Peter watched the waves of soldiers below crash against the mountainside defenses like waves. Three layers had been breached, and with the installment of the dragons teeth that number was steadily getting closer to four. The cost of each strike was the lives of tens of men, but in an army of over ten thousand, the lives of soldiers was a surplus that the Hephaistians were short of. It was up to him, and his freshly picked troop of orb lobbers to rebalance things.
“We don’t have a massive amount of time, so I will break this down for you pretty simply. Poison combat as a whole is the most simplistic form of combat a person can take part in, perhaps apart from javelin throwing or military bowmanship. It’s not complicated because it does not need to be, and any excess complication often will end up you just killing yourself. Keep it simple, all poisons I use are in easily breakable packets. Throw them away from you and towards the enemy before you get out of the area as quickly as possible. You don’t want the poison to ever touch your skin directly, as some may kill you, some may cause your flesh to rot while you are still alive, and some may decay your soul to the point where all you are left with is an empty husk of a body”.
As Peter spoke, a few of the men and women collected before him visibly flinched. They all knew of the terrors of warfare, but none had dealt with such a seemingly innocuous source of terror before. Many of the powders they had been given were brightly coloured, or rather pleasantly scented. If they had come across them in the wild they may have even tried them, as they seemed reminiscent of heavenly medicines.
“The reason why poison combat is so simple is because of that”. Peter continued, “Fancy techniques are more than just likely to get you killed, so no ‘spinning flowers’, somersaults or whatever other acrobatic tricks you know. Just throw and retreat”.
There was a murmur as the crowd of Hephaistians mulled over Peter's directions. They could tell that he was not telling them the whole truth, but they knew he was not lying to them.
Seeing their unaccepting faces, Peter could not help but sigh. “Look,” he said, “Poison combat can become more complex, but currently you're like farmers who have been given a sword for the first time. Sure, you can guess you need to keep the pointed end away from you, but the complexities of dueling are things you don't need to know. Don't try to run before you can walk”.
“So what now?” someone asked from the middle of the crowd. The mass of people split apart slightly, revealing Piao, the young man who Peter had been introduced to when he first arrived. “What poisons are we going to be using? Which are in what packets? Are there things we should look out for to avoid or to maximise our yields?”
“Good questions, all of them. I'll approach answering them by each poison we will be using. On the table in front of me there are bandoleers with nine pockets. I've split the pockets into three by colour, with the red pockets having a substance known as Soulfire inside, the orange pockets containing Personae Magnum Aqua, or as it is more commonly known- Heartblood. The last poison packets, the yellow ones, are called Bane”. He paused momentarily as he let the names ruminate in the minds of those around him. They were rare poisons, and those before him would likely have never heard of them before, but Peter knew without a shadow of a doubt that after the poisons were used they would never be forgotten.
“So what do they do?” one person asked.
“Well, Soulfire is the first in the bandoleer, so I will tell you about that. It's effect is that of burning away mana, and it gained its name because contact with any amount, no matter how small, would cause a person to feel like their spirit reservoir has been set alight. If you apply more than about a single gram of the powder to a person then it will actually cause their entire spirit to immolate and collapse. In incredibly small doses, however, it can actually be used as a method of removing possessions. Generally, you want it to just cause pain, but there is a moment during each movement of mana before a power is cast where you can interrupt with the smallest amount of Soulfire and it will still cause spirit immolation. In the middle of warfare, even if you throw this stuff about ad-hoc you’ll still catch at least a few people like that.
“Heartblood... Heartblood is terrifying. Do not let it touch you at all. The slightest contact with it seeps through the skin and the moment it comes into contact with blood it causes it to crystalise. The crystalised blood gains the same effect as the poison and within seconds the victim’s entire blood stream is solid. The blood of the victim can then be spread as the same poison to other people, so if you see a red crystalline substance on the ground do not touch it”. Peter smirked as he saw the people before him recoil in horror. Rightfully so, he thought to himself. There were no poisons that he would refrain from using, but even he would have pause when it came to Heartblood. “There is a relatively simple cure to the poison, however. Heartblood becomes entirely worthless if exposed to elemental water. As such, if you accidentally poison yourself, take a shard of Nereid Aquamarine and cut yourself with it. As long as you hold the stone over your open wound for long enough, the blood should revert to normal and the Heartblood will cease to perform in any fashion within you”.
“What was it used for originally?” Piao asked curiously.
“No idea, honestly. It might have been used as an attempt to isolate blood-borne diseases but it just kinda kills people.Within ten seconds of introduction it will cause you to become light headed, within thirty you will black out, and in three minutes you will be dead, so please, when using this just keep a source of elemental water on you at all times”.
Peter turned and looked back out towards the mass of corpses piling up below him. “The final poison, Bane, I hope you don’t use. Bane is honestly closer to a plague than a poison. The infected spread the effects through touching their friends and allies, who in turn spread it on their own. The cure is common, but awkward to get hold of in sufficient quantities to actually cure people, and the effects are terrible. It rots the body, then the mind, before finally striking the spirit. Over the course of an hour the victims transform from normal people into decaying mindless husks whose only will is that of spreading the poison within them”.
“So what’s the cure?” a young woman asked.
“It’s ethanol. The problem is, to cure Bane you need to fully submerge the infected person within it. I asked Yun to set up a few vats in the main hall of this building so just in case someone is affected by Bane, the cure is ready and available for us, but if the spread of Bane becomes out of control, there is no way of dealing with it before the effects become irreversible. This poison...” Peter stopped, before holding up a simple yellow bag. “This poison is only for a situation where you are heavily outnumbered”.
Standing up, Peter walked over to each person, and handed them a single bandoleer. Each time a person was given their new weapon, they held their belt like it was a newborn child, both with reverence and fear in case they dropped it. Nobody wanted to even chance causing their pouches full of poison to spread, and even less so on the field of combat. They were all incredibly worried about it until, as curious practitioners of the Book of Creation usually did, they began looking at the bandoleers carefully. Each pouch was its own storage pouch holding far more than they could believe reasonable.
“Hold on a second,” Piao said, his face flush with shock and joy. “This is father’s work! These aren’t storage pouches, but rather the bandoleers are all connected to one storage space! How novel”.
“I asked Yun to get me twenty or so belts that could connect to three storage spaces. No idea who made it, but it went above and beyond what I asked for,” Peter replied.
“That sounds like father. He always said, if you’re going to do something, make sure you do it to your fullest or you’ll always be left with regrets over it”.
“That sounds like good advice. We’ll be going once the next barrier breaks, so that could be in ten hours or it could be in a couple of days. Make sure you’re ready and keep your bandoleers on you at all times. Got that?”
“Yes!” The group shouted in unison, far more confident about their war effort than mere minutes before.
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