All the tanks in Morwen’s armor column fired at once. Massive twenty foot fireballs roared out of each barrel and sent slugs screaming at Ominek who simply stood nonplussed about it. Soil and fire exploded where the Dread lord stood, and Morwen waited for the dust to settle. She didn’t think seven tanks would be enough to topple the dragon, but then again, she’d been wrong before. Unfortunately, as the smoke cleared, leaving Ominek hovering where he’d stood in the center of a considerable crater, she fought the urge to deflate. This is just the opening act, she had to remind herself.
Ominek dusted off his black suit coat, wiping away small clumps of dirt and rock, then glanced back at Morwen. She watched as the dread lord allowed himself an amused smirk. She desperately wished she could wipe that smirk off his face. She knew that while she was a powerful spell weaver; she lacked the power needed to top the dread lord who easily held centuries to her. The best she could hope for here was a stalemate until Akamori could disrupt the ritual enough to convince Ominek to disengage. He’d committed his forces to a delaying action largely because it seemed he didn’t have enough to prosecute a full battle. Ominek held most of his top end troops in reserve here to protect the ritual casters. Presumably so that they could spend the local wildlings first.
“Is it my turn now?” Ominek said.
She watched as violet energy swirled and billowed around his hand until it compressed down to the size of a brotherhood “golf ball” and then flew at blinding speed into the furthest tank on the flank. The instant the spell touched the armor, It’s HP crashed to 0, and the tank dissolved into particles and blew away in the wind like dust. Morwen gasped, suddenly realizing that Ominek could cast a full powered Disintegration spell. She took a moment to recompose herself, and Ominek seemed all too willing to allow her the time.
“It’s shocking, I know. By all means, take as long as you need to find that valiant steel that so firmly held your spine upright before. I’ll wait.”
She knew it was a fifth level spell, and that it couldn’t be countered, it just dissolved any counterspells fired at it. Trying to stop it was a waste of aether. That left trying to avoid it, which she knew the tanks would not be accomplishing. Somehow she had to rattle Ominek. Spells like that took a lot of energy and discipline to cast. If she let him have those elements, he controlled this fight. The question was, how to do that? She needed to disrupt his casting process.
She pressed a finger to the transmit button on the device in her ear. “Corporal Yasiin, I need you here.”
“Yes sir, on my way.”
She turned to Sala, who’d turned to her for orders. She gave him a nod. She knew what he was asking, and he knew what she just allowed. She watched as the primal turned back to the dread lord. She didn’t have to see Sala’s face to see the hungry smirk on his expression. She could read the sudden confusion in Ominek’s face instead. It told her all she needed, but she knew Sala wasn’t enough. Not as he was. True, Primals had once been the chief rivals of the dragon wings for sector control in the past, and that the dragons had beaten them back, but the primal's were the masters of the next sector over. They were renown warriors, and so their value as war slaves here made them nearly priceless.
Ominek began the signs for another disintegrate, but Sala forced the dread lord to dodge away from several attacks, beginning a game of cat and mouse between the two. Sala pursuing like a blood thirsty cat, and Ominek nimbly dodging and evading. Good. She knew it would only serve as a temporary distraction, Ominek was a canny opponent, and Sala’s relentlessness would only hold him at bay for so long.
She tried to chip in with the tanks and fired off a void ray spell that Ominek casually countered at the expense of his disintegrate spell collapsing. But he easily restarted the process. This time the tanks fired, throwing him over. Sala fell on him immediately and reared back to grind the dread lord into the ground, but the air around the dread lord rippled and swirled with violet dark magic as he teleported out from under Sala who let out a frustrated roar, then searched and scanned for the disappearing dragon.
This was bad. If Ominek could fire off a disintegrate on Sala uninterrupted, the primal might not have time to avoid the attack. Her heart jumped up her throat as she tracked a disintegrate missile hurtling towards Sala. She cried out wordlessly, and the beast hurled himself into the air with a powerful kick of his legs. The spell slammed into the soil just ahead of where he’d been standing, dissolving a massive patch of earth and wetlands grass.
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Sala fired off several light missiles during his descent, crashing down into the soil and kicking up a spray of mud that clapped back down on the soft top soil. Ominek stood some distance off, and Morwen noted the lack of a confident smirk. They’d pissed him off now. They just needed a little extra pressure. His hands were smoking from countering the light blasts that Sala fired seconds ago. He straightened out a small cloth rope around his neck. Some kind of odd human fashion found in the Brotherhood colonies. Why they’d willingly tie a noose up for their enemies to seize bewildered her, but Ominek apparently found it colorful enough to mimic.
She watched the dread lord summon some earth magic and wiped the mud cleanly from his suit. His ebony skin hid his eyes as he closed them to draw in a slow breath. He regained that cocky composure again, and she felt herself tense up. She had no genuine hope of beating him in a straight up confrontation. The best she could expect was pissing him off long enough to forget about the ritual.
If that’s how I have to die to make this a victory, then so be it.
Ominek began weaving several void signs she recognized as the preamble for a disintegration spell, when a light bolt crashed into his hands, canceling the signs out. Everyone just stared in muted shock at his smoking hands, Ominek most shocked of all as he quickly glanced around. A scowl dragged his lips downward and his forehead furrowed into canyons.
“WHO DID THAT?” he snarled.
“I did,” came a confident voice from behind and thirty feet above her. She turned to see Yasiin holding his spell rifle. The barrel still glowed with ambient magic. His eye still pressed to the scope. This might do, she thought. Finally, she might have enough of the right pieces to frustrate him long enough to allow the mages to do their job. She just hoped they could carry the fight with the teams split so evenly. She’d hoped to leave Akamori enough that he could fight as his own overwhelming force, but pulling Yasiin proved vital to her efforts here. There was nothing for it, she’d made the call and committed to the play.
“Welcome to the party, Corporal. I hope you came prepared,” she said, allowing a glimmer of hope to ignite in her chest.
“I always show up ready, sir.”
“Good, because the preamble is finished.”
She wove several soul and water signs and cast an enclosure shield that trapped them inside. Her goal was to cut Ominek off from the ritual. As the runes spread out like a magic net that met the ground and solidified, he tested one lattice with a finger. The magic resisted his touch, pushing back. This drew up an amused chuckle from Ominek as he turned back to her. He clapped slowly.
“Bravo Captain. I have to say. You’re either very brave, or idiotic. You see, you may have separated me from the ritual, but you’ve only slowed me down. In time, I’ll kill you all and break free and resume my work. Why? Because you haven’t trapped me in here with you. No,” he cooed. “You’re trapped in here with me.”
He stressed the “me” emphatically and Morwen swore she felt a chill brush over her like someone had skipped atop her grave. She schooled herself into a disciplined posture and let no hint of fear or discomfort show. Sala and Yasiin both remained equally composed. This only seemed to please Ominek further.
“Good! What a delightful game this will be,” he clapped his hands together with finality. “Who will live the longest?” he asked. There was an eager playfulness in his voice. It threatened to overwhelm her with abject terror.
“I have to say, when I heard you killed Telmok in orbit, I was curious who’d done me the favor of finishing my eldest brother. He was rather ambitious, but a bit… slow. His penchant for brute force made him less desirable as the lead for this mission. When I learned that you’d landed here, curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to take my measure against the mages who killed my sibling.”
His expression twisted suddenly, as though he’d just eaten something foul. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t as impressed as I would have hoped to be.” He paused, an index finger up. “Then I realized something. You weren’t just any bog standard federation captain after me. No, who but none other than the Valkyrie of Kofex, Tohruun and even that armpit of a world Hoshun.” He rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Well, once I figured that out, then I knew I just had to see you. I wanted all this to be much more grand. I wanted your Federation to see it’s end put on full display as we destroy everything you fight so vainly to protect and save. Disappointed as I was that a scant few brotherhood vessels and your own ship showed up to the defense left me rather deflated. Still… knowing that you’ll be here? The Federation’s poster woman? Well… that’s just good enough for me.”
Morwen gripped the top of the tank's hatch until her hand turned white knuckled. Only then did she truly felt like a meal trapped in a predator's cage. It took considerable willpower to set aside the need to run and lean into the need to fight. She drew on that. The anger and rage at all the atrocities committed in the name of the Sauridius. The countless colonies they’d lost, that she’d sacrificed so many young human marines to in order to save lives. She fed that feeling and felt her strength coming back to her in surges. She was the Federation’s Valkyrie. Their battle angel that escorted the most valiant to the afterlife. And she had one last miracle to work.
“Sala. Yasiin. Lt. Fennex. We hold the line here. It’s been a pleasure serving with all of you.”