Chapter 256 - The Desert of Forgotten Weapons ( Part 2 )

The first sword came to life.

Then the second one did.

And then all thousand of them.

Standing at the edge of the buried battlefield, Jennie Queens saw an army which had been dead for several centuries decide to take a new look at its life.

Hundreds of dead warriors rose from the black soil. Their helmets hid the lifeless faces behind them. Broken spears were dragging across the ground. Swords and shields were scraping, creating a terrible metallic symphony.

There were crimson lights burning inside their empty eye sockets. They weren’t burning the glow of life, but something much colder, older and prepared.

Jennie cast a glance at the broken dagger in her left hand.

The weapon was barely worth to be called a dagger. Its blade had become chipped, its tip bent and its handle could literally break into pieces if Jennie would grip it too hard. It looked like something a farmer would use to cut ropes, but not like a warrior’s weapon to battle the risen dead with.

Then Jennie looked back at the army of corpses.

"All right, before anyone does something stupid, I would like to remind that I am having a pretty bad day today."

The dead warriors raised their weapons.

"Apparently, that’s a no."

The battlefield erupted.

Hundreds of warriors attacked at once. Their motions were awkward and strange, as if their bodies were controlled by something which had a quite vague idea about the correct motion of limbs. But what they lacked in grace, they made up for in numbers.

Jennie started running.

She jumped sideways as the spear pierced the soil, where she was standing just a moment ago. Sword swept past her shoulder, stirring her hair in its way. Jennie ducked under a rusted halberd, pushed the fallen shield away and slipped between the corpses before their weapons would trap her.

Jennie could not afford to battle them separately. Even if every corpse would be slower than her, there were just too many of them for her to handle. With her right hand useless, she could not use the sword techniques which would make her nearly untouchable before.

A rusty blade sliced towards her face.

Jennie tilted her head. The sword passed her by just by a finger’s width. She plunged her dagger into the knee of the corpse, twisted the blade and used it as a stepping stone. The armor of the fallen warrior broke under her weight, spreading metal pieces all over the battlefield.

Then the ground started shaking.

Not under Jennie’s feet, but under everything.

A deep grinding noise rumbled across the buried army, so powerful that even the corpses stopped their movements. It was not a sound of steps or lightning, but of something huge and old stirring from the sleep, something which was sleeping under the battlefield longer than any man can remember.

Jennie landed on the pile of broken shields.

"...Please tell me that’s an earthquake."

The earth cracked open.

Something huge was stirring beneath the battlefield. Rows of corpses fell down as the ground rose underneath them. Swords, shields, spear heads and armor pieces were dragged into the crack, swallowed by the darkness which was swallowing everything, including the red lights of the dead.

Then the creature crawled out from the crack.

Jennie forgot to breathe.

That was a centipede. Describing it as giant would be an insult to the word.

Its body spread across the battlefield like a living fortress, each part being larger than a carriage. Thousands of swords, shields, spearheads and pieces of armor were fused together in order to create an armored body of the creature. Thousands of legs were long and jointed swords stabbing into the ground with each step the creature took.

Some parts of the body were covered with ancient bronze shields. Other parts had greatswords in an armor of scales. Some other parts consisted of such old and rusty weapons that one could hardly recognize their original forms.

The head of the creature resembled a monstrous helmet with a rotating crown of weapons. Underneath that crown, a narrow crimson eye opened up. That eye was burning with nothing but cold hunger and merciless patience of the creature which had been waiting for the prey for a very long time.

Dead warriors started crawling towards the creature. Their weapons tore themselves from their owners’ hands. Each sword, shield and spear rose up into the air and rushed towards the creature.

The centipede absorbed them.

It grew larger.

Jennie stared.

"So the battlefield wasn’t an army."

The legs of the creature scratched the ground.

"It was a buffet."

The Thousand-Blade Centipede screamed. It was a thousand swords scraping across rock at the same time—a tearing sound, like the very weave of the world was being shredded.

Then it charged.

Jennie barely managed to get out of the way.

Its head collided with the hill she was standing on, crushing tons of ancient armor. She dove away as it ripped through the earth with its blade-filled body, shattering pieces of metal everywhere. One of them grazed her cheek. Another ripped through the fabric of her coat.

She landed hard, somersaulted over a shoulder, and staggered up coughing dust.

It turned. Every segment of its body turned with a terrifying speed.

Jennie started running.

She sprinted between two huge statues, while the creature was destroying both of them without slowing. Stone crumbled around her as she vaulted over a toppled column and ducked under a tipped-over slab just as the monster was sweeping across the battle field.

One of its segments collided with the stone.

It shattered the pillar.

Jennie was sent flying into the ground. Sharp pain ripped across her ribs. She gritted her teeth and forced herself back up.

"Right. That’s definitely not going to be a good idea to fight it head-on."

She learned something vital in her journey across the Celestial Battlefield.

Power has weight. Wounds carry stories. Weapons pick their owners.

And, apparently, ancient monsters care nothing about people’s personal spaces.

The centipede moved forward. Jennie summoned a small gust of wind and hurled it in the creature’s face. The air impacted the rotating weapons on its head. Several of the blades shifted position.

There was a gap.

Jennie’s eyes became focused. Right there.

She moved forward, casting a wind magic spell into her left arm. The spell created a swirl of dust and tiny fragments of metal on the ground. She hurled the broken dagger.

It flew through the air and cut into the gap between the shields. The blade pierced it. A line of dark liquid formed under the armor of the creature.

The centipede screamed.

Jennie smiled. "Ah-ha! Looks like you’re not invincible."

The smile didn’t last one second.

Its head pivoted. The shields protecting its eye started rotating in opposite directions. The weapons from its body disassembled, reorganized and formed a new structure.

The dagger disappeared under a fresh layer of armor.

The wound closed.

Jennie’s smile disappeared.

"...Sure. Why not?"

Its head whipped in her direction. The armor split open and hundreds of blades stabbed out.

Jennie dived behind a rock as swords were impaling the earth around her. One of them slashed through the edge of her sleeve. Another passed so close to her ear that she could feel the movement of the air.

She peeked around the rock.

The centipede was changing. Its upper segments reformed into the shields, while the lower segments turned into blades, extending out like the teeth of a great saw.

It was adapting to her attack. No—it was learning from it.

Every weapon in its body belonged to someone who had fought here. Every shield defended a warrior. Every blade was used to kill.

This monster was not just wearing their weapons. It was using their experience.

Jennie swallowed. "Great. Now I’m fighting a history textbook with legs."

The centipede rammed its head into the rock. Stone exploded.

Jennie jumped away, but one of the blades grabbed her coat and knocked her off balance. She fell into the ground, rolled down the slight slope, and hit a buried shield with her shoulder.

Her right hand was throbbing helplessly by her side.

For a horrible second she remembered how easily she could once win this fight. Excalibur would cut through its armor. Leviathan would crush its balance with the power of the ocean. Tempest would rip its body apart. Eclipse would let her disappear into its blind spots. Gram would answer her rage with violence.

Five Divine Swords. Five solutions she no longer had.

Jennie shut her eyes for a second. Then she opened them.

"Stop comparing yourself to the person who had those swords."

Her voice sounded strange amidst the chaos—either because she was talking to herself or because she needed to hear it.

"You’re Jennie Queens. You’ve got one broken dagger, one useless hand and a really bad sense of self-preservation."

She pushed herself back up.

"And you’ll have to make it work."