Chương 74: Chapter 150 - Apophagorga

At first, the myrvite hunters seemed frozen. Even with the orange flare flickering bright above the myrvite titan, no one was taking action.

"Aim for the head. Fire!" Mirian snapped, and at last, the riflemen seemed to break from their daze. Their rifles cracked out, first in a volley, then in a chaotic chorus as the hillside echoed with gunfire and the music of sliding bolts and brass cartridges. Patches of black ichor erupted on Apophagorga's head as the high caliber bullets impacted. It let out a hiss, then turned its massive body to the side so that its thick shell faced them. Hearing the gunfire, the arcanists finally went into action.

She saw the dazzle of lightning and fireballs streaming through the air.

"Switch fire to the front leg until it presents a better target! We have plenty of ammunition, and don't want to have to lug it back with us!" Mirian called out. She launched her remote eye out to examine the battle at closer range. The first thing that became apparent was that direct spells weren't having a small impact; they were having no impact at all. Apophagorga ignored them like so many biting insects.

It had turned its attention to the casters who were bombarding it with fire spells and was now lumbering toward them, the doom doom doom of its footsteps shaking the ground. As it moved, it shot out bursts of arcane energy that intercepted the fire spells before they hit. Is it using counterspells as natural magic? Fortunately, the captain of the flame team had been paying attention, and that team ceased fire and began a running retreat into the trees. Mirian's remote eye peered at it.

The kinetics team had attempted to use force drill on the shell, but she couldn't even see a blemish.

"Switch all attack spells to indirect flame and kinetic-launched boulders. Aim for the fleshy bits, we're not getting through that shell." The assistant hesitated. Mirian closed the eye she was using to look through her remote eye.

"That's red, white in quick succession, then a green sparkler to indicate targeting."

"Right, sorry sir!" he said, and loaded the next flares. As they whistled through the air, Mirian checked the divination equipment. Barely any readings. The spell resistance is just too high. Annoyed at the fireballs and rocks now peppering its side, Apophagorga had turned to chase one of the other teams, which in turn retreated as the flame team reemerged from the shelter of the trees. That team retreated, while Annita's team moved forward.

Mirian caught sight of a boulder streaming through the air that cracked against the back leg of the beast, which must have been the elite hunter's spell.

"It's working!" the arcanist on the hill exclaimed.

"Who would have thought classic pack tactics would bring down something so large. It'll exhaust itself!" Closing her eyes, Mirian embraced her focus and pulled out Specter's curse wand. It wouldn't be enough to have her spells penetrate the resistance alone. She needed to bind the beast's soul. The nice thing about Second Cairn was they regularly killed myrvites, so she had seven fully charged soul repositories. Her limit had only been how many repositories she could make. She started casting.

Apophagorga was clearly annoyed. It started stomping the ground, sending out tremors. A small landslide of loose dirt cascaded down the hill. It looked at Mirian— looked —right at her, red eyes glowing. It knows, she thought with total certainty. The bonds she'd attempted to layer over its soul snapped, and the myrvite titan whirled again and charged the flame team, and this time, when they hid in the trees, it didn't stop.

Its tendrils grabbed and uprooted the trees, sucking the souls out of some of them, simply discarding others. The beast's strength was incredible, more than just a sum of muscle and size. With its body it slammed into another grove of taller trees, sending them toppling. The arcanist who had been cheering a moment ago got wide-eyed.

"Oh shit," he said. A tree crushed one sorcerer. Then the titan reached out with a tentacle and snatched another as she ran, then a second, then a third, feeding them all into its mouth. The team finally remembered to scatter, but as they did, Apophagorga let out a roar. Mirian could feel her aura being abraded from hundreds of meters away. For the arcanists right next to it, the feeling must have been crippling. Two of them fell to their knees, while the others stumbled on.

The two that fell were snatched up and devoured.

"Fuck," Mirian said eloquently. Flame team was gone. There were three survivors, but there was no way in the five hells they were going to stop running.

"Sir, we don't have a clear shot anymore," one of the gunners reported. As if she couldn't see that.

"Hold fire until you do." She kept observing with her remote eye. The beast had gone out of range of most of the casters. The death and rout of flame team had caused several other hunters to start retreating without orders. There was really nothing to be done about that. She could order a renewed assault, but she knew too well that most soldiers would not follow suicidal orders. Myrvite hunters would be no different. Mirian needed a way to rally them.

Fortunately—or unfortunately, Apophagorga had set its sights on her hill.

"Ready the orange and green flare. We'll indicate a renewed assault as it draws into range. Rifles, aim for the eyes and mouth."

"Sir… we may wish to retreat," one of the hunters said.

"We're not outrunning that thing. Scattering into the wilderness just spreads everyone out so smaller myrvites can attack them. Hold steady. More is at stake than you realize." She could tell that fear was still winning out, but the rifles started cracking out again as the titan knocked over more trees on its way to the hill. It was ducking its head so the shell covered most of it. With her remote eye, she could see that the wounds were regenerating.

As the black ichor bubbled out, the flesh seemed to move like a swarm of insects before scabbing over with what she could only describe as crystalline tar. Fire might disrupt the healing process, as it often does.

"Launch the flares," she ordered, then cast another curse. Again, the binding snapped. Its soul-flow was simply too fast; it was like trying to make a dam out of sand while standing in the rapids. No curses. Spell piercing, then. She noticed another phenomenon as she prepared. Part of Apophagorga seemed to vanish as it moved, then reappeared. As it did that, some of the boulders that should have hit it missed entirely. It's still using the fourth dimension. It exists there. But how to take advantage of that?

She also noticed it had stopped snuffing out the spells hitting it. She wondered why it had stopped. She'd have to figure it out. Until then, it was time to hit the myrvite titan as hard as she could. Mirian drew from her soul repository and pulled as much auric mana as she could, pouring it through a triple-conduit fire wand modeled after the one she'd seen in the Allard estate. She aimed it right at its face. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Cover your eyes," she said, casting a brief veil spell on herself. The greater coruscating beam of fire was designed not just to burn, but to blind the beast. As the titan approached the hillside, she unleashed.

"God's fucking blood!" the arcanist said, shielding his eyes a bit too late, while there were calls of shock from the rifle team. Maybe they hadn't heard her. Apophagorga roared, this time in pain and not as a weapon. The growl sounded like a cauldron bubbling in an echoey cave. She took in a deep breath and cast again, but this time, the beast did counter it, though the soul-sheathe on the spell seemed to prevent the spell from being nullified entirely.

She could make out bubbles and seared tissue where she'd hit it, but it wasn't slowing down.

"Three orange flares. We need a renewed assault. Logistics, evacuate down the hill southwest, rifles, sacrifice accuracy for suppressing fire!" Mirian cast again, and again, but the beast kept coming. Behind her, the noncombatant personnel were fleeing down the hill, having abandoned basically everything. It's not after them, though. It didn't like that curse attempt. It wants me.

"Alright, everyone break off, full retreat! I'm going to lure it back towards the other teams. Retake the hill if it follows. Go!" The rifle team and arcanists didn't need to be told twice. One woman kicked over an ammunition crate in her hurry to turn and run. Mirian pulled out her levitation wand. Apophagorga wasn't quite as tall as the hill, but it was a close call.

It used its tentacles in coordination with its colossal legs to pull itself up the rock face, keeping its face tucked down so the hump on its shell protected it. The soul energy sheathe protects spells from its counterspell. I wonder if… There was only one way to find out. Mirian surrounded the directed antigravity field the levitation wand put out with soul energy. The repository began to drain rapidly, but if she was right, it would give her the ability to move without being knocked out of the air.

She dashed northeast toward the clearing where the beast had emerged, narrowly dodging a tentacle as it smashed the place where she'd been standing a few seconds ago. Sure enough, Apophagorga sent out a dark beam of whatever it was using. Mirian felt a jolt and dropped ten feet in a matter of seconds, but recovered. She landed, then shot another beam of fire.

"Come here you big brute!" she shouted. She held her fire beam longer this time, sending a scouring line across one of its trunk legs. Again Apophagorga roared, slamming its shell into the hillside causing part of the slope to collapse, then phased out of sight. Shit, Mirian thought. She started flying immediately, not using the soul energy, but instead just using bursts of levitation. She caught sight of a shadow forming behind her and sped left.

Two tentacles slammed down with such force they must have been magically enhanced. A cloud of dirt erupted and the rock beneath was cracked. Mirian was right next to the beast now, choking on dust. As a tentacle came out to snatch her, she summoned Eclipse and embraced the Lone Pine, sundering her disguise bindings. She slashed at the approaching tendril, but it was like hitting a bog lion with a knitting needle. The tendril smashed into her, knocking the wind out of her and sending her flying.

She slid across the ground. Everything hurt. She blinked back spots, grit her teeth, and flushed her body with soul energy, first haphazardly, then with more purpose as her soul-sight found her broken ribs and the scoured flesh on her back. Her wands had gone flying, so she cast detect arcane energy. Whirling, she spotted the wands on the ground and used raw magic to telekinetically lift them both to her hands as she dematerialized Eclipse. Apophagorga glared at her.

It had swatted her like a roach, but seemed annoyed the roach hadn't been squashed. It advanced again, maw open. Mirian sent a beam right into it. The titan made a gurgling sound and ducked its head under its shell. As it did, she saw boulders and fireballs coming from the hunters who had remained. Annita's group was still intact, and they were going after one of the legs. The beast didn't hide for long, though. It suddenly burst forward, pounding forward faster than she'd seen it move before.

This time, three tendrils grabbed her at once, the spines on them piercing her, and then tearing— A great void, and a form standing before it. The Ominian. They floated in the void, watching that field of stars. The dozens of needles in Their flesh glistened in the sunlight. In the distance, two dark spheres of different sizes. A feeling in her blood. Despair. Fear. One of the needles erupted from Their flesh glowing orange and violet, and vanishing. In the distance, a great fire spread across the stars.

Mirian woke with a scream still on her lips.

"—AHHHshit, sorry Lily, really sorry, couldn't help it, I'm fine, everything's normal, please don't worry. Whew. No, I'm fine roomie, it's all good. Sorry. Whew. Just… give me a moment." She sat there, taking deep breaths. Tears welled in her eyes unbidden, and she blinked them back.

"Mirian, I don't think you're okay," Lily said softly. She came to sit next to her on the bed and put an arm around her. She exhaled hard.

"Yeah, you're right. But I have to keep going. The only way forward is through."

Down in Cairnmouth, Mirian tried something she hadn't tried before: she talked to Ravatha about hiring an assassin. The price, she found, was surprisingly cheap: 500 doubloons to kill Troytin. A bargain, she thought. He might have seized key positions in the conspiracy, but authority took time to spread. The Syndicate had never heard of him, so they had no problem snuffing him. With that done, she got to reassembling her attack force.

As she worked on forging seals for letters of credit and reassembling her divination equipment, she considered what she learned from the first fight. The coating of soul energy on a spell pierces spell resistance. But it also prevented the beast from using its spell-nullifying power. That wouldn't have worked against a counterspell. Is Apophagorga projecting its own soul energy? She thought back to its last charge forward, and its enhanced blows that had sundered stone.

She'd checked with Viridian before she left Torrviol, and from what they could estimate using myrvite strength-size tables, even a beast that size couldn't sunder stone like she'd seen. Its soul magic must be instinctual, like the magic of any myrvite. The forms of a dervish are just modifying soul flow and resonance—perhaps it naturally can do something like that. She paused her work and sat back in her chair, looking around the makeshift workshop, but not really seeing it. She was visualizing the battle.

At a certain point, it stopped nullifying spells. Doing that must be energy intensive—it would be drawing from its own soul. Its soul is massive, to the point where the curse bindings couldn't even touch it. But it's a living thing. It can't drain too much of its own soul. It has limits. Dealing with the beast's dimensional travel would be more difficult. She started working on a model that would help her conceptualize how it was moving. There had to be a way to constrain and stop it.

Just before she left for Second Cairn, Mirian received a delivery package from a nice young man who didn't at all look like a criminal. In it was a severed ear. That was gross, but it was also fantastic news. Don't have to worry about that idiot Akanan this cycle, she thought. I can accelerate my plans.

This time, they arrived on the 25th of Solem, which gave them plenty of time to prepare. Mirian had also hired on a mercenary contractor, bringing twenty additional rifles into the mix. She had the arcanists help lift stones into place to create barriers that each team could retreat through. It wouldn't stop the myrvite titan, but it would slow it down while the other teams harassed it. She'd also bought extra rifles to hand out to battlemages who ran out of mana too quickly.

"I'm, uh, not trained on rifles," one of them protested.

"Point it at the creature and pull this thingy," Mirian said.

"Believe me, you don't need to know how to aim to hit it." The mage gave her a quizzical look. She ignored him and moved on, ordering contingencies. If the beast was moving about in four dimensions, she thought there was still a way to pin it down.

"The most critical flare to watch for is orange-blue at your station. If you see that you must advance along with the fourth hunter team and focus fire on the legs. Captain, you have the document?" The captain patted a scroll case at his breast.

"Yes, sir," he said.

"Good. You're also in charge of wards on the northeast side. Scimitar lions have been spotted in the area, so don't go walking around alone." Once again, Annita approached her at the command station.

"Correct," Mirian said, as she opened her mouth.

"You know what I'm going to say?"

"Yes," Mirian said blandly.

"And you're right. But I can't tell you more. Perhaps after we slay the beast. It emerges tomorrow." Annita gave her a look she was now all too familiar with, the look that had a thousand questions beneath the surface. But she didn't ask them. The next morning, near dawn, the ground began to tremble, and Mirian steeled herself for the fight. Round two, she thought.