Blood Shaper

A swirl of ash pulled from the runes written unseen along the shaft of Meten’s halberd gathered around the spiked tip of his weapon, adding range and burning heat to the thrust he sent in the direction of another skittering vampyr-thing. The more the fighting went on the less humanoid and more unnatural the enemies throwing themselves at him had become and it all felt like something meaningful was coming to a head. A new Class Line Progenitor appearing to the world, the rise of a new powerful nation, the appearance of a vampyr swarm that had devastated a nation, and now a missive directly from the System itself declaring the importance of their goal to the world as a whole. Most of Meten’s focus was on what paints he would use to depict all of this as his body went through the motions of destroying the weak enemies flocking to him on it’s own. It wouldn’t be just one painting, there was too much going and each needed a canvas on their own, but he knew where to start. So many things had come to hinge on one young man, and his first meeting with Kay would be the first painting he made to tell the story.

He hadn’t been this inspired to paint in decades! One of the consequences of merging his original Expert Painter Class into his tier five Class was that painting became part of his fighting, and in turn fighting became part of his painting. He’d worked to get a new painting related non-combat Class once he’d freed up a slot for one, but so much of his inspiration and interest in painting had come from the battles he’d participated in since his travels to the Rune Master’s demesne. Years of defending his home village and relatives had been fulfilling, but rarely inspiring, struggling to deal with the plague that had spread across their lands and the surrounding areas had been neither, and destroying the occasional patrol sent by that bastard mayor to drag anyone non-human into Nelamian slavery had been cathartic, but had done nothing for his painting.

After becoming part of Avalon, battling the occasional monster to make places safer for settlement had spawned a painting here and there, but it wasn’t until the Shatterplate War that he’d really started to churn with creativity. Kay creating a dragon simulacrum and completely overwhelming a real dragon with rider had been immensely fun to depict and while painting the physical image of the eldritch thing that had burst onto Torotia that Kay had driven off was impossible, he’d done his best and was quite proud of what he’d produced. These events though, were going to lead to his best paintings yet! He wasn’t a master at his art by any means, but he was damn well going to make some masterpieces!

Meten hoped that there would be something interesting to fight here soon though, or else most of the paintings would be about other people and he wouldn’t have any new material to tease his lovely daughter with. She really hated when he put on the persona of a braggart and the faces she made when annoyed at him were just so cute!

Large steps and sweeping strikes created temporary paintings in ash, each a gradient of gray and black that occasionally flared with red hot burning vampyr as Meten created draft after draft for the paintings he wanted to make. Runes formed in the wake of his strikes that released myriad effects, from temporary protections that shielded the adventurers and Sentinels backing him up to minor healing auras that closed small wounds and kept people alive long enough for real healers to get to them. To everyone but there Meten it was a display of awesome martial prowess but to him it was just sketching.

An unexpected sensation of imminent danger made him start paying attention for real. He glanced around, looking for whatever was triggering his instincts, but nothing stood out among the ranks of twisted vampyr. They fought and died against the adventurers and he assisted here and there to keep anyone from being overwhelmed, but he didn’t notice anything that seemed to be a real enemy worth his full attention. Yet the feeling of danger kept nagging at him. After not seeing anyhting after a third time checking the area, Meten slammed the bottom of his halberd’s haft down onto the ground and began channeling a much larger amount of ash out of the weapon than normal. His weapon wasn’t technically a storage item and he didn’t have a Inventory Skill, but the halberd he wielded was a gift from one of the Rune Master’s personal disciples and the mysterious runes carved into it let Meten pull out a volcanoes worth of ash each day.

The ash began to swirl around the head of his weapon in a growing storm that spread out over the slopes of the abandoned quarry that the Sentinels and adventurers were battling their way to the bottom of. According to the scouts the ritual circle had been created at the very bottom of the spiraling ramp that led into the quarry, so he sent most of the ash that way while also coating the area directly around him in a liberal amount. Meten didn’t have the kind of precise control and direction over his ash like Kay did over blood, but he could easily change it’s temperature so that the people it flowed over weren’t hurt.

A film of ash covered something floating in front of his face that he couldn’t see and he instantly incinerated it. A keening shriek that was somehow off-key rang out as heat immolated the creature and Metne’s spreading ash found more and more of them, swimming in circles around people’s heads. They weren’t attacking or doing anything obviously threatening, but his instincts told him they were dangerous and he’d learned to trust his instincts. Blankets of ash constricted around the hundreds upon hundreds of invisible creatures and one by one they began to burn.

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Adventurer’s stopped to clutch at their heads and some even sank to their knees as Meten killed the things, but he didn’t have a chance to luxuriate in being right. Hundreds, maybe even thousands more of the creatures began to fly int view from below. They were no longer invisible, Meten had no way to know if it was because they no longer felt it was useful or that these new enemies were somehow different, and they were disgusting to look at. Twisted, spiked fingers hung from fish-like bodies in the places of fins, with human-like vampyr heads hanging from jointed, lizard like necks. The monsters flew using clusters of insectile wings that created an annoying droning noise that spread over the entire quarry as a warm of them began diving down to attack.

They were immediately met by a wall of ash accompanied by ranged attacks of all sorts from the adventurers, and the first swarm was obliterated. But the second wave came in equal numbers to the first and some got through. The monsters used their entire bodies as weapons, slamming into people at high speeds and either biting down with their fangs or stabbing at people with their finger-limbs. They died in droves as adventurers slashed and stabbed them away from their comrades. Even being knocked to the ground killed most of them, that’s how weak they were, but more and more came at every moment.

“Damn. Is this what fighting Kay is like?” Meten mused as he made a series of runes in the air that sent out a shockwave that decimated multiple rising swarms and bought the adventurers some time to recover.

“Sir!” One of his Sentinel subordinates ran over to him. “Please go ahead and take out whatever’s sending these things at us! They’re individually weak and we can deal with them without you, but not forever!”

Meten had originally accepted the position of leader of the Sentinels as a way to garner influence for himself and his family that had become refugees into Kay’s lands. Even if they were counted among the foremost settlers of the new nation, there was always more that could be done to cement their position. At least, that had been the plan before Amanda had truly unveiled herself to the world and shown what an amazing daughter he’d raised. Now he kept the job because he liked what he did for the most part and liked the people he got to work with. He wasn’t however, very good at making battle plans or organizing things, which is why he had made sure to recruit many talented subordinates.

“Are you sure?” He shouted over the droning hum.

“I am, sir! Take out the source and we’ll be fine!”

“Very well!” He tapped one of his horns in an informal salute and ran straight into the thick of the enemy. He allowed as many of the vampyr-chimera-things to surround him as possible before triggering one of his most destructive Skills. Pyroclastic Stroke turned a seemingly endless amount of monsters into molten bits that rained from the sky and then Meten was past them on the way to his destination. He sprinted down the ramp that led deeper while destroying chunks of monsters, both the annoying flying ones and any other vampyr that was still in his way, all the while with a grin on his face. The painting that came out of this battle would be amazing! He decided to hand it up in Amanda’s home, somewhere nice and obvious.

What was waiting at the bottom of the quarry killed his grin. A lump of spongey looking material covered in honeycomb patterns spat out a continuous flow of the fish-bug monsters from small holes at the connection point between each honeycomb shape. Inside the faintly hexagonal shapes were massive compound eyes that had each segment filled with more eyes in a descending pattern that glittered ominously in the light. The eyes all snapped to him as he stepped foot at the bottom of the ramp and three spongey legs flopped to the ground from the bottom of the mass. It pushed itself off the ground, rising up and up until it loomed a hundred feet or more over Meten, still spewing monsters all the while.

At the bottom of it a sphincter of sorts began to spread open and a long snake-like appendage emerged. Three pairs of razor sharp mandibles extended from an inflated end point that vaguely resembled a head with one giant human eye that stared at Meten without blinking. He wasn’t actually sure if it could blink, there didn’t appear to be any eyelids. The bottom section of the abomination lunged forward at Meten like a striking viper and he instantly responded with a wave of blazing ash extending from the upward sweep of his halberd. The red hot particles swept up the appendage emerging from the bottom of the bulky hive portion of the body and began burning the thing from the inside.

Thousands of the flying monsters spouting from the hive screamed in pain and rage, voicing the feelings of their creator that seemed to have no voice. It reared back on two legs and the third slammed down into it’s own snake-limb over and over until it was ripped from the main body. Meten was please with the early advantage he’d secured until the dangling leftovers of the severed limb began to froth. Within moments two identical copied of the limb grew out form the original stump, each new eye staring at him with obvious rage.

“This might actually end up being a painting actually worth bragging about!” With a ferocious grin Meten of Avalon charged into battle against an abomination that tainted the world, trailing ash and budding runes made for destruction and war.