The Oracle Paths

Norton roared with anger as he felt his precious fur being soiled with human blood. Ruby pouted indignantly as she was met with yet another punishment from Jake and scandalized stares from the other squad members.

She had nothing to do with this. These natives were really too brittle.

Everyone was focused on that soldier's accidental death rather than the barrier she had erected to save them from being knocked off the demon gorilla. Deep down, she felt Norton was thoroughly guilty of this crime. As soon as he had chosen to gallop at full speed in his bestial form, the mutant should have known that it would end up like this, taking ordinary humans on his back.

For the time being, if there was one person who was extra lucid about his condition, it was Trash. At his request, he had let himself be tied up by Carmin's whip to avoid such a fatal ending. The Vampire had squeezed a drop of blood from him out of gastronomic curiosity, but she had quickly lost interest in him after revealing a disheartened countenance.

Lily also tasted his blood by pricking his fingertip with one of her sharp fingernails, but her reaction proved to be even more raucous than her older sister's. Seized by a fit of giddiness, she retched a few times akin to a toddler eating spinach for the first time.

"It looks like you have the potential to live safely in Laudarkvik." Elduin nudged the teenager teasingly. "Odd, the Vampires seem to find your blood stale. Any idea why?"

Ignoring the answer, Trash shook his head, but if Jake wasn't busy leading the way he could have provided an explanation. The Oracle Scan had clearly mentioned that the orphan was also Half-Leprechaun.

So he wasn't human. Hence the indigestion.

"Though, I wouldn't recommend taking the confidence too much kid." Bhammod put him down without pulling any punches. Then pinching his hip as if to gauge the thickness of his rind he sussed mischievously, "I'm sure the Alghoul from earlier won't be so picky..."

Trash shuddered in horror, while the other players and natives present burst into laughter. While the group recovered from the soldier's gruesome death as they tormented the teenager, Jake and Norton were wreaking havoc as they swooped so close to the ground.

Especially Norton. His beastly form was so powerful and nimble for his size that every tree in his path was uprooted, while each of his strides caused the soft soil of the plains to cave in on their path, along with devastating landslides, which completely redefined the topography of the entire land.

Now that they were no longer trying to be inconspicuous, the battlefields separating them from the refugee convoy could sense them approaching from a great distance. Since they were moving faster than sound, those Lodunvals and Khinchods soldiers obviously couldn't hear them, but the vibrations in the ground ahead of them surpassed those of ten thousand galloping horsemen.

"My god... What is that!?" A badly wounded Lodunvalese soldier nearly pissed himself as he saw the titanic mutant gorilla leap over a small adjacent mountain that the beast had just climbed.

The Wengol who was about to finish him off with a thrust of his spear also froze at that moment, his suckers quivering as he sensed a danger out of all proportion to the ongoing battle. When the alien turned around, his three eyes popped out of his head.

"Holy sh-"

The Wengol warrior was smashed by a huge incoming palm before he could finish his sentence. A bloody octopus soup immediately soaked the plain, but the giant beast didn't even slow down to admire its handiwork. The soldier, who thought he was about to die, remained frozen in place, unable to digest the absurd scene that had just occurred.

In a few strides, a hundred Wengols were trampled with the same unbridled brutality, and alas, there were a few unlucky human soldiers among the victims. As such, Ruby's crimes no longer seemed so reprehensible...

Norton didn't want to waste any more time with these skirmishes. These soldiers had already planned to sacrifice themselves to save the refugees. If their group saved them all, only to realize that the civilians had been exterminated, their sacrifice would have been for nothing.

But more importantly, he had a strong sense of foreboding. Jake, who was flying right in front of him, complemented his work by taking out all the Wengols he could with his micro-telekinesis, but there were still more than half of them left after they had flown by.

Nevertheless, it was enough to even the odds. Now they just had to keep their fingers crossed that these Lodunvals would take advantage of this unexpected help to regain the upper hand.

Jake and Norton swallowed dozens of kilometers in an instant, thinning the ranks of three Khinchod regiments on the verge of achieving their respective victories. The Lodunvals bent on death were all in shock, but they kept fighting, willing to do anything to save a few more minutes for the civilians.

Still, Jake was soon troubled after passing their eighth skirmish. Gascon and the other soldiers showed the same lack of understanding.

"Where's the convoy?" Norton growled as he smashed a huge rock with his fist.

Jake frowned, but didn't answer right away.

"Seven kilometers ahead I see a battlefield with many caravans. Everyone is dead." He finally reported.

Norton snarled, but the Lodunvalese soldiers shook with despair at the news.

"How many, how many dead bodies are there? And the Khinchod army?" Gascon stammered, shaking like a leaf.

Jake put on a complicated expression and said,

"At least fifty thousand dead humans. About two thousand soldiers, the rest are civilians... Mostly old men, but I count a few children too. I don't see any Wengols. Not even a single corpse, nor any weapons."

"Fifty thousand..." Norton repeated thoughtfully. The convoy was supposed to have many more refugees than that.

The number of evacuated citizens was in the millions. Even after breaking up into several convoys to increase their chances of survival, there should have been at least ten times that number of civilians. Even assuming they had spontaneously scattered into smaller groups, they should have run into a few after all this time.

After all, most of them were just normal humans. It was impossible for them to outrun them in such a short time. The high proportion of old people suggested that this was a diversion to save the rest of the convoy, but then where had they gone?

As distressing as the news was, Gascon and the other officers, though pained, were also relieved to learn that there were 'only 50,000 casualties'. To them, this meant that all hope was not lost.

Then the meaning of the whole message finally sunk in and Norton exclaimed in dismay,

"No Wengols?!"

Deeply alarmed, the giant gorilla galloped at full speed in the direction pointed by Jake and they found out a few seconds later the extent of the bloodshed. It was a macabre scene worthy of the worst horror movies.

Bits of old men's brains as numerous as the blades of grass growing on the plain, enough blood to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool and enough length of intestine to tie up Norton itself. But there was no evidence of Wengol weapon wounds.

These aliens' weapons were recognizable. Because of their large size and powerful musculature, they wielded oversized weapons that matched them. Moreover, they used a marine organic alloy of their own, on which coral easily thrived. A Wengol spear or sword wound was not just very large, small pieces of broken coral were often found in the wounds, causing further damage.

There was no trace of these coral shrapnel in the wounds of these victims. If one had to be objective, these wounds looked like they were inflicted by the refugees themselves. Some faces were distorted with terror or grief, but many others had died with an elated smile. It was even more shocking when one saw this kind of expression on children.

Hovering slowly a few inches off the ground, Jake stared for a long time at the corpse of an already blue baby, nibbling a bloody piece of intestine with his gums. The infant had barely opened its eyes and its skull was contorted as if someone had thrown it to the ground. His presumed mother lay next to him, her maniacal gaze forever fixed on that of her ungrateful offspring.

Seeing this scene, even Jake, who thought he had become cold and undaunted, turned pale with fury, clenching his fists so hard it almost hurt. His heart raced and his boiling blood quickly rushed to his head, giving him a healthy glow.

"Who did this?!" Jake uttered through clenched teeth. He would not let such crimes go unpunished. If he found the culprits, he would make them pay dearly.

" Demons!" Norton screamed in rage, while one of the officers broke down in tears as he recognized the body of his wife and daughter among the dead.

Jeanie had long since hidden herself in Jake's pocket, while Trash was throwing up his whole dinner in a bush. What he had just seen was far too traumatic for a child his age. In comparison, Lily, Carmine's little sister, timidly tasted the dried blood of one of the corpses and then said excitedly,

"This cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters is pretty explosive, but it doesn't explain what happened to them."

"Thank you... for that information." Elduin coughed with a pale face. He looked like he was about to throw up too.

"You're welcome." The lolita gave him a wide, pride-filled smile, which did nothing to improve his opinion of the young Vampire.