Erage #9 Werewolves

Xi Cì walks forward towards the pack of five werewolves. Sure, Untoltelage and his apprentices are equal to the number of werewolves. With Xi Cì on their side, Untoltelage outnumbers the werewolves.

Those numbers are meaningless. Only Untoltelage and Xi Cì are even worth counting in the balance of a battle. And both of them are worth more than a single individual. But then again, werewolves are notoriously hard to kill. They specialize in shapeshifting and body-enhancing magic for quick healing, and super strength, speed, weight and size.

Untoltelage pulls some seeds out of his pocket and splits them between both of his hands. Xi Cì does seemingly nothing to prepare for the battle. She is sort of a subtle magic-wielded. She doesn’t use much external or flashy magic. She doesn’t shoot fire or command the earth. Instead, she simply increases her own physical prowess. This subtlety makes her especially dangerous. It is hard to tell what she is capable of when one does not see what she is doing.

Despite her magic not being very showy, she loves the attention. Maybe this is why she doesn’t use external magic. She doesn’t want anyone to pay attention to anything but her. She would grow jealous of her own fire.

Another thing that sometimes has an influence in battle. Xi Cì is of a foreign ethnicity. Like, out of this world or something. She does not have an ethnicity native to Erage. Untoltelage doesn’t know where she comes from. Xi Cì’s eyes are sort of squinted and her eyelids look like they stretched to the sides. Untoltelage has seen this sort of person only rarely and never in Erage.

This is one of the reasons hat Untoltelage believes that Xi Cì is likely an Egocentric. But she might not be, Xi Cì has never displayed any knowledge of surviving after death. There are a few other possibilities. She physically traveled between worlds as Untoltelage sometimes does when trying to escape the Banshee. This seems unlikely because iti s very difficult to learn to do. Unless, unless she’s a Psyche. Psyche’s are very good at physical traveling between worlds.

Untoltelage would prefer to not consider the possibility that Xi Cì is a Psyche. It seems unlikely as he has never had his Ego consumed by Xi Cì. The idea that she might learn to do that is something he would prefer not to acknowledge this idea. Especially given that she has killed him by “accident” five times and on purpose once.

Ah, but this is no time to be considering the mysteries of Xi Cì. There is a battle to be fought.

Three of the werewolves charge at Untoltelage. The two others go after Xi Cì. Untoltelage thinks that the only reason that the werewolves would appropriate more of their numbers to take him down instead of Xi Cì is because they are suspicious of his apparent young age as a nine-year old child.

Untoltelage leaves leaves the pit of a fruit on the ground as he runs to the left and Xi Cì runs to the right. The werewolves are forced to split into their two groups to follow their respective quarries.

The seeds in Untoltelage’s right hand sprout into vines that rise out through the cracks between his fingers. They grow long and flexible like multiple whips. He swings his right closed fist, which sends the whip-like vines snapping through the air. This doesn’t cause the werewolves to pull back as another person might have. Instead they charge right into the whipping vines and let themselves get slapped by the vines. It doesn’t do much. They might get bruised but that about it.

Untoltelage hopes he survives long enough for his deceptions to come into effect. Everything really is so much harder when he’s a child. Less magic. Less natural physical ability. Incredibly fragile.

The werewolves have too much momentum. He could trip them, but he wouldn’t be able to get out of their way in time. Well, tripping is the best he can do right now.

Since the werewolves didn’t bother dodging his vines, he causes the vines to hold the werewolves’ legs together. It doesn’t work. The werewolves continue moving, breaking through the vines and barely even slow.

Untoltelage drops the sprouted seeds from his right hand and jumps boosted with air magic. The jump sends him above the werewolves as they leap to try and reach him. The seeds Untoltelage has just dropped to the ground reach up with their already sprouted vines to grab Untoltelage and pull him back down to the ground.

The werewolves are already in the air with jumps that were aiming for a much higher target. They soar above Untoltelage’s head. This is Untoltelage’s chance. The werewolves are temporarily unable to move according to their own will. But they will reach the ground in only a few moments.

But Untoltelage doesn’t have any good way to kill a werewolf. These people are nearly impossible to kill with their magically-enhanced healing. And they are too strong for him to restrain them with vines. But while he can’t hurt them, he can’t activate his deception while they are disoriented.

The pit of a fruit that he dropped earlier sprouts vines. The vines reach up to Untolelage’s height and assume his size and shape. Then the flesh of a fruit grows over the vines to give it the image of being Untoltelage. If one were to examine it, they would easily notice that it was not a real person. But with the paranoia common in Erage, anyone who saw it would be just as wary of it as if it were a real person.

In battle, however, no one will take the time to realize that this is not Untoltelage. But this is also a distraction. Untoltelage can’t win a fight with only deception. Unfortunately, he lacks the power, the reservoirs of magic, the fuel to do anything harming to a werewolf. So the only thing to do is run them out of their magic.

If they waste all of their body-enhancing magic, then they won’t be able to heal. Their supernatural strength, speed and healing all share the same source—body-enhancing magic. So if he could get them to waste their magic in a surge of speed, strength or healing, they wouldn’t be able to heal anymore, right? Wrong. They also gain strength, speed, size and weight from their shapeshifting magic. So anything that wastes their strength and speed would drain Shapeshift and body-enhancing. That means the quickest way to run them out of healing is to cause bodily harm. But that’s stupid. That’s everyone’s tactic. That is how you kill anyone. Do enough harm and they will eventually run out of healing power.

Untoltelage has already decided that he can’t do enough damage to run them out of healing, so that is not going to work. He will have to run them out of their magic by making them waste strength and speed. Unfortunately, the level of speed and strength that these werewolves are currently at are already more than enough to deal with anything Untoltelage can throw at them.

The werewolves have landed. They turn to face Untoltelage. But he is gone. In his place is the vine structure that is covered with the flesh of fruit to look like Untoltelage. Of course, the werewolves assume this to be him. So that’s what they go after. So much work, so much effort to form a duplicate that is just going to be instantly decimated. That was wasteful of him. He probably could have just formed anything vaguely humanoid in shape and it would have drawn the attention of the werewolves.

The three werewolves leap at the duplicate. It really is a shame for such a beautiful work to be so quickly destroyed. Maybe he could… the vine duplicate jumps out of the way. The pit of the fruit is hidden inside of the dupicate’s left foot. As long as that stays intact, it should continue to function. The duplicate could be completely destroyed, but Untoltelage can still regrow it from that pit. Problem? That still takes plant magic, and he will eventually run out. Just doing as much as he has to form this duplicate has used up about quarter of his plant magic.

The werewolves chase the vine duplicate. Of course, they’re faster than the duplicate. But the duplicate isn’t really alive, so it can afford to be reckless. Using earth magic,  Untoltelage roots the duplicate in place, stopping its momentum. Then the duplicate charges towards the werewolves. But now it’s too close. With impossible agility that comes only because the duplicate doesn’t really have joints or bones and bend in ways unnatural to a human, it slips between the werewolves that are too caught up in their momentum to turn around immediately.

The duplicate looks ridiculous when it passes the werewolves. Its “head” is at its hip-level while its right “leg” rises above its head. Both hands curling on the backs of the werewolves to give push itself off them and away. If the werewolves were paying attention, they might have realized that despite the distortionist display, the left foot of the vine duplicate slid across the ground. The reason is that Untoltelage wants the fruit pit to be touching the ground as much as possible so that he can’t pull the pit out of the duplicate and hide it underground at a moments notice.

That fruit pit is key to many of his advanced deceptions and tricks. It allows him teleportation and cloning. It was also a conjured fruit pit, so it took about a quarter of his magic to produce when he made it last week. So far, he hasn’t had to make a replacement yet. But he should probably make a back-up. Untoltelage just hates being low on magic. He needs to realize that if he doesn’t have aids for his magic, he is going to ruin out of magic a lot quicker. Be low on magic for a few days to produce some tools that will allow him to use magic more efficiently for many days to come.

The werewolves turn around to face his duplicate. The werewolf in the middle—he is slightly larger than the rest with black fur instead of gray—he snarls at glances at the two werewolves beside him. They nod in response. Untoltelage isn’t quite sure how they are communicating, but he is sort of impressed. These people must have been working together for a long time if they have learned to communicate non-verbally or at least in some sort of secret language.

The werewolves on the sides run past the duplicate. At first, Untoltelage is worried that they realize his trick and are coming after him. But the werewolves stop and turn to face the duplicate. They’ve got his duplicate surrounded. Untoltelage sighs in relief. He is hiding in the branch of a nearby tree. He only could escape up here unnoticed because the werewolves were momentarily airborne from their overshot jump. Even then, only the more obvious presence of his duplicate kept them from finding his poor hiding place.  

The werewolves slowly close in on the duplicate. They’re being patient and intend to prevent running past their prey again. Untoltelage doesn’t want his duplicate ruined. But he would much rather that his duplicate be destroyed a thousand times than die himself. Unfortunately, they will find him soon after they destroy his duplicate. So he’s just going to have prevent them from destroying his duplicate. He could make another one, but that would take another quarter of his plant magic. Instead, he just needs to… the duplicate sinks into the ground.

It’s kind of strange. He specializes his earth magic into moving around himself. But the duplicate is almost a part of him, in that his self-centered earth magic specialization transfers to the duplicate as if it were him. He wonders what other self-centered skills and abilities can transfer to his vine duplicates.

Untoltelage needs to act fast. His duplicate has escaped the werewolves by sinking underground, but that will puts them on high alert. They will be looking for him, they will soon find him. Luckily, they should be looking for him in and on the ground, not in the trees.

Untoltelage hears a growl behind him. What? The three werewolves he is fighting are still on the ground. He can see them all. Untoltelage is scared. Could it be possible that one of the two werewolves that went after Xi Cì is behind him right now? It doesn’t make any sense. It is possible that they defeated Xi Cì, but more likely is that they just stopped fighting her for some reason. Untoltelage finds it hard to believe that any of these werewolves could have defeated Xi Cì.

So Untoltelage goes against his instincts of staying hidden and ignores the growling behind him. He ignores the breathing on his back. He ignores the scratching on the bark of the branch he is sitting on. Instead, he focuses on the fruit pit in the left foot of the vine duplicate that is submerged in the ground.

Untoltelage jumps from his branch aiming to land where the vine duplicate went underground. The werewolves were not expecting him to come from above, which allows him to hit the ground. Oh, but he doesn’t hit it so much as he sinks into it. And the same time as he sinks under, his vine duplicate rises up and out of the ground. He sends the vine duplicate running towards the tree he just jumped from. He is underground now. He can’t see the duplicate. He waits for about two seconds, then he rises back out of the ground.

As he suspected, his duplicate didn’t even reach the tree. It is ripped apart into a mangled mess of green vines. Hopefully the fruit pit is still intact. The werewolves look at the “corpse” with a confused expression, but they’re confusion turns to anger when they see Untoltelage behind them.

Untoltelage looks at the branch where he had been hiding. There is no one there. Whoever was behind him must have moved. But he doesn’t see who it was or could be. Untoltelage still has a handful of seeds in his left hand. He causes the seeds to sprout vines. Untoltelage realizes that he hasn’t been fighting to kill. He has been stalling. He has been trying to buy time for Xi Cì to finish off these monsters. But he can’t count on Xi Cì to help him. She is probably too engrossed in her battle to care whether anyone else lives or dies.

Untoltelage can’t fight a drawn out battle to run the werewolves out of their healing. They’re adults. They have more magic than him. The three werewolves run after him, enraged by his deception. They have now completely abandoned their strategy and patience. They are reckless and charging.

Untoltelage has whip-like vines hanging from his left hand. He continues to cause the vines to grow. They snake across the ground towards the fruit pit by the base of the tree. Untoltelage distracts the werewolves from paying attention to his vines by running towards them. Of course, this drives the werewolves into a rage. They close distance to him. Untoltelage spins to his right, swinging his left arm in a wide arc in front of him. The vines haven’t reach the fruit pit yet, but his swinging send the vines slamming into the legs of the werewolves, tripping them.

Untoltelage sends his vines reaching for his fruit pit. Connect. He feels his vines grasp the pit, holding it like a ball in the palm of his hand. He expends a second quarter of his plant magic. A surge of energy shoots through his vines into the fruit pit, growing it into a duplicate of himself. The duplicate sprouts from the pit. The duplicates left foot is attached to the vines that come from his hand. That’s going to make it hard to move. He pushes the fruit pit up into the duplicates left hand.

Now Untoltelage and his duplicate are nearly a mirror of each other. Both sprouting large vines from their left hand connecting them. Now, for his last deception. The werewolves see him bring back a duplicate where they killed his previous duplicate. Ah, but Untoltelage sends the pit through the vines connecting them. The werewolves claw at Untoltelage’s face. But he doesn’t bleed. He smiles at the werewolves because his deception works.

The werewolves, impatient, rip off his head. But his head falls to the ground, falling apart into vines. Vines sprout from his neck and shoulders tightening into a ball shape to replace his head. Untoltelage’s punches his left arm into the shocked werewolf’s hip, as he can’t reach much higher than that.

The vines conneting Untoltelage to his clone disconnect from him and instead connect his clone to the werewolf’s hip. Or, it was his clone. Untoltelage slumps to the ground and splits apart into vines. Untoltelage strands by the tree. He switched places with his duplicate by teleporting to his fruit pit through the connected vines. Then he sends the fruit pit back to his clone that is now standing next to the werewolves and seeds back to his left hand.

Untoltelage had spent his third quarter of plant magic for that teleport. Now, he expends all of his earth magic in one blast to sink the werewolf as deep into the ground as he can. The werewolf falls through the ground about thirty feet before Untoltelage runs out of earth magic, the ground solidifies, trapping the werewolf underground in stone. Worse than paralyzed, he’s practically petrified.

The fruit pit is now deep underground, but Untoltelage still has a vine from his left hand connecting him to the fruit pit in the werewolf trapped thirty feet underground. The other two werewolves aren’t too happy about this. The big black-furred alpha werewolf is still there with a gray werewolf. They strike at the vine that sinks into the ground, physically disconnecting Untoltelage from the fruit pit that is in the ground.

But it is still his fruit pit and he still has a quarter of plant magic left. He defeated a single werewolf, but the werewolf will likely escape before the day is over. Not any time soon, but the werewolf isn’t dead. It took this long just for Untoltelage to defeat one of the three werewolves. He is going to lose this battle. Ah, but now he contemplates what it could have he heard and felt on the branch in the tree. A growl. More than that. Someone was there, breathing on him, scratching at the bark.

Suddenly, it makes sense. Xi Cì has already won her fight. She is simply watching, waiting for him to finish his. He could probably get her to finish this fight for him. Xi Cì loves to fight. That might be exactly what she is waiting for, an invitation. Untoltelage knows not to interfere in Xi Cì’s fights, maybe she assumes that she should apply the same courtesy to him as well.

Untoltelage suddenly loses the will to fight. How can he find this invigorating when there is no chance of loss. He can just call in Xi Cì to save him. The adrenaline and fear of death that has kept him going so far cease as he finds himself feeling perfectly secure. It’s a terrible feeling. The feeling of safety. He shouldn’t feel safe. Xi Cì is unpredictable. And he hasn’t asked for her help yet. He could still die, but even death seems more of an inconvenience than anything to really fear. Okay, well that’s an exaggeration. It is a lot more than a mere inconvenience. It means he has to go back to being a newborn infant. It means he has to relearn all of this magic. The first fifteen to twenty years are always the worst times during Erage. Physically weak, magically incompetent, lacking artifacts, no friends.

Here come the werewolves. Untoltelage actually feels bored now. What does it matter how dangerous these werewolves are? They can’t do anything to him. He feels immortal. He isn’t, but he feels unkillable, untouchable. Just that safety net he can call on if he can’t beat this fight.

It makes all of his efforts seem meaningless. Like, he doesn’t even need to try, if he fails, Xi Cì will succeed. But now that he is calm, he is also thinking clearly. The key to defeating these werewolves seems so easy. The alpha leaps for Untoltelage. Untoltelage lazily steps out of the way. And presses his hand against the werewolf as he hits the ground. The creature bursts into flame. This won’t kill it, that’s for certain, but it will certainly drain them of their healing. They will still have plenty of healing left, but fire it doesn’t take much to catch a werewolf on fire.

The werewolf, fur black from char in addition to its naturally dark hue, rolls on the dirt, squashing the flames. While the alpha rolls on the ground, his buddy crawls towards Untoltelage hesitantly. It’s trying to get close enough to pounce without being close enough to be burned.

Untoltelage ignores the werewolf that is about to pounce for now. He throws his sprouted seeds from his left hand to land next to the alpha that is now getting back on its feet. He doesn’t want to waste plant magic on this because he needs to save that for his fruit pit. He uses his water magic to pull the vines across the ground. The vines are wriggling across the ground of a large green spider. They aren’t doing anything dangerous yet. But it is enough to make the alpha to back away.

The alpha’s buddy pounces on Untoltelage. It’s jaw clasps around Untoltelage’s neck. It’s fine. He can survive one fatal wound, but it will drain him of all of his body-enhancing magic to heal it. He places his palm against the werewolf on top of him. The werewolf catches fire. But it doesn’t let go. It continues to claw at Untoltelage. Uh oh. It is supposed to flee. Um, let’s see. Untoltelage was going to save this for the alpha, but this is an urgent matter. He presses one hand against the ground and the other against the werewolf. He drains the rest of his plant magic to pull the fruit pit up top his hand that is on the ground. A powerful piercing vine sprouts from the pit, punching through Untoltelage’s hand holding the pit.

The vine strikes into the werewolf through the back of his hand that is pushing against the beast. Power surges through his hand and into the vine and it searches out the heart of the beast. The beast claws at Untoltelage more wildly then falls limp. That’s the last of his plant magic.

Only one werewolf left. But Untoltelage is wounded. Sure, he has healed his fatal wound on his neck, but he has bleeding claw marks on his chest. He lacks plant magic, earth magic, and body-enhancing magic. He still has air, fire, frost and water magic. Actually, that’s more than he thought he would have. He can work with this.

Untoltelage is struggling to push the werewolf corpse off of him when the weight of the alpha slams into him, sending him skidding along the ground. It shakes the dead werewolf off of him. But the alpha replaces that weight, pinning Untoltelage to the ground again.

Untoltelage light the alpha on fire. But taking after the example of his buddy, the alpha pushes through the pain and stays put. That’s fine. But Untoltelage is going to make that werewolf feel that fire more than ever.

Untoltelage conjures water, throwing it together with fire to make steam fly into werewolf’s face. But that’s just to distract the werewolf from the air he is conjuring in his flaming fur, fueling the flames with oxygen. Untoltelage uses frost magic to freeze the wet wolf face.  Finally, the wolf jumps off of Untoltelage and starts running away.

Untoltelage gets up from the ground. He is really hurt, but he can heal this over the course of a day or two. That fire burned him too. But it’s gone now. So is the werewolf.

“Are you going to finish that?” Xi Cì asks from the branch of the tree.

“No, he doesn’t even have a pack anymore.” Untoltelage says.

“Well, if you’re not going to…” Xi Cì says.

“Yes, you can finish him.” Untoltelage says.

Xi Cì giggles like a little girl and glides from tree to tree in pursuit of the alpha. She kind of half-way shapeshifts into a peacock to give her wings and feathers. Untoltelage walks over to the nearby trees, and knocks on them, trying to remember which tree he hid his apprentices in.

“Over here!” A muffled voice says from a large oak. Untoltelage walks over to the tree. “Alright, remember what I taught you. You should be able to get yourselves out of this tree.” Untoltelage says.

A despite it being an oak tree, a stems from a low branch and blooms into a peach. Then peach grows to the size of a small child. Untoltelage knows that’s how big it is because it falls off the tree and splits open to reveal Kekister. Three more peaches fall to the ground to release the rest of the apprentices.

“Oh, you look hurt.” Jostahim says.

“Not anything worse than I’ve already endured.” Untoltelage says.

“Where is Xi Cì?” Hyethra asks.

“She went hunting the alpha werewolf.” Untoltelage says, “It ran away once we kil-”

[Don’t Expect me to finish this anytime soon. This is definitely lower on my priorities than my more interesting stories like Occulturation].