Benjamin Vryce.

As Benjamin rounded the latest curve in the long tunnel he came upon the battle. He took in the sides at a glance, they were easy to distinguish. A very human looking woman in a black pantsuit stood with her back against the tunnels wall. He thought she had short blonde hair with pink highlights. She was hard to see, due to a slight distortion to the air in front of her that also had a pink tinge.

She was flanked on either side by two massive grey skinned brutes. They each had two large tusks jutting from their bottom jaws and bald heads. He thought they might be trolls or rock giants. Their bodies were rounded but thick with muscle; and they guarded the blonde woman zealously. Surrounding them on all sides were an absolute hoard of dire rats. There were hundreds of them, interspersed with a few handfuls of larger rats.

They rushed the trio in waves. Breaking on the translucent barrier the woman was holding before being smashed to pulp by the two giants. They couldn’t hold out; Benjamin could see that clearly. The ground was littered with dead rats, but there were far too many of them left alive and the giants were already covered in bloody bite and claw marks.

“Ogres,” said Grace. She and Stomper had finally caught up, they stood to either side of him catching their breath. “Grace thinks the woman feels like a soul. She has the same…aura…that you do Benjamin.” She finished.

That made sense, if she was a human soul then the two ogres would be her summons. That rankled him a little. They towered over her, swinging their massive fists around, crushing the rats with minimal effort. Benjamin looked to his own summons; they barely came up passed his waist. He shook the dark thoughts off, it was what it was.

“Alright, we help them then. Grace, stay here and pick off the larger rats, the ones the size of dire squirrels. Stomper, you come with me; I want to see what you can do.” He said after a beat. Pulling on his connection to two worker ants. When the house cat sized ants materialized, he ordered them to protect Grace and then moved toward the battle. Stomper moving at his side.

He waded into the swarm, not caring at all for the bites he was receiving. His passive regeneration would take care of it as long as it didn’t get too bad. As he killed the rats and syphoned their essence, he would continually replenish what his body used.

That was all the thought he spared for pre combat planning. Entering the tide, he let his instincts take full control. He bared his teeth, taking huge sweeping slashes with his claws. Sometimes he caught more than one rat with a single swipe. He stomped down and crushed them, squeezed them to death when they climbed up his body. There were so many rats he quickly lost count of how many he killed. It was a rush; he could feel the essence flowing into his body with every life taken. The flow was even higher than what he had expected, that puzzled him until he looked around.

There were four lines of essence flowing into him. Looking closer he found that they were the lines connecting him to his creations. That was a nice surprise, the rats killed by his summons helped grow his essence core. His strength would only grow faster as he called out more of the creations. One line was by far producing more essence then the other three, so he followed it back to its source.

Stomper was as effective at killing rats as he was. Swinging his axe in great looping arcs. He watched the goblin fighter cut through his targets, circling the axe around before bringing it down again. The way he cut and twisted the weapon was quite unlike when Benjamin himself had tried the axe. There was no stopping the swings, no fighting the blades momentum. He always used the weapons momentum to his advantage. Riding the force around to swing at another target. The shield was also being used to the fullest, bashing and thrusting rats aside as they came on.

Benjamin spared a glance at Grace; who wasn’t producing nearly as much essence. Her bow was in her hand and she was slowly firing, taking her time before releasing each arrow. He knew she could shoot faster than this and wondered what she was doing. He followed the latest shaft with his eyes. It flew straight into the neck of a dire squirrel sized rat, dropping it. The shot wasn’t instantly fatal, like he was used to seeing on TV. Killing blows rarely were. The rat was still alive, writhing around on the ground. Thrashing into its smaller brethren as it bled out.

Glancing around, Benjamin saw that all the nearby giant rats were down. That explained her lower essence yield, she had been doing exactly what he had told her. Grace was only targeting the big ones. That realization warmed his heart. The worker ants were also doing what he had instructed, the pair flanked Grace and were chomping down on every rat that approached.

At about the size of a house cat, the ants were much smaller than the three-foot-long rats. They were easily an even match for them however. The rats couldn’t seem to pierce their armor, there were long scratches and gouges on their carapace but no orange insides were visible. Not only were they well armored, every time an ant caught a rat in its mandibles it was crushed to death quickly. The biggest problem they were facing was that they were far slower than the dire rats. They could kill them, but not quickly enough to keep the tide away from Grace.

Benjamin made his way over to her slowly, killing rats with every step. She was being surrounded and he needed to clear the area before she was overrun. He moved around her position, decimating the swarming rats. His clothes were soaked to his skin with gore, armor once again chewed up and dented. The bracers and greaves again escaped the majority of the damage but the leather and cloth items were close to tatters.

Once he killed the rats that had gathered around Grace, he moved away again. He hadn’t looked at her, not wanting to interfere with her shooting. If he were being honest, he also didn’t want to face her after his angry outbursts. He would deal with it, just not right now. It was so much easier to kill things.

Benjamin looked up to check on the blonde woman, she had seen them enter the fray. The tunnel wasn’t very wide, it would have been hard to miss them. She hadn’t moved or changed her tactics however. She glared at him suspiciously when their eyes met, otherwise she stayed pressed against the wall behind her force shield. Waiting while her ogres killed the rats swarming her. She was holding out, for now at least.

He lost himself in the battle for a while after that. Not looking at any of his allies or the woman and her ogres. Only the rats mattered, he killed them and killed them and killed them. His vision was red, his breathing was haggard. His body was continually regenerating from the damage it was being dealt, but it seemed like it didn’t come without a cost. His channels burned, and his skin itched from constant regrowth.

Eventually he swiped his claws, but didn’t hit anything. He tensed up, waiting for a bite. When it didn’t come, he tried to focus and look around. There weren’t any more rats. The tunnel was piled high with their corpses, but he couldn’t see any that were alive and moving. He blinked his eyes wearily, slowly standing back up from the crouch he had been forced into. He was close to seven feet tall now, and the rats were only a foot high at the shoulder. In order to hit them he had been crouched over. His back popped in protest as his spine regained its normal shape.

Stretching his neck, he looked for his companions. They were surprisingly all still alive. Grace was supporting a wounded Stomper. He was so blood splattered that Benjamin couldn’t tell where he was hurt. Other than the male goblin, they looked ok. Turning his gaze to the human woman, he watched as she extended her hands toward the chewed and mangled wrecks that were her ogres. As he watched, their wounds slowly began to close.

It took his tired mind a moment to realize she was healing them with essence. Could he do that? He decided to try, turning around he fumbled mentally for the connection lines to his team. Finding them he concentrated on restoring them to prime condition. Then he pushed essence into them. It only took a few moments, and they also began to heal. Stomper soon stood on his own, looking down at himself in wonder.

Once she no longer had to support him, Grace moved away from Stomper’s side. She looked at Benjamin. Her jaw working slightly, it looked like she wanted to talk to him. He was too tired to care right now though. With everyone healed, he dismissed the worker ants back to his void space. They weren’t really intelligent, and without a task to perform they were just a drain on his essence. That done he moved over to his companions. He leaned against the wall, and slid down to the floor.

The blonde was still tending to her ogres. Benjamin decided to let her make the first move. He was exhausted and just wanted to sit. Closing his eyes, he looked into his core. He wanted to see what kind of changes there were after consuming so much essence.

It looked similar, only the core had…intensified, brightened. He didn’t know how to describe it. The vapor layer around the outside was pressed flat, the liquid layer had expanded so much that there wasn’t any room for it to move. It reminded him of an over full water balloon, bulging out in places just before it broke. He frowned at that; before, the three layers had balanced themselves automatically.

For some reason the liquid hadn’t condensed down into the solid core at the center. Benjamin didn’t know what to make of that. His tired mind having trouble thinking through the situation. Was this his limit? No, it couldn’t be. Should he try to compress it himself? He would have to think on it, maybe he could get the Erlking or the Arbiter to tell him what was going on. Right now, he was just too tired to bother.

He was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, when he felt something lightly brush his hair. He opened his eyes to look, not worried about being attacked with Grace, Stomper and Silver all right there. It took a few blinks to clear the weariness and, redder things, from his vision before he could see what he had felt.

It was Grace, standing beside him. She was slightly taller than him where he sat, and she had run her small hand through his blood splattered, finger length hair. He looked up into her yellow eyes, as she tentatively reached out and repeated the action. He wanted to tell her to stop; that she would only get filthy touching him, but he couldn’t do it.

There was a look in her eyes that he didn’t understand. A longing and vulnerability, or maybe he was seeing his own emotions reflected back to him. He supposed it really didn’t matter, he was too tired to figure it out or to fight it. Closing his eyes again he lightly pressed his head against her hand.

They stayed that way for a time, perhaps only a handful of breaths. Though to Benjamin it felt longer. She didn’t say anything, just continued to run her fingers through his filthy brown hair. He could have stayed that way all day, but the moment was broken when Stomper cleared his throat.

“Sorry to intrude Chief. The other soul is headed this way and she doesn’t look happy,” he said.

Benjamin opened his eyes to see Stomper moving protectively, to stand a few feet in front of him. He was loosening his shoulders and held his weapons at the ready. He wondered what had got the goblin fighter so agitated, until he looked past him and saw the woman. She was indeed heading his way, and she looked pissed.