Hm, did I ever mention I was never trained to fight? Yeah that’s a fact that’s probably going to become more and more evident over the course of this last segment of the war. Thank spoot for my danger-wraps silent sonar senses guiding me. I feel like I’m moonwalking and pirouetting between spells, breath weapons, and swipes of claws, spears, and swords. Hell, I am. I literally am. This reminds me of the Fata Morgana, in the Temple of Time. When future me somehow prompted me to move in the order of the Konami-code in order to dodge and make it through the monsterrific copies of me.
The foes I’m facing snarl and sneer at me, cockily sure of themselves. I can see them preemptively beginning to cast the counteractive portion of the greater dispellation spell. I giggle a moment which turns into a full-on cackle as I unleash a cone of cold boosted by an empowered non-spelliform frost rune in all of their faces. The internal backlash is surreal, since for the most part, I don’t feel thermal fluctuations, so the fact that my guts ice over with a crackling frost that grows further and further through my body is intense. Blurgh, I think I take somewhere between a hundred and a thousand damage when empowering a non-spelliform elemental rune. Crap on a cracker that is painful.
Good thing you’ve got around five K health, eh Reggie? Sure. Still blurgh though. Oh, wait. No wonder Jarrah was impressed when I empowered the cold rune. Most creatures on Rayileklia, even the toughest, generally have less than a grand in health total. Holy crap. Archmages on Rayileklia would die if they tried to do what I do, bending rules and empowering non-spelliform elemental runes. Another reason it’s no wonder that Jarrah thought of me like a spoiled child when they found the ranges of my powers. Sighing, I rattle my skull.
I was petulant in a way, but it was because I was chasing magic and powers in order to try to break Dawn’s curse before she was taken from us, erased by magic. And even still, despite how hard I chased that power, I still failed. She was atomized in my arms, pleading with me to stay with her til the very end. The only thing I managed to save was just enough of her soul that memories of her weren’t erased from time.
Anyway, I shrug at the disbelieving or terror-stricken faces of the foes who’re encased in ice, some of whom may or may no longer be living. Sorry guys ‘n’ gals ‘n’ whatever else Terrorzin has. My spells have subtle-spell metamagical rigor as Jarrah puts it. Y’can’t counter what you can’t sense being cast. That’s the one plus-side to me not being able to use a Rayileklian mnemonic.
Though, that makes me keenly aware that if there are any archmages with Sorcerous Potential along the lines of mine, I’ve got to be leery that they might subtly drop some heavy magical nukes. Actually, hm. With my attunement to Rayileklia’s interwoven leylines, and the frosty Fel, I can feel when spells are beginning to be woven, period. If I target that, if I feel like it’s something that needs to be acted against, I should be able to dispel or counter it in-action. As long as I have enough SP to empower, quicken, and cast the greater dispellation magic at least, whether or not they attempt to put subtle-spell metamagical rigor into it. I guess I’d better just pay extra-close attention to the magic of the realm.
Since my insides are frosting over, having used an empowered non-spelliform frost rune, I empower a non-spelliform fire room, to counterbalance it. Phooph, I virtually vibrate with the intensity of the various focuses I’m spreading my brain across as I’m utilizing that rune to bolster summoning FFS once more to this side of the veil. The hit to my health pool is this visceral twisting of my nonexistent innards. My Frostfire Salamanderian ally bursts forth into our realm, loosing walls of fire across the battlefield, complicating the approach of Terrorzin’s landbound forces. The ones that aren’t immune to fire at least. Though the ones that are still have to contend with me glaciating small sections of the combat field. Anyway, thanks friend, I wave a two-fingered salute at Frostfire Salamanderian.
When the further silt-odilian roils, thrashes, and spasms in its death-throes, I breathe a mild sigh of relief. Whew, some small comfort knowing that Boetah, Shaylon, and Vylon are freed up to meet the front line of the assault head-on. Utilizing something like semaphore, I direct Shaylon towards the furthest northwest point that I want covered by Aegis, and Boetah south of me, where I want Shield emplaced. Boetah balls up, and Shaylon serpentinely wraps around him, before spinning like unleashing a top, launching Boetah into the fray like a whirling rock cannonball.
They’re virtually playing tenpins with Terrorzin’s horde, striking down a small squad with the maneuver. A gaggle of kobolds is flattened along Boetah’s trajectory towards the position he’ll hold. Further, half a dozen Draconiac Spellknights, and a couple of human-form young-adult dragons are knocked aside like, well, bowling pins. As his whirling slows towards a halt, Boetah extends his forelimbs, gripping the foes who’d only been knocked down, and he smashes their skulls together in a brutal display of strength. With his gentle-giant attitude at Solace, it’s a pretty vivid reminder that he’s one of the best combatants in the realm.
Teuila’s dropping her slowing fields on forces she senses might be dangerous to let act freely during moments she’s got to focus her firepower elsewhere, and I’m doing the same. We’re burning through our daily-use abilities, and somehow simultaneously making headway, yet seeming like we’re about to lose ground, massively. I think it’s my genre senses telling me Terrorzin’s about to send in something souped-up for the next wave. Phooph. Uggggh. Why’d I have to be right?
Backflipping out of the way of some sort of crystal-spine barrage, I take to the air once more, continuing to juggle everyone who needs to remain airborne until this silt-odilian finally kicks it. The strangest porcupine-faced crystal-quilled wyvern chases me about the skies while I get a read on the situation. Five, six, no, seven ancients, each of different elements, each with fully-charged breath-weapons, each as large as the expanded-yet-collapsing tunnel will allow come barreling onto the battlefield. My allies are locked down in a mix of dragonfrights of different signals from different types of dragons, signals I don’t know how to nullify instantaneously due to their varying types.
My mind is reeling momentarily as I try to figure out how to keep everyone from getting fried, blasted, melted, blown up, or trounced. The fact that even Vylon, Shaylon, and Boetah are frozen in their tracks, petrified by the dragonfright presence, means that these ancients are on par with our absolute best. That’s something I still can’t contend with easily. Similarly to Al’pa’ca, or the Damnations, I don’t have the offenses to down such behemoths in short order.
The Red’s fire melts the stone of the tunnel and surrounding south-side of the canyon walls. On the opposite side, to the north, the Ice’s breath pulls a “me” and glaciates everything in its path. The Acid in the middle spews forth alternating jets and cones of sulfurous scented fluids that steam and sizzle, melting and crumbling stone and corpses in their path. The crackle, hiss, burble, and spit of the acid boiling away midair or after contacting lava created by the flames is its own hellish cacophony. The roar of the flame contends with the ever-roaring thunder of the Worldstorm.
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Seeing Teuila frozen atop the skull of the dazed silt-odilian, my heart simultaneously catches in my throat, and beats like slamming a drum to the most frenetic rhythm. My pulse pounds up into my ears, semi-deafening me from the inside. Shortly to be replaced with my tinnitus screaming to the fore. The Poison along the south edge, next to the Fire, looses bursts of gas that are ignited, sending explosive shockwaves across the field, scattering bodies and further destroying our chokepoint. The combinations of melting, burning, and exploding minerals and chemicals leaves the foulest, most acrid scent wafting about the air.
Originally, our only light in this valley came in brief bursts, flashes of lightning from the Worldstorm, or the occasional spellwork. Now the red-hot glow of molten stone running in rivulets along the south side of our staging-grounds illuminates everything in an eerie orange’ish undertone.
The Lightning next to the Ice looses blasting chains of electrical energy that dance along the still-forming ice-crystal structures, shattering some of them, melting and hydrolyzing the frost, and aerosolizing portions of the jets of acid. That makes for a dangerous combo. The worst though, the worst is a Sand, whose animate breath-weapon coalesces like a silicate dervish seeking out our allies, and I know it’s going to try to work its way into their lungs, suffocating and strangling them. That is the breath weapon I’m most worried about, and the one I absolutely have to counteract ay to the ess to the ay to the pee.
As the breath weapons begin coalescing, in a much more focused synergy, with far-better teamwork than the snarling horde, my eyes go wide in worry for my friends as I dash to intercept them. When the breath weapons curve around me, I fumble midair momentarily and blink stupidly. Oh, right. Shield and Aegis. Both of their Latents attract breath weapons, and their stony hides handle them with near-perfect durability whenever they’re unmoving for long enough.
Pft. I can’t help snorting with laughter a bit. I mean, I had planned to utilize that benefit, but I panicked a bit there with worry for my loved ones, my family. Still, they hadn’t had long in their unmoving states to build up their durability for their Latent-empowered protection. So their hides are *not* looking as impervious as one would hope, especially after intercepting such powerful blasts. Their stony, craggy flesh will not fill out as well over the course of the day if they keep getting pelted and pummeled before they’ve gotten chances to stay still long enough. Wait, how many of the ancients loosed their breath weapons? Was that only six? Is one of them holding theirs in reserve? In this battle of attrition, we’re losing ground on all levels.
Worse, all of my allies are still unmoving, including FFS, who gets pulverized, and dissipates back to the elemental spirit realm. Grr, I just paid the SP cost from Claíomh Solais to bring them here. At least most of the horde is inconvenienced by the dragonfright, and slash or simply by the size of the ancients as this septuplet spread out and barrel past the lip of the tunnel to take their largest forms. I really, really wish I knew the meteor spell, and that it was castable within a reasonable number of runes slash SP. What the hell can I even—.
A familiar sound echoes along the canyon walls, but, not from the west. No, not from our foes at all. Rather, the sound is a near-mournful howl that permeates the air coming from the east. It’s the baying of a hound who’s feeling left-out. The baying that comes from far to my east sends a nearly evil grin spreading across the left half of my face.
That sound? That’s my son, Lucky. Lucky, who borrowed armor pieces from Triorgraiz’s mount Fennel when we were assaulting Vorzhog’s Keep. A keep that was replete with far more enchanted equipment than anything we’d yet run across in the war before that point. Lucky commandeered that armor when someone broke a ceasefire, as a bit of recompense. Armor pieces that produce an aura of fright-immunity around the wearer, in a radius. Lucky, my shapechanging hound son who can become as large as or larger than ancient dragons.
Over the goggles, I can hear Aktixas’s hard-vowel accent commenting, “Figured you could use the backup, Schism. Hunter and Sun are on their way, along with the Thunderer, and some Spellknights.”
Biting my lips, I mutter carefully, as quietly as I can into the goggles, “Make sure everyone coming as backup knows to stick near Lucky. He’s got some armor that offers protection from a few things… for everyone around him. Thanks for bringing me up to speed. Schism about to do something stupid, over and out.”
Loosing a silent sigh of relief internally, I glance through my scrying sensors towards those perched in the security center. I can see Lucky’s view skating smoothly this direction, as he hovers speedily using the boots he’d looted from Adkre. Nice. If those still have charge in them, Lucky can get a barrier up for us to buy us a few moments to regroup. I wonder if the barrier is a set size, or if it’s based on the size of the boots at the time of their use? Because the magic items shift with Lucky, and Lucky will be friggin’ enormous. I’m so proud of my son, Lucky, Hunter, Hound of the Onyx Dawn.
Similarly, seeing Lil rocketing this way at a glide near Worldstorm level, skirting lightning-strikes in order to get to us in time to help out is heartening. I think Lucky’s carrying a few Spellknights, and Lil might be carrying Shiz, or some others. It’ll be good to have backup arriving synchronized, rather than spaced out at different travel speeds. It’s a bit humorous to see Lil blowing a thin stream of fire beneath him, shaping it with his salamander gauntlets, both expelling it behind him like a thruster, and using the updraft to speed his glide. He’s getting more resourceful. I’m so proud of my Lil buddy. Sun, Star of the Onyx Dawn.
I’ve still got to buy a few minutes as Lucky and Lil arrive from the east, like some sort of cavalry. I cannot have this ancient Sand’s breath strangling and suffocating those I love, worming its way into their lungs and scouring or bursting them from within. Loosing some fire, and redirecting several flames, into the path of the sand dervish that is the animate breath weapon, I breathe a mild sigh of relief when the sand particles are glassed, and settle down, falling to the ground. Still, we’ve got to keep it from charging up and breathing again.
I can’t help beaming my wicked smile into the eyes of the first foe I fly into the face of, startling the ancient Sand, who opens their mouth wider, surprised that I can move through dragonfright. They lash out, their maw diving forward as they attempt to chomp me. Nah fam, this is where I’m safest and strongest. In the belly of the beast. Well, their throat.
It’s surprisingly moist in here, considering this foe of mine exhales dry silicates. Similarly, it’s surprisingly not the most horrendous stench. It smells like, hm, limestone along the edge of a desert. Slightly acrid, earthy, but not truly pungent. I’m trying to keep Ahliyui, Ahliyuri, and the two bots levitated with my telekinesis, outside and above the skulls of the ancients, without any visual or sensory lock on them whatsoever. Thankfully TK itself offers some feedback as to objects within its reach, and the frozen Spellknights, and two bots, are objects within reach.
What time is it Reggie? Time to light ‘em up up up! Drawing Frostburn, I slash and dash along the inside of the ancient Sand’s throat, aiming to open up its sinus cavities and as much of its mucous membranes as possible, ruining its desire to exhale more silicates. Moreover, I’m hoping to gain a bit of nearness to its brain for my spell as I call out, “GSE Balefire!”