The Primeval Era-Chapter 39: Blood and Stone IV

He could sense the anger in her whisper as she spoke.

She did not ask him whether he had the confidence to stand against the Bone Tempering Warrior or not. She did not question whether twelve Flesh Awakening Warriors were too many for one man to handle. She simply believed in whatever ability she held, believed that they would not die here today.

And truly...

Damian’s gaze became firm and heavy.

The axe in his hands was grasped tighter, his knuckles whitening around the rough wooden haft as it actually caved in.

He had taken life earlier today after many summers had passed. The Butcher’s Warriors had fallen to his spears in the village, their blood joining the blood of the Tribesmen they had killed.

But it was not the first time he had taken a life and bathed the Lands of Stone red, no matter how much he tried to forget and deny it.

The first time he did so was when he was ten summers old.

Right before he and Uncle Adam ran.

He remembered it still!

Damian did not particularly like killing.

He was not a crazed madman who found joy in ending lives.

But like many things, killing in the Lands of Stone served a purpose. Killing in order to survive was an honorable killing. The beasts did not ask permission before they hunted. The strong did not apologize before they claimed what they wanted. To kill in defense of oneself and others was simply the way of the world.

And killing for vengeance?

Well, that was another type of killing.

One that the Ancestors themselves sanctioned.

At this moment, Damian grasped the stone axe in his hands tightly, breathed out, and felt the Mana coursing through him.

His flesh tingled with it.

His bones hummed with it.

His blood carried it through vessels that burned with new vitality.

His marrow stirred with the beginnings of generation.

His organs pulsed in synchronized rhythm.

DUM!

The beat of his heart came into focus.

DUM!

And around him, things felt like they began to go slow again.

The vile words of the Bone Tempering Warrior slowed to a crawl, each syllable stretching out as if spoken through honey. The blood dripping from the Chieftain’s broken face moved like drops of rain suspended in amber.

The flames of the bonfire flickered in lazy undulation. The Warriors moving about the camp seemed to wade through invisible water.

Everything slowed except Damian.

He grasped the stone axe and wound his hand back, feeling the weight of it, the balance, the way the Mana in his arm could add force to the throw.

And he flung his axe forward.

His body shot out right after.

SAA!

It was a glorious and surreal scene.

The axe spun through the air toward the back of the nearest Flesh Awakening Warrior’s head, a man who stood with his back to the Ancestor Pillar, watching the darkness without knowing that death came from behind.

And ridiculously, Damian was only a step behind the axe in how quickly he moved.

He was like a flash of lightning made of blue Mana, tendrils of power crackling across his skin as he crossed the distance between the tree and the encampment in a heartbeat.

CRACK!

The axe struck the first Warrior’s skull and split it open!

The man did not even have time to cry out. One moment he was standing guard, the next he was falling with his head cleaved nearly in two, brain matter and blood spraying outward in a grotesque fountain.

Damian did not stop to watch him fall.

He was already moving toward the second Warrior, a man who sat near the fire with a strip of dried meat halfway to his mouth. This fucker’s eyes had not even registered the death of his companion yet. He was still chewing, still relaxed, still utterly unaware that his life was measured in fractions of a heartbeat.

Damian’s fist came around in a devastating arc of a haymaker.

The Mana coursing through his flesh, his bones, his blood, his marrow, his organs, all of it focused into that single strike. His knuckles connected with the side of the Warrior’s head.

CRUNCH!

The skull caved inward like a clay pot struck by a stone hammer!

The Warrior’s body flew sideways from the force of the impact, crashing into another man who had been sitting beside him. Both went down in a tangle of limbs, one dead, one confused.

Damian grabbed the dead man’s spear as it clattered to the ground.

The third Warrior was trying to rise from where his companion’s body had knocked him down. His eyes were wide, his mouth opening to shout a warning but...he never got the chance!

Damian’s spear punched through his throat and out the back of his neck, severing his spine with surgical precision. The Warrior gurgled, blood bubbling from his lips, and went still.

Three dead in the time it took to draw a breath.

The fourth Warrior finally understood what was happening.

He had been standing near the bonfire, warming his hands, when the commotion began. Now he spun toward the source of the violence, his stone sword coming up in a defensive position.

"ENEM-"

Damian’s spear took him through the eye before he could finish the warning.

The shaft sank deep, piercing brain, and the Warrior crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.

Four dead.

Only now did the others become fully alerted.

Shouts of rage erupted across the encampment as the remaining eight Flesh Awakening Warriors finally processed what was happening. They bellowed challenges and curses, grabbing weapons, turning toward the blood-soaked figure that had appeared among them like a ghost of vengeance.

"ENEMY ATTACK!"

They rushed toward Damian from multiple directions, stone weapons raised, faces twisted with fury and shock.

But he was still far faster than them.

DUM!

His heart beat.

DUM!

And they moved through water while he moved through air.

A Warrior swung a stone axe at his head. Damian swayed aside, feeling the displaced air as the weapon passed inches from his face. He could see the individual chips in the stone blade, the sweat on the Warrior’s brow, the widening of his eyes as he realized he had missed.

Damian’s counter was a horizontal slash with the spear he still held.

The stone tip opened the Warrior’s belly from hip to hip, spilling coils of intestine onto the blood-soaked ground.

Five dead.

He released the spear before the dying man even began to fall, snatching up the axe that had been swung at him. The weapon felt good in his hands, heavier than his own but well-balanced.

Two Warriors came at him together, coordinating their attacks with the practice of men who had fought side by side before. One thrust high with a spear. The other swept low with a club.

Damian jumped.

He soared over the low sweep, his body tucking and spinning in midair with a grace that should have been impossible. At the apex of his leap, he brought the axe down on the spearman’s shoulder.

The blade bit through flesh and bone, cleaving the man from collarbone to sternum.

Six dead.

Damian landed behind the club-wielder, who was still completing his now-pointless sweep. Before the Warrior could turn, Damian drove his elbow backward into the base of the man’s skull!

The crack of breaking vertebrae was audible even over the chaos.

Seven dead.

...!

Oh!

"He...he...!"

The shout came from one of the Warriors guarding the women. Both guards had abandoned their posts and were charging toward Damian with spears leveled as their eyes showed horror!

The women screamed and scattered!

Damian grabbed a fallen Warrior’s club and hurled it at the leading guard. The heavy weapon spun through the air and caught the man full in the face, shattering his jaw and sending him tumbling backward.

Not dead, but no longer a factor.

The second guard thrust his spear at Damian’s chest with all the force a Flesh Awakening Warrior could muster.

Damian caught the shaft.

Just caught it, his Mana-enhanced grip halting the thrust as if it had struck stone.

The guard’s eyes went wide with disbelief.

Damian yanked the spear forward, pulling the guard off balance, then drove his forehead into the man’s nose. Bone crunched. Blood sprayed. The guard staggered back, blinded by pain and the blood flowing into his eyes.

Damian reversed the spear and drove it through the guard’s heart.

Eight dead.

The one with the shattered jaw was trying to rise, trying to flee, trying to do anything to survive. Damian’s axe ended those efforts with a single overhead blow.

Nine dead.

Three remained!

They had clustered together near the bonfire, their initial rage having transformed into something closer to terror. They watched the blood-soaked figure approach with wide eyes and trembling weapons.

"What are you?!"

One of them screamed the question, his voice cracking with fear.

Damian did not answer.

He simply moved.

The first of the three died when Damian’s thrown axe split his skull. The second died when Damian closed the distance in a heartbeat and drove a borrowed spear through his chest. The third tried to run.

Damian caught him in two strides, grabbed his head from behind, and twisted.

SNAP!

Twelve dead.

Less than thirty seconds had passed since Damian emerged from behind the Ancestor Pillar.

Twelve Flesh Awakening Warriors lay dead across the encampment, their blood painting the stones in spreading pools of crimson. Some had died too quickly to understand what was happening. Others had died with expressions of terror frozen on their faces.

But well, all of them had died.

And now Damian stood in the center of the carnage, his chest heaving with exertion but not exhaustion. The Mana flowing through his systems sustained him, fed him, made him more than he had been.

His eyes found the Bone Tempering Warrior.

Lukaku had risen from his crouch over the Chieftain during the massacre. He had watched his entire force be annihilated in the span of less than half a minute. He had seen a single figure move through twelve trained Warriors like a scythe through wheat.

And now that figure was looking at him.

Damian reached down and picked up a stone spear from the ground beside the last Warrior he had killed. The weapon felt natural in his grip, an extension of his arm.

He thrust it toward the Bone Tempering Warrior who had been torturing the Chieftain.

CLANG!

Lukaku blocked the strike with his own weapon, a bone blade that crackled with stored Mana. The impact sent shockwaves through both their arms, and for a moment, they stood locked together.

Damian looked at the man who had tortured and killed

And Lukaku looked back.

His expression held shock, and his expression held horror.

And beneath both of those, unmistakably, his expression held a trace of fear.

Because what stood before him was not what he had expected to find in these backwater territories!

Damian looked like a brutal primordial human, streams of blood coating his face and arms and chest. The crimson painted him like war markings from some ancient ritual. Faint tendrils of Mana danced over his skin, visible even in the darkness, and more disturbingly, that same blue light flickered in his eyes as he stared at Lukaku.

The hazy light from the Ancestor Pillar nearby illuminated everything.

The dead Warriors scattered across the camp.

The shock on the faces of the captured women.

The disbelief in the eyes of the bound Chieftain and the two surviving Warriors of the Purple Stone Tribe.

All eyes were on Damian and the Bone Tempering Warrior.

Lukaku’s weapon buzzed against Damian’s, Mana crackling where they met.

The Sworn Warrior was breathing heavily, his composure shattered by what he had just witnessed.

And Damian?

Well, Damian simply looked at him with those Mana-lit eyes, his heavy heartbeat audible even to those watching.

DUM!

DUM!

DUM!

At this moment, bathed in blood and illuminated by ancestral light, Damian Vakochev looked unfathomably glorious, and unfathomably terrifying!