IrateRapScallion
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Chapter 38
🕑 Added 2018-08-05 22:44:22 +0000 UTC Every city in existence possesses its own unique architectural quirks, and Nefin was no exception. The unusually large windows, designed to invite in the ocean winds in order to combat the city’s notoriously sweltering summers, were one salient example. The basketball-sized statues placed on every corner of every roof were another. Known as ‘svanta’, they were apparently part of an old superstition from long ago. For the people of Nefin, they were guardians of a sort, placed on the outermost perimeter of every house to ward against evil. For Hector Miranda, they were stepping stones.He’d asked one of his lays about the statues once, as even the most oblivious person would be hard pressed to miss their omnipresence. She’d babbled on and on about spirits and gods and fire from the skies or something; he’d zoned out once it had become clear that her answer was longer than a few sentences. Whatever the reason for their existence, he appreciated their presence in the moment. The roofs of Nefin tended to be heavily sloped, and running horizontally on a steep slope sucked. You couldn’t push off properly and all it took was one bad shingle for you to slip and fall. Luckily for him, there were these convenient stone statues for him to use instead.
Each svanta was unique, hand carved by some Nefin sculptors who designed them to stand up to the wind and rain that came from the sea just kilometers north of the city. What the sculptors didn’t design for was the weight of a muscular superhuman carrying a second man, and the crushing force said superhuman generated when pushing off. Some svanta shifted on their base, others cracked, and many crumbled into pieces as Hector used them as launching pads. Not that the trail of destruction left in his wake bothered the twenty-five year old former athlete. He had somewhere to be, and this seemed like the fastest and most direct way of getting there.
His judgment was almost immediately called into question. Leaping over one of the city’s widest boulevards, the svanta beneath him crumbled as he leapt, reducing the force of his jump just slightly. As he sailed over the crowded street below, it became clear to Hector that he would fall short of his targeted roof and instead fly smack into the wall below.
Thinking quickly, Hector realized that the wall rushing at him was made of wood, not stone like his inn. Having spent so much of his time in the richest sections of the city, he’d forgotten that wood was actually the main building material for the majority of the structures in Nefin, as the mages, or ‘Observers’ as the local called them, that specialized in building with stone charged exorbitant prices for their work. Hector liked to avoid poorer areas as much as possible. He was a big shot now, and slumming it with the peasantry wasn’t something an elite like him had time for. This time, however, he was glad to see the rough brown wood approaching, because it meant he had a way to salvage his leap.
Gripping his pole arm tightly in his left hand, he drew his left arm back and then thrust it forward just as the wall was about four meters away. The large weapon, an extra long and durable variant designed to hold up to the rigors of Feeler combat, shot out, the massive blade plunging deep into the wooden wall, effectively turning into a flagpole sticking out from the surface. Keeping his strong grip on the shaft so that his hands wouldn’t move, Hector let his momentum swing himself around ninety degrees so that he was now perpendicular to the wall. He slamming into the side of the building feet first, his strong legs absorbing the momentum enough to prevent injury. The wooden wall flexed and shook from the heavy impact of his body, but thankfully held.
The momentum now dissipated, Hector fell from the wall and hung two stories in the air, his grip on the pole arm and its purchase in the wall the only things keeping him from plummeting into the chaos below. And chaos it was. The boulevard was filled with panicking Gustilians running towards the richer inner section of the city, their most prized possessions in their hands. This was the main reason that he’d chosen to stick to the rooftops — the streets were a frothing sea of fearful families and paranoid merchants all desperate to escape. Getting to the wall, where the crash of the gong continued even now, would take forever if he tried it down there.
Hector couldn’t help but scoff disdainfully at the sight of the crazed people beneath him. If there was one overarching aspect to the Gustilian national character, it was pride. Their society, so heavily built on chivalry and honor, prided themselves on their fighting spirit and refusal to back down from any and all challenges. The funny thing was, Gustil hadn’t fought a war against another nation in generations. From what little history of the region he understood, the continent of Nocend was largely peaceful, without a major conflict in over a century. Sure, there were the occasional battles between Drayhadal and Stragma to the south, and of course Gustil’s own bizarre tradition of using “civil war” as a form of elections could not be forgotten, but on the whole the people of Gustil had spent decades bragging about their backbone without actually having to back it up. Now this was being put to the test, and they were failing tremendously to back up their boasts. Where were the bold citizens rushing towards the wall to help the soldiers? It wasn’t like they didn’t have training. Law required every Gustilian to serve in the army for a five years before they were official adults. Yet tonight it seemed like all these former soldiers felt content to let others deal with the problem instead. Bunch of hypocrites. It reminded him of those fools on the playground who talked a big game but couldn’t back it up on the court. More glory for him, at least.
The lip of the roof was just an arm’s reach above the pole, but reaching it would be easier said than done. Hector’s right arm was rather full with the unconscious body of one of his attackers — the man with the stretchy arms, who had taken a bucket to the head so hard that the container had broken into twenty small pieces. Hector had a feeling that this man might be a key to figuring out what was going on, so he’d decided to take the man with him to the wall and hand him over to the authorities. To Hector’s annoyance, The man had turned out to be heavier than he looked and he kept flopping about whenever Hector moved.
With both hands occupied, Hector needed to get creative. Rocking forward and back, he began to swing around the pole arm like an Olympic gymnast, getting higher and higher until he was swinging fully around the pole. With each rotation the pole bent and swayed, the blade slowly working its way out of the wall. He needed to be careful; the weapon had not been designed for this sort of use and if he put too much force on it at the wrong angle the blade would snap in two and send him towards the dirt in a hurry. Fortunately, with his ability he could tell that he hadn’t hit the danger zone just yet, and the blade was nearly out of the wood. On the next rotation, while on his way upwards Hector yanked as hard as he could on the weapon, ripping it free from the wall. Pulling on the pole arm had the dual benefit of freeing him to continue upward while also sending him towards the nearby rooftop, and the next thing he knew he had alighted onto the sloped surface with catlike grace.
He laughed. Absurd acrobatics were child’s play to him now. This world was awesome. Checking the pole arm’s blade, he found it to be just fine, unbent and free of cracks. Not that he’d needed to verify it; if his actions would have damaged the blade, he would have felt it.
Hector arrived at the wall just a few minutes later to find the area engulfed in battle. The armies of this world that Hector had seen didn’t have strict uniforms or equipment like the armies of Earth; each member wore the armor and wielded the weapons that they felt would serve them best. In order to tell friend from foe, soldiers each wore a sash over their shoulder bearing the color and emblem of their country. Before him pockets of Gustilians with their vibrant red sashes fought desperately against an increasing tide of black-sashed attackers, doing their best to hold out until reinforcements from the city could arrive. Feelers fought to hold a perimeter around Observers while simultaneously trying to stay as spread out as possible so a single well-placed wide-area projectile wouldn’t take out five soldiers at once. Fire blazed, ice covered the ground in spots, and in some places the wall itself seemed to be shifting as both sides sought to turn the battleground itself into an ally.
To his west, several larger groups of Gustilians had their hands full with the oncoming enemy but seemed to be holding their own relatively well. The command center for the northern side of the city was close to that side, and so the strongest soldiers who had the misfortune of being stationed on the graveyard shift were probably that way. The scene to his right was a different story. There the Gustilians looked close to being overwhelmed as more and more enemy troops surmounted the wall. The opposition looked to outnumber the home team at least three to one and it was getting more lopsided by the second.
To his east he also saw the massive gong that had awoken the entire city, surrounded by perhaps forty soldiers. The enormous metal disc hung by a thick rope suspended under an equally enormous wooden frame built to support the incredible weight of the thick metal. The instrument was nearly a quarter of a meter thick and if laid down would very nearly fill the entire eight or meters of walkable space between the front and back lips of the wall. In fact, if it...
A smile crept onto Hector’s face as an idea popped into his head. A fun, crazy idea. Without wasting another second, he jumped over to the wall’s outer lip and headed east, running with unnatural grace along the edge and lopping off any enemy heads within range as he sprinted by. Jubilant shouts rose up from the Gustilians as he passed and the soldiers cheered as he sprinted by and they redoubled their efforts to delay the swarming invaders.
“The Storm!”
“The Storm is here!”
“Thank the spirits, we’re saved!”
The troops by the gong were arranged in several lines on each side, with several people standing by the outside edge of the wall to handle anybody getting behind either line. With a great leap, Hector cleared the crowd of attackers and the lines of defenders, landing in the mostly empty middle. A man nearby turned, ready to strike, but paused when he saw who Hector was. He saluted quickly.
“Sir, it’s great to see you sir! Your orders?”
Hector smiled as he noticed the man’s large warhammer. “Here,” he said, tossing the unconscious enemy at the man. “Take care of this guy for a bit. I’ll be borrowing that.” He pulled the hammer from the befuddled soldier’s hands and tied it to his back using the red sash that he had, just like everybody else, before tossing his pole arm to the side.
“Sir, what-”
“Just keep him alive for now.”
Climbing up to the top of the frame with ease, Hector straddled the large wooden cross beam, grabbed the thick rope with both hands as best he could given that the rope was thicker than his arm, and lifted the enormous metal disc off the two hooks by which it hung. Dropping the instrument temporarily, he jumped off the frame back towards the center of the wall. The gong landed on its edge and released a loud clang before tipping and falling towards Hector, who caught it by the rope with ease. The clamor was loud enough that everybody in the area stopped for a moment and looked in bewilderment at the source of the sound.
“Everybody get down!” Hector roared. Most of the Gustilians threw themselves to the ground just in time as Hector began to spin, swinging the gong around him in a wide arc with everything he had. It plowed through the nearby enemy troops, and the slower Gustilians, throwing many of them off the wall and crushing others into the ground with amazing force. It crashed through the thick beams of its frame, splintering the wood and sending the beams toppling off the inner side of the wall. After one full rotation, nothing stood within a ten meter radius but Hector. Only he and the gong stood tall, the ground covered by trembling Gustilian soldiers and the bodies of the slow and unlucky.
Still, Hector did not stop. He continued to spin, he and the gong speeding up rapidly. In a mere moment, Hector had the instrument whirling about at over eighty kilometers per hour, the rope in his hands about to break from the incredible strain. “I think it’s time for a music lesson!” he quipped. Then he let go.
The gong careened eastward along the wall, ricocheting back and forth off the outer and inner edges with the force of a eighteen-wheel truck, bulldozing through dozens of enemy soldiers with deadly force. The massive metal disc filled nearly the entire walkway between the sides, leaving almost no room to dodge the oncoming mass. Blood and organs flew through the air as the blunt object’s momentum was so immense that it literally ripped people in half as it went.
With a leap, Hector charged after it, sprinting through its trail of destruction. Thanks to his new body’s incredible speed, he caught up to the rampaging instrument moments later and jumped onto it, riding atop it as it skidded down the lane like the world’s largest shuffleboard puck. The gargantuan disc’s inertia let it bowl through crowds of enemy soldiers while Hector’s borrowed war hammer flashed out periodically to knock those that managed to avoid the oncoming hunk of metal off of the wall.
Eventually the gong’s momentum ran out and it slid to a stop over a hundred meters from where Hector had thrown it. Countless bodies littered the ground between those two points, some crushed against the floor, others against the sides. Farther down, he could see the Gustilians who had been fighting near the gong slowly pushing their way back towards allied troops. But down here where Hector stood, enemy troops still remained. Several hundred men and women dressed in black sashes stood between him and the point where the north wall took a sharp right and became the east wall. Down the east wall he could make out a large group of Gustilian reinforcements headed him way, so all he had to do was hold out for another few minutes. It was time for “Part 2” of his super-cool gong strategy.
Hopping off the instrument and away from the soldiers bearing down on him, Hector wedged his hands beneath the gong, ducking out of the way of an incoming arrow while he did so. “Heave ho!” he called out as he heaved the mass of metal upward with all his might. The eight meter wide disc tumbled over itself into the air, flipping over itself as if it were a giant coin being used by a god to make a decision. Arrows and other projectiles heading towards Hector bounced off the suddenly airborne shield and the closest enemies halted their charge, hesitant to run close to the twirling instrument.
Hector wasn’t done, however. Pulling the warhammer from his back, he reared back building up strength as best he could before hurling the heavy metal mallet as hard as he could at the center of the spinning gong and then as quickly as he could covered his ears with his hands. The hammer struck the gong head first, right in the very center of the disc, and the world seemed to explode.
A wall of force knocked Hector off his feet, throwing him a dozen meters back. A cacophonous roar assaulted his ears, and he felt his entire body shake like it was a doll in the grip of a hyperactive child throwing a tantrum. After was felt like a minute but was probably only several seconds at most, the gong crashed back into the wall with a crushing finality and a deathly silence fell over the area. Or at least that’s what Hector assumed. He couldn’t really tell because all he could hear was a loud ringing in both ears. He coughed and tasted a hint of blood.
Staggering to his feet, Hector’s jaw dropped at the sight before him. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Dozens of enemy soldiers lay still on along the wall; whether they breathed or not Hector could not tell. Others, mostly those farther away, writhed on the ground in pain, their hands at their ears or their head. But what shocked him the most was the large vertical crack present in the wall itself, located directly below where the gong had been when first struck. Formed as a single solid piece of stone for maximum structural integrity, the walls of major cities were the most durable non-metal structures Hector had ever seen, capable of withstanding serious punishment, and he’d damaged one with sound alone. His strength surprised even him sometimes.
Jogging back towards the west, Hector stopped at the now empty gong frame to pick up his pole arm. The battle in this direction had taken a major turn for the better. Freed from the need to hold two lines simultaneously, the group around the gong had been able to make steady progress, pushing the enemy back. In the meantime, the trickle of reinforcements coming from the city had turned into a torrent, with more troops entering the fray every second. This battle was effectively over.
“Sir! That was incredible, sir!” A soldier approached him, showering him with platitudes. It was strange how he could understand the man even though his ears were ringing so loudly that he couldn’t hear a single thing the soldier said. Hector saw it was the man he’d dumped his unconscious attacker on, and whose warhammer he’d borrowed. He had forgotten all about the guy. Looking back at the hundreds of other incapacitated, identically dressed people on the ground behind him, he grumbled at the realization that all the effort he’d expended carrying the unconscious man to the wall had been a foolish waste of energy. Oh well, there was no use harping on it now. With a shrug, he lifted the man off the soldier’s shoulder and tossed him over the wall, ignoring the way the soldier gaped in befuddlement.
Looking back once more upon the carnage that he had wrought, Hector spotted somebody headed his way yelling what he believed to be “Captain!” and waving for his attention.
“Captain, sir!” the man said as he skidded to a stop and saluted. Hector noticed the long ears sticking out from the man’s hair. An elf. Elves weren’t common in Gustil, but enough lived in the country that seeing one wasn’t considered a rare or noteworthy occurrence. The same could be said of the beastpeople. He’d been told that about fifteen percent of all Gustilians were non-human. For his part, he did his best to treat elves like he did anybody else, but secretly they bothered him, especially the male ones. The male elves he’d met possessed an alluring femininity in their features that made him uncomfortable.
“What is it, soldier?” Hector responded, nodding but not returning a salute. Saluting wasn’t something he did.
“General Ozek requires your presence immediately at the Many House, sir!”
Hector smiled. “Just the words I was hoping to hear,” he said as he turned and leapt off the wall and onto the nearest roof, leaving the messenger to stand there, confused and unsure what to do next. A smile of anticipation slowly grew on his face as he made his way towards the city center as fast as he could.
* * *
Bodies, both Gustilian and invader, littered the area around the Many House. A fierce battle had been fought here just a little while ago. It made sense. The Many House was the nerve center of the city. Through Manys, efficient communication throughout the country was possible. If you wanted to blind a city and cut it off from the rest of the country, the Many House would be the place to strike. Such tactics were common, of course, so every Many House in Gustil was well-guarded at all times.
“Captain Miranda!” the guard greeted Hector when Hector approached. “General Ozek is expecting you inside in the administrator’s office. Top floor, down the hallway on the left.”
“Got it, thanks,” Hector replied as he strode through the doorway. Following the guard’s directions, he quickly found himself approaching a fancy looking door at the end of a corridor. Wasting no time, he opened the door and found before him a sight that made him nearly weep. There she stood, bent over a desk as she studied a map, her back to him and her rear jutting out in all its wonder.
Blessed with a rack that would make cantaloupes jealous and an ass that just wouldn’t quit, yet somehow toned with a hint of muscle everywhere else, General Beren Ozek was, in Hector’s opinion, the hottest, most beautiful woman in all of Gustil and perhaps beyond. Her long, fiery red braids of hair cascaded down over flawless golden skin that seemed to shine even when no light fell upon it. She had an elegant, refined face with lips softer than the softest pillow and haughty eyes that seemed to find everything within their gaze to be unworthy. The woman was the ultimate stone cold fox — literally, even. Perky fox ears poked out of the top of her hear, swiveling this way and that, while a long, bushy fox tail emerged from just above her ample, glorious posterior. Hector had never thought he’d be into that kind of thing, but the animal bits lent an exotic savagery that only served to enhance her already-immeasurable sexiness. She was perfect. The mythical eleven out of ten. So, of course, it figured that she was playing hard to get.
Other Generals who were stationed in other cities Hector had visited made it a point to be seen with him as much as possible and curry his favor. He was the country’s rising star, after all. Any association with him would only benefit their standing. But General Ozek seemed to avoid meeting with him whenever possible. She wanted him to prove himself to her, he knew. He could see it in her eyes during the few times they’d met, behind her carefully constructed facade of disdain and disapproval — she wanted him. This was no surprise; every female wanted him, even if they didn’t know it yet.
“Hey there, hot stuff,” he greeted as he sauntered into the office. His left hand swung out to give the woman’s fine backside a playful slap, only halt just centimeters away as a dagger suddenly flew in between his palm and its target and floated there in midair, blocking access. The general was a very rare form of Observer that could move material objects with their minds, sometimes known by the term ‘blade caller’. Unlike most Observers, blade callers waded into the front lines like a feeler, wielding a small arsenal of different weapons and controlling them simultaneously, a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield. While there were exceedingly few blade callers in the world, they tended to occupy high positions in their society through their battle prowess alone. If he recalled correctly, the king of Kutrad, another country to Gustil’s east, was a blade caller.
“Move that hand any closer and I will skin you alive, Captain,” General Ozek said, turning to level him with a withering glare.
Hector retracted his hand and saluted with it. “Aye aye, beautiful.”
“I swear, if you weren’t the king’s shiny new toy I would have done it already. Now listen well, because I’m only going to say this once and then you’re going to leave. The high brass have ordered you to make south for Rul at maximum speed. Gustil is under attack.”
“By who? I didn’t recognize the symbol on the black sashes the guys I was killing wore.”
“The Ubran Empire.”
“The Ubrans? Everybody told me that there was no way they’d be able to attack Nefin from the north. That they’d be eaten by the leviathans as they made their way across the sea and even if they did make it they’d have to scale those giant cliffs. They’d all said it was impossible.”
“We were wrong. They likely lost thousands crossing the water, but they did it somehow.”
“But why even bother? They had the element of surprise and they timed their attack well, but they didn’t have enough people to even think of taking the city.”
The general scowled. “They didn’t care about that. The attack was only a distraction, meant to divert attention so they could kill the Manys. They wanted us deaf and blind so we wouldn’t hear the news.”
“What news?”
The woman closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep, solemn breath, her face lined with worry. “Redwater Castle has fallen. The Empire now has a clear path directly from Obura into Nocend.”
“No way! Are you serious? That place?!” Hector couldn’t believe his ears. Redwater Castle was where he’d first made a name for himself, the site of the tournament he’d won. He’d never seen fortifications like that anywhere in his life, on either world. The walls there were easily five times the size of the ones here in Nefin, maybe more. The nearby terrain was nothing but jagged peaks covered by ice and snow. The fort was known as unconquerable, and having been there he’d believed it.
“Yes, I can’t even imagine such a thing, but it is true. That’s why the Ubrans struck here. They hoped that if we could not hear of events down south, we would not send troops, making it easier for them to establish their army on this continent. But enough of this. You have your orders. Leave.”
“As you wish,” Hector replied with a bow. His arm lashed out, impossibly fast, and delivered a playful smack to her divine hindquarters. “See you in Rul, sweet cheeks.”
Beren Ozek’s face twisted into a raging fury as five knives, a sword, and a candlestick all levitated into the air and shot towards him. “OUT!”
Hector laughed as he dodged, tumbled, and rolled his way through the doorway, parrying and deflecting the blades as they went for his face, his heart, and, most notably, his groin. He could still hear her shrieking in rage as he exited the building and made his way back towards his hotel room to pack before heading out, a cocky smile never leaving his face.
She totally wanted him.
Comments
IrateRapScallion
Heh heh heh... this story still has a looooong way to go
Richard Davis ll
Love the chapter the new character is interesting especially since he's an ass, I wonder if that'll ever change?
