Think Reggie, think. Take into account even slim possibilities. Plan. You’ve done this before. Multitask your mind, see the paths through the timeline, the outcomes. If one or more of the colossi happens to show up, either just from wandering by to trade, or if they’re brought back with Teuila, anything like that, we can set up a massive barrier, and chasm, separating us from the horde. Or, if worse comes to worse, their geokinesis can be used to cave Autumn Brook in on top of a large section of the horde if the horde makes it that far. I wonder if I could get Tiktik to ride Apheliotes out of here to seek out one or more plains Colossi. I’m sure if I formed a concrete plan, she’d agree if it seemed necessary. Keep thinking.
Right, we still have the possibility of the weather control spell. I’m pretty sure it’s only about two thirty in the morning at this point though, we would need sunlight above to even bother trying the weather control fallback. Teuila left about twelve hours ago, she probably won’t be back for another twelve hours. How the hell am I going to keep this up for twelve more hours? Or even just five more hours before trying our weather control fallback? I’m two hours into this fight and almost entirely tapped out.
If only I could access my full suite of Can’Z’aasian thermokinesis on demand without killing myself, or taking eight minutes per ability. Or, at the very least, my FBF, my Frost-Burn Fist Style so that I could be throwing out SIPs, Subzero Ice Punches. It’d give me at least a weapon to keep fighting with. The crossbow is great, but it’s taking longer and longer to form holy halefire bolts at this point. It’s not like I have access to any other ele—. Wait. I’m embedded with every shred of shrapnel from the thunder stick, and overflowing with electrical energy to the point that I’m nearly dying moment by moment if it weren’t for Tiktik’s dragon scale spell absorbing the excess.
I was able to form a magnetic cage fairly easily. What if I—? Testingly, I focus the excess electrical energy about my fists. I watch in awe as I’m able to form a vague semblance of spiked gauntlets, katars, or other fist mounted weapons. I, I think this is mine now. The staff is a part of me, and it keeps siphoning excess electricity out of the air into me. To stay alive, I need to be using it.
Reggie Shellcracker? Yeah? Guess what you just did? Hm? You leveled up an ability buddy. Might as well have a name for it for when we finally meet back up with the triple L squad. I guess I could call it my electro shock puncher style, my esper style, as I throw around ESPs, electro shock punches. I’m sure Lil would get a kick out of that, if, if they don’t hate me.
Right, can’t spare the energy to go down that thought trail. Five to twelve hours of battling before even a chance of reprieve. I hope to all that’s good and holy, that Harriet is getting everyone out of the town. A plan is starting to form. A bit after dawn, I’ll drop into a fighting retreat to get to Tiktik, and we’ll try to cast the weather control spell as a ritual together, setting it up that way, we might be able to open a permanent hole in the clouds over Autumn Brook, though it could take an entire hour to cast it that way. I think it’s worth it.
If our spell succeeds, it gives The Brook itself the entire day in safety, but we’ll need to keep fighting to keep the attention of the horde anyway, so that they don’t just walk around to the south, or ride the Fel Portalspawn out into the lake. If they go around us, evacuees are going to die rapidly. As tiring as it is, we have to remain their focal point.
If the spell doesn’t succeed, we continue doing much the same, just with no guarantee that we can fall back for even a moment’s breather. There’ll be no guarantee that the residents of The Brook have most of a day to get organized and evacuate. Either way, Tiktik, Apheliotes, me, and my mana constructs are in for a grueling day. When most of my mana constructs have fallen, I’ll throw the elemental stones out, summon a true fire elemental with the archsorc staff, and read the scroll of protection from elementals. That’s the nuclear option, because it’s as risky to everyone around us as it is to our enemies. I know the fire elemental will technically at least agree to my requests, if not obey my commands, when it’s summoned from the staff, but the others are deadly to everyone.
When all is said and done, hopefully by evening, Teuila will have returned, and hopefully with several plains Colossi, or at least one. Teuila can take over the fight, if she isn’t dead tired from the round trip, and I’ll coordinate with the Colossi to set up Autumn Brook as a massive sinkhole ready to crumble when the horde mostly fills it. If Teuila is dead tired, then I’ll just give her the directions to share with the Colossi. I only hope that Te is as genre savvy as me, and is expecting to return to some sort of apocalyptic scenario, so that she would invite or request the presence of one or more Colossi of the plains.
I guess I can’t plan for more than that. How are my mana constructs doing? Drat, one stone elemental construct dissipated just now. Huff. It’s okay, it’s okay. They bought me enough time to at least memorize these runes, and carve them into my mindscape. The Felgres launching meat missiles occasionally knock one of my mana construct gryphons from the sky by injuring their wings, but, being mana constructs, their wings just reshape after they crash down and cause havoc among the horde.
Meat missiles aren’t the only things being lobbed around anymore though. More Felgres are either ripping bone spikes from themselves, or each other, or their fallen companions, and launching those. Some are even able to simply eject the bone spikes as projectiles without ripping them from their bodies. I need to take out the ones that are able to launch flaming bone spikes, so that my gryphons don’t all start dissipating from damage. My shadow hounds are still working stealthily about the battlefield, clawing their ways up and into Fel Portalspawns’ skulls and tearing them apart from the inside. Good.
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I slump over for a moment, panting from exertion. I’m struck by a gory glob of flesh from afar, but it does little more than send me tumbling. I end up rolling a ways to one side before coming to a halt. Gasping for breath and struggling through the migraine eating away at the right side of my skull and face, I dash to close the distance with the horde, leaving the relative safety of the small clearing that had been carved out by one of my constructs.
Though I feel weak, exhausted, literally burned out, and burning alive, I find my punches easier to throw than ever. It’s as if sending the electricity down my arms to form weapons along my fists is either sending my fists along with the energy, or is magnetically drawing my attacks to their targets. Either way, I’m grateful for the boon. Too many incoming at once! I leap away from a Felgre I’d been about to slay as the area is peppered with obsidian bone spikes. The horde slays one of their own while attempting to end me, but I miraculously spin through the hail of projectiles. I’m nearly untouched, save for one flying shard that grazes a deep gash above my hip along my torso. Contact with the hellish projectile seems to loose a curse upon my body. Fel fires attempt to overtake my wound, struggling to char it open.
I hiss, “That hurts like hell! Yes, I see the irony, and you’re about to see some iron up close and personal!”
Despite the wound aching and burning like hell, my thermal resistance manages to quell the cursed fire rather quickly. I sigh with relief as I close the gap towards a cluster of Felgres that are able to launch their hellish obsidian bone spikes. Drawing what’s left of my dagger, I test a theory. Sure enough, I can extend the electricity along the handle, up what’s left of the blade, and produce at least a short blade of electricity. I can’t exactly fire off lightning blasts, but lets see what happens when I throw this. Hyah!
That worked better than expected, though it’ll be a pain in the ass to keep retrieving my dagger. I tap two more Felgre Bonelaunchers with ESPs to their craniums. My fists cave in their skulls after several punches, leaving massive jolts of energy within, and I dash aside as the electricity blows their brains apart from the inside. Standing over the corpse of the third, I retrieve my Valkyrie dagger, and lock it back into the buckle-sheath. Yeah, this is koff, going to koff, be too much of a hassle. What about other projectiles?
I drop to my knees in a coughing fit as exhaustion fights to overtake me. While I’m down here, I may as well collect a few of these Fel bone fragments to experiment with. Argh, nope. They resist taking my electrokinesis extension. Still, I launch them at the nearest Felgre’s face while I continue dashing about the battlefield, making a nuisance of myself as I stray further and further from Autumn Brook. I keep the horde harassed and harried as I hurry towards the next Fel Portalspawn. Thankfully, it seems like I’m quite effective at ticking off the hordes of Hel. Or Hell. Whatever. Who knows.
It’s almost funny how far away the thunder sounds in the distance of Rayileklia’s permanently gloomy skies. Lightning cracks off somewhere in the distance, and the thunder travels after, but here’s me, so far from the source of that sound, spreading lightning all around. I stray about the battlefield, slamming into one Felgre after another after another. There’s just no end to them, and I’m starting to get deep enough into the horde, that the ones further to the west are turning away to continue advancing towards Tiktik and Autumn Brook. I’ve strayed too far. I need to get back to the fore of the horde and make myself known.
I recall my mana constructs other than my shadow hounds. I leave the hounds on their stealth assassination missions. Leaping into the air, I let one of my gryphons catch me in a talon as I rain down holy halefire bolts across the horde, injuring, annoying, and slaying quite a number of Felgres. Studying the composition of my water elemental construct, I understand that it’s not truly water, or truly an elemental, so I’m struck with an idea. On Can’Z’aas, I was able to convert kinetic heat energy into mana. At the moment, I’m brimming with extra electrical energy.
Ordering my gryphon to drop me, I land on my water elemental, yelling, “Surf’s up!”
I let electricity flow from me in waves as the water elemental construct flows swiftly across the battlefield. Sure enough, despite the normal duration and power of one of these constructs being quite limited, my current surf upon this turf is becoming supercharged. I’m not sure how much it can handle, even with it allowing electricity to pass into many Felgres that we slide through. I’d rather not be caught up in some kind of massive critical electrical energy nova, so I leap off of the supercharged elemental. I’m fairly certain I can only do that to the two water elemental constructs currently, so I seek out the other one, to supercharge it. Since they emulate properties of water, they function somewhat as capacitors. Especially since most water on Rayileklia has at least some amount of acid. They’re basically animate batteries.
Now that I’ve added a few extra tricks to our side of the field of play, I feel like there’s a slightly increased slim chance of surviving long enough to be done with things. But I’m, I’m so, so sleepy. So tired. No no no! Reggie keep it together! Stay awake! This is too many spells and concentrations and mental subroutines, so many of them would vanish if you black out. You can’t afford to let that happen! First, we’d lose all these allies, secondly, we’d probably explode with the constant buildup of electrical energy. Lastly, well, we’d just be killed by Felgres if we lost consciousness now. You can’t sleep for a very, very long time my friend.
Since when are we friends? Uh, since forever, I’m you, remember? Oh, right, right. Hellspit and Fel fires, my personality is fracturing further. I’m going utterly bonkers. Just, I’m just so exhausted. Oh no, my limbs, but, but I haven’t been crafting any more runes. Why are they suddenly leaden? My dashing westward becomes a dizzied stagger. My migraine's ache sends waves of blurriness over my vision.
As my vision blurs, I stumble, reaching a hand out, pleadingly, I beg, “T-Tiktik. Kitten. I, I need—.” I falter, my consciousness beginning to drift away from me.