Hundreds of skeletons had surrounded me while I read. Snow lies thick on the ground, except for in a circle around me where Sclamhaire has been radiating heat. Even that is rapidly being filled in by the steadily worsening storm. In spite of the vivid, almost fluorescent green color of the flora covering the animate bones, the skeletons seemed to vanish, fading in and out of visibility in the thick snowfall. My sonar isn't working well either, the snow in the air absorbing sound waves making it hard to track anything. Even my mana sense is impaired the amount of the island's heavily aspected mana that filled the air.
Nothing moves other than my hand drawing up my hood, and then my mask. I move slowly, trying not to break whatever stalemate is holding everything still for the moment. I need the time to plan, I can't fight from where I am. Without my extra and improved senses to help me keep track of everything around me, it would be too easy to swarm me under.
So, step one, get out of the encirclement. I don't trust my ability to use my voice for this. I only just figured out how to do a sonic impactor, and I'm not really sure I can do it reliably enough or with enough power to punch a hole through the enemy positions. Telekinesis on the other hand is straight forward enough that even if I'm not sure of my precision, launching something heavy really hard is well within my abilities.
I pull the bow string in my mind back as far as I dare. Whatever I find to launch is going to have to make a corridor through the hostile bones big enough for me to escape through. I search my memory as I turn slowly in place, scanning my surroundings to find something suitable for use as a projectile, when I run out of time.
What I thought was a patch of solid bare rock, turns out to be something very different. Roots and vines explode out of the ground at my feet. The thin shell of rock crumbles away letting the hostile vegetation reach out to ensnare or impale me. I shriek in surprise, my voice not activating only because almost all of my free mana has already been handed over to my TK. TK that in my shock I lose my hold on. The mental bow string in that moment of inattention snaps forward, and everything in my vicinity is launched away from me forcefully.
The vines and roots that had already begun to coil around my legs, searching for a way through my armor, are shredded. The amount of kinetic energy I had accidentally dumped into my surroundings rips the greenery to pieces. The skeletons don't get off freely either. Gravel and loose debris scythed through the first few ranks like a claymore has gone off, shattering and cracking the exposed bone. Then the wave of accelerated air strikes, and any of them still standing are knocked off their feet. The vines and roots not reduced to kindling are pushed out to the limit of their length and slammed into the ground.
That's... new...
I have only a moment to register what's happened, and I don't take it. Acting entirely on instinct I pull the bowstring back again, and fling myself away from the center of what is now obviously a trap, and outside the skeletal encirclement. I don't have the skill to catch myself with my TK so I simply take the impact, roll to disperse it and get myself back to my feet as quickly as possible.
The moment I have proper bracing I lunge back into the skeletal ranks. Sclamhaire goes through them like the proverbial hot knife, the energy animating the undead devoured eagerly like everything else she'd ever tasted. Mana rushes into me to replace what I've already used, and like that, the real battle begins.
Sclamhaire lives up to her name, and feeds me mana every time I fell a skeleton. Mana that I then spend like water. In my efforts to avoid getting surrounded again I adopt a tactic of running away from the bony mob and telekinetically pelting them with anything I can, until a small group separates from the rest. Once I have a manageable group isolated I spin on the ball of my foot, and charge back into the smaller mess of skeletons. Not only does this tactic make sure that I don't get overwhelmed, but it gives me plenty of time to think.
Apparently the island is a genius loci. A phrase that in ancient Rome was used to describe the god or spirit of a specific area. More modernly it's used to describe a piece of land or a building that has gained sentience, some form of magical power, and the ability to manipulate anything considered a 'part of itself' for its own ends.
Which definition a late fifteen hundreds era Exorcist might have been using I have no idea.
I'm not sure it really matters in my current situation anyway. I'm pretty sure I can't kill a god of any size, and I wouldn't know how to even start going about killing an island. I suppose I could stab Sclamhaire into the ground and just let her work. But that's only viable if it works quickly enough for me to survive without my weapon until the island dies. And that's only an issue to worry about if there's any possibility that the genius loci has a limited power supply. If there's a ley line running under the island, or god forbid an intersection of several, then it effectively has an infinite power supply.
So what does...
I nearly trip over my own feet as another squad of skeletons pops unexpectedly around a corner nearly right on top of me.
God damn snow!
God damn ambient mana saturation!
It's all I can do to turn my head and take the tines of a pitchfork, rusted just enough to guarantee tetanus, on my hood instead of my face. The only sound produced is a very soft 'tink' of metal gently tapping metal, my armor absorbing most of the impact. I sweep an arm up knocking the pitchfork out of the way, an arc of motion that's quickly followed by Sclamhaire cutting the skeletal colonist in half. The pulse of mana I get from the animating force of that bone pile is sent directly into another omnidirectional telekinetic pulse blowing the surrounding enemies back. I leap after the ambushing force, Sclamhaire singing through air and bone with equal facility. I can't even feel any jolt of impact from my wonderful sword, only the rush of mana indicates when she meets something that should have provided resistance.
This kind of fighting is heady and dangerous. These undead pose literally no threat to me as it turns out, my fears of being overwhelmed seeming to be unnecessary. I could stand, and just let them pound on my armor as much as they want, and all it would do is feed me mana. I don't feel tired, or any form of fatigue. The constant in-rush of mana keeps me running on all cylinders. The entire experience leaves me feeling invincible.
Which is why it's dangerous.
Even as I move through the mooks like a fox in a hen house, I need to remind myself not to become complacent. My left hand shoots out to grab and crush the skull of a skeleton coming at me with a badly corroded knife, as Sclamhaire cleaves through three others. One with a half rotted scythe that it tries to put in the way. It accomplishes nothing.
Reinforcing my point about not being complacent, a deep resonant roar sounds over the colony. The skeletons around me don't react, except to try and get at me harder. I'm not particularly interested in seeing what made that sound unless I have to.
Which means I can't be tied down here any more, and I really need a few free moments to think. The easy solution is to just... not be here. My glamor wraps around me, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned, quite suddenly I'm not here.
Off pure muscle power I make the single story leap to the top of the building next to me. I have no idea what it used to be, and really it doesn't matter. Continuing to not be here, I get a running start, and in a few moments I've made it to the other side of the colony. Roof hopping the whole way.
Far enough away from my starting point that I hope I won't be immediately found, I drop my glamor and take a moment to try and figure things out. The first question, of course, is what my short term plan is. I don't think I can kill an island. I'm not against trying, but I really don't know where I would even start. Which means 'winning' this fight, in the classic sense, is off the table. So instead the priority becomes survival. My ride off this island is coming tomorrow evening. So that's how long I have to survive. I really wish I knew how these skeletons worked though. It really makes no sense for a nature spirit like a genius loci to be using something like them. The vegetation growing on the skeletons clearly has something to do with what's happening, but what is again beyond me. I guess it doesn't really matter as long as I can keep killing them as easily as I have been.
Absently I check my mana and...
Huh...
I have more mana than I should. I'm not an expert in judging how much mana I should expend vs how much I should get back for a given activity. I just don't have the experience, but I know that what I have seemed like too much for how much I expended getting to my current hiding place.
Further backing up my feeling is the relatively small rush of mana I get from my armor, that I only notice now because I'm paying attention. How long has this been going on? A few moments later I get another surge of mana. Then another. After a few minutes of watching I find that the inexplicable bursts of mana are coming at fairly regular intervals. Though again from no source I can find. I can't see, or hear, or even smell, anything hitting me when the extra mana comes. Which means it has to be coming from some non-physical source...
The wooden roof under me suddenly creaks and groans. I look down and swear. The wood I'm sitting on is rotting away as I watch. Mold grows through the substance of the wood in fast forward, the boards weakening. I barely have time to register this new way the island has to fuck me over, when the roof gives way and I'm sent plummeting back to the ground.
I hit with a crash that echoes through the colony, and moments later is answered by the deep resonant bellow I heard earlier. The rest of the single story house collapses on top of me.
The fall does more to me than the building landing on me does. My armor takes most of the fall, my troll bone handling the rest without more than a twinge, and all of the falling house. I'm still stunned enough from the impact rattling my brain that it takes a few minutes for me to realize I'm stuck. Nothing in the house is heavy enough to keep me pinned, but the way everything's fallen on me I have no leverage to even begin trying to move.
A literal lifetime of meditation helps me keep my breathing even and my thinking calm. No matter how much I want to listen to the tiny voice in the back of my head that does nothing but scream. I've been ignoring that voice since I was eight. It's not hard anymore.
My best bet for escaping is going to be my TK. It doesn't need leverage, so it shouldn't have any problems. Sure moving everything on top of me will take a lot of mana, but mana isn't exactly in short supply around...
Something plows through the wooden debris around me shattering thick and heavy beams and turning them into splinters. It hits me, lifting me off the ground with the force of the impact, overwhelming my armor's absorption ability. For the first time since I got it, the metal of my armor actually matters. The Lady of the Lake does good work though. My armor plates flex just the right amount, shedding impact in the best possible way. Cloth that's metal to the rest of the world deforms, and then falls back into place immediately.
I catch enough air time to actually process that I'm in the air, and acknowledge that landing is going to suck. Then I hit the ground, and I fucking hate it when I'm right. I roll several times, less in the controlled impact reducing fashion that I learned in gymnastics and perfected with parkour, and more in that fish just tossed onto the deck of the boat way.
I groan in pain, my eyes clenched shut, even if I can already feel all the bruises that I've acquired through my armor fading away. I want to take the time to wallow for a moment and let myself finish healing, but a heavy thud from right in front of me prompts me to open my eyes.
Right in front of me is a hoof the size of a dinner plate. Roots slither around it sinking into the ground as I watch. I groan again and, against my better judgement, I turn my gaze upward to get a look at what I'm beginning to think literally punted me out of the collapsed house. The hoof is connected to a collection of thick heavy bones that have never belonged to a human. They're held together by richly colored green moss or mold. The combination of bone and moss create the illusion of a complete, thick limbed, green skinned being. Vines and roots thread through every part of the thing, seeming to take the place of muscles and tendons. The illusion and method of creating it continues all the way up the thing. It has two legs, a humanoid torso with broad shoulders. Instead of hands, it's forearms end in thick, and very solid, looking clubs. It's head, standing eight feet or so above me, is where the illusion of a living thing falls apart again. It's head is an ox skull, bare of flesh and covered in only the thinnest patina of green. The skulls' eye sockets though are filled with beads of dark green fire. I can feel huge amounts of mana pumping through its form as I meet it's gaze.
We stare at each other for a moment, then it raises one of it's club arms, and I frantically try to roll away. Which is the right choice as when the thing hits the ground a huge cloud of dust and other debris fly into the air leaving a small crater in the ground.
I pop to my feet, far enough away that it would have to lunge to reach me, and take Sclamhaire back into both hands. It stands, slowly turning it's skull and glowing eye analogs in my direction, and I set myself in my stance, ready to fight. It opens its jaws, lets out the resonant bellow I've been hearing around the colony, and rushes me. What the hell, I let out my own roar and charged it back.
The sound I produce shouldn't come from a human throat, and makes the air around us tremble. The undead minotaur thing staggers slightly as the sound hits it, it's headlong rush stalled into several staggering steps. By the time it's regained its footing, I'm already on it. It throws out a clumsy counter swing at my head, the motion of it's arm almost like a hook. I smoothly slide my feet apart dropping into a lower, wider stance. The blow flies cleanly over my head, and I swing Sclamhaire into its leg just above it's knee.
I fully expect Sclamhaire to act like it has with every other thing I've ever swung her at, and slide through vine muscle, and moss covered bone without even slowing down.
That isn't what happens.
About six inches away from the thing Sclamhaire starts feeding me a truly spectacular amount of energy, and begins slowing down like I tried to swing a normal sword through sand. By the time Sclamhaire's edge actually touches the undead monstrosity, the blade is barely moving at all, leaving no more than a scratch on the moss green bones. I'm so startled by Sclamhaire failing to bisect something for the first time, that I almost fail to see the artificial minotaur's back hand coming for my head.
Almost.
A hurried jerk of my head backwards ensures that it's club arm only clips my hood. Again hard enough for the cloth to deform slightly, but as before it shakes back to its normal position with a twitch from my head.
So what the hell is that? Another hop backwards puts me at a safer distance, and I glance down at Sclamhaire feeling just a bit betrayed. I don't have time to really indulge the feeling though, because the island's mossy bone golem is charging me again.
I only just manage to sideslip, ducking under the things heavy club arm, and slash Sclamhaire across it's leg bones again. This time I'm paying attention though. I can see an aura from around the thing's leg the color of tarnished gold. The energy of the aura is so thick that even as Sclamhaire drinks it down, it still slows her enough that upon actually reaching the undead construct my swing has nearly no force behind it. Resulting in Sclamhaire barely being able to cause a scratch, no matter how sharp her edge is.
I fling myself away from my enemy to avoid any retaliatory swings, and end up narrowly avoiding more roots reaching out of the ground seeking to ensnare me. I roll to my feet and take a moment to check my surroundings. The snow means I have to work to keep track of the horde of less dangerous skeletons. Less dangerous in that they have little ability to do me direct harm. Enough of them though could probably keep me in place long enough for the minogolem to do some serious damage.
It looks like I've managed to find my way back to the central square of the colony. The crumbling well is just barely visible in front of me, and the skeletons arrive as if on cue, marching their way out of the snow in creepy silence. Behind me the thudding footsteps of the bone minotaur lets me keep track of the thing despite the snow falls' effect of rendering the majority of my senses barely functional.
Suddenly the tactic at work here makes sense. The skeletons aren't really a physical threat to me, but there's more than enough of them to hold me down for a while.
It's a tactic that's probably worked on everybody who's ever come here. It would probably work on me, if not for my staying power and TK. The skeletons are here to swarm me under, and hold me down while the larger bone construct actually does the damage.
A construct that's right behind me.
I spin on the ball of my foot, Sclamhaire swatting the bone golem's club arm to the side. At the same time the bow string in my head is pulled back as far as I can with no notice, and released. The construct is launched a few inches off the ground, before the roots that surround it's hooves, and sink into the ground with every step it takes, snap taught and it's pulled back to the ground.
Fucking hell!
What does it take to hurt this thing?
It swings its clubs down at me together, which I smoothly evade with a step backwards. When it's arms hit the ground though it releases a pulse of the tarnished gold energy that seems to fuel it. The pulse strikes me like an oncoming bus, and even with my armor absorbing a lot of the impact I'm lifted off the ground and flung into the horde of skeletons.
I roll to my feet quickly, and lash out around me with Sclamhaire and my hands and feet, trying to clear a space around me to breathe. Sclamhaire cleaves through a skeleton here, a fist crushes a skull there. I even get a 'This is Sparta' moment on a skeleton when a push kick sends it backwards into the colony well. The sound of it's bones echoing down the shaft shows that there's an entire aquifer that used to be under the island that has run dry.
I only have a few moments though, as my friend the bone golem arrives in a charge with its resonant bellow filling the air. With the horde of skeletons around me I have no place to dodge except straight up, which is stupid if you can't fly.
I really want my wings.
The bone club comes arching down at me, and with nowhere else to go I brace Sclamhaire's blade with my off hand, and catch the swing on the flat of my blade. Mindful that only one of its arms is occupied, I pivot Sclamhaire under the club and step to it's outside. The club I'm blocking slides past me to hit the ground, and it's body blocks it's other arm. It, of course, pivots to come after me, and I find myself right back where I started with the thing, dodging and blocking while trying to find some way through it's aura to actually hurt it.
Only now I have the added bonus of the seemingly infinite number of skeletons crowding around me. Every single one of them is reaching and clawing, trying to get in my way and hinder me any way they can. If I stay in one place for more than a few seconds roots grass and vines erupt from the ground and try to wrap around me. With judicious use of TK I manage to stay ahead of all of them though. Nudges to the bone construct's arms make evading it easier, even if it's legs are seemingly immune to interference because of how well anchored they are.
The time I spend staying one step ahead of my bony dance partners isn't entirely wasted. Now that I'm looking for it my mana sense is finding that tarnished gold energy everywhere. It glimmers inside the skeletons animating them, shines faintly in the plant life lending the growth speed and strength, and saturating the ground like water. Little bits of it are constantly being flung at me from every direction, which is what my armor has been absorbing for the extra mana I couldn't account for.
Not that the information helps me very much at the moment.
Though it does give me an idea of how to deal with the golem.
I lunge backwards from the golem's clubs, and watch them whistle past my face. As soon as they hit the ground I lunge forward, forcing myself through the pulse of energy enhancing their impact, and running up it's arms before hopping lightly over its head. While in the air I spin to bring Sclamhaire down on the golem with the full force of my fall.
Once again Sclamhaire floods me with mana stolen from the golem's protective aura, but fails to do any real damage to the bone construct. Which I'm not really expecting her to. Instead I watch carefully as the mana Sclamhaire stole from the thing is restored, trying as hard as I can to see how the power comes back.
As I more than half expected, with focus I can see the roots surrounding the golem's hooves draw the tarnished gold component of the island's mana from the ground and into the construct, restoring it's protective aura. The golem's return swing, which I really should have seen coming, takes me full in the chest. Already being full of mana from Sclamhaire's work just moments ago my armor absorbs very little of the impact taking most of it on the armor itself. What little impact my armor did absorb is enough to immediately pop my burning wings from my back to vent the excess energy.
I'm lifted off the ground for the second time and flung for distance. I crash through the wall of one of the still standing buildings, and then thankfully another wall before I hit the ground with a crash. The last thing I need is another building to fall on me. My armor finishes venting the small amount of excess energy it had absorbed before I hit the ground, my armor's wings collapsing into my back plate in the air.
Note to self, work on being able to view mana in detail while still being aware of everything around me.
My everything hurts. I'm pretty sure that I'm covered in bruises, some of which must reach bone. Bruises that are already fading, fortunately. If it had hit me just a little bit higher I'd probably have a broken nose even through my hood and mask. I'm still smiling though. Even though I took one hell of a hit for it I still finally have an idea of how to kill this thing.
Or at least get rid of it.
In Greek myth Heracles fought a giant, who's name I can't remember right now, who he couldn't harm or even overpower. The giant explained that he was a son of Gaia, the earth. Because of that, Gaia protected him and he gained strength and healed faster than he could be injured as long as he touched the ground, rendering him functionally immortal. The utter stupidity of explaining your powers to an enemy aside, Heracles' solution was to pick the giant up and squeeze him to death before hanging the corpse on a tree so that the giant never touched the ground.
My problem is basically the same, and while I can't pick the golem up and crush it in a bear hug, maybe I can do something similar. The only issue is it's too well anchored for my TK to overcome.
At least while standing still.
I noticed that every time it takes a step it has to reroot itself. Meaning in mid-stride at least one leg isn't holding it to the ground. In a charge, which it had done several times, there will be moments where it won't be touching the ground at all. The golem's resonant roar, and subsequent thudding sound that I could hear even through the muffling effect of the snow, tells me that I might just be about to get my chance. The timing will have to be precise, but I can't think of any other realistic options for victory here.
I push myself to my feet with a groan. I never would have thought that I'd consider troll healing too slow, but right now it seems to be taking forever. I move away from the building I've been thrown through, stiffly at first but loosening up as I move and my regeneration does its work.
To pull this off I need to see the thing coming at a fair distance away to have any chance at the timing. At the same time holding still just invites the island to try and cocoon me in roots and vines, which doesn't sound like much fun. Not to mention I just don't want to be laying where it expects me to be when it catches up. That very much sounds like giving it a free shot.
Which it does not need.
I clearly made the right move as moments later the building collapses as the minotaur golem crashes through the wall I've just been through myself. It takes a moment for the bulls skull eye sockets, with their burning green light to lock onto me, then it charges again.
I move Sclamhaire into a basic guard position in between me and the onrushing mass of bone and plant life, just in case. Otherwise I hold my ground, watching it's stride and pulling back my bow string. I pull the string back further and further, packing as much mana as I possibly can into what will no doubt be my greatest exercise of raw telekinetic power to date.
I have only seconds to catch the rhythm of its stride. Closer than I probably should have let it get, I let go of the string. Right as it's back hoof comes off the ground, but before it's forward hoof lands, the roots of both just barely touching the ground, it abruptly changes course upwards. The mana rushing out of me leaves me feeling faint, and I drop to one knee as the bone golem soars upwards in a parabolic arc that will hopefully see it land somewhere in the sea, far from the island. Hopefully it will run out of power long before it can find its way back into the Genius Loci's sphere of influence.
Even if it doesn't though, I'm hoping that getting back will still take long enough that it won't be an issue. Sclamhaire plants into the ground, and she once again lives up to her name, devouring the tarnished gold energy that floods through the island, rapidly refilling my network with life energy. I have no idea how long I have to keep fighting, and even though I can last far longer than most, I still doubt that I can last forever.
Thanks to Sclamhaire, my network rapidly reaches capacity and stretches just that little bit further I like to feel when I feed. I pull her free of the island before I overfill by too much, and come back to my feet. The bruises from the first golem have vanished with the influx of mana, any feeling of physical exhaustion washed away with them.
At the moment I'm hoping that I wasn't attacked until sundown because for some reason daylight interferes with whatever power the island is using for all of this. That way I only have to keep fighting until dawn, and then get off the island before sundown again.
If I'm wrong... I'm not really sure what I'll do. Which isn't a good thing, but not something I'm going to worry about until it becomes an issue.
From opposite sides of the colony, two more roars like the one the bone golem made sound out across the island. From the still falling snow the skeletal horde emerges, having finally caught up with me, and the island's botanical minions are no doubt not far behind.
Clearly even if I'm right this is going to be a looooong night.