Arcane Apocalypse ~ 150 - Part 1 (Patreon)

AN: Some of you may remember that I mentioned in the last Chapter's AN that I want to take a break. I'll be doing that for the next two weeks, but I'll be leaving you guys with a gift before I go. I have managed to finish ch 150 last night, which is a nearly 12k-word-long monstrosity of a chapter (4x times the size of a regular chapter) that concludes the final Big Fight of this major Arc. I will break it into three parts and post them on Patreon over the next two or three days, then take a break. The 10 advanced chapters I promised to the Archon Tier will be maintained that way. 

Part 1 comes today, Part 2 comes tomorrow, and Part 3 comes on Tuesday. After that, two weeks skipped, and I'll hopefully be back next Monday after that. Which should be February 2.

*****

Six minutes until the beastkin caught up. Each one felt like an eternity, and the distance they’d covered in the interim was much too small for Mia’s liking. Her ears twitched, catching shouted last-minute orders, the thumping of feet on asphalt, then the war cries when they finally rounded the corner and came into view. The beastkin outriders, or rather, outrunners, were here.

Eyes wild, postures even more so, and magic held at the ready like a leashed hound straining against its shackles. All of them were fast, probably why they were made part of this outrider group, and they were closing the distance quickly, bounding along like a pack of starving wolves smelling prey. 

It was eerie, and Mia was struck by the sheer … inhumanness of them. The way they moved, their gait, the way one nipped at another, only to be swatted aside by the larger one. It was animalistic, bestial in a way Mia had never seen a beastkin act before.

She’d always seen them as human, just with extra bits. Changed outwardly at least, struggling with new instincts, yes, but fundamentally just as human as they had been before the System came and warped them into their new forms. 

Fae, Elf, Beastkin, Vampire, or any of the other magical species, it didn’t matter. They had all been human just a few months ago. All of them grew up in the same country, watched the same shows, and went through the same education system. 

And yet … the beastkin bounding towards the rear guard were alien to her, almost as alien as the monsters she’d been fighting for months now.

Maybe that was why she found herself acting without thought or hesitation, her hand snapping out and sending her Spectral Blade flying free of her grip.

It reached the edge of its range in seconds, spinning twenty metres away from Mia’s outstretched hand, and that was always relative to her own position. She swung it from side to side, making the humming blade draw a glowing, zig-zagging line into the air. It was visible and quite obviously very lethal to run into, so at best, she thought it would be good to keep the beastkin from nipping at their heels too closely. It was supposed to be a warning. A way to keep them away while the soldiers or other ranged fighters picked them off one by one until they inevitably retreated.

That didn’t happen. Some slowed as they closed in on the still-moving convoy and its walking rear guard, yes, but some … they tried their luck. 

Mia saw a man, his face a misshapen thing halfway between human and wolf. He saw that Mia had swung her blade to the side opposite to him and broke into a dead sprint. Before anyone else could react, Mia snapped her hand to the side, and her Spectral Blade followed the motion, tearing through the air in an instant.

There was a scream, short, primal and raw, then the wet thud of twin parts of a once-human hitting the asphalt. Mia froze for a moment, staring into those bloodshot, frenzied eyes now wide with agony, and watched them lose their light. 

He wasn’t the first to fall; that honour went to an unfortunate feline beastkin, who was more like a humanoid tiger than a human with cat-parts. He earned a wind-enhanced arrow to the heart from Sebastian’s elven squadmate. More of them fell, some dead in an instant, others wounded, most just knocked off their feet by blasts of air magic coming from an enthusiastic Lina. 

They had no ranged fighters, Mia realised, and it doomed them. They had the numbers advantage, but it wasn’t anywhere near overwhelming enough to overcome the power of a ranged offensive. Three archers and half a dozen mages kept up a near-constant assault, and one of the soldiers joined in too, sitting atop the backmost Jeep with his rifle at the ready. That one man matched the kill count of the three archers combined, though that might have been because he made sure to put a bullet into the enemies whom the mages tripped up or disabled. 

That didn’t sit right with Mia, felt a bit too much like double-tapping, which was a war crime …, but that only applied if they were no longer a threat, didn’t it? And these beastkin would certainly bounce back from a nasty fall quickly enough to become a problem. 

The fight lasted less than a minute, leaving forty-odd broken beastkin bodies littering the street as the convoy left it behind. 

Mia had expected more of a fight, and somehow the lack of it left her feeling conflicted, though about what, even she couldn’t say. It just left her off-kilter.

“Hey, elf girl!” The shout would have gone entirely ignored by Mia, had Camie not nudged her to pay attention. She wasn’t an elf; her ears were small and triangular, barely poking out from beneath her pink hair. But the soldier in question apparently didn’t know that, because he was staring right at her while leaning out of a Jeep’s window. “The General green-lit an artillery bombardment. We need targeting data! Where are the bastards?”

Mia stared only for a moment, then had Sparkle fly down and get the name of the street they were on, then the names of the next two streets it would intersect with. She jogged up to the man and quickly rattled them off, earning a brisk nod from the man before he repeated it into his radio. 

“Can you keep watch? Tell us their speed and when they pass the intersection?” The man asked clearly, just relaying his superior’s words, and Mia nodded easily. 

“They are coming up on the first intersection, not in much of a hurry, at most an easy jog or a power walk for most people,” Mia said, pausing for a few seconds. “The big dinosaur monster that their King is riding just crossed the first intersection. He’s riding at the head of the mass of them.”

‘Here they come.’ Sparkle hummed, and Mia quickly tapped into his senses, hearing the sharp whistle of a missile cutting through the air. 

It slammed into the horde a metre behind the ankylosaurus-looking monster, right in the middle of a cluster of towering Shifters. Werewolves, Werebears, Wereaurochs, Werecrocodiles and even a Wereelephant were blown away as the missile exploded with a thunderous crack, the shockwave carrying a fiery inferno on for a dozen metres. 

Many of the Were-beastkin stood back up, burned and wounded, but with their injuries already starting to mend. Only a handful received enough damage to be truly killed, having stood at the epicentre of the explosion.

Chaos erupted among their ranks, shouts and screams of something that was impossible to make out. Fear, rage, perhaps something else entirely.

Mia saw the crowned Werewolf roar, arms gesturing wildly and somehow managing to stem the tide of chaos before it truly started to spiral. Then the second missile — or maybe it was a mortar round, or some artillery shell, Mia hadn’t the faintest idea how to differentiate them — struck a building beside the road, erupting into a ball of fire inside an abandoned apartment and blasting parts of the wall outwards. 

Some of the more skittish ones bolted for cover, while others only did so when their furry mutt of a king gave the order to seek shelter inside the nearest buildings.

Mia decided to share that information. “They are taking shelter inside the buildings.” 

The next missile struck the scuttling mass trying to squeeze into a building, but finding the doors too small for swift entrance. It landed a bit off centre, but it still must have killed dozens. Anyone within five metres of the impact died, perforated a dozen times over, and their organs ruptured by the shockwave. Those within ten metres standing in the open were hit by shrapnel, deafened by the incredibly loud booms and blinded by the violent flash accompanying the explosion. These weren’t the tough shifters and were-beastkin anymore, but the more human-looking ones. 

Two more missiles fell, neither hitting the targets but managing to strike enough fear into their hearts to truly panic. Brawls broke out, bigger, stronger beastkin throwing others back to press forward, mages forcing their way forward. Some got trampled underfoot by the panicking crowd. 

I did that. Mia thought numbly. It’s been her idea to call in the artillery barrage … and it had proven effective, just as she’d hoped. She couldn’t find it in herself to be happy about that, though. Them or us. Maybe the more fearful ones will desert their dumb king and leave even fewer enemies for us. 

It was easier to shrug off the guilt than it had been for her first, second or even third kill. This was planned, yes, but detached. It had gone through an entire military chain of command without anyone thinking that her idea was a bad one. She’d just been the one to kick the entire chain of events into action. 

A few more shells fell from the sky with those eerie death-whistles, striking the street, buildings, and the entrances. 

“They’ve taken shelter,” Mia said. “The last four shells have hit nothing.”

Two more shells fell, having no discernible effect besides causing the beastkin to press further into the buildings, then they stopped.

“Hopefully that’ll at least keep them on their asses until we link up with the reinforcements,” the soldier said, then turned to give Mia another brisk nod that she couldn’t quite discern the meaning of. “Could you keep an eye on them? We might be able to scare them back inside their shelters if they start poking their noses out, if we launch our last few shells.”

“I’ll keep an eye on them,” Mia promised, though inwardly she couldn’t help but wonder why they had fewer than twenty artillery shells. Did the army contingent sent to Graz take a single mortar with them, along with only the bare minimum of ammunition for it? Maybe they’d already used up the rest, or maybe the beastkin raided the supply depot they’d stored the rest of their ammunition in.

It took a full minute for a beastkin to poke out his head after the bombardment came to a halt, though he ran back with a squawk of terror when Mia sent an Arcane Blast through Sparkle to explode the pavement before his feet. Hopefully, that would keep them inside for a few more minutes.

It was another minute later that the Werewolf King emerged from the deep garage he’d fled to with his oversized dino, at the head of the Were-beastkin contingent. On second thought, they were probably his elite guards. Mia considered messing with him a bit, too, but the reinforcements were already within sight, so there wouldn’t have been much of a point, and she didn’t want to force Sparkle to do so anyway. The small Sprite was quite clear that he wasn’t happy to be even within sight of the wearer of an Abyssal Crown.

A trio of Jeeps came first, though these had mounted rotary machine guns on top, and all of them were manned, too. Behind them came a pair of APCs, blocky things with eight wheels and an even larger gun emplacement on top, and once they came to a stop, the reinforcements poured out of them. Still more were jogging down the street behind the vehicles, but they were still a few hundred metres away.

The jeeps carrying the wounded carried on, hopefully taking them to safety to rest up, or better yet, to a healer. Maybe the beastkin kid Konstantin had glued to his side, or Lara would be able to help them. Speaking of Lara, Mia wondered how the woman was doing. She was one of the few beastkin she knew who outright ignored whatever freaky Call the Werewolf King made and stayed behind in Jeff’s apartment building. 

For a moment, Mia caught herself worrying about an angry mob lynching the helpful rabbit-kin, but then shook it off. Jeff would have beaten anyone who tried to pulp, and seeing how Zeigler’s soldiers had acted with the POWs, she was pretty sure there was no cause to worry.

Over the course of the next ten minutes, more troops kept flowing in, establishing makeshift barricades around side streets and taking up posts down the length of the street. Mia assumed it would be their task to protect the flanks and at least hold off any attacks trying to encircle them until someone could go and deal with it. More importantly, she caught a handful of snipers setting up in random windows or on rooftops all around the street. Hopefully, they would take out any of the greener than grass beastkin snipers … not that she’d call Sparkle back from his scouting, it was best to have one more layer of defence, and it didn’t tax him much, if at all, to just fly around and keep an eye out for them.

Mia recognised Aiden and Lori’s squads among the reinforcements, but also Clive, who strode up to her group, looking marginally less like a walking corpse. She was happy to leave dealing with him to Brent, while she kept an eye out, continuing to update the radio operator about the enemy’s movements. It wouldn’t be long now; she could already hear the sound of the dinosaur-monster’s footfalls. She wasn’t alone in that either; people started tensing up, hurrying along and getting into position. 

“It’ll be fine,” Camie whispered under her breath in that low tone she used when she wanted only Mia to hear her. Mia glanced up, finding a pair of ruby red eyes staring right back at her, creased with worry.

Mia forcefully released a breath she hadn’t noticed she was holding and loosened the white-knuckled grip she had on her wand. She gave a jerky nod, and her adorably awkward vampire gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder before putting her game face on. 

The monster came into view, a towering mass of bark and vines, covered in mossy greens and even some rocks jutting out of its back like spines. It really did look like an ankylosaurus, or maybe like a giant tortoise, but with a super murderous makeover. 

On its back sat the villain of the hour, a werewolf with fur as black as night and a pair of crimson eyes. Mia’s gaze latched onto the oversized, oily black crown floating above his head, then jumped down to the mass of beastkin crowding around the six trunk-like legs of the Evergreen monster. Some of them looked feral, just like the outriders, but most of them … most of them were normal. Just people, some looking stoic, some fearful, some eager and some downright terrified, and Mia’s could — perhaps unfortunately — see it all. 

The monster itself was huge, still hundreds of metres away, and yet its massive frame was still awe-inspiring. At the same time, Mia had the distinct impression that being big was the only thing it had going for it. It couldn’t have been of a higher level than the Broodmother, which had been established to be a maximum of maybe 16 to 20. Being that big should have roughly exhausted the power such a level would grant, by Mia’s estimation.

“Someone’s overcompensating for something,” Mark said, to the audible snickers of more than a handful of the gathered combatants. 

Mia was expecting … Well, she wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting. Maybe demands of surrender and subservience from the Werewolf King, maybe a soldier shouting demands right back at him. Instead, a resounding boom rang out, and the high and mighty would-be King of Graz was blown off the top of his pet monster. 

Everyone held their breath as the werewolf tumbled down the side of the towering monster, and Mia’s eyes caught that there seemed to be a profusely bleeding hole the size of a fist through his chest. His arm snapped out, fingers flexing and claws digging grooves into the bark-like hide of the ankylosaurus’ side. He heaved and launched himself back up to the monster’s shell, glaring into the distance while pitch-black fur grew over the freshly repaired pinkish skin on his chest. Then it was gone, with no sign of the attack that had punched a hole right through him remaining. 

Was that one of the snipers? Mia caught herself wondering. Hopefully, the next one aims for the head. 

“Attack! Kill them all!” The werewolf roared in apparent rage, his voice deeper than any Mia’d heard before. It reminded her of a landslide or a collapsing building. “The city will be ours by nightfall! No mercy!”

Whatever reluctance Mia still had against doing her best to murder this cunt evaporated faster than a snowball in hell. No mercy. She heard it in his voice that he really did mean that, and she’d always tried to live by the rule of treating people how they chose to treat her. 

The monster started lumbering forward, and the crowd of beastkin at its feet roared in response, two, maybe even three hundred voices all melding into a single cacophony of impending violence. Mia watched as the fear, terror and hesitation melted off of the more reluctant faces, giving way to savage snarls. A few seconds ago, a good third of them looked like they would scatter at the first sign of heavy opposition, and a fifth more like they would do so at the first opportunity that wouldn’t get them shot in the back for desertion. Now, there were none.

Was this merely mob psychology or something more sinister? Mia couldn’t tell, and it wasn’t like she had the freedom to investigate either. They were coming, and by the looks of it, wanted to kill her. Whatever it was that came over them at the moment was all that mattered. Survival. 

With an Arcane Shield still held before her, and one of Mark’s raised asphalt walls covering the rest of her body, Mia only poked her wand out from cover. Her spell of choice this time was the piercing variant of Arcane Bolt. Once they got a bit closer, she was planning on swapping to Arcane Blast, then finally to Spectral Blade for when they were within the last fifty metres or in close quarters. 

Maybe she’d even get to use her Blade like a proper sword … yeah, probably not. The spell wouldn’t be even half as effective if she swung it with her noodle arms instead of relying on the kinetic component of the weave to spin it.