“Shock and awe!”

  Jun exploded into motion.

  Literally.

  Miniature detonations marking each explosive step. Burst step, he’d dubbed it. Greatest thing since sliced bread, and don’t let anyone tell you different. Wasn’t easy keeping them tame though—from grand craters down to small indents, and wasn’t that a damned shame.

  They’d insisted it was purely a safety precaution. That his body was ill equipped to handle the strain. All he knew was that it rankled something fierce, not that it could really be helped.

  You know, summarily outvoted as he was.

  Unfortunately, what those traitorous bastards didn’t seem to understand was that, just because something soundedreasonable, didn’t mean it was right dammit!

  After all, neuter his poor baby—his precious, unsuspecting technique—and where in the nine hells did that leave him!?

  A ponderous, clumsy bastard with a marked lack of stones would be the correct guess, and thank you very much for playing, come again soon.

  Granted, it was far gentler on his bones. Fracturing instead of shattering, which, he had to admit, was rather nice.

  Beasts wailed. Bits flew. He paid the chaff little mind.

  By the time the cries reached him, they were already well behind him after all, and he only had eyes on the future. Carved through them like butter, he did. A runaway carriage straight out of hell. Passing over, under, through the ugly bastards.

  Stray pieces clinging on for dear life.

  In the throws of denial, or so it would seem. Trying their best postmortem to strangle the life from him, for all the good that did. Like if a phantom limb made to scratch at a very real arse. Bloody useless in other words.

  Insides, better left inside, made to flap in the wind. Strips of skin and rank intestines. Dripping pink streamers which adorned his body. You know, if those streamers also happened to smell like raw sewage. Enemies were summarily executed just as soon as they came into focus.

  Mantis, goat, reptile? Oh my! Didn’t matter to him.

  “Shock and awe!”

  House sized stingray with the legs of a spider, the tail of a scorpion, and the head of a woman? Come one, come all! Step in line to win a prize! Said prize being a stiff backhand to the face, if that weren’t already bloody obvious.

  And two more, now that you mention it, just for good measure. He tried to play it off, all calm and collected like, but that pale monstrosity wasn’t something he wanted getting back up again. Not now, nor ever.

  “Havoc! Anarchy! Shock and bleedin’ awe!”

  Crome kissed fist met charging ram’s head, arresting its forward momentum in a single, perfect instant—the successive crunch of vertebrae like music to his ears. Blood gushed from its nostrils.

  Eyes burst from its sockets.

  Jun grinned, receiving the somewhat imaginative missiles without batting an eye—dull impacts to his chest and across his left cheek. Oddly and uniquely satisfying, if he was being completely honest. Unfortunately for him, the truly impressive stuff, like stopping the charge of a rampaging beast the size of a small cottage, always came with their downsides.

  In this case?

  Their equal and opposite reactions. He rocketed through the air. Launched backwards uncontrollably. Spinning. Spiraling. Cackling all the while. Slapping a few man faced hornets from the air as he went. He bathed in their vile ichor. Using it to slick back his hair. Grinning. Open, manic, and wide. Spinning and spinning and spinning before-!

  BOOM!

  Much to his surprise, it was a writhing mass of conjoined beasts—a throbbing hill of hairless flesh, covered in mouths that wailed their collective agony—that went to the trouble of breaking his fall. Entirely free of charge, if you can believe it.

  Charitable, that. Admirable even.

  Not to be outdone, Jun, in turn, did the tortured beast the great mercy of, quite literally, putting it out of its misery.

  He speared through the creature like an arrow shot through water. The veiny skin of the thing bulging outward in the wake of his shining, silver lit passage. Expanding unnaturally, in uneven clumps, until, with a loud bang, the entire thing burst apart in a spray of red mist, meat, and stinking awful.

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  He, meanwhile, emerged out the other end, thoroughly drenched, though otherwise unharmed.

  And while true, he still skipped across the battlefield haphazardly—careening, rebounding from one monstrosity to the next—even he knew the moment of greatest danger had passed. Jun grunted, unsatisfied. He’d better smarten up and get after it then.

  Clipping the pebbled hide of a massive something he didn’t quite catch, receiving a mouth full of fur, then a face full of animal musk, it was only a few more bone rattling collisions before he’d properly touched down and regained his feet.

  Not one to waste a golden opportunity when it presented itself, he ignored his many aches and pains, the disorientation and broken bones that tried their best to hamper him. Instead choosing to take the initiative. His body could go into shock all it wants, so long as it allowed him to follow it up with sufficient levels of awe.

  He moved. Weaved.

  Less by design, and more drunkenly than he’d have liked, but by no means did his own clumsiness deter him. No. Not even close. He charged. Picking up speed, even as he narrowly evaded stomping legs and snapping mandibles. Eyes on the prize, he stumbled, tumbled. Dead set on the next in a long line of bloody landmarks. A notch to grace his metaphorical sword belt. A beast worth the retelling.

  Something to write home about, at the very least.

  It was a big bastard by anyone’s definition, easily head and shoulders above the rest. Crimson eyes periodically glinting—nearly hidden behind a mass of reaching limbs and agitated bodies.

  All sound was drowned out by the snarling din. The cacophony of pounding feet, hooves, and the slapping of tentacles. And yet, for but one moment, as they locked gazes, all time seemed to stop. The thundering procession of beasts abruptly slowing to a floating crawl.

  The surprised looks of recognition on the closest ugly mugs made comical, as only now were they beginning to register his existence. An intruder in their midst, standing so brazenly behind enemy lines. And yet it wasn’t they who held his attention. It was a wolf, far as he could tell, and so achingly familiar. With a massive frame, at least twenty meters tall. It’s obsidian fur somehow glinting despite an overcast sky.

  [Blackstone Direwolf (Middling B Grade)]

  Then, the moment of stillness broke like a shattered pane of glass, and Jun rocketed forward like his previous pace had merely been a standstill. Fuck the council and to hell with his bones. The next steps he took made the earth quake and tremble.

  The world around him warping, blurring, fading.

  Clarity sharpening to a single point. Everything between him and his goal either swatted aside, or charged straight on through outright. Wounds and bruises accumulated at a truly alarming rate. He payed it all little heed, no mind whatsoever. And then, in what felt to him like no time at all, he’d crossed the distance separating them completely.

  The creature loomed. Jun tripped.

  Rolled, slid, feet desperately scrabbling for purchase.

  He could hear it now.

  The reverberations of its growl.

  Deep and resonant. A rumble that could be felt, thrummed through his own chest as if in eager sympathy.

  Fever hot breaths touching his forehead and beading his brow, caressing his nape and down along his spine. Strangely intimate, and oh so very familiar. His body was nearly horizontal by now. Ankles one stray pebble from being twisted out of all known proportion.

  Sliding, drifting, skidding in his attempts to bleed off at least some of his overeager momentum.

  Jun’s feet finally found purchase. Legs bunched. Fists clenched.

  He leapt.

  And damned if he didn’t soar.

  Spinning uppercut met obsidian fur just beneath its lupine jaw. There was the terrible crack of impact. And, in the next moment, the spirit of the once titanic spirit beast, the very same that had terrorized him what felt like so long ago, was lifted clear off its feet.

  Sent careening at a sharp angle, even as every bone in Jun’s arm was summarily shattered. Unlike others who’d attempted something similar, however, this particular outcome did not come about due to some form of cosmic rebuke.

  No. On the contrary, his patron ideal couldn’t have been more proud if they tried.

  As one, the two gracefully arced through the air. Soaring above the craning heads of rift spawn, monsters, and spirits alike. Their little stretch of battlefield having come to an abrupt standstill, captivated by the uncanny sight. A second stillness gracing their small slice of heaven, before gravity reasserted itself and they both came crashing down.

  Whereupon Jun rode the bulky beast a bloody furrow through enemy lines, whooping and hollering.

  Cackling madly all the while.

  It took some doing, offing the beastie after that. A quick trip through its orbital cavity, and up into its brain, enough to put an end to even the legendary Direwolf’s renowned levels of resiliency. At which point, upon extracting himself, the confused melee began again in earnest. A fact for which S. Jun was eternally grateful.

  This glorious day something he wouldn’t trade for anything else in the whole wide world. For the umpteenth time, he threw himself, headlong, directly into the fray. And though, by this point, he’d racked up his fair share of what should’ve been debilitating injuries, he didn’t even hesitate.

  He fought like a rabid animal.

  No tactic too underhanded, no depth too low to stoop to. Entirely uncaring of the damage he received, every iota of his being focused purely on those sweet sweet exports. What pain, what carnage, he could reasonably dish out. So that when his good arm abruptly refused to obey his commands, he found his legs sufficed to get the point across just fine.

  When his shins nearly snapped, and could no longer stand to bear his weight, he applied flying knees to discombobulate his enemies.

  Until, that is, his knees suddenly buckled, threatened to spill him, to break. At which point he used his head—to bash and cripple and maim to his heart’s content. Finally, when his head felt fit to bursting, he used only his teeth. Chomping down hard like a horse at the bit—feeling carapace and cartilage give way almost easily, each with an oh so satisfying crunch.

  And it was around then, and only then, that—despite his still being raring to go, practically in tip top fighting condition, all things told—as the darkness closed in, and he found he could no longer move any part of his body, even he was forced to admit things weren’t looking too good.

  In fact, if it were just him out here, currently being trampled to death under an unceasing hoard of supposed rift spawn, this might’ve proven the end. Luckily for him, he wasn’t alone. In one moment there was the brief flash of ruby red, barely seen out of the corner of his eye. In the next, Eleanor burst onto the scene, blade already flashing a bright crimson.

  Her incoming swarm of rose petals, a welcome sight indeed.