Depthless Hunger

After Feida died, things turned ugly fast. In the initial brawl Omilaena took out one of the Jackal mercenaries, and two more died in the clash, but their side was cut in half. Now she fled back through the walls, dragging Kulha and another injured tribesman behind her.

Jackal Thirteen drifted overhead, as light and deadly as a razor wire.

Omilaena waited for him to gather his threads for a strike, then used her remaining trump card: she exhaled as large a cloud of poison overhead as possible, blanketing the sky over the courtyard. One of the mercenaries going over the wall fell into it, screaming, and Jackal Thirteen twisted away in midair to avoid the cloud. While she was hidden, Omilaena broke through the door of the next wall and dropped off her cargo.

She couldn't drag them to safety unless she thinned out the enemy a little more, so she pivoted instead of running. Omilaena exhaled another line of poison at the mercenaries following her, hopefully dropping more.

Before she could grab the injured, a mercenary plunged through the smoke, unharmed. Omilaena leapt back in surprise, barely evading the sword he chopped in her direction over and over. Did he have some sort of immunity ability? No... this one wasn't alive, it was just another puppet.

She deflected the sword with a needle, then cut through the puppet's throat. It slowed, though it wasn't taken out, confirming that they weren't invincible, just not exactly living. While it stumbled she also confirmed that it wasn't one of the mercenaries she'd killed, but one that had been in the original group. At least Jackal Thirteen couldn't create puppets like this instantly.

The wall beside her exploded and the former Manticore tribe patriarch rushed at her. The symbols of his soul nearly overcame her as she was forced to leap back.

Name: ???

Total Power: 1048

Manticore Tattoo (+200)

Physique Level: E-8 (96)

Soul Level: 0 (0)

>

A Sky Soul, even a weakened and puppeteered one, was nothing she could take lightly. Worse, the real threat was floating overhead again, releasing threads so sharp they cut through the stone behind her.

Forget trying to save the injured. Omilaena might have risked her life for Kai or Zae Zin Nim, but she wasn't getting herself killed for random tribesmen. She leapt back at full speed, dodging around more razor threads as she tried to escape the battlefield.

Unfortunately, she couldn't get away from Jackal Thirteen easily, and he seemed to be entirely ignoring the injured bodies. One or two of the Earth Souls had fled in other directions and they were being ignored as well. So he was smart enough to focus on her as the real threat, which meant the idiots didn't even buy her any time. She didn't exactly have backup at the camp, either, so the situation was turning from bad to worse...

Omilaena was so focused on dodging the razor threads that she didn't notice the nonlethal one until it wrapped around her ankle. She hacked it away instantly, but there were more rising from the ground, binding her legs. As soon as she stumbled, Jackal Thirteen caught up to her, threads flying from his ragged cloak to completely bind one of her arms in place.

"You could have taken my arm." Omilaena frowned at the threads as she tried to cut her arm free.

"I'd rather take it all." Jackal Thirteen landed opposite her, still wary.

"Interesting technique you have there. You think you can turn me into one of your puppets?"

"I'm not about to give you more information about it."

He hurled a razor wire directly at her torso, forcing her to dodge. At the last moment the threads binding her arm twitched, slamming her into the ground. Omilaena managed to roll with the impact, but as soon as she was up again, her footing was jerked out from under her. Seemed like he planned to take her down piece by piece, and the other mercenaries were catching up now, surrounding her.

"Is that why you did all this?" Omilaena asked. "This is your only chance to get high stage puppets?"

"That's part of it." Jackal Thirteen raised his hands, extending razor wires around the area. "But the rest won't matter to you, not for long."

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Just as Omilaena managed to sever the threads around her arm, more gripped around her ankles. They pushed against her skin, as if they were trying to worm their way in, but they couldn't penetrate. Unfortunately, they seemed to have some sort of draining effect, because her energy was flowing out of her. That could get bad quickly.

"There are others who will come for me, you know." Omilaena sounded weak even in her own ears. When had she ever relied on anyone else?

"They'll have to get here within a few days, or their only options will be to destroy you or join you under me."

"So the process takes a few days, huh?"

Jackal Thirteen looked mildly irritated, then shrugged. "As you'll find out. It depends on the strength of the body and their will to resist."

"Fascinating. Tell me more."

One of the weaker mercenaries unleashed a qi attack, a large sphere of spectral water. Omilaena tried to duck underneath, only to be pulled upward by the threads. She clipped the edge and hit the ground, not terribly injured, but stunned enough that more threads began wrapping around her.

Just when she began to consider how desperate she was, Omilaena heard something boom through the air. She caught just a glimpse of a figure blurring through the sky, then power raked the landscape, massive claws tearing apart the courtyard as well as shredding most of the threads.

Kai landed, his eyes burning like the fires of hell, and Omilaena decided that she didn't mind being saved just this once.

.

..

.

If he'd arrived just an hour or two earlier, Kai thought he could have prevented the entire disaster, or even joined the attack and won it. Instead he'd found out too late that the Earth Souls had left, then burned a huge part of his energy moving at top speed toward the patriarch's vault based on little more than a feeling.

Turned out he'd been right to rush. Omilaena had some more fight in her, but she was outnumbered and drained, while her opponent was highly dangerous. The rest of the Jackal mercenaries appeared to be Nascent Foundation stage, so they weren't an immediate concern, but the others that were being controlled...

His claw technique hadn't severed the spiritual threads that controlled the puppet-like figures, so they reacted first. One was an old man wearing Manticore tribe robes, and his physical blow actually pushed Kai back a step. Whatever his current condition, the old man had nearly the strength of a Sky Soul.

One of the weaker puppets lunged at him, but Kai caught it with a kick and the puppet's chest caved in. He pushed it aside just in time to deflect the next blow - the Manticore patriarch struck at him over and over, beating him back across the courtyard.

The lead mercenary was holding back, watching him, and that was a fatal mistake. While Kai defended from the blows, he had time to analyze his opponent and Behemoth's Heart was restoring the stamina he'd drained rushing to the battle at top speed. His first concern had been whether the patriarch was still alive, but though he had the appearance of life and looked mostly human in his spiritual sight, the body itself seemed too stiff, as if it had been embalmed.

So Kai let himself remain on the defensive until the others were about to ambush him, then he finally unleashed Baleful Breath. He very nearly caught the Manticore patriarch's body, but at the last second it jerked into the air unnaturally, pulled away by the spiritual threads.

Kai swept his maw after them, exhaling death into the sky. He managed to catch one of the other Jackal tribe mercenaries, who fell out of the cloud as char, but the Sky Soul enemy made a strange whirling movement. Countless threads wrapped around him, and though the breath burned them away, when the embers faded, the enemy was retreating into the sky beyond with his puppets and remaining allies trailing after him.

For a moment Kai considered going after them, but his back ached where wings should have formed. If they'd taken Omilaena he would have pushed himself, but now he held back instead of pursuing them into a potential ambush.

"Thank fuck." Omilaena was struggling up from the ground and he rushed to help her. "I didn't think we'd win that one."

"I'm glad I got here in time," Kai said, "but was that actually a victory? A lot of people are dead, and it looks like he's controlling the Manticore tribe's patriarch."

"Maybe we'd better call it a draw. I suppose it depends on how much is left in the vault." Despite her casual words, Omilaena leaned heavily against his side. It wasn't just exhaustion, he thought he felt a sort of relief that she rarely expressed. He wanted to enjoy the feeling of her body, but if there was more to this weariness in her...

"If something had happened to you, I-"

"Oh, don't get soft on me now."

"Alright, fine. You're lucky I didn't stay another night with Zae Zin Nim, or I would have had to go rescue you."

Omilaena snorted into his side. "Then I should be glad you weren't horny enough to stay. Doubly glad because you're presumably hornier now. Let's go find somewhere private."

"Seriously? Even for you..." Kai gently examined her injured arm and shook his head.

"It'll be restorative fucking, I promise."

Instead he just threw her over his shoulder, which she accepted with a laugh. That might be the only way he could get her to rest instead of pushing herself harder, and meanwhile they had important business to handle. He'd notified the Manticore clan about what he was doing, but they wouldn't be here for some time, if they dared to follow at all.

First he checked on the other Manticore tribesmen and was glad to find that three Earth Souls were still alive, plus Kulha. The others had said that Feida went with them, but he found no sign of her or her body. When she realized who he was looking for, Omilaena went quiet, which was answer enough.

Finally he entered the patriarch's home, which appeared to have been vacated of all Manticore clan members. There were ordinary rooms on the first floor, but he was only interested in the alleged vault below. When he walked down the stairs, he discovered a short hallway with three heavily reinforced doors on each side and one at the end. Most were intact, but two had been forced open and their contents looted.

"The Jackal tribe mercenaries either only wanted part of the vault, or they ran out of time to break open the others." Omilaena wrapped herself around his back to look better. "That's a shame. We may be able to find some things for Zin Nim, but they probably took the best treasures."

"I have the real treasure in my arms right now," Kai said with a wry grin.

"Wow, that was awful. Shut up and put that mouth to better use."

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