Chapter 1915 – Counteroffensive 4 – Tinder and Ash [Vinh POV]

“FOR THOSE BESIDES YOU!” Vinh roared and leapt into action.

“FOR THOSE BESIDES US!” the Robber Army echoed and followed her charge.

The distance between her and the enemy was less than a hundred metres. Even mundanes could cross that distance in under 15 seconds if they were trained enough. Vinh was faster – much faster.

Her enemy was faster still.

The corrupted man spread out his arms. The dramatic gesture opened his spine. Individual vertebrae rose up on stalks made of gelatinous ribs, drawing black tethers between them. In an explosive instant, thousands of branches sprouted from the raw flesh of the man, making his humanoid form the trunk of a perverse tree that fruited growing bulbs.

Disgusting, black fluid splattered when the bulbs were torn open from the inside. Horrors dropped out of sacks, absorbing the Lorylim matter as they learned to walk. Vinh skewered the head of the first creature before it finished that process. The second was halfway through it, but too slow to actually stop the Robber General. The third blocked the spear with a bone-plated forearm, then caught a fireball to the face.

Vinh took hold of the burning body, accelerating its return to ash. Her hand swiped through the cloud of ash. Her thumb dragged over her left cheek, leaving a black streak. Its edges glowed. The ash mage drew power from the burned essence of combat.

A hail of arrows rained down all around her. Arrows and a whole host of other, improvised projectiles, all of them capable of ripping through the Lorylim horrors and their growing sacks. Early delivered creatures flopped on the ground like half-eaten fish.

The other members of the Robber Army charged in, axes, spears, swords, and other arms at the ready. They moved to finish off what seemed defenceless.

Thorns burst from slimy forms, skewering flesh.

‘Loyal fucking idiots!’ Vinh cursed in her mind. The thorns penetrated shoulders, legs and abdomens. By luck and luck alone, nothing vital was hit and the people cut the thorns before any further injury struck them.

“Loyal idiots indeed.”

Vinh whirled around. Too slow, once again. Something sharp sunk into her skin, before the excess force of the impact sent her the other way. She was caught by four of her soldiers, their hands stopping her momentum, then reversing it. Laughing, the Robber General was thrown back into the face of her enemy.

‘Let…’

Ash grey hair fluttered in the wind of motion. The tips of her low-tied twin tails burned like ignited fuses. Her ornate spear swung downwards. The creature that blocked it was the man who had entered the Illusion Barrier. A cord of flesh connected his back to the tree that had grown from him.

‘…me…’

“There should only be one creature that still looks human – you must be Izha then?”

“HAH!” the man laughed, stilted and in pain as always. “No, no, no, no, I am just little Xenity. I have merely copied the Master’s horrid powers. No. No, no, no, no.” He pointed at her stomach. “Izha is in your veins.”

‘…IN!’

Vinh screamed when a thousand needles pulsed through her abdomen. A thousand voices twisted into one boomed in her brain. She was thrown backwards again, this time by the involuntary convulsion of her own muscles. Somehow, she managed to land on her own feet. She stared at the stab wound and the network of black veins that spread from them.

‘Let me in!’

The insistent phrase was spoken, quietly, in her mind again and again. It was a plea. It was a sweet seduction. It was a promise for something more.

‘I’ll leave you the power to change your home.’

Vinh shook her head. ‘I’m not taking your power.’

‘You were so eager to take that of the Phoenix, why not mine?’ The creature sounded almost offended.

‘Because you’re an eldritch mushroom monster,’ Vinh thought back drily.

Three of the lesser Lorylim jumped at her. She dispatched them in a flurry of swings. Fire consumed their bodies. Ash scattered around her, then followed the whims of her motions. The black cloud clashed with a roiling mass of spores. Black and intertwined, different shades of grey refusing to mix as they consumed each other.

“There is no hope for you.” Xenity cackled without any mirth.

The branches of the tree spread further. More horrors dropped from it, swelling ranks that already grew faster than the Robber Army could diminish them.

“We’re a bit slow sometimes, but we have fire!” Vinh shouted back.

Intuition had timed the declaration perfectly. The World Turtle’s agape maw gave rise to a red-tinted beam that cut above the heads of the army. Before it could strike the tree, Xenity leapt up, putting his body in the path. The energy of the young World Turtle met the resilience of the Lorylim.

Vinh had no illusions on who would win and rushed forwards.

‘It won’t change anything,’ Izha whispered.

‘If it doesn’t matter, then I’ll still burn until the end!’

‘Good answer,’ a female voice laughed.

Vinh’s spear sliced through the cord connecting Xenity to the tree, then scorched both ends for good measure. It did not have the desired effect of causing the horrendous growth to wither immediately, but its branches stopped expanding and that was its own little victory. She gathered up the ash and added another streak to her warpaint.

Xenity landed next to her a second later. Burning what she had, she managed to move fast enough to match his strike. The one open eye of the man widened in surprise. He struck her again. Vinh blocked again.

Adrenaline pumped through her veins. She felt alive, more alive than ever. If all of this had been a stupid choice, then she did not care for the smart one. Every bit of her intuition was alight. She felt faster than ever, stronger than ever, more awake than ever. Every time Xenity struck her, he felt a little more predictable.

Their duel took them across the battlefield. The Robber Army was stabbed and struck by the Lorylim all over. Bites tore muscles from bones, but the brave soldiers of the south continued to fight with the defiance of generations.

Vinh knocked aside Xenity’s claws, then whirled around and skewered a different Lorylim. Her might turned the creature into a construct of ash so fast it did not have the time to lose its shape. Only when the Robber General gathered it into her blackened palm did it change from a monstrosity into another addition to her warpaint.

“MASTER – WHY?!” the corrupted man roared. The severed cord on his back was turned into an impromptu whip. Vinh had not expected that and her speed was not yet truly superior to his. One strike lashed across her side, leaving a bleeding gash. The second strike met her spear. The ancient armament creaked – then shattered.

Vinh jumped backwards again and again, narrowly escaping the swings of the cord. As she backed away, she realized that the whole of the battlefield was turning against her. The Lorylim were growing again, by some other mechanism than the tree. It wasn’t their numbers that swelled, but all of the creatures that were still alive.

‘Let me in.’

The voice of the monstrosity was in her mind again. Xenity’s whip extended even as it whistled through the air. Vinh managed to back away, barely.

‘Let me in.’

The pain in her stomach surged. She put a hand on it. The pain flared, then went away. Her hand came back grey with the ash of her own flesh. She added it to her warpaint.

‘…Let me… in…’

“Let me in!” a soldier screamed, pinned beneath two Lorylim, before cutting his own throat with a shattered sword.

“Let me in!” a soldier screamed, swarmed by flowing eyeballs, before blowing his brains out with a hand cannon.

“Let… me… in…” a lieutenant groaned, busy repeatedly stabbing his heart in an effort to make it stop before the infection got there.

Individual Lorylim creatures were turning into mulch. Bodies flowed together into a corruptive mass. Vinh launched desperate fireballs at it. Another, then another, then another, while enduring lashes from Xenity’s whip. Her own pain didn’t matter, only dying well did, and dying well meant that she would protect her soldiers with every last drop of strength in her body.

The mass moved all the same, swallowing her men and women, alive and dead, as it all streamed towards the World Turtle. The living fortress and pet of the Robber Army launched a second beam at the mass. The formless pile of exposed muscle fibres, eyes and teeth recoiled from the impact, then lashed forwards with tremendous speed.

Cho Con, the dull, brave, idiotic, loyal turtle that it was, stretched its neck and bit down on the creature. The animal realised its mistake too late. The semi-liquid mass climbed down the granite throat, spreading outwards through the gaps as stalks of mould. When the World Turtle opened its mouth again, it spoke with vocal cords it should not have had.

“Let me in,” it droned.

Vinh did not honour it with a response. Her eyes were locked on Xenity. There was nothing left to save. Now, there was only one thing left to do.

In an instant, all efforts to dodge, to prioritize other enemies, were forgotten. Vinh rushed forwards, pulling all the power from the ash on her body into herself. Warpaint and tattoos glowed, until the incandescence made her bones cast shadows through her skin and fire leaked through her wounds.

Xenity realized what she was about to do, but her suicidal surge finally elevated her fully above his speed. “Let’s burn out together,” she said with a broad smile.

“Crazy-“

Xenity did not get to finish the sentence. The living bomb that was the general and last of the Robber Army exploded, turning herself and her enemy into a cascade of ash. Vinh felt herself in the scattering particles of grey. Vestiges of her magic that stretched her soul and awareness as the explosion only grew in power as it rippled outwards, scorching all that there was inside the Illusion Barrier, melting rock and boiling the ocean.

Then, she remained.

Not in the Illusion Barrier, but in the ash. She remained in a space of black and red. Laughing, laughing, crying, the black receded, leaving her alone in a vermillion waste. Feathers of orange and red embraced her.

“Huh… so I always was chosen?”

“No, you simply impressed me.”

“Neat… so what happens next?”

“Next, the phoenix rises from the ashes.”

“Ah… would you believe me if I said I didn’t plan for that?”

“I don’t need to believe you, I can see into your heart. Every bit as idiotic as your followers.”

If Vinh had had a hand, she would have scratched the back of her head. “I think they say similarities attract in the West?”

“That is the opposite of what they say.”

“I guess…”

“I offer you a wish.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“Then… you know what I want.”

Red lips spread in a smile.

“I do.”

Vinh was dragged back together. Commanding ash particles felt considerably different when those ash particles were herself. Embers that had burned to white consolidated into the shape of an egg. Embers that had burned to white were ignited once again. Cracks spread through the polished white surface. It broke open, shattering in an explosion of hot winds and flying shards of vitality.

The Robber General felt her stomach, then her face. Naked skin, smooth and unmarred. Orange glowing eyes drifted. Orange glowing feathers fluttered. The energy of her rebirth rippled through the field of her incinerated army.

A hand rose from the thick carpet of ash. It was made of burned matter itself, yet quickly returned to flesh. The tanned form of her Vietnamese countrymen rose one after another, confused, naked, and yet they stood. One after another, they understood the situation, and when the World Turtle was last to be reborn in the phoenix fire, the victorious war cry echoed over the molten shore.

The Cardinal Chosen of the Phoenix smirked.

“THE FUTURE IS OURS TO CHANGE!”