Chapter 491: Uneasy Allies (1/2)

So much for drawing away the defenders,” Neil said as the heavy land skimmer threaded a swift and dangerous path through the trees. In the driver's seat next to him, Belinda was concentrating on controlling the skimmer. The heavy combat skimmer procured specifically for the mission had full-coverage armour and defensive weaponry. It was an advanced vehicle that only those with the right abilities could operate.

“In fairness,” Gary said, “I haven’t seen any Purity priests. Or anyone else alive, for that matter. Just these things.”

Racing through the forest, harrying the skimmer, was a crowd of centaur-like construct creatures. Built from dark wood and mottled iron, they were fast, powerful and agile; perfectly suited to race through a forest. The bulk of the centaur constructs were bronze-rank, with about one on five being silver.

Some of the constructs had bows that conjured arrows when the string was drawn back and were using them to pepper the skimmer with arrows. Others had spears and lances they used to attack the vehicle whenever they got close enough.

The armour plating shielded the occupants, who were using open access panels to retaliate. Neil was using his shield powers as enemies tried to stab through the panels, his Burst Shield power blasting away attackers. Belinda was using the vehicle’s weapon system; a triangular column on the roof. There was a sigil on each of its three sides, each one capable of a different attack. One was an electricity attack that arced from enemy to enemy, while another blasted streams of fire.

These first two attacks had not proved highly effective against the constructs, so Belinda didn’t waste the energy. The third option conjured heavy bolts with strong armour penetration, which dug into an enemy before exploding. They were proving much more effective, although Belinda tried not to overuse the weapon and drain the skimmer's energy.

The main attackers were Gary and Kenneth, son of Brian; the fourth and final member of the group. Gary was throwing his hammer, which bounced from one construct to the next, chaining through the centaurs before flying back to his hand.

Each hit came with a resonating-force explosion, tailor-made for destroying constructs. Gary’s weapon was specialised for fighting constructs, being the silver-rank variant of a weapon he made for himself following Farrah’s death. It was enough to take out the bronze-rank centaurs in one hit, but not the silvers. It did inflict significant damage and send them tumbling into other galloping constructs.

Kenneth likewise worked on thinning out the bronze-rankers, but mostly focused on slowing down the silvers. One of his special attacks involved a conjured harpoon that he threw into enemies, prioritising the silver-rank constructs. Once buried in a target, more harpoons were conjured around it, launching themselves at the centaurs around it. The secondary harpoons were connected to the initial target by magical ropes that dragged the subsequent targets. They all crashed into the first, binding them together in an awkward bundle. Bound up, the centaurs were stuck trying to fight their way free from one another, inflicting mutual damage even as they were left behind by the rolling combat.

Ken had the skirmish confluence, which made him very useful in this kind of running battle. Many of his powers could trip up the enemy, literally and figuratively, keeping the skimmer from being overwhelmed by the huge herd of constructs. Leaving the destruction of the bronze-rank constructs to Gary’s powerful attacks, Ken concentrated on stalling the silver-rank centaurs with trip-lines and net traps.

“I thought Purity and the Builder were meant to be uneasy allies,” Humphrey shouted from the roof of the skimmer as it raced through a gulch. “If this many construct creatures are protecting the dam, it would seem we were wrong.”

“Making too many assumptions on not enough information is a poor pathway to knowledge,” Clive yelled back. ”I'm not sure we should have let Sophie go off alone?”

”Let her?” Humphrey asked. ”Since when does she wait for anyone's permission for anything?”

”Is she going to be alright back there?”

“Of course,” Humphrey said proudly.

The centaur herd bunched together as they followed the skimmer into the narrow gulch, which was exactly what Humphrey wanted. He was ignoring the arrows bouncing off his dragon armour since they all came from bronze-rank constructs. Sophie was nowhere to be seen, having left the skimmer long ago to stall the silver-rank ones.

As the lance-wielding centaurs thundered toward the rear of the skimmer, Humphrey stepped off, landing heavily in their path. The huge sword in his hands was in the shape of a dragon wing with rainbow scales. The blade was wreathed in fire.

Humphrey stood his ground as the centaurs bore down on him in tight formation, shoulder-to-shoulder, lances out. The centaurs might only have been bronze-rank but charging attacks were their specialty and their weapons had greater reach than even Humphrey’s huge sword. Dragon wings manifested on Humphrey’s back and reached around him to form a wedge against the onrushing weapons, which were deflected away at an angle. The wings immediately swept back to reveal Humphrey already swinging his sword in a huge horizontal arc.

The sword smashed through the tightly-packed front row of centaurs without even slowing down, passing through wood and steel like a hot train through butter. The centaurs all but exploded from the force, flames from the burning blade spreading to many of the scattering chunks, raining down as burning debris.

That was not even the end of the attack as a wave of fire and another of force were sent hurtling along the gulch by the swing of Humphrey’s sword. It wasn’t as destructive as the original attack but still toppled the charging bronze-rank constructs like bowling pins.

Humphrey leapt high into the air with his silver-rank strength and, with a powerful sweep of his wings, propelled himself forward. He swooped over the gulch, opening his mouth to breath fire like a flamethrower, blanketing the centaurs still pursing the skimmer.

Unlike the flames from the skimmer weapons, the fire from Humphrey’s powers had an extreme effect on the constructs. The silver-rank effect of his aura, Dragon’s Might, transformed any flames created by his abilities from ordinary fire into dragon fire. Dragon fire was far more effective against any kind of flame resistance, from protective magic to flame-retardant materials.

Wood quickly turned to ash and steel melted away as the silver-rank flames ravaged the bronze-rank constructs. Even the rocks were on fire, cracking and melting. In the wake of Humphrey's sweeping flight over the gulch, all that remained was burning wreckage, scorched earth and dark smoke, rising into the air.

More constructs were charging out of the forest and into the gulch. Humphrey turned to look for the skimmer, about to vanish into the woods again. Deciding that he’d bought it enough time, he teleported onto its roof before it moved out of sight.

Despite the construct centaurs moving through the trees in a tight herd, Sophie had no problems moving amongst them. If anything, it made her harder to hit with lances and bows, which were not designed for close-quarter fighting. So long as she avoided being trampled she was fine.

She wandered through the herd like a breeze, graceful and untouched. Even when it seemed like she was struck by a charging construct she wasn’t, the very concept of distance bending to her will. She ignored the weaker centaurs, knowing that Humphrey would turn them to piles of molten scrap.