Daniel Thrush’s sword whistled through the air, redirecting the pole axe of an Orakh warrior with a quick tap and a clang of metal as he danced to the side. Time trickled forward at a crawl as he bent backward, letting another axe blade swish through the space he’d occupied a second before. Dan had his spellshields active, but as he quickly found out the raw strength and weight behind an Orakh’s halberd would make short work of his defenses.

Of course, that was if they managed to hit him. An Orakh next to him pirouetted glacially, a smoking hole in its shoulder. Dan smiled as he darted forward, sword removing an enemy’s leg at the knee as the report from the 20 mm cannon assaulted his ears. The gunshot was good news. It meant Abe was nearby and he’d fought his way clear enough of his attackers to provide fire support.

His feet sank into the springy soil of the marsh as he threw himself into a roll to the side, avoiding his injured foe as the crippled Orakh tried to tackle him. Unlike Abe and William, Dan didn’t wear the heavy powered armor developed by the Thoth Foundation, instead relying upon his mobility. Most of the time it was a good strategy, but against the heavier Orakh he needed to avoid being dragged into a grapple. His magically enhanced strength might let him hold his own in a one on one wrestling match, but his current fight wasn’t one on one.

Dan came out of the roll and launched a fireball into the cluster of five Orakh that had been trying to bring him down. The resulting explosion staggered and wounded all of them, leaving them easy prey for Dan. He hit them like a tsunami of precisely targeted sword strokes and force bolts.

Over the past two weeks since the Orakh landed on Earth, Dan had become adept at the dance. Each swing of his sword took a limb and each force bolt slammed into a joint, occasionally breaking a bone but mostly knocking the amphibious Orakh off balance so that they couldn’t capitalize on his attack. Then he was on the other side of the gaggle, the swamp littered with writhing limbs and crippled Orakh behind him.

They would survive. One of the first lessons humanity learned was that Orakh could survive a lot. Their bleeding stopped quickly and as a species they just didn’t go into shock the way that mammals did. Worse, severed limbs could regrow onto their stumps given a couple of hours. The combination meant that bullets weren’t as effective as they should be. Sure, a head or organ shot would kill an Orakh just like it would a person, but without blood loss or shock more than one soldier had died to an Orakh that they disregarded due to ‘fatal’ gunshots.

These days, anyone hunting the Orakh made a point of confirming kills before they moved on. Still, William needed help with the Orakh Shaman he was keeping suppressed with a combination of 20mm cannon fire and liberal use of the flamethrower mounted into his power suit’s other arm. Technically Dan had awakened William’s ability to use magic, granting him a water and an earth affinity, but the old man didn’t really trust the magic.

Apparently that distrust of magic didn’t apply to the series of runes Dan carved into William’s armor at his daughter’s behest. Jennifer knew that logic wasn’t going to sway her father. Instead she convinced Dan to inscribe enough strengthening and defensive runes into both Abe and Williams’ armor to bring both of the suits onto another level entirely.

The shaman let out a silent scream, a wave of force mana rolling toward William across the uneven hillocks of the swamp and threatening to spill him off of the narrow island that they were all fighting over and into the Bayou itself. That would be a problem. As troublesome as the Orakh were on land, they were completely at home in the shallow water of the Bayou, moving with an ease and agility that even Dan couldn’t match. Luckily, they were usually simple-minded enough to follow humans up onto swampy islands once provoked. Otherwise, clearing them out of the Bayou would simply be impossible.

William stomped down with his right leg, digging it into the moist soil and crossing his arms. Dan could sense the flood of earth and force mana as he activated his runes to counter the shaman’s spell. The wall of force slammed into William, but the runes activated, generating a shield in front of him and quadrupling his weight. The Orakh’s spell still generated enough force to knock the old timer onto his ass, but William’s countermeasures broke the back of the attack.

Dan raised his hand and shot a lightning bolt into the shaman. Whatever charm it was using to approximate a spellshield flashed, but he could immediately see that it wasn’t optimized for dealing with elemental energy. A second lightning stroke brought the shield down. Despite his massive reserves of mana, Dan could feel himself beginning to run dry. Gritting his teeth he fired a third lightning stroke, burning through most of the shaman’s chest and dropping its twitching and smoking body to the ground.

Sighing, he toggled his time dilation rune off. Immediately the world sped up and the dull bass roar turned into music. Abe had insisted that his suit have speakers. He claimed that fighting to ‘tunes’ inspired morale. Dan didn’t particularly care, it wasn’t that hard to reconfigure the suits PA systems to play music. It was just that in the current state, they couldn’t ensure proper access to streaming apps. That meant that Abe was stuck using an old CD player and collection of CDs he’d fished out of an abandoned car a week ago.

“Big wheel keep on turning,” Abe shouted, off key and with enthusiasm. He pointed the cannon arm on the power armor at an Orakh that was trying to flank Jennifer as she fought another two.

“Rolling,” Abe fired the 20mm cannon twice, throwing the Orakh to the ground. “Rolling on the river.”

Jennifer used the distraction to quickly bring down the remaining Orakh, leaving them all panting on the otherwise cleared out island. Well, Dan assumed that Abe and William were panting. It was hard to tell through the towering suits of armor.

“Can you cut the music Abe?” Dan called out to the man. “We’ve got a job to do and I’d prefer to not alert everyone and everything within a mile that we’re here.”

“Come on Dan,” Abe responded. “We can take pretty much everything that we’ve seen since the landing so long as we can stay out of the water itself. Plus, we have to listen to Creedence down here. It’s basically a rule.”

“Abe,” Dan pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t sure if his headache was from mana exhaustion or the soldier’s exuberance. “We can win against everything we’ve seen so far, but I don’t think we can handle the numbers the Orakh are capable of throwing at us. Plus, now that there are enough mana activated individuals in the area it's only a matter of time before the local wildlife begins changing. I’d prefer not to be surprised when some sort of magic using mega alligator pops up for the first time.”

“Fine buzzkill,” Abe replied with a chuckle as he wandered over to a pile of writhing Orakhs. Methodically he lifted the heavy boots of the powered armor, bringing them down on the Orakh’s skulls, crushing them with a fairly satisfying crunch.

“That’s Mr. Buzzkill ‘sir’ to you Abe,” Dane rolled his eyes at Abe’s gleeful behavior. “If we’re going to make this entire mercenary company thing work we need to have some sort of chain of command.”

“I still don’t see why I’m not the one running this show,” William interjected, crossing the arms of his powered suit across his chest. “I mean, I’m the one that actually used to be a general at one point.”

“Because none of this works without Dan Daddy,” Jennifer shook her head as she walked away from her Father and began finishing off wounded but regenerating Orakhs. “Plus, he could take all three of us in a fight if it came down to it. You can be in charge of planning and operations, but the person who can command the elements and ignore bullets gets to be the commander. That just seems common sense to me.”

“Same,” Abe agreed, continuing his happy stomping.

“Thank you for your votes of confidence everyone,” Dan smiled slightly. William was a bit of an ass, but the old man didn’t mean much by it. At this point, Dan suspected that the old man was simply giving him a hard time out of spite. It almost seemed that he was relieved to not have to deal with the boring politics and logistics of command anymore.

Mana began to flow into him as the rest of the team butchered the Orakh he’d injured. Dan gritted his teeth against the influx of pleasure as he grew stronger. He slipped back into a meditative state and quickly began partitioning his personality to prevent it from impacting his thinking. The worst part about the mana was how seductive it was. It was easy to know that too much of it was bad for him, but the minute he touched it, Dan couldn’t help but think about how much easier it would be to just let a little more in.

Still, he knew where that path ended. Addiction and in all likelihood becoming some sort of serial killer. Like the gang running Miami right now. He sighed. Even as the Orakh tried to take over the world, yet another problem reared its head, demanding that he solve it.

Dan stared off into space and triggered his status. It had been some time since he’d had the opportunity to access the system and take stock of his gains over the last month or so.

Status

Rank 7

Body 6 (8)

Agility 7 (9)

Mind 8

Perception 7

Spirit 67

Skills

Swords 11, Brawling 5, Archery 2, Runecrafting 8

Affinity

Space 13, Lightning 11, Fire 11, Gravity 10, Force 13

Enhancements

Armor Rune V, Strength Rune +2, Agility Rune +2, Thermal Resistance Rune, Temporal Dilation Rune 10:1

Runes+

Spells

Shocking Fist 10, Spark Field 2, Lightning Stroke 11, Spatial Shield 8, Flame Jet 4, Gravitational Easing 10, Fireball 13, Force Bubble 12, Spellshield 10, Forcebolt 9, Flame Aura 3

He blanked out the status. He was close to another rank up and already he could feel the extra kick from the steadily increasing level of his spells and affinities. Once upon a time, lightning stroke would simply stun an opponent. Now it killed them. He wasn’t where he needed to be yet, but Dan was well on his way.

Shaking his head, Dan focused on the moment. Jennifer was cutting off the ears of the Orakh they would need to fulfill their contract with the Mayor of New Orleans. The country was in chaos and at this point, no one really knew who was in charge. In some states, the governor ran the show, but in others such as Louisiana, control was much more local. The Mayor of New Orleans had declared emergency powers and set herself up as a borderline autocratic ruler.

Still, most of her efforts were devoted toward keeping her people safe and the Orakh away from the City. When Dan and his team arrived, she was ecstatic at the idea of a trained group of veterans of the Brazilian campaigns against the elves stepping in. Even if paper money was of dubious value, she was able to offer up enough food, gold, and electronic equipment including solar generators that Dan’s team wouldn’t be able to replicate on their void ship, the Viceroy’s Pride to make helping out worth their while.

Glancing up at the sky, he saw that there was plenty of light left in the day. That meant more Orakh to kill and more mana to earn.