The Twice-Enchanted Blade: Part 5

“Where do you get all this?” I asked a young woman who had just placed a flower wreath on my head and was now trying to push a cup of wine into my hand. My head was spinning from the music and the incense.

“There is a grotto you can reach through the temple”, she explained, “we grow our produce there. As for a lot of other goods, we have a few wealthy patrons up north. They give us generous donations, as our presence is welcome whenever they wish to take a break from their spouses”.

“I... see, ” I mumbled, putting the cup on the ground next to me. She picked it up and tried to hand it to me again. “Come on, drink up, don’t be shy! Don’t worry, I don’t bite!”, she was nudging uncomfortably close to me while trying to coerce me into drinking.

These temptations were nothing compared to what poor Civet was going through. Probably thinking he would be a weak link due to his scholarly appearance, he had no less than three pale beauties doting on him. He was completely red in the face, trying awkwardly to back off. Iocasta was glaring daggers at them. A muscle-bound hunk approached her and attempted to whisper something in her ear, but she glanced at him with even more ferocity, and he backed off.

In the meantime, a large bonfire was created in the middle of the beach, with ten of the acolytes, five male and five female, beginning a wild dance around it. Smoke and music were steadily growing in intensity, putting me in a haze. The weak link of our group turned out to be not Civet, but the youngest member of Fang’s crew, a boy of maybe nineteen. Beset by two strikingly voluptuous women, his will eventually cracked, and they got him on his feet and dragged him towards the temple, arm in arm, giggling and whispering all along. Fang stood up and shouted at him, urging him to get back, but the willpower-eroding effects of the incense were strong, and one of the other acolytes managed to convince him to sit down. The young man continued towards the temple, grinning like an idiot.

Time turned into a blur. Annabel was chatting with one of the male acolytes who was attempting to court her, asking rapid-fire questions about who knows what. The man, who didn’t intend for the situation to move in this direction, was attempting to answer her with increased exasperation. I almost felt sorry for him. The dance around the fire grew in intensity, threatening to turn indecent at any moment.

“Don’t you want to join them?” asked the girl still clinging to my arm, “Your muscles are so tense, it would do you well to relax a bit”.

It would have been over for us, I believe, if this were to continue for just a few minutes more, but a sudden scream broke the spell, sobering us up in an instant. The young mercenary who had been taken to the temple stumbled out of the cave, saber in one hand, trying to plunge a gaping bite wound in his neck with the other. One of the acolytes he had been with rushed after him, her left forearm missing, knocking him down and bashing his head on the rocks. But it was too late – everybody was aware of the disturbance. The ambush was sprung slightly earlier than intended, and it was what saved our lives. So-called ‘acolytes’ were likely waiting for us to become completely dysfunctional to eliminate us without resistance. But now, they would have to fight.

Annabel was the first to react. It turned out, she had conjured a blade of sand in advance, wasting a decent chunk of her magic power in the process of sustaining it, but allowing her to attack instantly, stopping a question she was asking mid-sentence and decapitating the young man sitting next to her in one swing. The blood that poured out of his neck was thick, almost black, and reeked of sulphur. From there, she continued manipulating sand, waving her arms like she was conducting an orchestra, first knocking the three female creatures who pinned Civet down and prepared to kill him to the ground, and then continuing to play a support role, alleviating pressure from whoever needed it most.

I tried to reach for my weapons, but the ‘girl’ clinging to my arm held me back with remarkable strength and plunged her teeth below my shoulder. I punched her in the face with my other hand, then picked her up and lifted her by the throat. She looked baffled, as shocked by my unnatural strength as I was by hers. “’ I don’t bite, ’ you said? It’s not nice to lie”, I remarked as her neck cracked, and I dropped her to the ground.

I have fought humanoid monsters before and after, and these were far from the toughest, but were some of the most unnerving. These succubi, or whatever they were, looked and moved almost like humans. They had no fangs or claws, no fur, no tails or wings, and they didn’t make strange feral movements. The only telltale sign of their true nature was the strange property of their blood, and one other thing that I will mention soon.

Rhombus dealt with his immediate assailant easily, thanks to his magical sword, and then proceeded to bail Gandor out. The latter had a few shallow bite wounds, but they weren’t serious. Iocasta made a mad dash towards the barge, where she took up position and started taking shots at the enemy whenever an opportunity presented itself.

The mercenaries managed to consolidate around one of their members who had been knocked unconscious, and were in turn surrounded by a mob of monsters. One of them made a misstep, and the creatures managed to grab him and pull him out of the circle, where he perished horribly. A large male pseudo-acolyte claimed the fallen man’s weapon and attempted to attack the rest of the bodyguards, but he was no fencer, and Fang dispatched him with a few quick swings.

“To the barge!” shouted Nixon, engaged in battle with multiple assailants. Between the fight and attempting to direct our efforts, he neglected to notice a muscular monster approaching him from the flank just as he was cutting down one of his opponents, and punching him in the face, knocking him down. I drew my sword and my pistol – a large-caliber model custom-built to take advantage of my superior strength – and rushed to help him. I shot at the closest enemy, and my bullet nearly tore her in half. I then charged at the large one and, in spite of lacking any capability to defend himself and having shorter reach, he counter-charged, getting himself effortlessly killed. The creatures’ weakness, I concluded, was that they got so good at imitating humans that their beastly instincts deteriorated, and their battle skills were severely lacking.

I began dragging Nixon towards the barge, fending off attacks to the best of my ability. Rhombus and Gandor, noticing me, helped keep the enemy away from me until we got to relative safety. By the time we reached the boat, Civet and the boatmen were already there; so was Annabel, who was assisting the mercenaries with her magic, and they were in turn cutting their way through the enemy while carrying their wounded comrade.

After everyone was aboard, Gandor and I blocked the ramp leading to the ship, while everyone else provided fire support. It was less lethal than I hoped, since the mercenaries had older models of firearms, which could hold only one bullet, but it was enough to hold the enemy off. Annabel was out of energy already, sitting on the floor, breathing heavily. Some of the monsters attempted to attack our sauropod, but thankfully, they were unable to penetrate its hide. Then some of them attempted to swim to the opposite end of the barge and attack from there; it was a bit of a surprise, but the mercenaries managed to fight them off.

Their final attempt was an attack from two sides – both from land and water. This was almost successful, as it left me and Gandor to fend for ourselves, since everyone else was busy with the enemy coming from behind. Eventually, Gandor got so weary he could barely lift his weapon, so I got him to fall back before he got killed, and briefly had to defend that front on my own until Rhombus replaced his bodyguard.

Just as my arms too were getting heavy, and I thought we were all about to die, a few rays of sunlight appeared from above the cliffs. The creatures ceased their attack instantly and ran back towards the temple as fast as they could.

We won.