Leo screamed as everything he had just experienced came to him in a rush. The pain of his injuries overwhelmed him and he fell to the ground in a writhing heap. All around him, the other survivors did the same, whether they were wounded or just suffering from the shock of returning emotion it didn’t matter they fell to the ground and groaned.
Cries of anguish and pain echoed across the battlefield feeling as though it would never end. However soon the minds of the warriors settled into a quiet dread. People began to stir from where they had fallen and healers began to move through the injured, their hands glowing with the golden light of healing energy.
Leo took longer than would have cared to admit but the memory of the thoughts racing through his mind as he disregarded the dying all around him and the sight of Laryk Orayn’s brutalized form rising up to attack even as his body fell to pieces disturbed him.
What were words he had thought as the man died? “One less to kill later…”
Leo shivered and for the first time realized he could see. In the last moments of the fight with the Shadow Lord, he had done something he had never thought possible. Somehow he had forcefully channeled a skill through his eyes. The cold acknowledgment of his own eyes sizzling and popping as the flames burst from them had meant nothing to him just moments ago. Now however it sickened and terrified him. He could still feel the half-dried fluid on his face from their destruction.
Struggling to discard the emotions running rampant through his mind Leo dragged himself into a seated position once again without help from his arms.
Leo’s hackles rose as another thought came to him, “Where is Kalum?”
Leo had been barely conscious when the man had arrived but even so, he could feel the malevolence radiating from Kalum the moment he had arrived but now it was gone, “Someone heal my eyes damn it!”
Even over the groans of the wounded and broken apparently someone had heard him and a moment later he felt the slow warmth of healing magic sinking into his face, “I am here sir. Before it- before it ended I saw him thrown clear of the battle.”
The voice was quiet and feminine but at the sound of it, Leo felt a rage rise up in his chest for an instant. He almost lashed out at her but a sudden dizziness rocked his concentration and he fell back to the ground.
“Sir! Please rest. Whatever our savior did has left its mark. Our minds are fragile,” The woman said, her voice low and calming.
Leo grunted, this time the rage was nowhere to be seen. Eventually, he could see the barest hint of light as his eyes began to regenerate and then a rough shape of a woman’s hand became visible.
[Opal Torag | Vital Mender 78 | Human]
“Opal, the anchor. Is it still there?” Leo asked as his pain slowly subsided.
He couldn’t tell if she nodded or shook, “It is but something is happening. It is growing smaller.”
Leo forced himself upright again this time with tentative help from his arms and Opal. Now that he was sitting he could see her face more clearly. She was a thin woman with striking green eyes, her hair was almost as orange as the flames he conjured and her skin was pale, likely more so than usual due to the current circumstances. Opal wore robes much like Elder Volan’s but they were absolutely soaked in blood.
She kept healing him as he tried to look at the anchor in the distance. Opal was right it had gotten smaller but not only that the pillar that had reached into the sky now twisted strangely around itself. He was about to turn back Opal when a notification appeared in front of him.
Quest Available: Planar Retaliation
You are the mortal with the highest level of contribution that still lives and is within the incursion’s area.
Do you wish to maintain the existence of the abyssal anchor and use it as a staging ground for a counter-assault? Yes/No
Rewards: To be determined after the successful destruction of the enemy plane.
Leo’s eyes widened, “Do you see the quest?” He asked Opal.
The woman looked surprised by his sudden outburst, taking a step back before shaking her head, “No Sir, I don’t know what you mean.”
Leo didn’t even have to think about his choice before he selected no and a thunderclap tore across the area making his ears ring. The anchor blinked out of existence instantly as if he had never been there in the first place and Leo sighed with relief but the feeling faded when he reread the quest description.
Groaning with exertion Leo dragged himself to his feet at the protests of Opal, “Thank you, Opal. Please see to the others,” Glancing around through still blurry eyes Leo could see hundreds of wounded and dying people, “They need more help than me. I will search for Kalum.”
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Opal nodded and moved on to the next wounded soldier. Leo moved through lines of the wounded and dying spotting several shield bearers and fighters from early in the battle. Glimpses of memories flashed through his mind. Images of callus slaughter and disregard of the wounded. With what he had seen, Leo had expected to find more dead people than he actually did but at the same time, he knew all too well how they could ignore their wounds to strike out at the demons who harmed them.
It was a double-edged blade, ignoring the injuries only worsened them but the complete lack of pain response and fear often allowed them to avoid additional or lethal harm. He shivered again at the thought but now isn't the time to think about all that. He had to find Kalum.
Leo’s body moved sluggishly, his stamina and mana didn’t seem to be regenerating as they should. He passed by the form of Hedrik lying beside a row of wounded mages. They were all in a sorry state but from the look of it, they would all live. For a moment Leo wondered why the man hadn’t joined him against the Shadow Lord but Leo didn’t have to walk far to see why.
For every human, elf, or dwarf who had fallen twice as many demons died. The entire battlefield was littered with the demonic dead, or at least their black platemail devoid of shadow and bone that wore it.
They had no right to survive that battle, and yet somehow they had not only survived but fought the demons back to their anchor as well as defeated the monstrous Shadow Lord. It was all made possible due to Kalum’s arrival.
But where was he?
Leo scanned the tree line for any sight of the man but all he saw was another scene of destroyed terrain. With no better clues, Leo trudged through the bloody mud and charred dirt into the forest. Trees as thick as he was tall had fallen to the forest floor crushing the brush in a large area. It made finding the next oddity simple.
Behind the remains of a shattered boulder in a clearing created by the impact of a fast-moving object was a pool of dark blood. It was darker than normal but Leo had no doubt it was Kalum’s blood if not by the color or any real information it was what lay behind it embedded in the trunk of another tree.
Exterminator’s Regards [Rare] [Evolution]
The final weapon forged by the Lord of Extermination for a friend he hoped would never need it. This blade contains a fragment of its creator’s soul and will grow with its wielder. When an enemy is slain with this blade the wielder gains stamina equal to the enemy’s level. If damaged this blade will regenerate over the course of six days. The regeneration process can be accelerated by imbuing the weapon with mana.
“May you stride through the enemy unhindered.”
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Dalen’s eyes flickered open as the structure around him shuddered. His body screamed as it had before but that was the last thing on his mind, “Kal!”
Only when he sat up did Dalen see the carnage of the dome. He had been lying in a pool of cooling blood that seeped down the layers of rings around the central platform. Everywhere he looked lay dead and dismembered space mages. A large gash carved its way around the dome in a path of brutal slaughter and Dalen couldn’t help but note the height of the gash coinciding with bisected bodies of the summoners.
“Gods! What happened here?!” Dalen gasped and dragged himself to his feet.
“Did Kal do all this?” Limping slightly Dalen moved over to where he spotted Melisia. She had been moved from where he had seen her fall and placed into a more comfortable position. From the look of it whoever had healed him had healed her as well, “Melisia, wake up.”
Dalen jostled her a few times but she didn’t awaken. Sighing, Dalen scanned the room again and spotted Nyx and Ander both of them looked in as bad a shape as he did. Their bodies were covered in gray patches and strange burns.
Like Melisia they were both in comfortable positions and breathing steadily. If Volan hadn’t seemed like a powerful healer before he certainly did now. Dalen had no doubt he was the one who had kept them alive.
“Dalen?! You’re awake!” Jaliete voice pounded into Dalen’s head suddenly like a hammer against steel.
Dalen swayed on his feet for a moment, “Gods woman! Yes, I’m awake. What the fuck happened? Where is Kal?” He said aloud more for a way to vent his confusion and irritation than anyone's benefit.
“Elendria was forced to send him away-”
“What!” Dalen roared as the strange heat in his chest rose up.
“We had to Dalen. You did not see… Quickly come to the entrance, we will explain when you arrive,” Jaliete’s voice seemed to fade toward the end of her sentence before vanishing with a popping sensation.
Dalen hissed in frustration but didn’t waste any time grumbling and made his way toward the entrance. As he left the dome he used Identify on a few corpses he didn’t recognize immediately. He had no idea who were traitors and who wasn’t but when one last name appeared he grinned, “Fucking bitch!”
[Alansu Menbray | Mind Mage 99 | Human] [Deceased]
Dalen wasn’t surprised in the least to see the damned mind mage in the dome. No doubt the whole thing had been some god-driven plot to gain control of Kal. But clearly, things had not gone her way once again.
When he reached the passage another hint of satisfaction came when he saw the brutalized corpse of Lissette, the apparent “survivor” of an ambush, “Bull shit!” Dalen should have something like this coming. Once again he had failed to see the whole picture. Gods worked against them for fuck’s sake. The Order seemed to understand that but was also naive enough to get complacent, their “defenses” were bypassed and abused. All it took was a single traitor to destroy what semblance of safety they had.
The Order was not composed of the world's brightest or even the best leaders. No, it was full of the disillusioned people of the world. Dalen growled as he walked past the corpse and up the passages of The Vault. Anger drove him through the pain and brought him closer to the surface but then he saw the upper passages.
The passages were slick with the blood of both The Order and Empire soldiers. Men, women, and even children lay dead in the halls and the huge chambers between them, “Gods how many soldiers did they send? And how many did they kill?...”
When he reached the entrance and found the survivors of the battle and the elders gathered together doing what they could to re-establish order, the anger that had driven him through his pain had only grown.
His eyes locked on Jaliete, “Tell me everything.”