Black Magus

Leary, the Faithful.

***

There would come a time in every war when I would have to remove myself from the battlefield. A non-commissioned officer was I, a mirror to the officers at my side. But not just any non-comm. I was the Noctis Marshal. My station was too high to lead from the front - at least until things got bad enough to call one of us in to destroy. Standing beside the Abyssal Regent and Praefectus Noctis, ensuring my non-comms had everything they needed to lead from the front - that was my role. Yet, here, in this forge of Legionnaires, the order of operations was reversed. And yet, they were not.

In any realm save perhaps Maru, we of the Elven Devil's Troupe would be the first to arrive. We would be the first to explore. Experience. To learn. The first to judge or, more likely, be judged. I knew not if they would travel to lands we sundered to deliver Amun's final judgement or if they would fan out from our position like an Abyssal wake, exploring realms we'd never touched. I knew only that we would be the first to do all things in those realms, unexplored by us. Including war.

In this forge of legends - this demigod-producing factory - it was the same. We were the first. The first to suffer. To rise. The first to change. To dominate. There would be no legionnaires picking up behind us in this place, however, for we made it better for the proctors and instructors who would come behind us. There were no lands for our followers to expand upon either; for we made their homes for them. Even before we made homes for ourselves.

While they were not, the order of operations was reversed.

War. For us and us alone, war came in flavors. If some entity got into a conflict with me and used might, magic, skills, or cunning to bring me to an end, that was between me and them - a Solo War. If all the Troupe got involved, it would have no ties to the Legions or the Empire - a War Party. It was only in those cases where allies, assets, and other such things were threatened would the Legions get involved; for they were explorers above all else.

The order of operations was reversed.

We entered the Darkroom to see the wicked face of war grinning at us. Powerless as we were, we were forced to fight together as a team. To bond and grow as a unit. We gained power together and subsequently split to impose our will on this vast realm. And only now, at the tail-end of our year in the Darkworld, had we the strength, assets, and cunning needed to be the first to repay what was due.

It couldn't have come at a better time, for the change came slowly as the tide so often did. The fields of flowers spread across the land dried from the overbearing heat. The tug of gravity beneath my feet increased just a bit more. Howls and cackles of long-felled creatures spawned behind my train of bone. It was time for the crucible, and I was itching for it.

Much of the last month was spent traveling across the Bugdilk dominion, spreading destruction wherever I went and using the bones of my felled enemies to create vessels and skeletal minions to scout the lands in my stead. A great bone bridge to a flock of bony buzzards. An osseous obelisk into a train-mounted gimbaled spell cannon. Fields and mountains to railways and tunnels. The Grand Duchy of Kas was a different story. They were the neutral goblin nation of the Darkroom, set between our less powerful enemies and the adversarial superpowers in the distance, who acted as a barrier to the friendly nations in the furthest corners of the room. But we had little interest in them. Our interest was with those superpowers that had been observing us since we first entered, adapting to our abilities until it came time to face us in the crucible.

It wasn't until I came upon the border of the Oim Kingdom that I ordered a full stop. However, it was not because of the hulking vessel of bone that lulled in the sky - a vessel I did not create, though it was of good design. Even with realms 1.9 G's pulling on it, the skull, spine, and ribs of some long-forgotten leviathan hovered above and a head of me on propellers shaped like wishbones. Still, it was not why I paused. Nor was it the sight of pods and bone-encased capsules it released to fill the skies, each of them packed with arcane tech goblins. I paused because, finally, my prayers were answered.

My God was glorious indeed.

He had given me all I would ever need to thrive in war. My armor was augmented into my three cervical vertebrae and my five thoracic vertebrae; Rubber, Spike, and Silk mana were infused in my lumbar vertebrae for supreme movement; and the three fused, gravity-infused sacrum vertebrae granted me flight. My armaments were infused into my Volterum ribs, beam-infused sternum, shielded arms, and bladed fingers. I needed no tools, no weapons, no resources. But still, I would use them, for my God demanded nothing less.

With a mere thought, the 3 cervical vertebrae in my augmented spine blossomed to life, covering my head in a helmet reminiscent of a mushroom cap, while a devilish mask and goggles of bone congealed over my face. With my eyes bolstered and supplemented further by the networks, I turned my gaze to the growing clouds of black and green rain, wherein I spotted something tantalizing amidst the clouds.

"LOOK WHO IT IS, BYS! LITTLE LEARY'S ALL BLOWN UP! GAHAHAHAHA!"

That all-too-familiar voice grated against my ears and resonated in my bowls in ways that sent ripples through the divine materials comprising my nerves. My forearms responded readily to it, activating the shield mana in my bones to have them splinter through my skin, where it flattened and wove its shards into a pair of shields just as twin scimitars struck against them like lightning.

The resonance of adamantine on adamantine rattled the entirety of my skeleton, except in two places. The rubber vertebrae in my spine and the Volterum in my ribs. But I paid neither of them any mind, for my reunion with a goblin boasting hooped piercings and a mechanical eye was due.

"IT'S ME! RATTER!" Another twang reverberated down my arm with the words. Followed by another. "TAT!" And another. "TAT!" and more. "TAT! TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT…" On and on, Ratter swept and slashed, making my ribs tingle more and more until something wicked within me snapped.

The four claws of bone-infused metal clutched around my chest cracked to life, elongating into spider limbs that shot out with the force of a cannon. "…TAT- Ugh! Oho ho! My shoulders! My legs!

My! My, my..." Ratter grinned as he dangled from the end of my limbs, raising his scimitars high and wide. "You're gonna have to try harder than that, Leary, by!" he swiped, clanging his swords against my armored neck. "I survived the revive this time!" He shouted, slashing into my ribs. "And all times before!" He screamed, swiping at my legs. "I'm like you!" He swung. "I'm arcane!" He thrusted. "It's insane!" He swiped as he had swiped so many times before, bringing the vibrancy of my ribs from red to orange, and then yellow in ways that saw something giddy meld with the little devil inside me.

I lashed out at Ratter's face, losing myself enough to find my bony digits gripped around the remains of his snout and squeezing more. Thus, I continued where my instincts left off, squeezing and pulling to flip him between the ground and me before I unleashed everything.

"GYAAAAA!"

My scream released a violent stream of vibrant yellow energy - a beam - slamming through Ratter's chest to bore into the ground beneath us. But I knew that wasn't enough. He was still down there, in a pit of rubble and smoke, scrambling like the rat he was. But before I could give chase, I was surrounded by a buzzing volley of fire, ice, lightning, and steel.

I tried not to block it, for I am Leary, the Faithful. I showed my faith in my God and stood true until a hulking suit of metal appeared amidst the chaos. Boasting a comparatively tiny hobgoblin head, it raised its arm and was promptly kicked back as its arm erupted in flames, launching more than the intended cannonball ball at me with great speed. Again, I tried not to block it. Yet it did not hit me. Light and fire erupted from the ball just as it arced in front of me. The feeling was numb, distant; overshadowed by the winds roaring over me.

Fueling my 3rd, 2nd, and 1st thoracic vertebrae with power, I let my body relax as skeletal wings sprouted from my back, chased by a web of umbral muscle and a skin of metallic feathers composed of the same osseous-adamantine nature as my bones.

Banking around the formation, I put my Uma into action while I infused the rest of my thoracic augmentations to reinforce my armor with scales and emit a protective barrier 5 meters around me, giving me some reprieve. Though it would not last long. The constant pangs against the barrier saw my ribs lose their luster, draining my energy to a dull red glow before I ascended for the counterattack.

It came with the muffled shot of my spell cannon in the distance. The concentrated mass of lightning mana ascended as I dove, outstretching my hands to point all my fingers toward the enemy as I unleashed everything within me.

"I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS! TOO LONG I'VE BEEN WAITING! FEEL THE WRATH OF LEARY OR BOW TO THE MIGHT OF YOUR GOBLIN GOD-EMPEROR!"

My frenzied words drowned out the clusters of metal-encased bone shards I sent raining down on the enemy. But a few were undeterred by either my words or the hailstorm of bullets. The hobgoblin mech raised its barreled arms as I banked and weaved, spitting out my fingertips against the wave of spitting fire. But it wasn't enough. Thus I adjusted. Five and five shots were recast in favor of pairs that smacked into the hobgoblin with a slow rhythm while the deafening cracks of my spell cannon and the screams of frying goblins crept closer and closer to him, filling the air with Smoky Bones until the last agent-filled shell ignited the smoke in a fanatical explosion.

But still, it was not enough.

I cursed at the hobgoblin mech and the ship of bone steadily raining goblins armed with mechanical wands and power armor. That anger intensified as I banked around once more, fueling my sorcery with something fiendish as I charged madly into the brute.

A cannonball could not have impacted as greatly as I did the hobgoblin. With his cackling visage entrenched in my grip, we tumbled and tossed while the wicked bone within me poured through my charged ribs and out of my arm like a solid streak of black lightning. He howled with laughter as he fried from the Volterum discharge, and then panicked as the wickedness seeped into him, petrifying his skin into a statue of metallic bone that would remain as a warning throughout the ages.

Therein marked the start of my crucible. After that, I continued past the Oim border and the mountains straddling them, seeing the fault that Ratter must have emerged from on the other side. Upwards of a tenday were spent crawling back and forth, killing everything within. Filling it in with rubble; filling my bone worm with bones to create bone bots to scout this foreign environment around me while my badger tanks finished off any survivors.

I waited until the start of the Crucible's second month for Ratter, thinking that if I truly killed him, it'd be nice to kill him again before I found his boss. I never found him, but to the south, I found traces of Reina's brood, so I pushed my bone boys eastward. That was not to say I was dismayed, however. I was quite entertained the entire time. The machinations installed by Iris and Reina allowed me to check up on the others' progress across the Darkroom in real time.

The Mother of Flesh wasn't bound to pillage Oim like I was. She was focused on the Black Brood's expansion. An isle of flesh-crafted creatures within the inland sea to the south housed her Brood. At the bottom of a deep pit, they gestated and spread beneath the seafloor, acting like mycelium to colonize the bedrock of every continent. Iris was doing the same thing with little success; as her creatures required industrial waste and scrap metal to form their habitats. Thus, she elected to conduct surveillance and provide support after building a hive for herself on the northern coast of Freysia. With Ratter nowhere to be found, however, I moved deeper into Oim, wherein I came upon a vast lair, home to an arcane, highly intelligent osseous warg. And Ratter.

He appeared when the beast was most distracted, and I was preoccupied elsewhere in its lair. He launched some type of bone-weakening poison into its chamber, weakening it enough for him to steal its strength. Then, he came for me. Him and his minions.

They ripped through trunks and boulders alike to reach me, all while slinging a rapid slew of spells from their mech-wands and throwing arcane grenades with levels of accuracy even I was impressed by.

With twin axes conjured from my fingertips, I engaged with levels of zeal only I could muster. For the first time in my life, I let my lumbar augmentations shine as brightly as everything else. I bounced and snaked throughout the forested hills with reckless abandon, caring not for stone or wood; dirt or water, as I impaled goblins and their machinations alike, like an adamantine sea urchin shot from a cannon. I bounced, leaped, and darted unceasingly for weeks on end, ensuring to leave strings of adamantine silk in the wake of my travels to halt up those who lived; though not for long.

Those who lived soon fell. Yet others got away. Ratter always got away. Although I could not despise him for it. Our fights were always riveting. He had proven a capable rival, if not a cowardly adversary, always giving me the slip behind the corpses of his minions; always hiding when I slayed his armies. He led me over the southwestern hills and across the mountains to skate across the glaciers near the Darkroom's southern wall, using his minions as sacrificial pawns to make himself stride that much further, that much faster. He supersonically sprinted across the wide fjord that fed the Great Oim Sea and darted north, back into the tundra and forests, using scavenged mech-wands and arcane javelins to destroy my vehicles as he danced across the water.

Up and around the small peninsula at the opposite end of the Great Oim Sea - over 2,000 kilometers of rough terrain - I chased Ratter. Throughout the 2nd month and through to The Crucible's 3rd, my Boneworm Train chased me, chasing Ratter, absorbing the fields of bone to repair itself, build rails, and construct more cannons to protect itself from the ever-increasing swarm of goblins stampeding alongside it. But still, it was not enough. He brought me to the end of the line and retreated, giving my train nowhere to churn; and I could not chase him, for we received orders to recall on the 1st of the last month.

The invaders were being invaded.