My next personal missions involved making Long Jumps to the islands neighboring the Vesayans: Xi Ru’s island and Freebooter Island.
Both were desired for purposes of Karmic gain. Of the two, Xi Ru’s Island was also potentially able to be settled to an extent, and was far more controllable as far as Karmic gain went.
The main creatures on the island were moarsmen, who were ostensibly guardians of the Deru Tree and the homes of the Falatacot priestesses of the Light who had dwelled there. Sclavi also guarded the temple there, and were considerably more dangerous than the moarsmen because of their spellcasting.
The discourse of what to do there had been rather intense, as Xi Ru was a sister of Lady Adja in spirit, and disrespecting her grave and home was not something I was going to be party to.
On the other hand, the moarsmen there were Summons and out of control. They were a melee-only creature, with no magic or ranged attacks, which made them ideal opponents to a wide variety of foes since the circumstances of engagement were easy to control. Not desiring to take control of the Deru Tree without making a commitment to it, King Borelean readily agreed to leave the Moarsmen Spawn Points at the base of the way up to Deru Tree intact and to not disturb the Deru Tree without good reason.
If the Deep was infiltrating those Moarsmen onto the island, we needed to know. Likewise, if the Dark Falatacot were exerting influence there, we also needed to stop it.
Previously, the only way known to get there was through the services of a devoted ghost in Ayan Baquar tasked to open a Portal that had sent people there. With no such ghost remaining there now, that meant going over the waters.
Likewise, the Portal Devices that sent people to Freebooter’s Island had overloaded and/or been lost during the Fall. All of the Faction Headquarters had once had them, but not even the most senior members who remained, including Master Ben Ten himself, had the slightest idea how they’d been constructed, or any idea of how to replicate them.
I was not so foolish as to go alone, so Lord Mick came along… along with a bunch of Royal Guards eager to test out the moarsmen on Xi Ru’s shores for additional training. It was a great place for Wolfpack training, now widely acknowledged as the most lethal of the Mastery Chains for soldiers.
The Mick towed us across the four miles to Xi Ru’s island in front of the Wagon, and remarkably there was no interference from the Aquatics in the waters. I did scan for them, and there were definitely a few schools of the remorans around, but they stayed underwater and did not emerge to mess with us as the Mick skated past atop the waves at silent speed, making no real noise to range out ahead of us and alert them or spur their curiosity.
If they popped up behind us, it was irrelevant, as we were out of spell range of the shark-rays before they could get something off.
Of the nautiloids of various kinds, all of them stayed down deep and were either unaware of us or did not care to bestir themselves as yet.
We’d see what would happen when we reached the shore and they noticed we were there.
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The area we landed on after breaching the Shoreward had indeed changed. The Mick skated slowly across the breach as everyone stood up.
“Lord Mick, there seems to be rather more moarsmen than the old stories tell us,” the commanding officer, Sir Darvis, mentioned dryly. The crew of soldiers sent on this mention were aspirants to the Royal Guard, and he’d been placed in charge of their safety and command during this trip.
“Aye, an’ that be truth. Shouldnae be a single Spawn active until we reach halfway about the island. The northern side of the island is supposed to have nary a Spawn. Lass?”
I panned my Detect Magic back and forth, pointed ahead. “There are real moarsmen up there on that hill, the rest are indeed Summons.” I held up a hand, conjured up the globe of an Eagle’s Vantage, and tossed it skywards.
It shot up to a thousand feet up, giving me an excellent sight of everything for two miles around. I replicated the view in Holo up in front of me.
Hills led up from the beaches along ridgelines to the major mount where the Deru Tree waited in a pool up there. There was an Empyrean Lighthouse and two crashed Empyrean Battle Platforms near it, which the Mick had mentioned had once floated nearby them, as well as a secondary tower near a pool with four Empyrean Heads about it, near the point where once people had been Portaled in… and now was the visible center of a bunch of gathered moarsmen not moving like Summons.
“Well, ain’t they clever little buggers,” the Mick murmured, Bunita already out and in hand as it was plain that we were going to need to fight just to bring the Wagon ashore. The Guard Aspirants were already cocking back their Autobows and drawing down on their targets, while Sir Darvis held two Rods that would send out the limning Faerie Fires in blue and purple hues to determine the targets of their shots.
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Clearly visible just around the turn of the island at the edge of the Vantage were two moarsmen coral beach temples, much like we’d seen before in other places.
“They bred real spawn in the temples and used them to take over the island spawns?” Sir Darvis asked for his troops.
“’Twould be my guess,” the Mick agreed “Lass, we may be paying the Deru Tree a visit after all.”
“Agreed,” I replied without qualification. “The Tree should have been able to keep control of the Spawns directly around its pool up there, but it may have lost control of everything else.”
“Sir Darvis, ye an’ the lads are about t’ have a very busy day,” the Mick said cheerfully.
“That’s why we’re here, Lord Mick!” the knight answered, raising his Rods and getting an instant shout of affirmation from the Aspirants there.
“I have your backs. You will not die while I am here,” I promised them all. “Kill them all, Seal these points, and make our way to those Temples.”
“Combat squads, you will disembark as soon as we hit the shores. Lord Mick, take us in,” Sir Darvis stated, and his first two targets lit up with phantasmal flames of pale blue and violet the moarsmen stared at with their dark eyes in confusion.
Autobows, made according to Sama’s designs and purchased as preferred weapons for the Royal Guard, thrummed and kicked. The copper-scaled Putrid and Viscous Moarsmen jerked over and fell, vivus sparking up on them with the vigor reserved for consuming Summoned creatures as their flailings quickly stopped.
The Mick glided ahead as the men with long Blades and Shields tensed, Sir Darvis picked out two new targets, and I made sure there were no surprises in the waters immediately around us.
The blaring hunting cry from the hill ahead of us was not something we wanted to hear, however.
The Mick stopped five yards short of the beach, ignoring the next two moarsmen who dropped as he turned his attention in the direction of that hill. With eerie synchronicity, all the moarsmen who we could see had turned their attention to the hill.
“Take care, Lord Mick. Keep shooting, gentlemen. I will be supplementing you.” Three Darts spun up around my arm in jet and silver. “I believe we are about to get bum-rushed.”
Bunita hissed out to her full length, Orange-Rainbow spirals swirling around the length of blue-black adamant edged in the same color, metal which swirled and transformed into a bar of solid soul-chilling frost as two Stones clicked into place.
“A bit more fun than we expected, lass,” the Mick said jovially as the heads of the moarsmen all turned in our direction under further roaring instruction to them.
“Pity them. Gentlemen, get those Shields over and drawing up a wall, no Wolfpacking for the moment. You stand and impale when they come, and the archers shoot them down from above.”
Sir Darvis just grunted, “Go!” as the Mick pulled up on the sands, and the sixteen men of the melee teams disembarked from inside, rapidly putting up a shield wall around the Wagon, Lord Mick front and center as Clan popped up to full size on his arm.
With savage roars, the moarsmen around us charged, with more coming from further down the beach and inland where it rose quickly into hills leading up to the abrupt towering mount ahead of us. That was where the unseen Deru Tree, invisible from a distance, waited in a magical pool of purest water drawn from the heart of the island and pouring down the slopes in a waterfall located at about four o’clock on the island.
The closest ones rushed in, and learned what the Archer Stand Thrust, Steadfast, and Hold the Line did for a shield line in impaling violence as they drove themselves onto ready swordpoints, while Shields suddenly sprouted six-inch spikes and were slammed back into the charging, rancid-smelling creatures, stopping them with grunts of effort as claws ripped at them and jaws snapped in front of them.
Autobows thrummed from point-blank range above as targets were painted, shifted, and actions clacked as volleys began to pump out in groups of two, killing anything impaled on the swords of the shield wall and still moving afterwards.
Lord Mick notably was not affected at all, Bunita slicing in flickers of motion, and every moarsmen who charged him died instantly and abruptly at his feet, blazing full open in vivus ate them away. If they managed to reach him, it was only to run right into the new Spikes on Bunita burning cheerfully away in Main-Gauche love, the same hues and power as Bunita without the Stones, and killed themselves in doing so.
He was heaping them up faster than the archers and swordsmen were doing in any particular area, which enabled him to hold the front of the Wagon all by himself without any problem. Naturally his very showy Weapon attracted the attention of the simple-minded Summons and drew them to attack him.
I just stood up top and thinned them out with Chained Dartrays, Kickers softening them up and eating away at them with Silver Fire. Any braced blow or archer volley could then drop them instantly, and so made sure the incoming pressure of moarsmen Summons was manageable.
More importantly, I hit every single Summons point painted in my Eagle’s Vantage after the Summons attached to it died, making sure they weren’t going to be respawning and turning this into an endurance contest.
Echoing calls from afar made it plain that this alarm was going off all over the island, and more reinforcements were going to be coming from the distance.
“I think we be taking that hill there,” the Mick said laconically, taking a step forward, a moarsman skull exploding into white dust under his boot.
I was busy Sealing Spawn points, Darts zipping out from around my arm and impacting specific tracts of sand and soil as matching lights winked out in my Vantage viewpoint. “As you wish, Lord Mick. There are more moarsmen coming in from the south of the island in a veritable flood. We are going to be in a mass Summons fight soon enough!” I called back.
“Nae worried with ye here, lass,” he answered, two slices dropping three moarsmen with flash-frozen heads exploding into white dust as they hit the ground on either side of him and were casually batted away by Clan. Plunging points from the shield wall and thrums of Autobows above backed up his words.
Sir Darvis pointed at a red dot who had come down off the hill on my Holo and was blending into the general mass of the Summons coming after us.
Four Autobows thrummed, slammed into the green-scaled real moarsman, and dropped it in a twitching heap.
There were a bunch of those to kill off, and they might well choose to run rather than fight, but that was what Detects for. Just hiding underwater wasn’t going to save them from us.
Taking shelter in the known Dungeons on the island, well, that might be another problem…