Chapter 17: In the storm

Rain poured in through the hole in the ceiling, and the dark, heavy clouds above flashed with near constant strands of lightning. An unrelenting peal of thunder filled the sky.

The warehouse was otherwise silent for a long, shocked moment, everyone staring up at the raging storm. There were still at least a hundred of The Chosen Storm, and as one Fen felt their minds turn towards him.

They started to push over the pile of their fallen comrades, and Fen pulled back, feeling their murderous intent begin to swarm around him. Fen backed towards the door where Captain Goran and his men were waiting, holding his sword in a defensive posture. His fighting had just triggered something terrible, and he feared what potential consequences might come if he kept fighting the cult.

There was a flash of movement to Fen’s left, and he reacted without needing to think. His sword blocked the spear of a cultist, and in a moment he was surrounded again. The weight of a hundred weapons trying to get to his flesh pulled him right back into the fighting.

This time something was different from his effortless slaughter minutes before. The ring on his thumb kept him alive, but he found himself slowly getting overwhelmed.

He swung fast and hard, his weightless sword moving with blurring speed, but somehow the cultists moved just as fast, getting their weapons around to block his strikes just in the nick of time.

Sweat began to bead on Fen’s brow. His whole mind was directed to nothing but survival. The thoughts of the cultists buzzing around in his head were frenzied and manic, blurring his ability to comprehend, and Fen started to fall behind, getting pulled away from the exit.

A ripple of shock echoed through the minds of the cultists, and Fen sensed more than saw that Captain Goran and his guards crashed into the back ranks of The Chosen Storm, fighting brutally to buy Fen some time.

Fen took advantage of that moment, striking in quick flurry of attacks and bursting through the back rank of cultists with a trail of bodies in his wake. He charged through the loading door with Goran and his men right on his heels.

Icy sheets of rain washed over Fen as he entered the storm. The sky was pitch dark, despite there still being several hours of daylight left, and the streets were only lit by the constant flickering of lightning and the steady glow of Fen’s sword.

A glance backward allowed Fen to see that the eyes of each of the cultists were glowing faintly in the darkness, and it sent a chill through his bones. Luckily, the cultists seemed to be leaving Goran and his men alone in favor of hunting Fen down.

Fen ran for all he was worth, splashing across the drenched cobblestones as he fled in terror from the hoard that was hot on his heels.

Fen dropped his sword and it sparked away, plunging the street into near total darkness. The disorienting, flickering shadows from the lighting made the street play out in two dimensional pictures, pausing briefly in darkness between.

Only Fen’s familiarity with the city allowed him to navigate the street, and he soon began to gain a lead against the cultists.

Fen had no idea where to go from here. His first thought was Regis, but he knew that The Chosen Storm also had magic, and it was possible that they would break through Regis’s shielding and expose the informant as well as Fen.

He thought he might try the palace, knowing that the King understood enough about the situation to have surrounded himself with guards, but with nearly a hundred magic wielding cultists on his tail, he worried that the palace guards would soon be overwhelmed.

Fen understood only that wherever he went he would be followed, and if this new god could track him, then there would truly be no hiding.

The only real option Fen felt he had left was to flee the city, dragging the cult on his tail to mitigate the damage they were trying to inflict to Unger. Even if he had to die fighting a hundred of them at once, he could at least give the city a fighting chance as well.

Decision made, Fen turned onto the main street and headed south. The hoard of cultists behind him started to splinter into groups, turning off onto side streets and trying to surround Fen, but he ran straight for the gates, not giving them a chance to catch up now that he was ahead.

The guards at the gate looked panicked to see Fen charging at them, followed by dozens of glowing eyed freaks, and luckily for Fen, they froze for long enough to let Fen through, but they started closing the gates, cutting off most of the hoard.

Fen turned on the few who made it through, summoning his sword with a bang and a flash. There were less than a dozen, and fear spiked in their thoughts as Fen plunged into their midst.

With so few of them, even enhanced by their god as they were, Fen’s ring gave him enough of an advantage to be confident in his odds.

He ducked under a blast of lightning energy and cleanly sliced the man’s legs out from under him. The upstroke blocked two different swords while Fen kicked another man in the gut. Then he twisted between two spear thrusts and swiped his sword through a pair of necks.

Fen pulled gently on the spear haft of one of the cultists, stumbling the man into the path of a burst of lightning thrown by his comrade who then fell to Fen’s blade in his confusion. Three of them fell as they tried to turn and flee. Fen sidestepped a sword strike perfectly, not moving even an inch more than necessary as he removed the arms of that cultist.

Two more men remained, and Fen smiled at the panic he felt from them. They tried to flee, but ran straight into each other. Fen slammed his sword through the both of them, pinning them to the gate.

When Fen dismissed his sword the two men slumped to the ground, and Fen saw through the small, smoldering hole in the wood that the guards had been overwhelmed and the crowd of cultists on the other side was trying to figure out how to open the gate.

Fen turned and dashed away from the city, hoping to have enough of a lead to confront The Chosen Storm on his own terms.