Olimpia

I pulled on my harness when I heard the shout of warning, propelling my body in the opposite direction from Kanieta.

Releasing a small pulse — this was not the time to be overwhelmed by information — I revealed everything around me for ten feet. Another — what was it? Blood golem? — had almost fallen on top of us again.

Angling my dodge more to the left, I heard the whoosh of air around the chest-sized tentacle the blood golem had formed while falling before I saw it. The main tentacle wouldn't hit me, but smaller offshoots were reaching out from its sides, and they were getting close.

The golem shook the ground as it impacted and squished down without splattering apart.

Even when I was ten feet from the now paddle-like tentacle and farther from the center mass, I never stopped backpedaling to create more distance. I am not being swallowed by one of those, I thought with determination.

As I was fleeing, I saw Kanieta streak away. I was moving fast. From a dead stop, I was moving to the side at nearly a sprint without frantically pumping my legs.

Kanieta made me look slow, like a child trying to keep up with an adult.

While I had moved around ten feet, she streaked to a stop at what must have been thirty feet from me. A spot that happened to be in the shadow of another falling blood golem.

Kanieta's arm snapped up, and shadows enveloped her.

I wasn't quite sure what was happening, as the shadows were writhing around her made it, you know, hard to see, but it didn't look like the tentacle slowed at all as it came down. It was as if the tentacle couldn't find purchase on anything and slipped to the side to hit the ground.

Then the gathered shadows began to fade, and once they were gone, so was Kanieta.

Short sword in hand, my eyes flicked around the room, but I kept one eye constantly looking upward. I had learned my lesson.

Every second was filled with the screams of those caught in the grip of the — there really is no better way to describe them other than abominations. Unnatural horrors that were a blight on the world and would forever haunt my nightmares was also apt.

It had only been a handful of seconds since the blood golems had fallen, yet the area around the golems and the center platform was nearly deserted, with rare forms sprinting past.

There were now three main groups in the chamber. Two were pounding on the doors on opposite sides of the chamber.

Not that the doors glowing a deep red around the frame seemed to care. Some of the hits connecting with them were so strong that they boomed through the room like impacts of the flesh golems falling. And yet, the doors didn't look like they so much as shook in their hinges.

The last group, and the one I intuited through my detective skills was the source of this attack, was those standing on the center platform in the ray of light.

"Anyone who approached my chieftains, and sware on their mana to serve me, will not be attacked by the blood golems!" Shouted Chieftain Derg, his voice ringing out above the din. Yep, I was totally right.

I eyed the mounts of flesh slowly moving away from me then I looked at the glowing figures standing in the center of the room.

"Which of the feckers are we killing first," Growled a voice next to me in anticipation.

Head snapping to my right, I saw the badger beastkin standing next to me, his claws opening and closing while he bounced on the balls of his feet. Every bounce was taking him slightly closer to the golems.

I didn't see Kanieta anywhere, and keeping her safe and sticking to her side was the only way I could see of getting out of this situation alive. The best way of doing that was slipping out of this trap. "I'm not sure fighting i—

"I know ya want to go right to fighting that Ass-sniffer trying to make himself look pretty over there, but he's supposed to be quite the warrior. We should save the best for last. But I mean, let's be honest," the fucking badger said, leaning close to me as if he was imparting some grand secret but not lowering his voice in the slightest, "I think his skills aren't worth mentioning. All he is really known for is his pretty face and the numbers within his warbands. I mean, what type of bastard relies on magical creatures to do their fighting? He must be afraid to get his fur messy and look like the shaggy mutt he is."

I was slowly walking away from the badger, but he was moving in step with me, oblivious to the effect of his words.

First off, all of the beastkin in the center platform had turned to look at us, their canine ears twitching. And the two closest blood golems had stopped their movement away and started moving and started shivering.

"I always hated the arrogance of badgers," Derg said, his voice promising death. "They're almost as bad as Olimpians. Kill the vermin first so we can get on with the oaths." He waved his arm as if he was signaling someone.

None of the large and muscular beastkin on stage moved. What—

Chieftain Franklin shouted in challenge, and I pivoted around. My eyes widened, and I took a step back in primal fear.

The blood golems had somehow traveled half the distance between us and were now lunging forward.

This wasn't a tentacle trying to smash me or sweeping over the ground. The bodies had surged twenty feet into the air and started crashing down toward me.

Instinctually, I let out a pulse.

Pushing off my back foot, I surged ahead. Shaping my mental energy, a tendril exploded from my chest, catching on my harness before extending past and tugging on it.

No one really knew why, but so long as they intended for a force to be exerted in a certain way with their mental energy, it was. Making what should be impossible possible.

The distance between my footfalls and speed nearly doubled as my movement was no longer reliant on my legs. But I knew I was moving too slowly, so I pushed out a surge of mental energy to pull me along ever faster.

After two more steps, I felt a burst of air hit my back, and there was a vibration that ran up my foot as the latest blood golem to fall from above hit the ground right behind me.

The two other blood golems started curving inward and down to my left and right, cutting off my escape to the sides.

"Run through the gap!" I shouted at the badger, who looked like he was going to run straight into the welcoming tendrils of the blood golem on the right. "There's one behind us!"

The badger beastkin threw a look over his shoulder, his lips pulled back, showing off all of his teeth. "Wonderful! Pressed on all sides, and little hope of survival! What is a better first fight for us!"

Turning away from the crazy beastkin, I focused on the gap between the two blood golems. Fecking badgers. I was getting a very specific impression of this type of beastkin, and the urge to separate myself from them was growing.

My breath burned in my throat as I pumped my legs as hard as possible, my arms swinging at my sides.

Keeping up a constant flow of mental energy from my core, I released pulses as fast as I could gather and expel the energy. With how my pulses now lingered, providing more information, it was like four people were releasing pulses instead of one. There were still moments when I knew nothing, but I had a terrific mental picture of the collapsing flesh walls around me flowing through my mind.

Bulges on the wall extended into tendrils that reached out for Chieftain Franklin and me.

The stupid badger continued on his direct path for the right blood golem, but with every step he took, the stone floor was running up his legs. His size doubled, then he tripled in a matter of seconds, and he fell to all fours with a boom.

What had once been a figure of mostly a man had become a stone badger as large as a horse. The fur of the moving stone construct were stone spikes while the teeth and claws serrated on their inside edge, designed to teeth into the flesh of anything they swiped over.

From my pulses, I could tell that there wasn't a single side of the creature that wasn't pointy and designed to kill.

Chieftain Franklin leaped at the wall of the muscle and fat, and the golem opened wide like some kind of monstrous four-sectioned mouth. I only got a brief glance into it before I looked away and focused on my closing exit, but the opening really did look like the inside of a mouth. The folds of fat and mussel took on the appearance of the roof of the mouth.

As soon as the chieftain entered the new chamber, the flesh walls closed up, appearing like they had never spread apart in the first place.

I waited for half a second, almost believing that the beastkin would explode out the other side of the entire golem or that it would suddenly collapse into a pile of disconnected parts as he spun in the middle.

But nothing happened.

The two sides of my death tunnel were barely outside my arm's reach, but that didn't matter. If the walls were all I had to worry about, I was sure I would make it. Staying positive, I thought, I got thi—

A tendril exploded from the wall driving for my chest. Fuck…

Slashing my sword at the closest flesh tendril, I sliced off the last six inches of the appendage. But the attack threw off my balance and slowed me down, forcing me to dive into a roll to dodge another tendril spearing for my back.

Releasing my sword as I rolled, I caught it with a tendril and began spinning it around my body faster and harder than my arm could possibly manage. It didn't matter how much one practiced. Swinging a sword behind their back with any level of force was impossible.

Swinging a sword with a tendril behind the back was easy. Didn't help with not having eyes on the back of my head, though.

I was releasing a pulse about twice a second, and how it was lingering now, I got an extra fourth of a second longer. But that still left half a second. Even the movement of your eyes to the side and then back could be the difference between dodging a knife in the throat or not, and that was far more than half a second.

Even as I was rolling over my shoulder and across my back, my sword spun around me three times. While I was not holding the sword with my own hand, I felt a mental twitch every time the sword came into contact with a flesh tendril.

Five Tendrils falling to the ground later, I was coming to my feet, pulling myself forward with a mental strand.

My sword shot forward, trimming the brush from my path. I could see the darkness from the increasingly bright pulsing red light that was enveloping me.

Steps growing lighter as I rushed to exi—

The blood golem on my right suddenly bubbled out into cones, then exploded into me.

Before I could react, the warm flesh hit me in the side, throwing me into the opposite golem. I instantly felt the golem ballooning around my body, trapping it in place.

Then I felt pricks all over my body as the golem started jamming its flesh tentacles into me.

As soon as my skin was broken, I felt… blood enter my body.

I knew it wasn't actually blood, but as my mind skimmed over the invasive energy, it was like slitting a throat of an animal and letting the blood run through my fingers.

It was tainted, though. The energy blood was like what would come from a necrotic wound, and the energy only gained in strength as it ate away at my body.

A scream ripped itself from my throat, but it wasn't one of mind-blanking pain. I had felt pain far worse than this. Pain no one was ever meant to endure.

Feeling my muscles being pulled away from my bones was now like a knife stabbing me. It was painful and concerning, but it wasn't like a boulder smashing the bottom half of my body.

No, my scream was one of wrath. I felt the energy.

It was like looking at a page of a scroll, all laid out before my eyes.

The energy wasn't uniform. It was a mixture made from a hundred beings fused to act as a single whole.

Men and women, young and old.

The caster of this spell didn't care who the fuel was. And the innocent were the ones being punished. Those who had never taken a sentient soul in their life.

Reaching out, I pulled, and the power of the world flooded into my core, filling it to the brim and then beyond in an instant.

I didn't try to control the energy, only throwing my will to destroy the golem behind it as it flowed threw me. It was enough.

The power raged through my body, pushing out all of the invasive blood energy. Then the energy started moving into the blood golem from where it was connected to me, driving back the blood energy saturating the flesh.

The abomination's blood energy offered no resistance as my power surged ever deeper. It was only a couple moments later before I felt the core of the creature, which could finally resist the rush of the energy, if barely.

I could feel the mass of crystallized blood in my mind, an eternal hunger for more blood radiating off it. Then I squeezed. It was no more effort than popping a grape.

The moment the crystal broke, I felt it release a shockwave that carried some of my energy along with it in a pseudo pulse.

Opening my eyes, I ignored the information I was getting. I saw the flesh encasing me be blown away by the power coming off my body before I focused inward again, my eyes glazing over.

I stood in place for a moment as I struggled to stop the endless energy pouring into my core and ravaging my body. It was like fighting against a strong wind. Something that no one was meant to control, only whether. And my body wasn't doing that great of a job.

Seconds passed, and I slowly closed the mental door I had ignorantly thrown open, sealing myself off from whatever wellspring of power that was flowing through me.

A blur ran up to me as I was focused inward, and I blinked and saw a wide maw of teeth surrounded by gore. Dropping into a crouch, I readied myself to fight the latest abomination.