The Court of Souls? - Chapter 64: ~A path.~

“A hag is a wizened old woman, or a kind of fairy or goddess having the appearance of such a woman, often found in folklore and children’s tales such as Hansel and Gretel. Hags are often seen as malevolent, but may also be one of the chosen forms of shapeshifting deities, such as the Morrígan or Badb, who are seen as neither wholly beneficent nor malevolent.”

– The Journey to the Afterlife

This is no joke, this is really an entry on wikipedia under mythological creatures!

***Dedessia, the Sea of Souls, Mana Storm***

***Shade***

I aim my staff and shoot a sizzling lance of energy at the approaching horde. Several of the creatures are incinerated instantly, others fall and the mass simply rolls over them as if they are nothing more than obstacles which have to be conquered. Well, not good. Seems like they have no concept of shock. Troops with the slightest bit of self-preservation would at least flinch when they are sent to their certain death.

And we aren’t really fighting an army. These spirits are more like a disorganized mob, which doesn’t mean that they aren’t dangerous.

Unfortunately I don’t dare to use my chaos magic on the portal. Right now it is the only thing which is holding off the storm and I have honestly no idea what a sudden shut off would mean.

It could be that the storm stays as it is, or simply continues growing normally. But with all the magic which will be flying around shortly, I suspect that it will go completely out of control.

“Use your shadows to break the tide! Most of those things are just small fry. When their charge is broken we follow and hack our way through to the portal. We have to close it if we want to catch Moonray,” Elona calls out. She punches her fist at the approaching fiends and several are thrown backwards, crunched into broken heaps of flesh.

I nod and kneel down, calling forth the souls within me. Restocking my collection of souls wasn’t easy and I am certainly not back to my former numbers. But I managed to collect some souls at the last battle, and when Moonray betrayed his former clan I managed to catch some fairly strong ones. At the very least it should even out the score.

Fortunately my ability to collect souls doesn’t discern between friend and foe. As long as it is a soul and it is weakened enough to be captured, it is simply sucked into me. I’ve often wondered about the possible repercussions, but other than restraining my mental capabilities there are none. I think it may have to do something with a soul’s mental strength. If I wanted to hold something like one of the big spirit beasts, or a really strong god, I would probably have to let go of most of my shadow army.

My shadow rises behind me and forms the portal which grants access to my soul. I concentrate on the spell formation and pour my mana into it. This isn’t a new skill of mine. Ascathon, a previous version of myself, developed the foundations. I just perfected them.

Since calling forth my former foes turned out to be very useful, I trained hard to improve the deployment speed. I hoped to turn this into a useful skill for one versus one situations.

But let’s be fair. Even if I manage to speed up the process tenfold, my opponent would hardly allow me to kneel down, close my eyes and concentrate for a few seconds while a huge, ominous portal forms behind me. I would be struck down thirty times before I am anywhere close to completing the spell.

The portal solidifies behind me and I call out the oath which binds the souls to their duty. All of them answer. I’ve made sure that even those who fought their battles on my side aren’t reluctant to leave my soul space. Which doesn’t mean that I gave them bad accommodations, but giving them a personal version of heaven while they wait to perform a useful task isn’t exactly in my job description.

At last the first of my servants start pouring out of the portal. I push a sizeable amount of my mana into the spell formation to hold it open, then I get back to my feet. If I don’t sustain the portal with my mana, it won’t stay open for very long.

But there is also the issue that we have to move forward. This way the portal won’t deploy my whole army, but it will get the job done while we continue moving. I give it a mental shrug since I don’t see a way to change the situation.

My shadows form the spearhead of our battle formation. Right behind them follows Ishaan in his titan form. I can totally imagine him going into a wrestling match with one of the bigger spirits when he is like that. He also got much better control of his spirit weapon, though I really don’t get how he managed to make it grow with him. Maybe he reduced the crystal’s density? Or he made it hollow?

It doesn’t really matter. My father swings his imitation of a morning star rather unceremoniously and crushes our foes, creating huge cracks in the hard ground.

Right behind him are Doreen and Tisha. They fight at each other’s side and attack everything that manages to get past Ishaan. Their daggers are already drenched in blood and all I can see are bits and pieces of monsters flying away from them. Getting close seems to be equal to jumping into a shredder.

Aswang and Manti are also fighting side by side. But instead of creating their own path, they coordinate and guide our higher immortals, trying to grant assistance where it is needed. They move around while our formation advances into the tide of spirits. They flow around us like water and then I find myself in front of a particularly nasty specimen.

It is vaguely humanoid with horns and blisters all over its skin. The dead, yellow eyes don’t give any hint as to where it is looking. The creature strikes at me, using one of its four ape-like arms. I duck and avoid the hand with three claws. There is no point in finding out what the milky, slimy substance on them might do to me.

I thrust the bladed end of my staff into its chest and channel my energy through the blade. The weapon emits white, hot plasma and the fluids inside the creature turn to gas. For a moment the monster’s ugly face shows surprise, then it bloats up and pops like a balloon with too much air inside.

I am showered in blood and intestines, but hurry on to keep up with the troops. Here and there some of our people go down, but we don’t have the option to stop and help them. We are enclosed completely and if we don’t reach the portal in time, these things might really take us down with pure numbers. We have to shut off their reinforcements.

There isn’t even the option to retreat because we don’t know if this is our only chance to reach the portal.

If we turn to flee and it turns out that the portal will spew out spirits forever, we might never again get close to it.

Somewhere to my right are Antonius and Quianna. He is guarding her with his shield while she hurls spears of water at the enemies. But despite being created from water, the spears are solid enough to penetrate their targets and even wound attackers far behind the first ranks.

When the enemy numbers increase even more, our steady advance comes to a creeping halt. That’s when Ishaan thrusts out his morning star and walls of ice rise to our left and right. They are so cold, the fiends who are unfortunate enough to be pressed to the icy surface simply stick. All they can do is tear themselves free, leaving behind bloody patches of skin.

With the pressure taken off of our flanks, we slowly start advancing once more.

Despite everything, Moonray’s portal could still be as far away as the moon. We are advancing at walking speed, it will take an hour to bridge the distance to the portal. An hour is far too long. The spirits will wear us down at this rate, even if Ishaan continues raising his walls.

I battle my way to the front and something jumps me from the side, but Elona barrels into the hound-like thing and strikes at its head. The skull caves in like a carton box.

Raising my staff, I channel mana through it. I abort the part of the spell formation which is responsible for focusing the energy into a tight beam. Light bursts forth and blinds our enemies, searing their skin and charring those who come too close. Some part of me screams that this is ‘Gandalf-Style-R18’, but sadly I don’t remember what that means.

Our advance speeds up once more until suddenly, ominously the flow of small spirits through the portal stops and something far bigger comes through.

.