MageCrafter - 20. Kotik's Birthday. Part 3

Berhanu never wanted to see Preja Bog again. It had felt like a lifetime since he had crawled out of that mire and escaped from her grasp. That horrible woman who’s very touch morphed and changed his flesh, causing him the most pain he could ever imagine. He did not even have a similar pain to compare it to. When Babica changed someone, she didn’t allow their brains to turn off during the procedure. She let them experience every agonizing second of it with absolutely perfect clarity to ensure they would become her frothing mad minions that she could control. The vast majority of the time, it broke her subjects' wills and minds and rendered them little more than frothing mad beasts ready to attack anyone she points to. For those she thinks will be able to handle it, she offers them the status of Warlock, granting them magic items within their bodies for them to use.

Occasionally, someone like Berhanu slipped through the cracks. He stared into his paladin hammer, shimmering with holy light as he looked upon his reflection. He couldn’t remember what his old face looked like anymore. It had felt so long ago. All that looked back at him now was the face of a well groomed wolf with a custom fit helm with the insignia of his Goddess the Golden Maiden upon it.

He stood tall at eight feet five inches with powerfully built muscles adorned with MageCrafted Gold Armor. Normally, gold was not a substance that lent itself to being armor, however in the hands of a MageCrafter it could be whatever they wished it to be. The MageCrafter that worked the forges of the Golden Maiden’s Paladin legions was such a being. Berhanu knew the lad quite well, and was part of the reason why he ended up pledging his oaths to his Goddess.

He did not remember who he was in his past life much before Babica had changed him. He knew enough to know that he was a waste of a human before, a wretch of an adventurer that was no better than a Bandit. A scum of a human who only thought of himself. He followed one bad crowd to another until one fateful day he had taken a dark ad off of the Adventurers guild wall. He had thought nothing of killing goblins by that point in his life.

He had thought nothing of it until that boy had confronted him on what he had been really doing. That boy that turned the air he was breathing into such a frigid cold that it threatened to seize his very lungs with the chill of it. He could still remember his dominating presence. A presence that should not be able to emit out of a lad like that, yet it did all the same.

He had told the boy back then that he had taken an ad to deal with a Goblin Infestation. Never before had he been really made to think about what he was actually saying until that boy had nearly killed him for his words.

“Care to repeat that last line one more time, Anti Demi Human Filth.” That boy had growled at him in such a frigid tone, almost colder than the air he made Berhanu breathe at the time. “and this time phrase it in a way that won't cause me to make what Babica will do to you look like a tender mercy.”

Most of his old life was gone from his mind. His name was one that was given to him after he had taken his oaths, and one that he now wore with pride. Even if he could remember his old name, he wouldn’t want it anymore. That old person died the day Babica got a hold of him and turned him into one of her monstrosities. Somehow he had been able to recover some of his sanity back and crawl out of the borders of Preja Bog. Normally he would have been killed on the spot, but due to a series of strange circumstances and friends he ended up making along the way, He found himself reforged as Berhanu, The ‘Wolfkin’ Paladin.

The cover story was that he was one of the Demi human races. One of the more animal-esque ones that didn’t even have a human face. A true wolfkin would be able to tell he was not one of them, but for the humans of Silbel such a distinction did not matter.

The Golden Maiden Faith was an independent force within Silbel from the Gughian Empire. One of the stipulations of their churches being there was their practitioners were exempt from the collaring laws of magic users and MageCrafters. The tradeoff was those paladins and clerics and priests who joined the Golden Maidens forces gave up their citizenship to Silbel and became citizens of Gughia as soon as their oaths were successfully accepted and they gained their attunement slots. It was not a deal Silbel was particularly fond of, and they were in constant talks to try and overturn it, yet for now such was the state of things.

At the moment they were scouting the outskirts of Preja Bog. The very act of being near the place made his fur stand on end. He whispered prayers to his goddess for strength, trying to put the traumatic memories of what the hag giant did to him out of his thoughts. If his Goddess needed his company here, he would serve her and do so.

Something was in the air however. He could taste the sharp shift in ozone in the atmosphere even though the sky was still so clear. Focusing some natural magic into his helm, he enhanced his golden wolf eyes and zoomed his vision in to see what could be causing such a disturbance.

His heart nearly jumped into his throat when he had spotted the Boy. The very boy who had confronted him those years ago. He was older now and far more nicely dressed but he was unmistakably the same person.

“C-Captain! You should take a look at this.” Berhanu called out over his shoulder. It had taken him ages to learn how to speak with his new mouth, but he managed it now, though it still had the strange eccentricities of wolf whines and growls to it.

A Blond woman with a stern face and impressively polished MageCrafted Gold armor strode up to Berhanu’s side and used her helm much like he did to observe the Mining village.

“By the Maiden, what the hell is happening over there.” She breathed in alarm as she watched the figure transfigure into what looked like a hero of old as swirling blue magical circles appeared above and below him.

Berhanu’s eyes widened in even more alarm as he spotted why the boy was casting his spell. “Holy Light! She left her bog! She’s bearing down a legion right on that village. By the Maiden I’ve never seen so many wyverns! We have to do something.”
It was at that moment that the boy shot the orb into the sky, and suddenly the entire sky became black and started to pour down so much rain that it was deafening. The Paladins and clerics backed up in alarm and looked up at the sky that had once been so clear that was now draped in the worst storm they had ever seen.

“What in the Pantheon’s name is that Wizard?! How many attunments does he have?!” Berhanu’s captain yelled out in disbelief. They had to shield their eyes as lightning bolts began to light up the sky in such awe inspiring numbers they could not keep a proper gaze on what was happening. What they could glean was horrifying to behold.

“By the Pantheon. The boy is taking on Babica Preja and her legion all on his own. Look at the size of that Hail! Any one of those would down a ship at sea without effort! What is that boy?! Surely no mortal has such powers!”

“Men!” Berhanu’s captain called out to the rest of their company. “I want all eyes observing this situation. I want anything of interest to be noted down. We are going to be sending this information directly back to the Central Church to see if we can divine what is happening in this place today.”

“A-Are those Tornadoes!?”

*** 

Babica had never felt such rage and hatred towards an adversary in her life. At least the Necromancers had the dignity to meet her forces with their own. This wretched brat hit behind his onslaught of magical attacks from a safe distance while he kept laying down this confounded Mase of Thick sheets of ice. Were she in her prime she’d just smash her way through those massive walls of ice instead of sending her wolves through that labyrinth, but she had to get them out of this Hail and lightning that kept shredding through her forces. The ground between preja bog and this infuriating mining village was painted red with the blood, gore, and charred remains of so many of her creations. So many hours of work strewn on this battlefield before she could even look at this coward in the eye!

As her dwindling army funneled into this Labyrinth that still had walls falling out of the sky to add to it’s complexity, she crouched onto the ground and channeled her attunement slots into her suit. She was done waiting to meet this coward in person again. She was going to launch herself right over to the village to meet him in combat one on one like a proper combatant she knew from the Heroes of Old. She had respect for those vaunted adventurers from yesteryear, this upstart had earned none of hers this day!

Her body sailed into the air through the never ending sheets of rain, leaping off several of the falling glacier sized hail as she moved her way through the air towards the village. She treated his massive hail like platforms to bound off of, hugging onto their surface and leaping off them with such force they shattered in midair. Her army could make it the rest of the way to the village, but for now she needed to deal with this Upstart at the source and give some relief to her forces.

One falling glacier after another shattered in the air as she picked up speed, leaping with ever greater force and savageness as the village came into view. She saw the lad floating in the air draped in robes and wearing a wizard hat. She snapped her limbs against her body as she sailed downwards, cutting through the wind as she fell towards her adversary with the full intent on biting him out of the sky with her powerful werewolf jaws.

“THREE FOLD ATTUNMENT, SPEED OF THE TIGER GOD!”

A red flash of light sprang up from the ground towards her at speeds she had not seen since she had fought the Barbarians from so long ago. Before she knew what was happening the fist of a ruby haired boy crashed into her jaw at blinding speeds and rocked her brain in it’s casing as he utterly changed her momentum.

What just happened?!

The second the red haired and tanned boy touched the muddy ground below he shot forward in such speed that he caused waves of mud to erupt out on either side of him before he took back into the air and met Babica that was careening out of control, gripping the Hag Giant by her tail and forcefuly slamming the figure down on top of a residence, shattering the building utterly as her over sixty foot body shook the ground.

Before she could even get her bearings the lad sped away from her, the red light quickly picking up momentum on the ground and disrupting the mud and rain as he passed before slamming his elbow right into her dazed face, punching her through several buildings and crashing her back into the mines, causing the entrance to cave in as she slumped to the ground.

Babica roared in outrage and began to grow eyes all over her body, eyes of so many of her victims that comprised the suit she was wearing and began to scan the area in earnest for this new assailant. From the force of his blows he must be giant blooded, she thought with some frustration as she wiped blood off of her mouth. The second one of those eyes spot this ruby haired welp she was going to send disintegration rays his way. She was done playing around!

She certainly tried, strangely brownish orange colored beams fired out of the eyes that grew from her body as they tried to get a lock on the speeding red haired lad, disintegrating one building after another into dust as she tried to corner him. She hated using this move because of how much of her attunement slots it required, and should any of those eyes get damaged while she was using this that would spell bad news for her.

Almost as if in response to that very thought, Maids began to dart from around buildings she hadn’t hit yet and started firing a hail of silver bolts towards her. Between her trying to keep a bead on the obnoxiously fast Giantblooded boy and now fending off these silver bolts that sped towards her like the rain from above, she soon found her eyes getting skewered by their onslaught. The Curse of Exhaustion hit her, though not as bad as someone who only had three attunement slots. It was more than enough for her to pull her eyes back into her body and try a different tactic.

This upstart! This coward refused to even meet her in battle head on!

***

Babica was coming. She finally gave up on the idea of showing up with her legion in the village and decided it was time to face Baldric on her own. Good. He was wondering when she was finally going to get impatient with how many losses she was getting. No matter how many his lovely assistants ended up mowing down, facing Babica with any kind of backup is not a desirable situation. He needed her separated from her army, and he needed to keep that army busy while they handled her.

He monitored her approach as he called down to the maids and Count Raudh.

“Raudh, How long can you use Speed of the Tiger God?” He called down, augmenting his voice with his illusory powers.

Count Raudh, who was only just now recovering from the display he had been seeing shouted back up at Baldric. “I’ve managed to get it up to about ten seconds but that’s about it. Why?”

“Ten seconds is plenty. Babica is coming.” The Maids and Raudh looked apprehensive, but Lord Baldric steeled his voice and took on a commanding tone. “Count Raudh, Do your Country proud and get that Hag Bitch dazed and confused. If you can, knock her into the mines so we can maximize the cover we get from the village. After you do that I will use my illusions to make it seem like you’re still running around to draw her fire. I don’t think you can take her head on without the Tiger Godspeed, so don’t even bother. Maids!” He turned his attention to the maids present, “If she starts growing anything, and I do mean anything out of that wolf body of hers, I want you to crossbow the fuck out of them. Get your Rapid Fire Crossbows with silver ammunition from the carriage, she’ll be here any second.”

“Yes master!”

The altercation between Raudh and Babica went better than expected. She must have been getting really desperate because she was not monitoring her surroundings at all when the Count had punched into her jaw. He felt something of an inward groan at all the homes being destroyed as those brief ten seconds dragged on, but the Bertolde estate would easily be able to help with any rebuilding efforts after the fact. Empty buildings were the last priority right now.

Even with those well coordinated strikes, Raudh had only roughed Babica up a little bit. Since she is so much older and more haggard now, she can’t take quite as much punishment as she could back in the day. Now that he was seeing her in action she didn’t seem to have as sharp a mind in combat either anymore. She must have gotten rusty and complacent in her old age.
He maneuvered an illusory Count Raudh around at high speeds as he drew her disintegration rays. Her eyes were the most troublesome part of her. She had taken notes off of Beholders and learned how to weaponize eyes into ways of channeling and aiming magic. She technically is even worse since she has so many more eyes than one of those floating eyeball monstrosities.

He had his maids move in to fire upon her as soon as she grew out those eyes of hers. While the maids were in actuality on their stomachs firing from that prostrate position on the rain drenched ground, he used his illusions to make it look like they were standing straight up and off center from where they actually were. Between the rain, lightning, darkness, and being rocked by Count Raudh’s attacks she would not be able to tell where those bolts were really coming from. By the time she’d see the maids moving away, she’d be following the fake ones with her eyes instead of the real ones.

There was another reason why he had wanted her by the mines as well.

High in the sky trained right at the entrance, one of his largest collections of Parallel Baldric and steam MageCrafting assistants were managing and crafting the single most difficult state of Water at their disposal.

Super-heated steam.

Unlike their visible counterpart, super-heated steam is completely and entirely transparent and is so hot and dry that it borders on the dominion of fire. It is just on the cusp of crossing over to an entirely different dominion while still being under his MageCrafting control. However it being so close to crossing over makes it excessively dangerous to manage in person. Which is why they were handling it so high in the sky. They were condensing and forcing this impossibly hot and clear pocket of dry super-heated steam so compactly that they were trembling with the exertion they had to put into maintaining its shape. Even MageCrafted Ice would melt under the heat of this small compact sphere.

With the efforts of the crew working on this orb of dry super-heated steam and scrying assistants helping to line up the shot on the Giant, Lord Baldric down below moved into position.

***

“There you are Dearie! I was wondering when you’d show your face!” Babica roared out as the cloaked and wizard hat wearing Lord Baldric floated imposingly into view. She could tell that he was killing even more of her army within his Labyrinth of thick ice walls right now, which infuriated her even more. What added to that was the fact that this Upstart didn’t even see fit to talk with her.

“What’s wrong! No Snark, no bravado boy!?” She screeched in indignation as she grew out her chainsaw tongues from out of all parts of her body. She would rip this brat to shreds if it was the last thing she did!

Lord baldric raised his hand and summoned forth several glowing blue glyphs in front of his hand, which spun and adjusted in strange ways before he used his other hand to make a sweeping gesture and roared out a single word in a voice that sounded like a chorus of voices.

Her eyes widened in alarm as a sudden and violent rise in temperature slammed into her from above that was so intense that even her MageCrafted flame retardant fur burst into flame from the sheer temperatures of it. She had never been hit with an attack so hot before! A fireball was positively frigid in comparison to the pure heat that just slammed into her from above and utterly shriveled her chainsaw tongues before they even got to rev their teeth up.

Babica shrieked in pain as she had to focus all of her efforts to maintain her Werewolf suit. She could feel some of them die within the creation, and she had to immediately jettison their corpses off of the superstructure while she MageCrafted her suit on the fly to handle these increased temperatures. She could feel Magic items inside of her dying, hitting her with new layers of Exhaustion cursing, making her more sluggish and slower to respond.

The heat left after a moment, but the attack had been devastating. Even now she had to regrow charred flesh and fur on her Werewolf suit, and her real body only just managed to escape from such an attack unharmed. However her attunement slots had taken a huge pounding, and it translated to her speed, coordination, and thinking ability getting hampered by almost half on top of what the maids and Count Raudh had done to her earlier.

She roared in indignation and mild panic as she leaped forward to try and eat this upstart, however he vanished into a puff of steam right as her teeth clamped down on his form, and her reaction time was so sluggish she couldn’t even stop herself from slamming into a building, caving it in as she slumped into it. All the while Rain continued to pour on this battlefield, and she could hear more and more of her minions in the distance getting slaughtered inside of that labyrinth she had sent them in.

She slammed her fist in frustration into the ground over and over again. No! She will not lose to this upstart! She was Babica Preja!

Suddenly her attention was drawn to a blackened building in the distance as an awakening like she had never felt before slammed into her field of perception. All the wood she was near turned black and she howled in pain as they suddenly grew spikes that pierced right through her werewolf suit into her body that she could no longer craft after the Dark age wars. She pulled off the spikes and staggered back, looking around to see that all the wooden structures and debris had taken on this dark spikey appearance. She noted with growing alarm that even trees far into the distance that she could see through flashes of lightning had those same spikes.

What just happened?! What is inside that building?

She got her answer as a door was kicked out of the way and a small lynxian boy with both his eyes and mouth glowing bright white sped out in a crouched position on all fours. The lads head almost immediately snapped in her direction, and he let out such an enraged howl at her that it made her blood run cold. Even as the roar continued the light in his eyes and mouth only grew brighter, making Babica have to shield her eyes and back up as she clung to her side where the blackened spike of wood had stabbed into her earlier.

She didn’t even see him rush into her. She didn’t have a second to register it when he leaped off the ground with such force that it created an explosion that ripped the building he came out of to pieces as well as the ground beneath him. Air escaped her lungs as she was sent flying back into the labyrinth with the tiny enraged creature on her. She flew into the thick sheets of ice with such force that they shattered on impact, one after another, battering her body and rattling her bones inside of her werewolf suit.

Before she knew it, her head was being dragged along the ground as a hail of tiny fists began to piston into her face, alternating from left to right at such blinding speeds she couldn’t even keep track of it all. Her werewolf teeth flew off in all directions and her werewolf face caved in completely as the glowing eyed and mouthed lynxian kept slamming his fists into her, his body a blur to any onlookers who could see him.

His punching turned to ripping, grabbing hunks of her werewolf suit and tossing them away like he was opening up a macabre birthday present instead of ripping into one of the most feared creatures in Silbel. She tried to punch him, tried to fight back, but every time she raised her hands to grab him he shattered her fingers and even ripped some of them off with a vicious yank of his hands. She had never seen something so powerful and so enraged in her entire life.

It terrified her.

Soon her head and neck was fully exposed as she ground to a stop in the middle of the slaughtering grounds where so many of her creations had perished to ice shrapnel, tornadoes, and lightning bolts. Babica tried desperately to do anything at all to get this Lynxian off of her, but to her horror she was utterly helpless to something so much smaller than her.

Babica felt her head be roughly and violently slammed back into the ground over and over by the lynxian, jack hammering the back of her head into the muddy ground and creating a bigger and bigger crater that pooled with muddy water and blood from her minions. Still he kept slamming her, now holding onto her neck and squeezing down with such force as he kept pounding her head into the ground below that it wasn’t long before her head was submerged in mud. Again she tried to punch him, to grow something out of her suit to fight him, all were ripped to pieces by his hands and teeth before he went back to focusing on throttling her neck into the flooding mud puddle she found herself suffocating in.

She didn’t want to die like this. She was a warrior! She was supposed to die in the heat of battle. Right now she never felt more helpless in her life. She began to try and scream out for help under the flood of muddy water, which just resulted in her gurgling and gasping.

It was that day that Babica Preja died, her face blue from suffocation from a lynxian she had tried to claim for her own.

***

“Come on whipper snapper, we need to calm him down now.”

“H-how?” Baldric had never seen anything like what Kotik had just done. He had never seen his little lynxian like that at all before. Between his second awakening and what he had just done to Babica, he had to admit he felt a pang of fear approaching his love. The Old Man would have none of it as he slammed his finger into Baldric’s chest while they walked to the crater where Babica and Kotik was.

“Don’t you dare break my boy’s heart, you fucking hear me brat? He adores you and he’s going to need you more than ever now that he’s got all this new power. The surface world is going to start acting real stupid now they know someone like him is up for grabs, and if Kotik gets hurt by any of them I will consider it your fault. You get me?”

“I-I understand. What do we do?”

“Follow my lead brat.” The old man fearlessly slid down into the crater and walked across the corpse of Babica Preja towards the still terrifyingly angry lynxian who now didn’t know what to do with himself. Kotik tensed up and seemed like he was going to lash out, however he noticed with confusion that The old man was hugging him. It wasn’t much longer before Baldric was hugging him from the other side. They just held him there as he knelt on top of Babica, and slowly but surely his glowing eyes and mouth faded away and was replaced with a horrified and tearful expression as he stared at his hands.

“N-nooo..I did it again. I did it again!” He was trembling after he realized he had choked someone to death again after not doing it after so long. After he met the old man he thought he wouldn’t need to do that anymore, but he went and did it again even with Baldric and The old man right here with him. He didn’t want to be the Silbel Strangler. He just wanted for people to not hurt him, that was all. Yet he kept doing it, he kept choking people to death, now he could do it to even giants.

He sobbed himself to sleep while being hugged by the two people he cared about most in his life. He didn’t even notice as he drifted off that the Old Man faded away back to the realm he had came from, giving Baldric parting instructions as he did so. Lord Baldric truly felt the weight of responsibility on his shoulders as he lifted Kotiik up from that crater like a princess and walked him out of the gore strewn battlefield.

They had won, but he knew things were not going to be the same after this point.