in the moment—connected him deeply to his surroundings. The howling wind raced through the monoliths, caressing his skin with the cool touch of late autumn. The sun shone down, glinting off the metal of his armaments, and focusing its presence on their battlegrounds.

All of that made itself known to him. He digested it—felt it keenly—without allowing it to cloud his mind. All he could see was the passage where they would come.

The hole in his centre flexed, widening as he fell deeply into the bond he had enshrined with Porkchop. Even with his helmet cutting off half of his view of his brother, Kaius could feel where he was perfectly. The way the muscles in Porkchop’s back tensed, and his back claws dug into the hardened stone with ease as he readied himself to lunge forwards in an explosive charge.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

Mana flooded through Porkchop’s aura—air displaced with a subtle pop as thumb-length thick plates of overlapping sacred jade were summoned onto his body. His brother’s face was sealed fully—though Kaius could still see through Porkchop’s eyes, his magic serving no barrier to his senses.

Above them, Ianmus unleashed his first spell in a searing wave of solar mana—charged to a new potency by his metamagic.

The magic settled over him like a dousing in scalding water—the radiant heat of the sun soaking into his bones, stoking his passions as his physicality grew to new heights.

**Ding! You have been Enhanced - Sundrenched Strength (Hypercharged Spell)!**

The biters arrived, howling as they peeled around the corner of the far off passage, racing onto the plateau in a tide of bone wrapped hunger.

Strong he might have known the alchemy would be, but he hadn’t expected such a fervent approach by the beasts. The rotting stench of the deer carcasses seemed to have driven them mad—the beasts approaching with abandon and all caution thrown to the wind.

As they raced over the dusted stone, the biters spotted them immediately. Slavering howls and gnashing snarls echoing across the pack as they readjusted their course—sprinting straight for Kaius and his team.

They were curiously formed things. They would have come up to his waist—about as tall as Porkchop had been before his evolution, but far bulkier and covered in a bone carapace. Underneath their armour, he could see that they were in fact simple beasts—though he could see how they could be mistaken for something less natural. Even if they lacked the horrific countenance, the biters almost reminded him of the bear abomination they fought in the depths, but he could tell they were creatures born—not made.

That didn’t mean they were pleasant to look at. Each beast had an oversized dog-like head with shrivelled pink skin poking out from between plates. It was plated in a natural helm—leaving their heads reminiscent of a smaller creature wearing a discarded skull.

Their torso was tapered—like a stretched triangle lying on its side. Massive shoulders and a barrel chest supported oversized front limbs tipped with wicked claws, while their rear narrowed to thin legs and a stubby nub of a tail.

Kaius reacted to their presence immediately.

A quick count confirmed that Porkchop was right—there were twenty-two. Not completely outside of the realm of possibility, but still slightly more than they were ‘supposed’ to expect.

His eyes honed in on their armour—searching for any weakness he could exploit. Explorer’s Toolkit came alive—working in conjunction with his Glass Mind to evaluate the threat. The platting that covered them was thick and stout—but it looked to be simple bone. Tough, but not undefeatable. Plus, natural as it was, it lacked the reticulation and overlapping layers of true plate. Thin gaps ran along the seams of the plate, revealing pink skin. The insides of their joints were even less covered—lacking any armour at all, including on their throat.

If they were covered, the biters would have been immobile. As it was, they might as well have been completely unarmored.

The beasts seemed to rely heavily on the strength of their front limbs to move—using their overdeveloped shoulders and upper torso to haul themselves forwards at a breakneck pace.

If he could shatter those joints, they’d be all but crippled.

His hand snapped up, a salvo of four Hateful Nails flying out as motes of orange flaked out from his gauntlet, the remnant byproduct of his burnt spell inscriptions.

A high pitched crack echoed through the air—each projectile flying fast enough that a blast of wind hit him in the face.

The biters jolted at the sudden sound, but none of them expected his assault to come so suddenly, and none of the beasts seemed used to dealing with an attack at range.

Twisted steel stakes flashed through the air, driving deep into the shoulders of three of his targets—blood showering as they howled in rage as pain bloomed within their bodies.

Only one of his targets was able to dodge, lurching slightly to the side in what Kaius was sure was more luck than intentional evasion.

It still took the bolt in the chest, the steel nail punching half way through the thickened bone and causing cracks to spiderweb through the rest of the natural breastplate.

The downed biters howls of fury quickly turned into desperate whines of agony as his Hateful Nails bloomed. Cruelly barbed spikes and twisted hooks erupted from the steel, tearing through the bodies of the beasts as binding brambles seemed to claw their way through delicate flesh with willful malevolence.

Muscles were shredded, bones cracked, and—just as he hoped—their shoulders gave out completely.

Losing the use of their limbs so suddenly sent them crashing down—a flail of clacking bones that forced the beasts behind them to slow their sudden charge so they could safely leap over the prone forms of their crying packmates. Even then, more than one stumbled over the newly formed road-block.

The one he had shot in the chest fared worse. Crawling wires and spikes were injected straight into the centre of its torso, shredding the delicate organs within. Kaius watched it outright collapse, panting weakly as a deluge of foaming blood seeped from its mouth.

The blow must have ruptured its lungs, he realised.

With the metal of his spell still embedded deeply in its flesh, its Health could do nothing—burning impotently as it elongated the beasts suffering. Kaius knew that as soon as the precious resource expended itself, the beast would suffocate.

First blood was his—he’d already killed one.

Light flashed overhead—searing beams sinking into the eyes of another front runner, leaving it yelping and blinded.

Porkchop roared—a furious bellow that announced his primal dominance. The effect was immediate, enraged howls rolling over the pack as they narrowed their focus, snapping at each other as they raced to be the first to punish the challenger to their territory.

Clad in sacred jade, Porkchop was unphased by the rage of the pack, confident violence oozing across their bond. He charged, a wall of jade preceding him as he entered the fray.

Kiaus grinned. He couldn’t let Porkchop have all the glory.

Focusing on his glyph of Aelina, he tapped into his newest spell. Light blue shards burst from his glyph, and a sudden crack echoed off the stone walls that surrounded them as explosive force detonated behind and below his back.

He went airborne.

The ground blurred beneath him, wind racing over his face as he flew. Even with a slavering horde of grotesque beasts at his landing point, he couldn’t help but laugh at the simple joy of moving very fast, very suddenly. Howling glee ripped its way free of his throat, stamina flooding into his blade as Kaius used his Bladerite and fanned the flames of its enchantments.

This fight was going to be fun.