The remainder of the Orakh spread out, allowing Dan to approach but cutting Jennifer off. They formed a rough ring around the hall, blocking Jennifer out but not taking any action against her. The gigantic Orakh dropped the armored body and hoisted its axe, quickly crossing the ground toward Dan with long, casual steps.
“I can feel the mana pulsing off of you, human,” the Orakh said, his voice a deep rumble Dan could feel in his chest. “You feel more like an elf than these animals playing around with their toys, but that shouldn’t be the case.”
“Tell me,” he commanded, hoisting his axe. “The elves believe your kind can’t accumulate power past a certain point. Obviously, they are wrong. Tell me who you stole this power from, and I will make your death and the death of your mate quick. Resist, and I will feed your limbs one-by-one to my men while you yet live.”
Dan let his mana flow into the sword, igniting it. The purple light illuminated the room eerily, casting the huge Orakh in front of him and the large metal throne behind him into flickering relief. The creature’s eyes lit up as it focused on the blade.
“So, you’ve killed an archmage.” The Orakh’s mouth curved into a bestial smile. “You are powerful, but not that powerful, human. I’ve been in battles against archmages. I’ve seen Orakh fall by the dozens as spells ripped their bones from their bodies in order to buy our warriors enough time to smash their way through the elf’s shield.”
“Tell me how you did it,” he continued, his eyes gleaming with a feral light. “No archmage would abandon their blade. But, at the same time, there isn’t quite enough magic in you to overcome one. What is the trick, manling? Tell me now where this power came from.”
“I earned it on my fucking own.” Dan rolled his eyes as he increased the mana to his strength rune. “By spell and sword, one dead monster and elf at a time.”
Some of the anger of the past couple weeks bubbled over. Days of stomaching overly rushed schedules and incompetence on the part of his employers. The constant skeptical comments when he spoke of using magic. The lack of discipline on the part of his new employees that led to their deaths and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment.
All of that, and here he was once again with an enemy talking down to him. The same cliche lines and doubts. Being underestimated might give him an advantage, after all. An arrogant enemy was an enemy you could easily trick, but Dan was fucking sick of it.
He triggered a Fireball into the ground behind him, counting on it to engulf the Orakh surrounding him. Given an opening, Jennifer could handle ten Orakh on her own, so long as she wasn’t surrounded. With any luck, the Fireball would provide her that opening and let her leverage her mobility to keep the traditional Orakh off-balance.
The Orakh Lord bellowed his defiance and anger at Dan, swinging the axe at a speed the half-ton weapon should’ve been incapable of. He hastily ducked under the weapon as it whistled through the air. Dan gritted his teeth. Even with his enhanced reactions, dodging was far more difficult than it should have been.
The Orakh moved elf-fast as he stomped on the ground, knocking Dan off balance from the impact as he jumped backward. In the air, the towering Orakh pointed his gauntlet-clad right hand at Dan.
Dan stumbled to his feet and looked up in shock as dark mana coiled around the Orakh’s hand. Energy curled around the creature’s metal glove, a wreath of purple sparks that arced and crackled as power accumulated.
With a muffled curse, Dan dropped mana into his temporal rune, eyes tracking the crude bolt of oscillating darkness that spat forth from the Orakh’s gauntlet.
His sword traced a crackling line of purple light through the air. The slowed time made the action maddening. The sword crawled, even with his enhanced muscles only able to drive the weapon forward at inches per subjective second as the bolt of darkness moved at almost three times its speed.
Sweat beaded Dan’s forehead as he pushed with all his might, dragging the tip of his sword infinitesimally faster through the molasses air. The blade barely caught the bolt of darkness, its purple aura hissing and crackling as it deflected the bolt to the side where it slammed into and disintegrated a stone chair.
Dan gasped for breath, eyeing up the Orakh as it glanced dubiously at the wrecked chair. His spellshield could have taken the blow, but it would have almost entirely wiped out its mana. Whatever that attack was, it packed a punch.
A punch that the Orakh shouldn’t have. To date, their race had divided itself neatly. The shamans were smaller and weaker, but they could use mana. Warriors came in different sizes, but they were straightforward. The only tactic they employed was charging toward you with an axe and hoping for the best.
This Orakh was different. He talked, reasoned, and used magic. Dan had already been preparing to counterattack once the thing overextended itself in the first charge, a common quick victory tactic he’d used against Orakh to date. Instead, it had anticipated his actions and tried to trap him, a worrying sign that his fighting style was growing stale and predictable.
They circled each other warily, eyes locked on the other. Behind him, clashes and clangs announced that Jennifer was fighting the ordinary Orakh, but he couldn’t pull his gaze from the enemy before him. Even a moment’s hesitation would give it the opening it needed to bring him in range of that axe.
Dan launched a Lightning Stroke with his free hand, catching the Orakh in the upper right portion of its bare chest. He sprinted forward, temporal rune pulling heavily at his mana reserves once again as he tried to take advantage of the spell’s distraction.
Unfortunately, it did next to nothing. The heat from the electrical arc burned a portion of the Orakh’s flesh, but there wasn’t the usual disability for him to take advantage of. No spastic twitching, no muscle spasms, not even a loss of focus. Instead, what remained was three tons of pissed off Orakh with a small burn on its chest.
It swung its axe at knee level, almost flush with the floor, forcing Dan to jump over it. Immediately, he realized his mistake, as the Orakh used the momentum from swinging the axe to spin around and deliver a backhand straight into his spellshield while he hung helpless, suspended in the air at the apex of his jump.
He managed to create a force bubble in the way of the Orakh’s fist, which dampened the blow somewhat, but even with the spellshield, he rocketed into the chamber’s wall, leaving a cracked crater in the heavy stone and iron. Dan shook the fuzz from his vision, tossing a Fireball into the air where he suspected the Orakh would be charging while he tried to regain his bearings long enough to escape.
The Orakh, singed but not seriously injured, stormed through the Fireball just as Dan managed to sprint away from the wall, narrowly dodging the axe blow that cleaved through it like it was made of soggy cardboard. He jumped over the stone table in the hall, trying to ignore the way the floor tipped and jerked under him as his scrambled brain tried to regain some semblance of balance.
The alien bellowed in anger, once again charging dark mana around its gauntlet. This time, Dan didn’t give him a chance, firing a string of Forcebolts into it before finishing with a Fireball.
Despite his incredible size and strength, the Forcebolts managed to stagger and distract the massive amphibious creature enough that it lost control of the dark mana. The Orakh took one step backwards, the closest thing to a victory Dan had managed to earn in the battle to date, when the Fireball detonated.
Dan sprinted forward once more, the translucent light of force mana glittering around his left hand as he charged. So far, the Orakh had mostly shrugged off his elemental attacks, but at least force mana knocked it around a little bit. Pummeling it with force bolts might not do much damage through its thick skin and dense muscle, but at very minimum, he should be able to keep it off-balance.
Once again, the axe blurred diagonally through the space that he was about to occupy, forcing Dan back a step. The Orakh grunted, his normally moist body hissing and smoking as he burst through the wall of flame created by Dan’s Fireball.
Time slowed as the temporal rune gave him the seconds needed to line up and launch a trio of Forcebolts into the gigantic axe, knocking it slightly to the side. Dan adjusted his course, twisting his body past the descending axehead as it buried itself in the floor without any resistance from his spellshield.
The Orakh’s eyes went wide with surprise as Dan ducked under its guard. His sword flashed, cutting deep into the meat of its left forearm, severing tendons and shattering bone before his strength and momentum ran out, and Dan had to brace himself to withdraw the blade.
Feeling rather than seeing the dark mana swirling behind him, Dan ripped his sword out of his enemy’s arm and threw himself at its ankles in a desperate spinning roll. The bolt missed, carving a hole in the room’s floor and creating a torso-sized hole into the chamber below. Then, his spellshield crackled as the Orakh’s shin crashed into him, sending Dan skidding on his back across the chamber.
Dan stood up, taking in the four remaining ordinary Orakh as their leader bellowed, gauntleted right hand clasped over the deep wound leaking ichor from its left side. Jennifer was partially surrounded, but she was holding her own, still without help. It would be some time before she’d be able to assist him.
“Duck!” he screamed at her, simultaneously triggering a force bubble over her dropping body and detonating a Fireball almost directly above her. She’d likely end up slightly crispy from the blast, but it was the quickest way he could think to resolve the stalemate.
The Orakh around her staggered back, clawing at the third-degree burns that covered their bodies. Dan turned toward the Orakh leader that was already trying to line up another bolt from its gauntlet at him. Silently, he cursed himself for focusing mostly on flashy area-of-effect and stunning abilities in his spell research. In a battle of pure strength, he needed something more dedicated: the ability to target the meanest SOB on a battlefield and make them hurt.
Filing the thought away, Dan ran at the Orakh once more, a zigzagging serpentine designed to deny the alien a clear shot as he peppered it with Forcebolts. Silently, he prayed that he could finish the monster off before he ran out of mana. Already, the constant spell and rune use was putting strain on his reserves.
A quick stutterstep and another bolt of darkness slammed into the ground about ten paces away from Dan as he changed course at the last second. This time, his sword slashed deep into the meat of the Orakh’s hamstring as Dan sprinted past it.
Behind him, the creature tried futilely to catch him, grasping at his shadow with the heavy gauntlet that was pulsing with dark mana. Dan wasn’t entirely sure what that would do to his spellshield, but it certainly made short work of a soldier in full battle armor, so he wasn’t inclined to slow down enough to find out.
The Orakh spun toward him, staggering as his injured leg struggled to carry his weight while his left arm flopped uselessly.
Dan locked gazes with the creature. Both were breathing heavily from using magic to push their bodies past their natural limits, but neither flinched. A distraction on its part would be all he would need to take advantage of its injured arm and lamed leg. But, by the same token, the bolts of darkness moved fast. After the two heavy kinetic blows he’d taken earlier in the battle, Dan didn’t want to push his luck on the spellshield absorbing all of the dangerous-looking spells.
A smile crept across Dan’s face. The Orakh cocked its head, eyes still on him as it tried to make sense of the change in his expression. Then Jennifer landed on its back, blades of force adorning each of her hands as she shoved them into its thick hide.
The force magic didn’t penetrate far; the Orakh’s corded muscles were far too dense to be easily harmed by such rudimentary magic, but they did hurt enough to distract it. Enraged, it reached back with the humming blackness of the gauntlet, trying to grab onto Jennifer, only for her to drop to the ground.
In that moment, Dan’s sword sank into the Orakh leader’s chest, the creature’s splayed arms providing it with no cover as it contorted its body, looking for Jennifer. The alien’s eyes widened, and it reached back for Dan, its muscular arm moving at a crawl as it tried to traverse the entirety of its body.
Dan fired a Flame Jet into the invader’s face, blinding him temporarily. Dan pulled his sword out of the Orakh’s body, dropping to the ground only to stab upward once again, driving the purple weapon deep into its stomach.
The Orakh fell to its knees, only for Dan to plunge his sword into the massive creature’s chest once more. With both of the alien’s lungs ruptured, he wheezed for breath, confusion and the first hints of fear widening his massive eyes. Dan knocked it onto its side with a Forcebolt.
The Orakh still clung to life, insensible but unable to give up, clinging to its last breath through sheer stubbornness and animalistic impulse. Grabbing the creature by the top of its head, Dan sawed his sword across the Orakh’s throat. The blade flared purple as it cut deep into the alien’s heavy muscle, only for Dan to jerk it backward, cutting his way through the reeling creature’s neck inch-by-inch.
It took almost a minute, but finally the head popped free, and with it came a torrent of mana. As Dan tried not to enjoy the afterglow too much, Jennifer tapped him on the shoulder and pointed through the hole in the floor blown by the creature’s gauntlet.
Below them was a massive chamber filled with pale, bioluminescent eggs. They surrounded a massive creature. The size of an elephant, it was a limbless sack of flesh with a mouth that warbled in distress as he fixed his gaze upon it.
Dan frowned. In front of his eyes, two of the smaller Orakh brought it a stack of meat, some from gators and some from humans. While they poured their crude wheelbarrows of food into its endless maw, it laid one of the pale eggs.
A Fireball burned in his grip as he stepped toward the opening in the floor.
