"The runes are failing! Back, get back, now!"
The blood beast slammed once more into the Mushroom Capital's western wall. The last few functioning runes gave a final struggle, then went out for good.
Stripped of the runes' reinforcement, the wall's masonry shifted and split in the space of a breath.
Boom!
An entire section of wall collapsed inward from the middle, rubble and dust pouring down like a waterfall, swallowing the Puchis that hadn't managed to withdraw in time.
Its duty done, the battered blood beast dissolved and splashed across the ground.
In the distance, Darean let out a long breath.
Even without any real interference, destroying this wall in a little over a day, by his power alone, had cost him dearly. Fortunately, what remained would be far simpler.
Darean raised his hand, about to send his eager subordinates surging through the breach, when he suddenly stopped.
His ears twitched. Puzzled, he peered toward the dust-choked gap. Something was approaching.
The sound resolved, bit by bit.
"Aaaaargh!"
"Kill me! Anyone, just kill me!"
"Mercy... waaah... I have repented, I beg you, mercy..."
Amid the howls of pure agony, Puchis marched out of the rolling dust bearing several vampires strung high on flagpoles. Once through, they fanned out neatly to either side and planted the poles just beyond the blood canopy Darean had raised against the sun.
The sight turned the vampires, who a moment earlier had been celebrating the cracking of the Mushroom Capital's shell, bug-eyed with rage!
"That's Randall! And Viscount Castor!" Some of the blood-scions even recognized the identities of the banner material.
"Curse them! They dare humiliate us like this!"
"Belian, don't!"
In the sky, one vampire shook off his companions' restraining hands and dove.
The Puchis on the ground opened up on him with mushroom cannons.
Belian's whole body melted into a slick of living blood, weaving nimbly through the air, letting every incoming shot pass through nothing at all.
The instant he landed, countless blood arrows lanced out, wiping out a whole swath of Puchis in one stroke.
His strike had landed, but Belian did not press his luck. He spun, blood blade sweeping, cut down the two screaming vampires bound to the nearest banners, seized them both, and flickered away between cannon shots, falling back a hundred meters.
Back under the blood canopy, with the sunlight sealed away, the two rescued vampires finally stopped screaming.
"How are you both?" Belian at last had breath to ask.
Then came the thing he could never have expected.
"Thank you. Thank you!"
One of the freed vampires, repeating his heartfelt thanks, condensed a short blade of blood before the stunned eyes of every blood-scion present, and drove it through his own heart.
He collapsed into his own blood, and in the last moment of his life, the look he turned on Belian was still brimming with gratitude.
That gratitude made Belian's skin crawl.
He was still frozen in shock when warning cries came from the others far behind: "Belian, look out!"
A blade of blood burst through Belian's chest from behind. He turned his head with difficulty, and what he saw was the face of the other vampire he had just rescued, fear and agitation and a thin smear of apology all mixed together.
Meeting Belian's uncomprehending, furious stare, the vampire's sun-cracked, ruined face twisted into an ugly smile. "This... you can't blame me for this! I had no choice either! If I don't want to die like that fellow, this is all I can do! You were too stupid... too stupid..."
"Traitor! Get away from him!" Belian's friend charged in, blood blade hacking straight at the betrayer.
The traitor kicked the gravely wounded Belian to the ground and bolted for the Puchi lines.
He crossed out of the blood canopy's shelter, and the sunlight fell on him again, searing him over every inch of skin. He did not stop.
At last, he dropped to his knees beneath a fluttering crimson cloak.
"Fungus Lord... great Fungus Lord... this humble... this humble one..." His enhanced senses repaid him with pain several times over; he couldn't even get the words out straight.
A tentacle drifted down before him and tapped him lightly between the brows. "Not bad. As a special dispensation, you're reassigned to serve your sentence on alarm-bell duty, and from now on you'll get one night of leave per month."
The vampire kowtowed like a pestle pounding grain. "The Fungus Lord is merciful! Merciful!"
"That said, you do still have to finish today's shift."
At that, several Puchis strapped him back onto his flagpole. He offered not a twitch of resistance, and once he was hoisted, he joined the vampires beside him in screaming with true professional dedication.
"Monsters!"
The vampire who had just saved Belian watched this absurd theater in equal parts horror and fury, and did not dare take another step forward.
He hauled Belian up to retreat, and then heard Belian force out a weak warning.
"Run..."
"I know. I'm pulling you back now."
"Leave me... and run!"
"Why? I can carry you perfectly well..."
Schlick.
A length of blood blade extended from Belian's palm and ran through his friend's arm.
"Why?!"
"I can't control myself!" Tears of blood spilled from Belian's eyes, and across his body, mushrooms began erupting one after another through his flesh. In moments, everything below his head was overgrown.
Belian's body attacked again, and at the same time, the Puchis beneath the wall began to advance.
Desperate, Belian's friend had no choice left. He condensed a blood weapon and struck back.
It was an utterly ordinary horizontal slash. Belian's body made no move at all to resist it; if anything, it helpfully adjusted its own position.
Belian's hands and head fell, rolling twice across the ground. His eyes found his friend one last time, and then the light in them went out.
"Ah... aah..." The vampire who had just killed his own friend with his own hands sank to the ground, head shaking, and even as the Puchis closed in, he did not react at all.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The Marshal Puchi patted its tentacles together, and on the fungal mat, a voice Puchi shaped like a torn burlap sack let out a horrifying sound: "Kekekeke..."
The laughter cut off abruptly.
The Marshal Puchi glanced back at the Mushroom Capital residents watching it from behind, decisively decomposed the voice Puchi, hitched up its round belly with a mycelium tentacle, and produced a voice of dignity and justice:
"Ahem. O wicked Empire, so vicious even to your own comrades!"
"Humans of the Mushroom Capital, do not be afraid! I, the great Fungus Lord, have come to save you!"
"Puchis, advance!"
The Puchis stepped forward in perfect ranks, fearless, while across the field a very real commotion rippled through the Empire's army.
A whip of blood snapped the dazed vampire back to his senses. Darean looked at his subordinates, precious little fight left in them, then at the crimson-cloaked Marshal Puchi opposite, and at Inanna behind it.
The Puchis' little theater production just now had him boiling with fury too, but he kept his reason.
He knew there was nothing more to be gained here.
"Withdraw!"
At Darean's order, the Empire's army slowly pulled back.
Lin Jun did not pursue.
A prince still carried real deterrence; his own side had no guarantee of eating the man cleanly.
If things went wrong, damage to the Mushroom Capital would be the least of it. If the pink Puchi got herself killed by accident, that would be a genuine problem.
Up on the wall, one soldier, after checking over and over that the Empire's army truly was out of sight, suddenly grabbed the Puchi beside him, hurled it into the air, and screamed with joy: "The demons are driven off! The Mushroom Capital is safe!"
That survivor's cry struck the heart of everyone in the city at once, and cheering erupted everywhere.
In the middle of the crowd, Dylan called out with the smoothness of very long practice: "Praise the Fungus Lord!"
The voices around him paused a beat, then took up the praise, and it spread from beneath the walls until the whole city rang with it.
Amid a full city's worth of worship, the Marshal Puchi hauled up its plump white belly, faced into the sunlight, and tilted its cap back at a perfect forty-five degrees.
(End of Chapter)
Comments