“So you were there on Hidros when they attacked?” Yasiin’s mother asked.
“Yeah. It was a little touch and go there for a bit, but we pulled it off thanks to the LT.”
“Rayshe? I thought you hated that fop.”
Yasiin grimaced. “No. He was…replaced.” He replied as diplomatically as possible.
“The new lieutenant is actually quite capable in a fight. Without him I don’t think we’d have come back.” Sala said from the wooden kitchen table. His bowl of soup still steamed softly.
Yasiin gave a thoughtful nod. “The sarge definitely whipped him and the weaver, Amara into shape. Those two were clutch in the final battle. For a stretch I wasn’t sure we’d all be walking away, even though we went in pretty certain we wouldn’t.”
Yasiin’s mother sat in silence as the two spell soldiers recounted the tale of fending off the dread lord and how Akamori’s team managed to ruin the ritual. At the mention of seeing a super massive leviathan and having lived to tell the tale, Yasiin was swept up into an emotional hug. Sala smiled wistfully until he was pulled in to join them.
“It always terrifies me when you boys leave to fight. The bits you lose, and don’t come back with. The cost it exerts on you.”
Yasiin gave his mother a sad smile. There wasn’t a way to really tell one’s mother that war was safe, because it just wasn’t. He disliked feeling like he was keeping something from her, though he knew her heart was in the right place. He ultimately settled on reassuring.
They exchanged a round of hugs once more but halted at the sound of multiple explosions in the city. They all three pushed apart. Yasiin exchanged a look with Sala, and he could already see the magic swelling within the Primal’s chest.
“We should go check that out, Mom, take the family and get to the edge of the city. Avoid the Starport. There may be an ambush waiting for fleeing civilians.”
His mother looked stunned, then she quickly schooled her features neutral and nodded. She took it all in stride with practiced ease. Then immediately whirled around to do as he’d asked.
That left Yasiin free to don his spell armor. The black plates turned translucent at the press of the mind rune. Stepping inside, he felt the magic deactivate and the armor allowed itself to harden around him. He opened his void pouch and drew his spell rifle free. He’d taken his earnings to the markets and purchased a longer barrel to give himself better range.
Sala for his part was already prepared for battle at the expense of his clothing. Burned away as he’d channeled his light magic, his golden Audra flared in a controlled fashion. The bottom haf of heavy spell armor covering his waist and legs now revealed. Some towels blew off the table and he bent down to pick them up before he was stopped by Yasiin.
“Leave them, let’s go.”
The two mages barreled out of Yasiin’s home in the rural district in time to see a plume of flame and smoke rolling into the sky from the downtown district. There was some very powerful magic being thrown around. Cries from the civilians echoed down the streets. Yasiin frowned as the scenario began to unfold. He recalled the lieutenant’s invitation and subsequent suggestion to remain behind and wondered if he’d made the wrong choice. He gave a nod to the chaos in the heart of the white, gold and green city.
“At a guess, how bad do you think it is in there?”
“Hmm. Definitely a code brown.”
“That bad?”
Sala nodded. “Bad enough the Lt and the rest dove into the depths on some crazy fool’s errand to stop? Trouble follows that guy like a shadow.”
“Brown it is then.” Yasiin agreed tugging the rifle up into the familiar spot of his shoulder where the buttstock met the arm. He started to advance, but Sala’s stillness halted him. He turned back to find the primal chewing on something mentally. His dark brows were knit as his eyes panned at the ground. “What is it?” Yasiin prompted.
“It’s just…why did we decide on pants?”
“Pants?”
“Yeah, for our codes?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Well, you don’t wear them. Since you’re in your armor. And mine are more like the bottom half of a spell armor. So technically neither of us could piss or shit our pants because we don’t wear pants.”
Yasiin’s eyes narrowed as his mood oscillated from confusion to annoyance and back. “The city is literally blowing up and this what you get stuck on?”
Sala shrugged innocently. “It just didn’t make sense, that’s all.”
“We agreed on pants because Pissing your pants is what you do when you’re scared. Shitting your pants is what you do when you’re outright terrified or already dead.”
Sala was nodding as he followed along with Yasiin’s train of thought.
“Right. But neither of us has on pants.”
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Yasiin growled in frustration, slapping the primal on his crimson fur. “Let’s go you big oaf.”
Sala placed a hand on Yasiin’s shoulder plate, an easy going but faint smile on his face. “It’s ok. I’m terrified too. But the others are coming. So we have to hold out till then, right?”
“Right.”
Sala’s aura erupted like a dormant super volcano that just awoke. Violent and powerful. The white stone beneath their feet cracked. Gravity was reversed near him as small stones and flecks of the pavement lifted up in Sala’s immediate orbit. Of the squad, Sala had the best aura control because it was how he shielded and healed himself. A stone sleeve crawled over his body like liquid rock, hardening solid.
“Then let’s get to work.” Sala said.
Chaos had broken loose on Eryn. As Yasiin and Sala strode against the tide of bodies pushing away from the action, they caught several gold spell fighters racing ahead. Acid bolts occasionally flew into the sky and explosions detonated with enough frequency to indicate a hot zone in the city’s heart. Yasiin tried to pick his pace up but the throng of panicked civilians fleeing blunted any potential momentum he could gain like wading through cooling tree sap.
Sala gently pushed ahead of him and flared his aura, frightening all the zeros around them. Anyone with no magical infusions or fewer than two felt the crushing push of his aura and instinctually fell away giving him room to move like a stream flowing around a rock. Pressing in close to the primal’s back, Yasiin helped push even as the press of bodies swelled in tight on them. They continued like this for a hundred slow meters until the pair stumbled through a wall of bodies into a mostly abandoned space. Litter fluttered away on the winds as the markets area lay clear.
Stepping around Sala, Yasiin could spot the telltale scars of battle on the architecture. Burn marks, and partially liquified materials like metal and stone. Dead Emerald Guard and Sauridius minions lay strewn about intermittently. Whatever the shacklers had launched had started here, but moved on.
“Looks like this is where the fighting started.” Sala said.
“Yeah, moved off that way, likely as they city guards responded. Let’s go.”
Yasiin fed equal measures of light and void magic into his rifle. Being a Nomad on the path of Balance meant that he was one of few who could possess and wield both magics with full competency. The two alignments tended to clash aversely within the soul, forcing a mage to choose which side they most wished to use. It was why void magic users were so rare on Eryn, setting aside the prohibition emplaced by the Federation. Being a spell soldier in the Federation’s army exempted him from the prohibition, but it didn’t mean he walked away from it without persecution.
He refocused his mind on the present when they rounded a corner and took in the raw carnage before them. Emerald Guard bodies lay strewn all over the place. Sala’s advance halted slowly, and even Yasiin was forced to take in the battlefield with awe filled fear and respect in equal measures. He’d been fighting with Captain Morwen for several campaigns so this wasn’t a sight he was unused to seeing. The fact that it was laid before them on Eryn of all places though? That hit home hard.
Golden spell armor smoked and smoldered from acid bolt impacts. Other guards were locked in the rictus of death, agony etched on their expressions. More than a few limbs lay about the scene. The lack of accompanying bio mass suggested disintegration or void spell use. This was the work of a dread lord easily. But there was more than one powerful ambient magical signature.
“There’s more than one player.” Yasiin said warily, drawing his weapon up into the high ready. He only made two cautious steps advancing in before a small squad of dragonborn hatchlings sprang up from covered positions and opened fire. Unfortunately for them, their practiced cohesion meant squat in the face of Yasiin and Sala’s years of teamwork. The Primal stepped in front of Yasiin. The acid bolts sizzled as they splashed against his aura harmlessly. The few that punched through too weak to breach his stone skin spell. The acid hissed and bubbled feebly. He rubbed a gob of it between his index finger and thumb, and sniffed it dismissively.
“These hatchlings aren’t even tier two.” Sala said. He flicked the acid from his fingers onto the ground where it hissed and smoked as it slowly ate away at the ground leaving a small crater in its wake.
“Good. Then we bowl them over. You lead. I’ll follow.”
Sala clapped a fist into his palm as his aura erupted outwards to fill the entire battle space. The hatchlings flared their own in response. The clash of magic lasted a moment as Sala was only seeking to distract them before launching himself at them while they struggled to fend off his oppressive aura projection. In contrast, Yasiin’s aura was the exact opposite. Tight and minimized, it barely extended beyond his skin. Against the contrasting sun of Sala, Yasiin’s aura looked like a tiny speck of dust. Exactly how he liked it.
Out of sight, Out of mind, he mused to himself as he sidestepped free of Sala’s body long enough to snap off a precision void bolt that caught his first target in the head, dissolving scales, bone, and brain evenly. He spun snapped off another shot on the furthest target on the right as Sala pounced and tackled the hatchling in the middle. His round catching his target clean center mass, coring out the young dragon’s heart. Sala had his victim smashed into the stone screeching before his peers hit the ground dead.
Yasiin strode forward, and Sala stepped off of his kill and the two marched deeper into the fighting. They didn’t move long before the sounds of active fighting could be heard. The pair picked up the pace and slid into cover behind a segment of column that had fallen over. Yasiin risked a quick peek over the top.
An acid bolt splashed against the grooved surface of the white stone and forced Yasiin back into cover quickly. The stone sizzled and popped as the acid hissed its way down the opposite side.
“I count three tangos. Two right, One left. Tier 2 hatchlings.”
Sala frowned, which dragged an inevitable “What?” from Yasiin.
The primal shrugged, his wild mop of black spilling down around his shoulders and back. He looked like he played with balloons too much then went to bed. Maybe something about the way air became electrically charged around him while he channeled his aura? Something to look into later.
“I don’t know. This just feels like a delaying tactic. They made all this noise and then we rush in here and find a bunch of goons?”
Yasiin couldn’t help but agree, despite the threat of a smirk that tried to form. “Yeah, well, just remember these goons almost handed us our asses a few months ago.”
Sala’s eyes pulsed and his voice dropped several octaves in a way that made Yasiin’s blood cool. “Perhaps. But not this time.”
Sala stood, and a hail of acid fire zipped towards him, splashing off his aura. His fists clenched, and the aura billowed out, expanding to cover more ground. Yasiin could sense the extra magic he was feeding it. The volume of fire intensified, but because of Sala’s aura projection, he couldn’t shoot through his friends defense. This was all the primal’s show now.
An eerie calm settled over the area as the Hatchlings ceased fire, uncertain of how to handle the primal tank. Then he vaulted forward in an explosion of movement and magic. His first victim was punched from his covered position, most of the hatchlings body evaporated where the rest splattered the ground. Sala was channeling his light magic to enhance his body now as well as his aura. This would tax his stamina, but the primal had practice with the technique. In a blur of gold energy he moved from hatchling to hatchling followed by satisfying snaps or cracks.
Dead dragonborn children littered the area and Sala ceased his aura. Yasiin was about to sigh in relief, when a sword erupted through Sala’s chest like a metal stinger. Behind him was a beautiful woman that he’d recognized as Morwen’s father’s paramour. She tsked reluctantly and shook her head, still pushing the blade through Sala’s chest as he roared in pain.
“You boys might have stood a chance with your meat shield in play. Or rather… stone shield? Aura shield?” She glanced at Sala’s grimacing expression, blood trickling free of his nose and mouth as he struggled to breath with her weapon buried in his torso.
“Now what will you do? You face a true champion now. Not some goon. Can you entertain me? Make this worth the agony of suffering through it?” She eyed Yasiin curiously. “Or maybe even end me all together and stop this farce?”
Yasiin steeled himself. He was facing the champion of the arena. The champion of Eryn herself. This was not going to end well.