About five hundred pounds of revenant moving at a speed that would make Usain Bolt weep with envy slammed into Ana with a force that might have killed her only months ago. As it was she felt the impact all the way from her toes to her teeth. Ana’s poor, much abused ribs protested and the air left her lungs in a pained gasp as her chest was compressed to within an inch of her life. And that was with her expecting it.
The revenant also tried to tear into her face, her throat, or her shoulder—anything in reach of its teeth, really, as its head came down. But Ana had expected that, too. The first thing she’d done as she and the demon collided was to get her left arm around its neck and her right forearm against its throat, controlling the movement of its head even as it wrapped its powerful arms around her, trying to crush her with brute strength.
Ana had it right where she wanted it.
The revenant was huge, and it was strong. When it flexed its arms, squeezing Ana from every direction, she felt it. But while Ana might be much smaller than the revenant, with her bonuses up and with her in physical contact with it she was considerably stronger, and that strength applied to all her muscles. She inhaled, forcing her chest to expand against the crushing force. Her damn ribs creaked with the strain, but they held.
While the revenant tried to shatter Ana’s bones, Ana applied that same Strength and more to returning the favor. The demon had slowed after their collision, and even more as it focused on the woman now clinging to its chest. But that wasn’t good enough. Ana’s Party needed it still and immobilized, and Ana’s solution was simple. With her arms around the demon’s neck, and with it holding onto her with all its considerable strength, Ana had all the leverage she needed to lift her legs and start stomping.
With well over 100 Effective Strength, Ana stomped down. Hips, thighs, or knees—Ana didn’t really care what she hit. All her focus was on making sure she didn’t get her face eaten, or her chest turned to pulp; the important thing was to hit hard and often. Ana stomped, and she stomped, and she stomped, jackhammering her feet into the revenant’s upper legs. At some point her left foot caught in the gaping wound Deni’s plasma bolt had created, and as she applied what must have been a ton or more of force downward the rest of its side tore open, spilling charred, putrefying guts onto the ground as the revenant kept moving forward. A moment later there was a loud, dull crack as its left femur snapped under Ana’s repeated kicks. Another kick, and the revenant stumbled as its leg folded in a place no leg should.
The demon went down, first slamming off the wall and then continuing onto the floor, trapping Ana under its bulk.
When that happened, Ana had what some might call “a moment.” She’d been trapped under a pile of changelings once, living and dead. She’d fought with all her strength, first trying to free herself, then just struggling to keep a tiny bubble of air between her arms and legs as she was slowly, inexorably pressed into the bloody mud. She’d fully expected to die there, and she’d never quite gotten over it. Months later she still reacted… decisively when she felt trapped, or when something unexpectedly covered her face.
Ana screamed. Not in fear or desperation, but in blind rage. Then she bucked, and while Part’s revenant must have weighed at least four times as much as she did, she threw it two feet into the air. She used the momentary space to fold her legs under her, planting her soles firmly in what remained of the demon’s gut. Then she kicked.
Ana still held onto the revenant’s neck. The revenant still had its arms wrapped around her. So when Ana kicked out with legs that could have squatted two thousand pounds, the revenant didn’t so much fly off her as up and over her head, pulling her with it as it flipped onto its back the long way. They ended up in much the same position as they’d started, only now with Ana on top, still screaming her head off into the revenant’s face, partially covered in things she couldn’t and didn’t want to identify.
Then the others arrived.
Ana hadn’t been able to keep track of anyone else. She hadn’t had the focus to spare. But the plan had been for Ana to control the revenant’s teeth and arms, and try to get it on the ground by any means necessary. The rest of them, five people with swords and axes plus one very trigger-happy Fire- and Lightning-mage, would actually destroy it. Now they set about doing so with ruthless determination.
The only problem was that Part had been a Bulwark, and revenants could retain some measure of the abilities of the person whose corpse they were created from. In this case, the revenant pulsed with Earth-mana as it maintained one of the most basic Earth-aligned Shapings: Ironskin. As the revenant writhed and kicked, far too focused on trying to crush and eat Ana to make a real effort to get to its feet, the others in Ana’s Party hacked, and cut, and chopped, barely making it through the revenant’s pallid skin, judging by their increasingly frustrated screaming.
Then Deni’s voice cut through the noise, repeatedly asking, “Can I let loose? Ana, can I let loose? Can I let loose?” and Ana, who caught herself trying to not only control the revenant’s head but twist it off, screamed back, “Light the fucker up!”
No one, especially not a bunch of kids, should ever have been exposed to the minutes that followed. By no means should they have been part of it. Between the hacking blades and Deni’s magic, they systematically reduced each of the revenant’s limbs to stumps, until Ana felt it safe enough that she could hold its head down by a two-handed grip on its jaw while Deni delivered a Thunder Tap to its forehead.
There were tears once the adrenaline wore off. Part had deserved better.
“What really bothers me,” Perrion said some time later, as they were getting ready to leave that cursed place, “is how Part died. Besides the fact he died at all, I mean.”
“How so?” Ana asked.
“I got a look at him after he turned and started running toward us. He was too neat, even for a corpse. The only wound on him was on his throat, and it had been cut, not torn out.”
“You’re sure?” Ana hadn’t really paid attention. There’d been a lot of blood on the front of his tunic, but she’d figured the revenant had found and killed some animal.
“Yeah. You can look yourself. There’s still a neat gash across his throat. That was done by a blade.”
Ana trusted Perrion, but she needed to see for herself. She got up, ignoring the looks from the other women as she made her way from the Crystal Chamber, where they’d sat down to rest, into the passage where Part’s ruined body lay, out of sight.
Goddess, she was glad that she wasn’t neurotypical. She’d liked Part. They hadn’t been friends, but beyond some surly comments right after she was appointed to train the militia and its officers, he’d been a perfect subordinate. Once she’d shown that she was fit to both train and lead them, that had been good enough for him. He’d never questioned her again unless he thought she was legitimately wrong about something, and when they’d gone after Talleh and the prisoners he’d broken out, Part had been among the first to step up for the hunting party that went after them. He’d been wounded fighting in the north, and hadn’t once complained.
If Ana hadn’t been who she was, she probably would have been crying.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Parrion was right, though. She’d made a bit of a mess of Part’s throat as she struggled with the revenant, but she could still see the neat cut across his throat, gaping wide enough that it must have been almost to the spine. And the implications of that made her sigh heavily.
“Someone murdered Part,” she said when she returned to the others. She spoke slowly. Deliberately. There was a miniscule chance that he’d been killed in self-defense, but that didn’t gel with the man she’d known. “The best case I can see is that it was someone in his Party. At least then there’s a chance that the rest of them are alive. Worst case…”
Ana closed her eyes, taking a deep breath to calm herself before continuing. Messy was by her side in a moment, one hand on her shoulder as the fingers of the other rubbed small, soothing circles on Ana’s neck.
Ana really didn’t want the worst case to be right. She could deal with one murderer. There were any number of idiotic reasons why someone might murder someone else during a stressful time. The alternative was that they were facing another, new threat in a line of threats.
In the first case, Ana could leave it to Falk and the guard. Otherwise she’d have to get involved.
“In the worst case,” she said tiredly, “we may be facing more of the same old shit we’ve been dealing with for months.” There. That would have to do as a summary. They’d understand.
“So, what do we do?” Messy said, looking between Ana and the others in the Party. “Do we go looking, or…?”
“We go back, right?” Rayni asked the Party. “We give Part an actual goddamn pyre, and then we return to the outpost the way we’d planned to, and we report what we’ve found and warn everyone.”
“We have a vanishingly small chance of finding anything,” Perrion said by way of agreement. “The revenant could have come from anywhere within a few days. I say we go home.”
“Does anyone disagree?” Ana asked. She looked from face to face, but no one did. “Alright. Let’s get the Crystals. It should be early evening, right? We’ll make a pyre to send Part off, then move a few miles before camping. We’ll start back in the morning.”
The Delve itself turned out to have been one of the least profitable in Ana’s short career. At Greater Tier with a Factor of 2, her take after they divided the Crystals, with some extra for Rayni like they’d agreed, came to 1800 Points. But that didn’t matter much. Destroying Part’s revenant had given her a Medium and a Minor Crystal, and her efforts had brought her Unarmed Combat Skill to Level 17, giving her a Greater. All that had totalled 2200 Points, and going into the fight she’d only needed 1800. By the time they closed the Delve, she was already there.
Silently, on the inside, Ana was elated. She could reach Level 20 whenever she wanted! But that wasn’t enough. She wanted… she wasn’t sure. Some kind of celebration? It had been a goal of hers for months, and now she was there. She’d rarely celebrated anything in her life, unless it was Mr. Stamper surprising her with a celebratory dinner for getting her GED, or arranging a surprise birthday party for her; surprises, because he’d known that she would’ve tried to avoid them otherwise. But now she wanted to share the accomplishment with her friends. With Messy, more accurately, but Messy would want to share it with their friends, so same thing, really. But now was not the time to celebrate, not after what they’d just been forced to do. Not when Ray still didn’t know if her friends—or colleagues, or acquaintances, or whatever they were to her—were still alive.
They did just as they’d said. Once the Delve collapsed they found Part, who lay nearby. They built a pyre, and said a few prayers to a few different gods, since no one was sure whom, if anyone, Part had worshipped. Then they burned what remained of him, Deni making sure that the flames burned fast and roaring hot. They put up a simple cairn over his charred bones and put a few miles between themselves and the site before camping.
Ana remained at Level 19. The Crystals weren’t going anywhere. She could wait.
They started back toward the outpost early the next morning. It wasn’t fully light by the time they’d eaten and everything was packed, and by the time the first rays of direct sunlight came down through the canopy of the trees they’d already hiked several miles. They kept on a direct route. Rayni and Perrion stayed close to the rest of the Party instead of ranging ahead; no one was in much of a mood for any adventures, no matter how profitable they might be. Getting back to the outpost, everyone agreed, had to be their number one priority.
Besides, the Delve had already been plenty successful for everyone involved. While the demons they’d slain had mostly netted Ana a large number of Lesser and Least Crystals, the others had picked up Majors and Mediums. With so many of their foes being higher level than Ana, the two fighters had received bonus Crystals, too. Then there were all the Skill Levels people had picked up, which netted them even more Crystals. Ana would be shocked if most or all of them, except maybe Rayni, didn’t have enough for another Level. She knew that Messy did, though her girlfriend hadn’t wanted to eat her Crystals for the same reason as Ana; Leveling was a happy occasion, and it didn’t seem like the time.
They talked little. There was really only one topic that seemed relevant, and nobody much wanted to think about it. And it didn’t seem like they’d be able to figure out anything useful, anyway; while Rayni knew who’d gone out with Part, by description if not by name, she couldn’t imagine any of the ones she knew personally murdering the man.
With no ready solution to the mystery they stopped talking about it by the time they’d finished their midday meal, and the first hour afterward passed in near silence. Ana passed the time listening to the sounds of nature around them. She could hear so much! Not just the birds and the buzzing insects and the wind in the trees, but the heartbeats of her Partymates, the barely-there sounds of animals watching them cautiously from the distance, and even bugs scuttling around in the leaf cover. It was a good thing that her ever-increasing Perception and the Perk she’d received from it helped her sort, analyze, and selectively ignore sounds, because the sheer number of distinct things she could hear at any given time, the immensity of the soundscape available to her, would have been absolutely overwhelming otherwise. If she’d had the kind of hearing she did without a proportional increase in her ability to handle sensory data, she would most likely have plugged up her ears, found the deepest, quietest cellar she could, and just curled up there, begging for the noise to stop.
As it was, she could simply enjoy the wonder of it. And that was what she was doing when the faint sound of feet running through dry leaves reached her from far behind them, back along the path they were following.
At first Ana wasn’t sure that she was hearing it right. “Halt, and quiet,” she ordered, firmly but without raising her voice. As the others looked at her, wondering what was going on, Ana closed her eyes and listened carefully. And there it was, just like she’d thought: leaves crunching in an even cadence. It was the sound of something running on two legs, no question about it. A sound that was quickly growing louder, though it might be a while before anyone else could hear it, even Rayni or Perrion.
“Someone’s following us. Sounds like they’re trying to catch up,” she explained once she’d opened her eyes, meeting the Party’s questioning looks. “Let's stay here. We shouldn’t assume that they’re hostile, but I want the backliners out of sight. Armor on, straps tight. Let’s be ready for anything, just in case.”
The others did as Ana said with minimal chatter, with those who had it quickly putting on their armor. Ana marched in hers, but the magical white leather armor she’d been gifted by the Wayfarer breathed shockingly well. A normal suit was far too hot to hike in, considering the warm, sometimes sweltering temperatures in the Splinter. But they were all experienced with donning their suits, and with helping each other; they were ready long before their pursuer caught up with them.
Rayni saw him first. “That’s… I think that’s Rill,” she said, and Ana could barely see the distant spec of a person running toward them, sword in hand. “Yeah. And, I mean, Rill. Not a revenant! He looks alive! But my Danger Sense… Is something chasing him? I don’t—” Confusion laced her tone, and then her words cut off as the distant figure came closer. When Ana glanced at her, the Huntress’s dark face was ashen, her mouth caught half open. There was a haunted look in her eyes as she croaked, “Run. Oh. Oh, gods! Everybody, RUN!”
Ana looked back. It was Rill, alright. Rill’s face, Rill’s armor, and Rill’s sword, all covered with a liberal coating of crimson. But when he got closer his eyes didn’t look like Rill’s. The manic glee in them, and the rictus grin that split his bloodspattered face, showing off all of his many, many sharp teeth, didn’t look like the Rill she knew at all.
Ana Inspected him.
His label said [Rill, Possessed Themion Hordebreaker (Threat: Apocalyptic)].
This Is Why People Are So Scared Of Possessed Delvers arc. I hope you enjoy it.
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