Wandering Warrior: Judge - Chapter 20 (Patreon)

Chapter 20

Leedy and the others were taking their sweet time, so Jess and I waited just out of sight of the village.  I extended my senses toward the shifter girl, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much she had recovered from our earlier spell practice.

“So, are you ready to try again?”  I nodded at the spell enhancement bracers she was wearing.  “I think you have enough mana if you want some practice.”

“Do you even need to ask?”  Jess stepped off the trail and took a moment to pick an innocent tree to mangle.  Once she had a target picked out, she looked back at me.  “What spell should I cast?”

“Well, wind blades come to mind because of their simplicity, but I think you should start with something a little more versatile.”  I held up a closed fist and rolled my wrist, then stuck out my thumb as the power started to take form.  Usually my weakest element was earth, but I didn’t even have to utter the spell name to get the ground in front of me to respond to my will.  I said the name of what I was doing anyway, so Jess could hear it.  “Earthen Wall.”

I had intended to raise a foot-thick section of hard-packed dirt about the size of a normal door, something perfect for hiding behind when an area spell was sweeping through where I was standing.  Instead, a sheet of solid crystal quartz three times the size of what I wanted erupted from the dirt, throwing dust, pebbles, and uprooted tree roots into the air past the height of the forest.  The power drain was a shock, and I sagged against the wall for a moment while I caught my breath.

“Holy Trinity!  What was that?”  Jess poked her head around the wall after things settled down a bit, her eyes wide enough that I could see the whites all the way around her cat-like irises.  “You expect me to do this?”

“No, I think something smaller and less dense would be a good place for you to start.”  I played it cool, not letting on that I was more surprised than she was at the sudden appearance of a sheet of crystal that had to be worth more than the combined value of everything inside the village we had just left.  Maybe several of those villages.  “Go ahead and try the spell while I get this one to go away.”

Jess gave me a look that said she saw through my façade and walked off to give it a try.  I immediately started inspecting the magical structure holding the wall together, looking for a place to unravel the energy that thrummed in my senses.  Something like a regular earthen wall would fall apart in a few days, but this looked like it might still be holding strong when it was time for me to go to a different world a year from now.  And to make things worse, I couldn’t find anywhere to pull on a frayed bit of spell structure to tear it apart.

“That’s it.  No more spells until I get a handle on what’s going on.”  I put my hand on the wall and tried to drain the energy from it, but after I felt full enough to burst it still had plenty of juice left.  I immediately broke my no-magic rule and opened up the earth under the wall until it dropped low enough to be flush with the ground.  I didn’t use any control words this time, which thankfully made it easier to manage the mana that left my hands.  Once it was impossible to see unless you were practically standing on it, I sat down to try and recover the energy I had used.

It was becoming clear to me that using both hand motions and activation or control words put too much force behind the spells I was casting.  I would have to do either one or the other, unless I wanted something completely overpowered to happen.  Thinking over my meeting with the wendigos, I wasn’t ruling out the need for ridiculously powerful magic in my near future.

“Stupid spell!  Work!”  I looked over to see Jess raising up knee-high mounds of dirt that fell flat after a few seconds.  “James, I don’t know what’s wrong, but I can’t get a wall to form at all.”

To my eyes, Jess was holding back too much mana, and she was trying too hard.  “Instead of forcing the spell to move exactly the way you want, try giving it some slack.  Give the magic a chance to form naturally, without your intent disrupting the natural flows of the earth around you.  And stop limiting how much mana goes into the spell.  Let the power come from within, like you are a spool of thread and the spell is pulling out as much as it needs.”

Before she could try again, the sound of a twig snapping caused both of us to turn and look back up the trail.  At first I suspected it was Leedy and the others, but I got to my feet when the smell of something rotting reached my nose.  It was clear Jess had noticed it too, because she moved to stand next to me.

“Undead.”  She took in a deep breath before coughing.  “Smells like zombies.  More than one.”

“Just to make sure I know what I’m dealing with, what kind of zombies are we dealing with out here?”  I reflexively enhanced my senses, listening for anything sneaking up behind us.  I was also surprised at how much I had recovered since burying the wall.  I wasn’t as full as I had been when I tried draining the wall, but it was close.  Probably something to do with the ball of energy behind my belly button that sucked in mana like a sponge.  “Are these the kind that shamble, or run?  And if they bite me, do I turn into one too?”

“You ask the strangest questions.  Of course you turn into one if you get bit, if you don’t get treated in time.  They aren’t vampires, where they have to swap blood or something.”  Jess looked away from me and dropped into a crouch.  “As for how fast they are?  That depends on how long they’ve been dead.  The older ones usually aren’t hard to handle.  New ones are the dangerous zombies.  They are even stronger than they used to be when they were still alive.”

“Great.  So, the worst kind of zombies.  Got it.”  I let loose a long sigh.  “Why did I even ask?  Of course this world would have bad ones.  At least a bite isn’t instantly fatal.”  A low moan came from behind us, forcing Jess and I to stand back-to-back.  “We need to finish these off fast, otherwise Leedy and Murphy might stumble into these things.”

It was moments like this that made me really wish I had figured out some kind of rifle from my original world.  Racking up some headshots–from a healthy distance–would be some serious stress relief.  Instead, all I could do was once again snap out the spear point on my staff, and prepare some wind blades in my left hand.  I could use the spear to keep them at a distance, and the wind blades to slice them up.

“Uuhhhnnn.”  Of course, that plan only works if there’s a handful of zombies to deal with.  When more than a dozen rotting corpses come stumbling out of the trees all around you, keeping them at distance suddenly becomes more of a chore.

“There’s too many!  Run!”  Jess darted away, somehow weaving through the first few undead so she could scramble up a nearby tree that was big enough to hold her weight.  The zombies immediately closed ranks, making it impossible for me to repeat her trick.  Jess saw the predicament she had suddenly put me in, and pulled free her dagger to try and stab the ones in range in the top of the head.  “Sorry!  I’ll try to thin out their numbers for you!”

Not wanting to get bit, I immediately cast the prepared wind blades at the undead closest to me.  The zombies were all rotting and bony, meaning they were of the older variety, so the impacts were enough to blast them off their feet.  When two of the five started getting back on their feet, I mentally kicked myself for not taking the extra bit of time needed for headshots.

I felt a bony hand grab my shoulder, so I spun out of reach while sweeping my spear-staff across at ankle height.  Two more zombies went down, and I had enough room to run.  I sprinted down the path before turning around to face them once again.  Since nothing ever seems to work right on this stupid planet, they completely ignored me and surrounded the tree Jess was hiding in.  She was trying to climb higher to get away from them, but the tree wasn’t big enough to support it.  A branch she grabbed snapped, dropping her back down to the lowest set of tree limbs.

“Help!”  Jess stabbed the arms grabbing at her ankles, chopping off fingers while trying to hold on with only one hand.  “Don’t let them eat me!”

My mind flashed back, to a different girl, on a different world.

“James, help!  Don’t let them-”  I was powerless to stop the swarm of giant centipedes as they covered her legs, biting and chewing their way up her body.  Her shouting stopped abruptly as the venom reached her heart, making her spasm violently before the light left her eyes.  The healing magic I was trying to push into her arms could do nothing for the dead.  My vision went blurry as I let go, allowing her body to fall down the cliff, landing on the broken bridge that had given out as our group traversed the gap.

“It’s too late for her, James.  Bianca’s gone.  We need to get out of here before we’re next!”  I ignored the knight standing behind me, his blackened armor hiding his face in the shadows of the stinking rainforest.  This quest was his idea.  His plan, to hunt down the warlock hiding in the ruins of an ancient city dedicated to the dark gods, was what had brought us to this point.  In that moment, I hated him for it.

I got to my feet, crushing the first centipede that poked its ugly head over the edge of the cliff with my heavy boot.  The rage building inside me needed an outlet.  The rage of seeing another friend die a senseless death, of being a part of an unfair mission caused by another in an endless stream of evil overlords, of yet another world I was forced to journey to without any real help or guidance, and most of all, rage at the pointless endeavor to bring ‘justice’ to a people that didn’t even want it.

The growl building in my chest built into a roar of frustration and anger, and I instinctively raised my hands as pure power erupted from them, washing away all the arthropods, plant life, and everything else in its way.  I scrubbed the ravine clean, leaving only the bedrock below.  Before I passed out from the sudden loss of energy, I heard the knight behind me gasp.  “By the gods, he’s not a paladin!  He’s a mage!”

World nine, the moment I gained my Mage Class.  The emotions running through me as I saw another comrade in trouble were more intense than I was expecting.  My vision blurred as I raised my hands, and with a wordless shout lightning erupted from my upraised hands.

The zombies were ripped apart by the violence of the attack.  Their flesh burned to ash, and their bones were blasted back up the trail.  Jess was accidentally caught in the electrical discharge, her body seizing up as she somehow managed to cling to the tree.  Seeing her getting shocked, I calmed down enough to bring my magic under control.  The lightning trickled off into sparks that jumped around my body, stinging my exposed skin.

My head started pounding, and the ball of mana behind my belly button ached in sympathy as it tried to suck in as much energy as possible to refill itself.  Oddly enough, it wasn’t the same kind of tiredness that I had felt when accidentally raising the wall of quartz.  Instead of it feeling like I was going to pass out from lack of energy, this was more like I had just done wind sprints and I only needed to catch my breath before doing it again.

Lightning had always been my weakest element, and this felt like it was more of a jump than even my stronger abilities would account for.  Could it be from the lightning Jess had seen in my mana?  I shook off the stray thought and hurried toward Jess, who had dropped bonelessly to the ground.  I slowed down as she sat up, groaning as she brushed herself off.  She looked up at me, her hair sticking out all over the place.  Her eyes widened in fear, and for a heartbeat I felt crushed as I thought she was afraid of me.  Then I noticed her eyes were looking over my shoulder.

Something snarled behind me, causing the hair on the back of my neck to stand up, and I dropped to one knee as I spun around, bringing my spear in line to intercept whatever was coming.  The undead creature that backhanded the spearpoint out of the way was–to my eyes–what would happen if the Hulk had an illegitimate child with a giant skeleton, and then that child won a fight against an oversized blender.  Basically, it was big, green, angry, and had bone spurs sticking out all over the place.

Instead of holding on to the spear-staff, I let go as it smacked it to the side to avoid the swing.  I had to roll off the path into the bushes to dodge the follow-up kick it aimed at my head.  The speed and strength it displayed were at least on par with the wendigos I had fought, but this one was really pointy.

The roll into the bushes caused my mace to come loose off its clip, leaving me with only my ninjato and wrist gun.  I unsheathed the magic-eating sword as I got to my feet, holding it with both hands in a low guard.  Not because it was the best position for fighting a larger opponent, but because it allowed me to point the barrels of the gun at the monster without it realizing what I was doing.

It stomped a bush flat as it moved toward me, thankfully ignoring Jess for the moment.  I dodged a sweeping roundhouse punch aimed at my head, waiting for the perfect moment to blow its head off.  “Me eat man-meat.  Hold still.”  The creature spoke in a gravelly rasp, and I was shocked enough that I missed a great opportunity to shoot it while it was talking.

“This thing can talk?!”  I knocked aside another punch, leaving a line of blackened flesh along its forearm from the edge of my blade.  It looked surprised that I had managed to hurt it.

“Ghoul!  Kill it with fire!”  Jess shouted at the top of her lungs, before dodging out of sight when the creature turned to look at her.  Not wanting to give up the opening she provided, I aimed and let loose with all three shots in my wrist gun at the back of its head.

Since my hand was vertical, the silver bullets hit in a line from the base of its neck to the top of its skull.  The heavy rounds did massive damage, tearing off huge chunks of rotting meat and spraying brain matter farther up the trail as half of its head disintegrated.  The monstrous undead stumbled forward, leaning against a tree before turning around to look at me with its one remaining eye.  Most of its throat was torn out from the exit wound as well, making its roar of anger more of a disturbing gurgle.

“Damn.  I didn’t think it was possible, but you just got uglier.”  The ghoul didn’t appreciate my comment, and charged at me once more.  The damage I had inflicted only seemed to have accomplished limiting its vision on one side.  Even though its brains were leaking out of its shattered skull, the undead somehow kept going.  Considering silver bullets had no effect, but my sword did, it most likely meant that ghouls on this planet were animated by some kind of magic instead of a virus or disease like in the movies, where ghouls were usually a type of super zombie or dead flesh-eater.

The undead monster leapt at me, barreling through the lower tree branches of the forest like they weren’t even there.  I curled my fingers and hurled a fireball to knock it out of the air, halting its trajectory and setting it on fire.  From the way it reacted, the ghoul’s blood seemed to have some kind of flammable properties. It rolled on the ground to try and extinguish itself.  I waited for an opening, and started hacking its legs off.

It managed to mostly put itself out by the time I managed to remove all of the ghoul’s limbs.  I took a step back to get a fresh breath of air and looked over to see Jess stomping out the few places where the forest was trying to catch fire.  “Thanks for doing that.  A forest fire is the last thing we need right now.”  I thought about what I said for a bit.  “Actually, that might be exactly what this place needs.”

“Ha-ha, real funny.”  Jess thought I was being sarcastic.  I wasn’t, but I didn’t push the issue.  “Why haven’t you finished killing it yet?  Trust me, ghouls are too stupid to answer any questions, and you made it so it can’t talk any more with that booming attack.”

“Because this thing smells like a highschool trash can that got left out in the sun over a long weekend before getting molested by a rabid skunk.”  I saw the confused look on her face, and waved my hand.  “Don’t ask.  Just know that it’s something that would stink almost as bad as this thing does.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”  She grimaced as the wind shifted and she got a taste of the full experience.  “Ugh, that is nasty.”

Before I could agree with her, the sound of a twig snapping nearby interrupted me.  Without a word, we both dropped into a crouch and ducked behind nearby trees.  Something else was coming.