Thinking things through, I try not to sigh as I recount just how many hydras or hydra-like creatures I’ve faced across my lives. Two, well, three Octorochis if you count Dehlia’s nearly total transformation, since she was definitely attacking all out with intent to kill me back then. Let’s see, oh, that weird plant thing named Cigarette. One, two… three hydras in the swamps here on Rayileklia? Then a bunch of hydra chimaeras in ShizTinth, and now another souped-up hydracoliche.
As I’m ruminating, Teuila seems lost in thought, imagining something, only briefly. When she begins giggling a moment, Te brings my attention to her gorgeous face, its galaxy-like smattering of freckles, and the emerald-ringed tunnels that mark the orbs of her eyes. I can’t help smiling at her, though I do raise a brow in query as to why she was giggling.
Thankfully, Te fills me in, “Yeeting you into the horde, and seeing your full crashdown strike for myself is gonna be hot ay eff babe. We need to do this more often.”
Snorting a laugh, I’m about to state how ridiculous the sentiment is, but suddenly I’m spinning, hurled through the air towards the hydracoliche at near-mach speeds. Te you butt, I didn’t even have my spell fully prepped and up yet. Finishing the last few runes of a recast of Steely Body, I sigh as my Adamantite form coalesces just in time before I make impact with one of the skulls of the hydracoliche. Since I’m spinning like a top, I go ballistic firing holy halefire double-barreled crossbow bolts as fast as the crossbow will regenerate the energy bolts.
Angling down through the vertebrae of one of this thing’s necks, I actually manage to detach one of its heads by acting like an internal holy laser buzzsaw. Or some radiant ninja blender. I’ve got the Riptide Katana out in my offhand, just holding it while I spin, gouging along the insides of this beast’s bones as my mainhand fires the wrist-mounted crossbow rapidly. Sometimes, a ridiculously long fifteen foot blade can come in handy. Snrk. It all happens in the span of mere moments, but I crater beneath the hydracoliches taloned feet, quaking and shaking the thing enough to cause a small bone avalanche.
Standing and plodding out of the crater I’d created upon impact, I stretch my temporarily Adamantite muscles, literally flexing on the wide-eyed horde. The innumerable masses of Terrorzin’s forces surround me, and if they weren’t already equipped, begin picking up weapons and gear to rush me. Alright Reggie, breathe deeply of the moment between moments. Slip into the absence of the flow of time. Read the battlefield as best you can. Take your thermal senses and paint the pictures in retrocognition.
Unfortunately, there’s enough fliders, that the damage I did will be rapidly undone. I’m going to need to take them out first, while somehow not getting absolutely demolished by this undead monstrosity, or the swathes of foes. The horde of foes is so varied in shape and size, that the roiling mass of heat in my thermal scans is completely unreadable for any details beyond, “here be dragon(kin)s.” Snrk. Alright, well, I guess this is a bit pointless. My brain is too effed over at the moment to really make sense of, or make use out of anything I can do in retrocognition. Too bad. Gonna have to wing it. Gee, as if that’s something new Reggie. Oh shut up. I have plans… sometimes. Pft. Snorting with laughter, I release my grip and slip from the absence of the flow of time back to reality.
Only an instant after I land, over my goggles, I hear Teuila chirp, “Gee Airhead, you sure know how to make an entrance and leave an impact,” before cackling delightfully.
Shaking my head and rolling my eyes, I almost can’t believe Teuila isn’t adhering to radio-silence for a covert ops rescue mission, almost. Moreso, that she broke radio silence for a pun so terrible that it’s the sort my mind would come up with and simultaneously berate myself for having come up with. But, well, this is Te we’re talking about. Love of my life, My Wings, Tenith of the Onyx Dawn. She’s a complete friggin’ goober. Snrk, heh, sometimes anyway. It’s probably a good thing she can’t hear me thinking that right now, since my psionic-aegis circlet is in place, blocking all psy effects.
Still, it looks like I’m on duty for pest control for the foreseeable future. It’s going to be rough as hell trying to take these things down… unless… Unless what? Unless I get them to take each other out. If a few of them blast each others’ wings with that bone-webbing, they’ll crash out of the sky, and be nearly useless. At least compared to when they’re airborne. If it only pings them in the wings, rather than getting a heavy direct shot, they might be able to walk around and still fire off calcifying webbing, shoring up the hydracoliche.
Regardless, another great thing about the Riptide Katana, at least right now, is that I can parry these calcifying web shots. I mean, I could with any weapon. With Riptide, I can do it without my blade getting weighed down, or me getting stuck in bone-webbing. I mean, since the blade is literally just water, from my own waterskin, or the constant rain of Rayileklia, or any source. And even if it did manage to somehow trap the blade, I can literally just have it levitate new water into a blade for the hilt, from the rain or puddles or whatever.
Woah! Oof, koff koff. Firstly, I need to check where I’m parrying bone-webbing shots, because I redirected some away from me, without thinking that they were going to hit the hydracoliche. Okay, so the hydracoliche has a bit of shapeshifting ability, or more limbs than I realized, or both. Or it can make up new limbs and abilities on the fly as it gets enhanced with extra bone or corpses and other stuff. We definitely need to keep it away from the chokepoints, where there’s almost nothing but corpses in a near-endless supply.
Ow, ow, ow. And now it’s just stomping on me. That’s annoying. Also, ow my ribs, and ow my stupid perforated right lung. Koff. Blurgh. Okay, that’s enough of that. Cosmic Roundsheath, gonna levitate you out and do a Wormhole Warpstrike onto this thing’s spine. Well, one of its spines.
Everything spaghettifies for the briefest instant as I’m sucked through a realm of the absence of space to my destination. I’m flung down into my target, ejected from that realm with the force of a hurricane. Thankfully, some part of the item’s activation prevents me from feeling any of the force of my own delivery. I could have used Mindfire’s teleport instead of charges from the roundsheath, but I—oh Mindfire. Hah. Hahah. Okay, let’s see if these fliders have brains.
Drawing Mindfire from my elemental bandolier, I keep it gripped tightly in my mainhand, so that I don’t accidentally drop it. Well, its effect that teleports me is only supposed to trigger at the end of a throw, whether it hits a target, or lands at the edge of its range. I’m not sure if dropping it counts the same. I’d rather not find out though. I don’t want to trigger its teleportation, and lose it for a day. It’d suck for it to disappear, then I’d be stuck waiting for its reappearance in the bandolier tomorrow.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
My offhand is guided by my danger wraps, parrying calcifying web-shots with Riptide, while my mainhand is blitzing about firing off holy halefire double-barreled crossbow bolts in a frenetic display of, “Hey, come get me, I’m attacking everything in sight.” It certainly seems to be working. Te’s made progress to the designated zone. I can tell from her scrying feed, that she’s taking a moment to be stealthy, and assess the area, trying to pick out where her rescue target is. More and more of the foes in the region she’s scoping out head eastwards towards me.
LBBTKSL’ing—friggin’ hell I need better move names and acronyms—into the sky, I zip near-horizontally whilst holding my breath to keep my featherfall enchantment from the Wyverium chestplate activated. More and more fliders begin to focus on me, due to me pinging them with annoying little crossbow bolts. I land atop one, and casually kick my adamantite boots into the back of its carapace, locking myself in place as if I were wearing skis, or a snowboard. Woah, a little unsteady, but we’ll get the hang of it. Or this thing will crash and burn, and probably die. Either’s fine by me.
Jamming Mindfire downwards into this thing’s skull has an interesting consequence. The thing spasms, losing control of its every muscle, and begins flailing wildly about, launching bone webbing everywhere other than where it intended to. I wonder how long that effect will last. Oh, only about six seconds. Too bad. I wonder how many of these things I can get freaking out in six seconds. Reggie? Mhm? Don’t do what I think you’re going to do.
Pft, as if I could stop me from doing what I don’t think I should want to think I should do. Or something. What was I saying? Rattling my skull, my brain aches. Today has been a day. That it has pal, that it has. Leapfrogging from flider to flider, parrying blasts of webbing out of the air, I knick about five before a six second countdown hits. So I can probably keep five freaking out simultaneously, if I play it casually. Yeah, with however many dozens of these creeps are in the sky? I can’t play it casually. Here goes, well, somethin’.
Wearing QCR number four, my lightning-cursed leg-guards, summoning all lightning in the area to me, including a massive torrent from the Worldstorm itself, I grimace at the scent of my own charred hair and smoking flesh. Eugh. Drawing my lightning-empowered-rune knife, concentrating on Claiomh Solais, I leap in tighter and tighter circles as I get the fliders to target and follow me.
When I’ve got as many clumped up as I possibly can, I doff my cursed greaves, push outwards with my EM field organ, and unleash a lightning bolt from Claiomh Solais expanded and reinforced by metamagic, and the elemental-enhancing rune knife. Okay, note to self. Close eyes before doing that next time. My sight is pure white, with some sparkling starbursts of colors flashing and swimming about my vision for the moment.
My silent sonar, and hearing, can detect dozens of fliders dropping out of the sky, or sizzling and smoking but still heading my way. My vision slowly begins to return, not that it’s much of a welcome sight for my sore eyes. It’s nothing but snarling fanatics, raucous undead abominations, and chimaeric experimentations. All appearing stop-motion’y when lit by the constant flicker of the Worldstorm’s lightning, as if I were being chased off of a rave’s dance floor. Anyway, now it’s time to do what I told myself to not do that I thought I was going to do that I thought that I shouldn’t. Ow. My freakin’ brain. It seriously needs a break.
Glancing through my goggles, Teuila’s scrying feed is just a sickening blur of motion at the moment, so I can’t really parse her progress. But it does mean she’s doing well enough to continue moving at speed. Speaking of speed—Oh boy, you complete doofus. Finishing my climb sky-high, literally, all the way to Worldstorm level I take a deep breath, and don my lightning-cursed leg guards once again. Holding my breath, I leap to float so that I’m facing down towards the ground, with my legs bunched up above me on one of my own TK squares. Now!
Exhaling smoothly, so that gravity takes hold of me, I push off into an empowered plunge, straight down. Drawing a river of Worldstorm lightning with me, I spin my way down through the assembled flying foes chasing me, intentionally nicking every flider with Mindfire. Aiming to repurpose my previous hole in the hydracoliche before it manages to fully recuperate or fill the hole with new bone, I blitz downwards into it, and keep my cursed greaves equipped. Hanging out beneath the undead behemoth, I let lightning continue to rain down on me, through it.
Of course, I’m still getting the crap zapped out of me, because my EM field organ is only a few days old in this body, and too weak to push out against the curse. More ow. More ow friggin’ ow. Also, the woven fabric of magic across Rayileklia, its leylines are tugged and pulled in several directions simultaneously, all from the furthest rungs. There are multiple high-mage casters out here, at the very least, if not archwizards or sorcerer supremes. Despite how powerful the effects are, I have to giggle about numerical incompatibility. Which probably sounds insane. I mean, I guess it is insane.
Since I come from Can’Z’aas, the numbers that make up the fundamental core of my being are so alien to Rayileklia, that a power word meant to slay someone instantly with a certain level of constitution or health, does nothing. Same with the power words intending to stun or invoke pain. Like, I’m in plenty pain already, heh. But not from their spells. Still, some of them put up a few walls of magic, ones that come in layered arrays of color in a prismatic sense. Those do tend to hurt a little bit. Fortunately for me, they tend to hurt Rayileklians more than me.
Chancing a brief glance through my goggles towards the scrying security center, I try to pick out Lucky, Lil, and Shiz’s feeds. There’s a gaggle of bodies moving about, making it difficult. The ancient Fire, and Ice, the high commanders, aren’t making any headway against chokepoint number two, which is good. I do want to relieve Lucky as soon as possible though. I want him to be able to take breaks, and to keep working on bunkers and evacuation routes.
Reaching out with my mind—well, my telekinesis—I grab and chuck any unarmored foes within range into these walls of prismatic elemental destruction. They’re vaporized or petrified or fried or frozen and shattered, or transmuted into mush, or have other horrible effects occur. Yeesh. Of course, many of the armored ones have anti-telekinetic runes engraved on them, annoyingly. Still, plenty are vulnerable to my TK. Thanks for providing me an environmental weapon bozos. Hm, too bad Lu has the tendril tattoo… or does she?
I don’t remember seeing the tattoo emplaced upon her arms while Alanea was tending to the breaks and fractures. Lu, you clever little darling, did you do what I think you did? Reaching into my interdimensional pouch, I fish around, and grin when I feel a tattoo needle that seems to constantly drip ink. Applying it to myself, I’m happy on a whole other level, for a whole bunch of reasons. One of which is how it brings me back to our days on Can’Z’aas, when we were really learning to adventure together.
Lashing out with these tendrils of pure force, I use them to knock foes aside, or grip them and slam them into each other, or to drag and fling myself about. Most importantly though, I dive to the far side of the hydracoliche. Grinning wildly crazily, I put on the absolute highest acceleration I can muster, all my force exploding out behind me against a TK square.
As I’m passing the hydracoliche, I engage the tendrils, wrapping about parts of it where leverage is on my side. My Adamantite form rocketing past this creature—suddenly tethered to it by magical, nearly-unbreakable tendrils—topples the beast. Better yet, my momentum topples the creature into, and drags it through these prismatically elemental walls.
Well, parts of it anyway. Large sections of it begin to separate, some of which are moving independently, which I do not like at all, so I begin batting those sections into my new favorite environmental hazard.