Vir had seen these in the bestiary, too. Zards. Lesser zards, by their prana signature. While merely prana beasts, and harmless individually, Lesser zards swarmed their prey, taking small bites of flesh. They were small enough to crawl into the gaps between armor plates, and quick enough that only fast reflexes and Lightning attacks could strike them.
If left alone, the party was doomed.
“Sic, boy!” Vir ordered, sending Neel to deal with the zards while he took on the Raptor.
Embroiled in battle as it was, it completely failed to notice Vir as he sprinted into a shadow, slipping into the shadow realm, and back out—right behind his enemy. Vir’s momentum shot him forth, and his katar plunged into the back of the Raptor’s soft neck, nearly severing its head from its body.
But there was no time to relax. A scream told him the zards had made contact. One mercenary went down, writhing as the zards wriggled into his armor, biting off small chunks of flesh whenever they found an opening.
Neel was on them in an instant, crunching into their scaly hide, or swiping them off the mercenaries with his paw.
Spears made for poor weapons against these beasts, so the remaining mercenaries switched to their knives, haphazardly trying to fend off the creatures that attempted to crawl up behind them.
Of course, they couldn’t hold a candle to the unseen shadow who dispatched zard after zard with his katar. By placing only half his body within the shadow realm, Vir slowed time by half, allowing him to surgically extend his katar from the shadow, skewering zards before retracting back to the shadows, where his enemy could not pursue.
Methodically he attacked, and with each second, more and more died until eventually, only silence remained.
Vir walked out of the shadows.
“W-who’re you?” a mercenary said, quivering in fear at the sight, and if Vir wasn’t mistaken, the man had pissed his pants.
“I’m the guy who just saved your lives. And these,” Vir said, pointing to the corpses, “are my kills.”
15ASH BITER
The party stared at Vir in shocked silence.
“I think you ought to abort,” Vir said, nodding to their downed comrade. The man was injured and bleeding, but not yet dead. “If you get him to a healer quickly, he might live.”
They scooped up their friend, nodding solemnly to Vir as they hoisted their rucksacks and headed back. Vir thought he’d have to fight to wrestle the kills from them, but his concern was unwarranted. Whatever fight they’d had in them had gone right out the window after their close call.
Once he was alone in the tunnel again, Vir started marking his kills. There were far too many zards to put a badge on each, so he made a V shaped incision in their corpses and piled them up at the side of the tunnel. Though, even when summed together, he doubted they’d fetch very much. They simply weren’t strong enough to warrant a decent payout. The Raptor, on the other hand, ought to bring in a bit of coin. He badged and carefully marked its corpse, jotting down the position and approximate time before continuing on.
Vir found it somewhat surprising that his first Ash Beast kill had been so simple. He dared not assume the rest would go down as easily, but he did breathe easier knowing he’d actually killed a beast of legend.
Neel led a handful of paces ahead, on the prowl for enemies. They found only marked corpses; the previous parties had done a thorough job.
Soon, they arrived at the central mining shaft, where a line had formed. The mining elevator could handle only three people at a time and had to be manually raised and lowered via rope. With two dozen people ahead of him, it’d be at least an hour before Vir had his turn.
Luckily, Dance of the Shadow Demon gave him a better option. Scooping up Neel, he quietly sank into the shadows. The mineshaft extended down, far past Dance’s range, but that wasn’t an issue—Vir popped out of the wall of the dark vertical shaft before immediately re-entering another shadow. In this way, only a small part of his body ever left the shadow realm, allowing him to ‘swim’ through the shadows with Neel in tow.
His descent went unseen, but to any observer, he’d have looked like a worm, burrowing into the rock, only to reappear some distance later.
The prana density had initially worried Vir. Rapid invocations of Dance dried up the ambient prana, but his concern proved unwarranted. Not only was he deep underground where Ash prana was denser, the overall prana density in the Rani Queendom was greater than in Daha. He had far more fuel to burn.
Down he went, past the second level, then onto the third. The mine comprised four levels, and while he briefly considered stopping at an intermediate level like most of the other mercenaries, he knew he’d find the strongest beasts at the deepest level of the mine. The stronger the beast, the greater the reward. It made him wonder how those beasts ascended to the higher levels. The walls seemed impossible to scale.
The dark depths of the lowest level had a different feel. The mine shafts weren’t nearly as well dug, and the brightness of the prana spoke of powerful beasts. Perhaps the other mercenaries had sensed it as well, for he was the only one down here.
Smart. They’re planning on farming the less dangerous beasts higher up.
The place reminded him so much of the depths beneath Daha that it made him freeze up. He recalled the horror of that beast of pure Ash prana, devouring everything in its path. Every instinct within him screamed at him to run. Only when Neel brushed up against his leg, looking up at him with his beady eyes, did he break out of his mental prison.
This isn’t Daha. There are no Prana Swarms here. Or so he desperately forced himself to believe.
The illusion was broken when a bloodcurdling scream penetrated the silence.
That wasn’t an Ash Beast…
“Neel, c’mon!” Vir said, running to the source of the sound. Luckily, the tunnels at this lowest level were far more linear and less labyrinthine than the ones above. He arrived at the scene before long… and wished he hadn’t.
Ahead was a wider room, made to accommodate multiple mine carts. In it, a lone mercenary dueled… a human? Vir thought. But as he drew closer, he realized he couldn’t be further from the truth. The creature only vaguely resembled a humanoid. It was, in fact, a horror straight out of a nightmare.
Though it walked on two humanoid legs and had two humanoid arms and a head, that was where all similarities stopped. Its skin was translucent, allowing one to gaze at its deformed skeletal structure. Its head was a caricature of a human’s. Thrice the size, its bloodred eyes burgeoned from their sockets while rows upon rows of sharp teeth lined its mouth. It lacked a nose.
Its gangly, overly long arms ended in hands with fingernails a foot long and clad in Ash prana.
Once again, it wailed, and Vir had to clasp his hands over his ears to keep himself from being disoriented. Neel took the attack less favorably and stumbled in a daze.
The worst part? This Ash Beast wasn’t in Daha’s bestiary. Apart from its considerable Ash prana signature, Vir had no bearing on how powerful the beast really was.
“Hey!” Vir called out. The man fighting the beast turned slowly, his face devoid of life.
Oh, no… “It’s you? Why did it have to be you?” Vir groaned.
The man was none other than the mercenary who’d challenged him to a duel the previous night. And if his performance that evening was any sign, he was far out of his depth. Vir hoped to find an ally to aid him, but instead, he found a liability.
“Just stay back and try not to get yourself killed,” Vir growled, stepping up to confront the beast. Whether or not the guy recognized Vir, he obediently complied.