One thing my TK squares are great at? Redirecting or blocking jets of acid. The pressure in an acid volley tends to not be enough to shatter them, and they aren’t a physical substance to break down through acid’s chemical solvent properties. Another thing they’re pretty good at, is levitating corpses, fallen chunks of hydracoliche, equipment, and living foes who aren’t TK-warded into the paths of said acid jets, and similar horrifying effects leveled my way.
There are plenty of fliders left about. Actually, some of them might be being reanimated by Terrorzin’s necromancers. That would just be annoying. I’m not out here to do another endless-hordes-of-the-Fel you dinks. I am however getting dogpiled, so I swap to my cursed greaves, summoning a river of Worldstorm lightning down onto myself again. It buys me a moments reprieve as I dig my way out of charred corpses, or shrug off the lightning-immune Blues. Doffing the cursed greaves, I rotate the river of lightning around me and send it cascading out into the fray while I’m busy stabbing and slashing lightning-immune foes.
Finally starting to be able to tell who’s casting what, I dash towards a necromancer while shouting, “When I put something down, I want it to stay down!”
Gruesomely, I bludgeon the necromancer to death. There was no fear in his eyes, only fanatical hatred. Hm, wait, I think I can prevent any necromantic reanimation revivification or rejuvenation. That’s right. I learned the necromantic bolt spell, and figured out how to get it down to one SP, which means it’s now free with the sash. Without engaging my runic clips, I tag every flider I can find, live or dead, with necromantic bolts.
Oh, distractions. This isn’t great for me. Something directed a few fliders above me, and detonated them. Their calcifying webbing spatters out in a wide radius, covering and hardening over me and the nearby vicinity. I should ravenport out of—wait.
Donning my cursed greaves again, Worldstorm lightning provides, and virtually vaporizes the webbing. Well, huh. Too bad my EM field organ is underdeveloped in this body. It’s going to get plenty of exercise today though. It’s going to hurt, and cost me a lot of health over time, but I might as well just keep the greaves on while pushing out with my electrokinesis and EM field organ as best I can.
I’ll try to keep the incoming damage to a minimum, between my abilities, and passive resistances, which have probably skyrocketed since Al’pa’ca’s keep. I get an endless supply of lightning, whew. The only thing that can get close to me without dying is foes whose armor happens to be warded against lightning, or Blues in their dragon or human forms.
There are a few downsides to this plan. It feels like I’m back in RS1 when my nerve-tunnels were cored out, as I fight against spasming from all the electric shocks. Also, I can’t keep my Steely Body spell up versus the lightning. I just do not have the SP to be recasting it every few seconds. Another one, is I can’t see a gorram thing through the unending brightness.
Thankfully I’ve got my danger wraps’ silent sonar to lean on, and my TK and thermal senses. Magic items and abilities I haven’t pulled out in a while I’ve got to keep track of and make sure I’m utilizing fully. My brain feels overloaded from the stress of multitasking by engaging so many abilities simultaneously though.
My cryokinesis through my ties to the Frosty Fel lets me conjure a bit of cold without much effort, enough to frost the ground around my feet. Though it almost instantly melts what with the heat of lightning. Seconds drift by into minutes as I dash, skate, or plod about the place, wreaking havoc with lightning, physically or telekinetically chucking foes into walls of prismatic elements, and generally just clearing out a wide field. Terrorzin’s forces, even the lightning immune ones, have elected to start staying well clear of me.
They’re focusing on building up their ranged offenses, getting archers, gunners, and breathers and blasters in place. The dragons—breathers and blasters mostly, I would assume—seem dubious about their position of having to attack me, but charge their breath weapons anyway. Several just don’t have the range, and several can see that I’m obviously immune—well, darn near—to lightning, heat, cold, and poison. Sands and Acids clash when trying to blast me, basically backfiring with a lack of teamwork, allowing me to ignore many of them. Plus, there are very few sands. I think two in total, in this segment of the horde.
The Poisons can’t even get their breath close enough to see if I would choke on it, or if it would damage me. They’re balked by all the lightning I’m tossing about that ends up igniting their breath weapons in their faces. It allows me a moment of reprieve to finish the hydracoliche, and all the fliders, using the endless torrent of lightning. Between being chased by Worldstorm lightning everywhere, struck by it constantly, and using my tendrils and telekinesis to rapidly flit about and knock foes into environmental hazards, I’m pooped.
My flesh is seared raw, and I don’t know if I even have any more hair left to stand on end. The scent of my own burning hair and flesh seems permanently affixed to the inside of my nostrils, which is absolutely awful. While there are only a few of them, the gunners are the only danger to me at the moment, so I try to keep corpses or shields between my vitals, and them. It’s not an easy task, as they’re trying to get ranged weapons set up in a wide circle around me. Phooph.
I sink to my knees while doffing my cursed greaves. Directing my lightning westward through the assembled horde, I crumple from the constant strain of shocking the crap out of myself. Huff. I’m just gonna… stay down here for a little bit. A call goes out amongst Terrorzin’s forces to ceasefire, and to check, “the corpse”. Rolling my eyes, I take a breather as a few brave souls run up to scout me out. Waiting until the last possible second, before they’re within spear-length of me, I enjoy this moment of reprieve, despite being face-down in sizzling gore. Just as they’re about to become a danger by getting into melee range, I begin telekinetically gripping those that I can, while my tendrils lash out.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
The screams of fear as I rise and return to my work of carnage are as unpleasant as every other sensation right now. My eyesight is virtually gone, blurry as hell. My gustatory senses feel like my tongue is coated in copper and rotten eggs. Every nerve ending of my flesh is virtually aflame. My muscles are sapped to the point of exhaustion. The snarling and yelling of the horde is giving me a headache. Or, well, it would be, if my head wasn’t already aching from a million different things.
Since my foes want to play with me from a fairly distant range, I begin slinging frosty rays their way, coupled with necrotic bolts. The change-up on my elemental devastation helps reduce the number of lightning-immune foes. Mixing it with my cryokinesis to frost the ground and skate about, I pick up speed and mobility as best I can. Adding in my lightning breath while utilizing my electrokinesis lets me conjure my own ball-lightning that I lob about the battlefield.
Through my goggles, I can barely make out the sound of Teuila stating, “Airhead, there’s still too many that won’t leave their post. I can’t get in stealthily. I have to engage and kick some major tail.”
Ugh. I’m a kilometer out from Te. I thought it’d be wise to be trying to draw things out over here. But, if we’ve gotta beat down the horde around the rescue area anyway, I should have just dropped there in the first place. Crap on several crackers I can barely move. My muscles are wobbly and vibrating. I can’t afford to stay down here though.
Despite not being fast enough for evasive maneuvers, I scoop myself up on a TK square and begin TK surfing around and over the horde to the west. Now, do I blitz these bozos, pulling down more Worldstorm lightning, or do I—Farzhis and Kinzul! Gazing up, I gasp when I realize that the Worldstorm isn’t as full of constant blinding flashes of horizontal lightning as I’m used to. Oh no. Oh no oh no. Please be okay, please be okay. I can’t check on Kinzul, she’s *still* off-grid. Farzhis though, she looks ill, drenched in sweat, and is in the infirmary.
Veril looks distraught as he’s out near Mah’ruke picking off stragglers of the siege. I’m sure he wants to check in on her and be there for her. Okay, okay, she’s alive, and it might not necessarily be my fault that she’s ill. It could be coincidence, though I sort of doubt it. Fine then. Worldstorm lightning and cursed greaves are a last resort, off the table for now. I’ve got to be more self-sufficient with my offenses. Alright, I’ll be leaning more on my breath weapons, cantrips, telekinesis, tendrils, and possibly conjuring FFS from my archsorc staff, Claíomh Solais.
To be fair, having slain nearly all the non-lightning-immune foes, the hydracoliche, the fliders, and a few lightning-immune jerks via cold, or environmental hazards, or plain old-fashioned stabbing, in a quarter kilometer radius put a rather large dent in the horde. Hm. I’m almost surprised that—don’t you dare finish that thought. Right. Right. We don’t need that kind of karma, luck, or genre-trope to strike, when we’re this badly off, this deep into enemy lines. Plus, we still need to distract or destroy foes in the target area to complete the rescue operation.
Gritting my jaw feels like a hellish agony of muscle-strain. I fight through what feels like it’s going to become a ceaseless pain. Loosing my breath weapons in bursts, I use combinations of thunder shouting, alternating poison with flame to bounce off of my own explosions, and lightning to boost my TK square leaping. The erratic nature of my movement thankfully makes me hard to pin down. Unfortunately, despite being a speedster, Teuila isn’t as well-off as I am. And that’s saying something, because I’m doing miserably. She’s within sight-range, but only just barely.
Gnawing my bottom lip in concern, I notice that Te's wincing, hesitating, and getting sloppy. It’s probably because of the injuries she'd been absorbing. I can’t keep up with my aerial maneuvers any longer with my muscles and jaw feeling like lead. Falling at an angle, I bounce, skid, and faceplant as I approach the foes who’d turned west to rush Teuila when she engaged. Groaning, I stand while wobbling side to side, looking for all the world like some charred zombie.
Still, telekinesis, tendrils, and my breath weapons are enough to begin carving my way through the horde towards Teuila. I pepper in plenty of frosty rays or necrotic bolts as well, without engaging the runic clips. Unfortunately, the myriad foes who’d been surrounding me a kilometer to the east are doing their best to rush my way. Those that can fly followed me fairly closely. The landbound ones are scrambling to march or dash after me.
I worry that I might be doing more harm than good, dragging more foes this way. Though only for a moment, as I remind myself that the foes who’d been after me probably would have gone after Teuila as a much larger unit, when she engaged, if I hadn’t gone in first.
Still, we’re in the thick of it, the worst of the worst. I do my best to parry and disarm any weapons that are jabbed my way, but the sheer number of foes with fangs and claws that leap upon me leaves me constantly struggling to slay my way through dogpile after dogpile. My whole world is flailing limbs and breath weapons galore. Every few seconds I’ve got to thunder shout, or ignite a poison-breath to explode a pile of foes, or corpses, off of me.
Glancing through my goggles, the second chokepoint is holding, and it looks like Lil is going nova. With how bright they are, his flames are blocking out nearly all the scrying feeds from anyone’s goggles who are posted over that way. That’s my best buddy for ya. Sun, Star of the Onyx Dawn. I worry that he feels he’s got something to prove, since we couldn’t keep his primordial evolution.
Whispering only to myself, I mutter, “You’ve got nothing to prove Lil. You’re brave, and strong, and perfect. Be safe buddy.” As I do, it almost feels like a beam of light breaks the Worldstorm’s cloudcover, the way the lightning seems to center and circle temporarily.
A call goes out amongst Terrorzin’s troops, “Surround the flying gnat, give her no room to breathe, end her now!”
My eyes fly wide in realization and horror, watching as thousands of foes advance towards, and descend upon Teuila, blanketing out her section of the battlefield. She’s a speedster. She needs room to accelerate to combat at her best. Worse, I feel a tug on Rayileklia’s magical woven essence, its leylines. The draw is across some of its more potent rungs, somewhere between the sixth and eighth tier. No. No no no!
Sensing Te in danger, I hit a second wind—wait. Did I hit a second wind because of Te being in danger, or because “The Sun shone a certain way,” upon the Stone In Two Parts? Err, doesn’t matter! Pouring out every ounce of effort I’ve got, I clear a larger swathe of the horde. Angling towards the new threat against My Wings, I’m about to speed off when it feel like my right arm is nearly yanked from its socket. Apparently, that tug on the weave was conjuring or animating chains about my wrist.