Chapter 240: The Boss Comes to Town (1/2)

Humphrey swung his arms inward, brutally clapping his hands into either side of the cultist vampire’s head. It relinquished its bite on Neil’s neck, rearing back to let out an alien screech from its inhuman mouth. His jaw unhinged in macabre mockery of the formerly human anatomy. The mouth no longer had teeth, just bare gums and a pair of hairy barbs, growing awkwardly out from the roof of the mouth. They bristled, wet with saliva and Neil’s blood.

Humphrey, gripped the vampire by the hair and smashed its head into the stone platform until the body stopped squirming. It was the last of the bizarrely warped adventurers turned inhuman minion.

“I think I got a big dose of that blood curse,” Neil said, sounding woozy. He cast a spell on himself.

“Imbue with life.”

Clear green light glow around his hand, then shot into his neck.

Ability: [Life Bolt] (Renewal)

Spell (healing)Cost: Low mana.Cooldown: None.Current rank: Bronze 0 (11%).Effect (iron): Delivers life energy though a projectile, giving a small burst of instantaneous healing. Damages certain targets that are inimical to life force, such as most forms of undead.Effect (bronze): Bestows a mild, ongoing healing effect.

It was Neil’s bread and butter healing spell, which could also be used as a weapon against most forms of undead. He had never actually used it for that, with undead being rare in Greenstone because of the life energy flowing down the Mistrun River. Vampires were no better, with the blood magic flooding their bodies that produced a warped facsimile of life. They were the one form of undead for whom, healing magic was fully effective.

“Give me a second and I’ll clear that curse, Neil,” Jason said. “I’m a little tied up, right now.”

He was stuck to the platform by a blanket of sticky webbing. Gordon was cutting him loose with his four force beams.

“My new armour is definitely a step up,” Jason said as he waited. “That resistance to adhesive effects on the old one would have been handy, though.”

“It was,” Sophie said. She was still using iron-rank armour made primarily, as Jason’s had been, of trap weaver leather. “They were spraying that webbing everywhere, like giant nets. I couldn’t dodge it all.”

“Clive,” Belinda said. “You told us they would be easier to fight after being turned into vampires.”

“And he was right,” Humphrey said. “A few strange spider powers are no compensation for a full suite of bronze-rank abilities.”

“Their transformation was more extreme than I anticipated,” Clive acknowledged. “From what I’ve read about blood weavers, they almost always leave intelligent victims largely intact. They recognise that a high-intelligence minion is worth more than another physically powerful blood puppet.”

“I’m not sure high-intelligence was an issue,” Neil said. “They joined a cult and agreed to come here.”

“Fair point,” Clive conceded. “Blood weavers can put essence users through a stronger transformation, as we saw here, but it destroys the mind. You saw the animalistic way they fought.”

After creepily staring at them from the jungle line, the vampire cultists had recklessly hurled themselves into the team. Their reckless attacks led to the team putting them down in short order, although not before they penetrated the team’s backline. Clive had displayed some unexpectedly solid staff fighting, combining strikes and blocks with blasts of magic. Belinda had used an escape ability but Neil had been latched onto.

Gordon finished cutting Jason free and he immediately started purging the team of afflictions, starting with Neil.

“That was some good work with the staff,” Sophie told Clive. “You’ve been practising with Humphrey?”

“I have,” Clive said. “He told me that I needed to train for the fight I don’t want, along with the one I do. It would appear he was right.”

“Is it just me,” Jason asked, “or was that a bit anti-climactic, after all this time. We came here after the cultists and they turn out to be just more monsters. I mean, after the whole vampire monster army thing, they were just a few more vampires.”

“They seemed more than threatening enough to me,” Neil said, then hit himself with another life bolt spell.

“I’m sorry they got past me,” Sophie apologised to Neil.

“As am I,” Humphrey said. “I don’t think anyone expected that suicide rush. Jason was right, I think. After all the build up, the cultists didn’t amount to much.”

“We need to find where they were staying,” Clive said. “My guess would be somewhere in the centre of the city, past the thickest jungle. That’s probably where the blood weaver found them.”

“So that’s where we’ll probably find it,” Belinda said.

“It could be,” Clive said. “I think it might have run, though. I suspect it realised that we’re strong enough to kill it and threw minions at us to buy time. It probably chose a handful that were strong and mobile and abandoned the area with them while we were chewing through the fodder.”

“We’ll take a break,” Humphrey said. “Then we’ll loot the monsters, burn the cultists and get on to the middle of the city. We’ll find where the cultists were staying before the blood weaver came along and then, what they were up to.”

“That was a huge haul,” Neil said. “Three blood essences and a dark essence. If we find a mouth essence somewhere, we can recreate Jason’s combination.”

They were discussing the loot as they made their way through the still-deserted jungle. Every monster for a wide area had either been taken over by the blood weaver and killed by the team or fled to avoid that fate. They were doubling up on Shade’s three mantis beetle forms, which excelled at cutting a path through the thick scrub. Humphrey with Jason, Neil with Clive and Sophie with Belinda.

“That’s not very mature, Neil,” Jason said. “You shouldn’t make fun of people like that. It’s why people like me more than you.”

“No, that’s because you always bring sandwiches,” Sophie said.

“Sandwiches,” Jason said haughtily, “are the garnish on a prime slab of perfectly pan-seared rakish charm.”

“Getting that myriad essence was the big winner,” Clive said. “A legendary essence, and one of the better ones. We could buy the materials to rank every familiar on the team to silver and still have money left over.”

“I’ll be happy to get mine to bronze,” Belinda said. “I’d also like to get closer to them. How do you do it, Jason? You get along so well with your familiars, but mine are so alien.”

“Colin and Gordon aren’t exactly everyday folk, either,” Jason said.

“Then what’s the secret?” Belinda asked.

“They’re just people,” Jason said. “Treat them that way. Yes, they’re a little odd to our sensibilities, but if it can think, it’s a person. That’s the same, whether you’re talking about a familiar or a god. Even a monster, although that’s a tragic one. Imagine coming into being knowing that you have a terminal condition, and your options are get killed by an adventurer or go insane, kill a bunch of people yourself and die.”

“Gods aren’t people,” Humphrey said.

“That’s a bit rude,” Jason said. “You’ll have to atone for that one.”

“Gods are above people,” Humphrey said.

“There is no above people, Humphrey. There’s just people. Give them enough power and they get a bit weird, but still people.”

“You seem very confident for someone who didn’t believe in gods a year ago,” Humphrey said.

“But I believed in people. It just turns out that some of them are magic. Like us.”

“You do realise that people have different stations in life, right?” Neil asked. “A king is not the same as a pauper.”

“Of course not,” Jason said. “The king inherits a hat and a chair, where the pauper’s lucky to get the hat. Better hat, though. What kind of idiot thinks a metal hat with no top is a great idea. The same guy who thinks monarchy makes sense, I guess.”

“How can you possibly think that gods are just people?” Neil asked. “You think you can just stand before a god and start mouthing off? I’ve been in the presence of gods. Just being near them was like standing under a waterfall.”

“From what I’ve heard, he did exactly that,” Clive said. “I talked to a lot of people after the last excursion into this astral space. A lot of them were talking about the gods showing up and the lunatic talking to them like they were random people off the street.”

“They are random people,” Jason said. “A bit showy, but nice enough. They like to make something of a spectacle of themselves, though.”

The group all turned to stare at Jason. Humphrey had to crane his neck from where he was sitting in front of Jason on the mantis beetle to do it.

“What?” Jason asked.

They passed through the rest of the thick jungle without being accosted by monsters. If any were around, they were apparently smart enough to stay well clear of the ones responsible for getting rid of the rest. The shattered and scattered ruins, buried in jungle, gave way to fully intact buildings in startlingly short order. The line of demarcation was so stark that it reminded Jason of the Vane estate, where the lush gardens met the desert.

The team made a direct path for the very centre of the city and the large square containing the Order of the Reaper’s trial tower. As they moved through the buildings, they started to notice fragments of unusual magic.