Future Reality beckons...

The griffons naturally had a very good idea of large movements in their territory, being low-level sapient apex predators with strong territorial instincts. They were able to tell pretty much exactly where the Warp intruders were coming from, and they didn’t like them at all.

Which led to me basically asking if they thought they could round up some more help for this kind of a fight. The Fey said the elves were moving, the Fey themselves might or might not get involved, and the unnatural reek the creatures had was revolting to just about any natural creature.

I also related that the reason the Warp had probably sent the dragon out here all by itself… was to round up some of the other creations over thataway, and bring them back to the fight. Many of whose body parts adorned my cabinets.

If I was right, this wasn’t just a random event; this was a slow and steady invasion from another world that was just blossoming right now.

The crown’s lord Stormcrest took his crown and went flying off in search of those who could help, while the two wounded griffons kept one another company until they were strong enough to fly.

And me, I started running again.

They were only thirty miles away or so. With the rough terrain and stuff, I’d be there in an hour or so, tops.

------

Flying things in the air several kliks off gave me something to orient on, growing larger as I closed in.

Warp Harpies. Exaggerated clawed wings, talons, and teeth. None of the dangerous singing stuff, pure hag-mean flesh renders and eaters flying aerial watch.

Two manticora, the scorpion-tailed variety. The Warp loved combo animals, but unfortunately for them, the bloodline of the griffon-types could be twisted, but not sustained.

That horned guy soaring around on a hieracosphinx, now, he looked like some sort of spellcaster.

They were all giving gravity the finger, so I’d have to give them a proper disciplining of thirty-two feet per second per second and its relevance to the lift/weight ratio.

I would like to say the Warp Centaurs surprised me, running around out there on scouting duty. They were effectively mutated versions of the normal ones, except bigger, brawnier, often with random unwholesome mutations, and a penchant for eating the flesh of sapients with all the bad temper and foul habits that went with it.

Oh, and they all had horns. Convenient for separating them from the ‘natural’ centaurs.

They weren’t exactly like the ones in Nightmare, who had tended to be Olympian. These guys had fun things like eyes on stalks, serpent fangs spitting poison, armored scales, mismatched arms or legs, animated beards, and taloned or clawed hands. Their horns could be stag, ram, goat, antelope, or just plain weird, but they tended to wear little in the way of clothing, let alone metal armor.

Which was fine with me. They must have been thinking that all their gory battle trophies and some hides were fine enough protection for the weather and weapons alike.

They were also replete with the Warp Energies of the Dark Gods. Tremble took note and began forming a Bane for them.

I knew from lore that these bastards were actually mortals or descendants thereof, usually humans, that had been affected by Warp mutation and turned into half-beasts or other horrors dreamt up by their demented masters. However, a group of scouts, no matter how bloodthirsty and demented, wasn’t going to stop me.

I left them burning vivic, and the Land feeding on the Warp energy being refined from them.

If this was a true Incursion, well, the Land might be feeding very well, indeed…

------

Okay, I was looking at a warband of sorts. Looked like a couple thousand troops, all out having a good time, mindlessly cutting away at everything in their path, looking for something to fight and slaughter.

A beastman army, consisting of tauren cavalry and anthro infantry, all Warp-powered. The cavalry was centaurs commanded by particularly large and overly-horned commanders, or powrful manotaurs with bull lower bodies.

The main infantry were types of satyrs, randomly with ram, goat, stag, or bull horns, led by bigger versions of them with greater racks, or full-blown minotaurs, some with horns so big I wondered how even necks that thick could carry them.

They had very little in the way of armor, except leathers from the hides of beasts or rivals. Lots of battle trophies, maybe they thought those would protect them. Only the centaurs carried bows, mostly a bunch of spears and axes for use.

There were two oversized chariots, glimmering with magic, being drawn by dire boars the size of rhinos, complete with yard-long tusks and spinal crests of bone spikes a forearm long. Some guys with skulls-on-staves and too many gory battle trophies were randomly exhorting these guys in Demonic, keeping up their spirits while looking for real battles and territories.

Some of those battle trophies were relatively fresh, too…

There was one giant minotaur, easily seven paces tall, with a single cyclopean eye, carrying with it a fist-sized (for it) boulder carved with Runes that made my eyes fuzzy.

They had to be under orders to keep going, as any territory without anything else claiming it was generally enough for creatures like this. Made sense, their bosses wanted conflict, and wouldn’t stop their hunger for fights.

I guess I was going to have to do something about them. I looked at the fliers overhead, reflecting that I hadn’t seen any ‘noble’ beastmen of the predatory races, which were supposedly much tougher than these types, or any demons, either.

Well, it was far from the first time I had fought an army, and they were all strung out in companies as they marched through this section of the forest, looking for a fight while the big one cleared away any obstacles for the chariots.

Well, I decided to oblige them. Mikle took a look at their numbers and opted to dismount and look on from a safe distance. He was invisible within ten feet, and treeslipping away far faster than his little legs could run, going to watch all this and report back to the Fey… or gossip, such as it was.

I smirked, wondering how long I would be able to fight before being forced to run, and eyed the centaurs.

Well, I had to start somewhere. I let Forge down into a concealing thicket, readied myself, and zipped into motion.

======

A swirl of grey materialized from the browns and greens of the forest, moving through the ferns and bushes while scarcely raising a ripple of motion.

“They are nearly to the clearing, Commander,” the slender figure reported, the hood of his cloak falling off to reveal pointed ears and dark hair on coppery skin. He was shorter than an average human, but with shoulders nearly as broad despite his overall slenderness and delicate, angular features. His movements were quick and precise, moving with extreme natural agility and poise, like an extension of the forest around him.

The commander nodded, her large emerald eyes glancing left and right, and seeing next to nothing of the forces gathered here. The scout brought up his hood and glided back into the undergrowth, vanishing from sight within several steps with no more sign of passage than an errant breeze.

Commander Shvaughn studied the far side of the clearing. The bestial intruders were following a relatively easy path on their advance, looking to move with speed and ferocity through the forest. They had indiscriminately killed basically everything in their path, animal or sapient, and used them for food for their forces. They reeked of Corruption and danger, and the call to gather the border forces of the kingdom had been swiftly responded to.

She had fought anthros before, as orcs, gnolls, hyen, and their like were persistent raiders at the edge of their lands, but a warband this large was unusual, as was the ravaging nature of it, projecting a domineering ferocity that was at odds with the raiding bands of the savages.

Still, she had served out here for decades, and her position here was hard-won and long-earned. While there were many elves among those beneath her, they tended to be of the younger generation, doing their service to the kingdom out here for a few decades before moving on to other services to their clans and houses. The senior, experienced elves tended to remain closer to the heart of the kingdom, where civilization and its pleasures flourished, leaving the border to those who lived out here.

One exception was her wizardess, Usilla, a Diviner who had a wonderful reputation among the border forces and rangers, often able to predict a raid or sortie days in advance, thus allowing them to get into position to ambush the enemy. It was her misgivings that had sent the first scouts out beyond the borders to discover that something fell was stirring out here, above and beyond the dangerous creatures that had crept into the borders of the Sidhete over the last generation.

Still, the defense out here was left mainly to the younger elves, gaining experience in service to their King and Queen, and to the halvyr who lived in the border lands and comprised the majority of the Rangers out here.

By the standards of most armies, the individuals of this force were elites, but they were not a battle line, being used to skirmish, to strike and fade. Only scouts had met members of the enemy so far, and their reports were not encouraging. These twisted creatures were tough and strong, did not die easily, and coming to frontal combat with them was not a good idea.

Happily, every border guard here was a skilled archer and spearman, and if they were not used to operating in formation or bearing heavy armor, they had no problems forming a tight line and supporting one another. However, they did not carry shields, and so any fighting would inevitably devolve into knots of combat… and this warband did indeed outnumber them.

Commander Shvaughn had a bow available, but was not wearing it at this time. It was her job to command, not to snipe, even though her fellow wardancers had their own recurve bows out and were prepared to begin shooting.

Soon enough the foul black wings of the harpies were swooping over the trees, looking for any threats and scouting the way between the thick copses that lingered along a river’s banks. A dark flow began to emerge from the edges of the forest ahead of them, and their fearless braying and calls sounded out to one another as the creatures came forth.

They looked like satyrs, but none of those decadent Fey ever looked so twisted or smelled quite so bad.

There were a lot of them, and her hands tightened on the hilt of her Sword as magic tickled the back of her throat, and she prepared to give the order to ready bows.

Something flashed behind the line of strangely horned, brutal satyrs. Different calls and sounds rose, and the advancing herds of satyrs slowed down, turning around in confusion.

“Usilla?” she asked, seeing the confusion among them, and the way the fanged harpies overhead quickly shifted backwards. A horn arose in alarm, and the satyrs started hustling back in the direction they’d come.

The silver-haired wizardess closed her eyes and murmured to herself, a pale halo of magic gathering about her head. She raised her head, her golden eyes gone white as she looked into the distance.

“They are moving back into the trees… there is something there, moving among them. It is too far away, I can only see snatches, but the creatures seem to be trying to encircle it.” Many deeply unsettling horns were blowing, indicating orders and positions of forces they could not see. “It is extremely quick! Sylune, such speed! It is cutting through them like a misting wind! I cannot tell what it is, but I just watched ten of the satyrs fall in seconds! I cannot seem to get a view of it, as if it were invisible…”

She blinked, and her golden eyes returned to normal. “It is rampaging among their numbers, moving from cluster to cluster with great speed, slaying along the way, and then butchering them in groups. I saw bodies being hurled into the air like toys, and cut in half instantly, not even slowing the killer.” She gestured, and an image arose before her, before she closed her eyes again.

Shvaughn watched the illusion of what Usilla was seeing alertly. The distant eye the Diviner had dropped had a full range of vision, and flew around the old forest out there, watching the satyrs and the other anthros hurrying this way and that as they tried to keep up with something that was moving through the forest too quickly for them to catch.

Or…no. Not too quickly to catch. It was… herding them, and drawing them into clusters?

She was a wardancer, and thus one of the heavy infantry of the borders. It was her job to jump into combat with the toughest of the enemy, or clusters of them, and show them the dance of vengeance. She had reaped many foes with the long blade in her hands… but she had not seen death dealt out quite like this...

As Usilla said, the source of the killing could not be seen, even as she watched a dozen satyrs come apart like a peeling flower, unseen killing strokes ripping through them like they were water, not hard muscle and bone. Their weapons seemed to find no target; she could see several spears chopped apart in casual passing, others knocked away lightly, and of course all their owners died.

Their corpses were all burning with a fire that was not really white...

Murmurs came from other elves, rising from their concealment to watch the illusion at work. The slaughter it was enacting was so intense, it was pulling the entire force of the invaders together to fight it!

Usilla oriented on something large… the massive, twenty-some-foot tall minotaur cyclops, striding heavily through the trees with a great Runestone in hand, doubtless a throwing weapon no one felt like getting in front of. It wound up and threw it, but there was no chance of the hurtling stone catching that unseen motion, even as it slammed through a group of satyrs being massacred, crushing bones and flinging bodies around like chaff.

The slaughter continued past the path of the rock, even as the stone crunched to a halt against a massive forest elder, and then rose from the ground and sped back to the waiting three-fingered hand of the horned cyclops.

The path of slaughter arced around, and headed right for the cyclops.

It bellowed, and its eye flashed, bringing the massive rock down in a thunderous blow, seemingly right on top of the bloody path coming towards it. The watching elves flinched, and then the cyclops screamed as its thumb flew off, and a deep gouge appeared in the side of the stone. A second cut opened up its left arm to the elbow, and then another cut appeared across its hanging gut, nearly disemboweling it right through over a foot of fur, hide, fat, and muscle.

There was no mistaking the sudden fear on the horned cyclops’ face. With a howl, it yanked back its hand, unable to grasp its Stone, and turned to run. It moved ponderously, yet still picked up speed, massive hooved feet slamming to the ground, bouncing off a tree or two and snapping several low-hanging branches as it ran towards the light ahead. Satyrs who were too slow in getting out of the way were smashed aside or stepped on as it fled from whatever had nearly killed it.

Two streaks of light shot out of nowhere, hit the back of its right knee, and severed the tendons there precisely. Several more satyrs died along the path of the killer, and the heads of the elves turned as on the other side of the clearing in reality before them, a massive form lurched out into the open, falling with a thud that carried clearly to their ears a couple of seconds later.

The illusion clearly showed it trying to turn and lift its hand to stop whatever was coming, and then something flowed by, there was a flash of light as its bulging eyeball erupted and something drove deeper within. Eye and skull flashed with unwhite light, and the huge creature slumped in death.

On the other side of the clearing, the same things happened from their angle.

“What manner of creature is doing this?” Shvaughn blurted out despite herself.

“They are warded from magic, and I cannot see them. It seems that the anthros can and are being slaughtered for the privilege.” Usilla’s expression was equally grim and amused.

“Be ready if they flee in our direction. Cut them down and show them no mercy!” The blur emerged into a narrow clearing, facing the first of the boar-driven chariots in the distance, and manticora and harpies swooped in upon it.

The creatures suddenly dropped out of the sky, flapping wildly, clearly out of control and very obviously having lost the power to fly. Dark forms crashed heavily into the ground and trees, and the invisible blur shifted past them at breakneck speed, making sure none survived the landing.

The Shaman screamed, waving his Staff of bone, but the blur seemed quicker. One boar’s tusk suddenly fell free as it writhed, and then blood spurted out where its eyes had been. Something opened a two-foot gash in the throat of the other great boar, half-severing its thick neck and sending blood spraying wildly. The Shaman raised his Staff, and weird green lightning blazed out from the unholy thing, thrusting forwards with ravenous power… before abruptly fading into nothing just above the harness of the boars.

It didn’t fizzle, or spark, or deflect off something. It was just… no longer there.

The front right skull-bearing pole of the chariot was sliced through slickly and smoothly, and the charioteer behind it lost his head. The Shaman gaped, clearly staring at something, trying to get his Staff in the way, when something sheared through his right arm, chest, and head in an unstoppable arc, dividing bone, muscle, organs, ornamental hides, and leathers in twain, swiftly and precisely. It was like a giant’s razor-sharp blade had swung through and irresistibly divided the Shaman in two.

Then the anthros behind the dead Shaman started to collapse, limbs and blood flying in every direction as the slaughter continued to braying screams of accompaniment.

“Commander, we could take advantage of the confusion…” one of the veterans there spoke up, a brown-haired, grey-eyed halvyr Ranger by name of Tathimir.

The flyers were largely gone, except for the powerful person up on the hieracosphinx, who was urging his vicious mount closer to see what was happening… but obviously not too close, unwilling to be caught in the same effect that had brought down the manticora and harpies so quickly.

“We advance and encircle. Do not let them flee the fight. Contain them and send them back whence they came, we will find out where they flee to,” she ordered crisply, her voice breezing through the woods swiftly and finding ready ears.

The vegetation began to ripple as the hidden border guard split with the ease of long practice, gliding out into the open area, keeping low and hidden even as they remained virtually invisible to those who could not pierce the camouflaging effects of their cloaks.

This fight was not shaping up to be what they had expected, but how good or bad a decision that would be remained to be seen…