Finn, Rosa, Tobias, and Sister Alharrow hurried through the wilds, racing to get to Malvas before the dangers of Termulain could. Even though they traveled quickly with their higher Stamina and Durability, they still tired and were forced to pitch camp long before they could see the fabled stone walls of the ancient city.
It was deep night when they finally stopped, and the two moons—one red and the other blue—were riding high in the sky, as if chasing each other.
I wonder what happened to our own moon, Finn thought as he sat by the fire, half-dozing as he listened to Alharrow’s rough snores and Tobias’s gentle twittering. Rosa was awake, keeping watch. Her form emerged in the firelight, the flames lighting up her electric pink hair although her face was pale.
“Something wrong?” Finn whispered tensely. His hand went to the blade on the ground beside him. Despite their lack of time, the others had forced Finn to go back so that they could search for the Pyrrhic Blade, which they’d found when it glowed red under the water in answer to Finn’s call.
He was glad to have it again. The blade felt like it was a part of him, not just a means of slaying monsters.
Is it something to do with the fact that it was a treasure dedicated to the Asai of Fire?
“I don’t know.” Rosa crouched by the fire, looking at it glumly for a moment before standing back up. “Come see for yourself.”
Finn wordlessly got to his feet and followed her out of the clearing then down the side of the gentle hill toward a rise that overlooked the wilds and river valleys. Rosa was tense, and that was unlike her.
“There.” Rosa stopped and pointed at a few glimmering lights in the valley below. “They started up a little while ago, so I kept my eyes on them, but they haven’t moved.”
“Campfires?” Finn hazarded a guess. There had to be less than a dozen flickering lights, but he couldn’t see their sizes from where he stood. He guessed it could be a camp of this War Boss Durzog’s forces, but if that was all they were, there wouldn’t be enough to defeat Blackwood, let alone Malvas.
“That’s not all. Look,” Rosa said, pointing to the sky.
At first, Finn didn’t see anything, but then he saw what had Rosa alarmed—a shadow gliding through the dark, black against black, and heading toward the lights.
“I don’t know what that is?” he whispered, even as he recalled the dying troll’s words. Durzog’s weapons? “Well, we’ve faced trolls before, and trollics, and ogres, and troll-ogres… They’re brutes, but they can be brought down. I’m not seeing anything that we can’t face…”
There was a snap of twigs behind them. It was Tobias and Sister Alharrow. Rosa pointed out the strange shadows in the sky and the flicker of lights on the ground.
“We should check it out,” Tobias said, and the others murmured in agreement. They already had their weapons, so they returned briefly to stamp out their fire.
But Sister Alharrow suddenly looked up into the trees and snarled.
They were in the middle of damping the coals when there were heavy thuds from the forest behind them. Too irregular to be just a branch or a twig falling.
“What is that?!” Finn hissed. There was a flicker in the darkness between the trees.
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> You have been struck by the Zephyr’s Crossbow for 65 points of damage.
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Finn was thrown back when something struck him. The pain was so sudden that he went down, snarling as he tore the bolt from where it had snagged in his arm. In a moment, the clearing was filled with the hissing of bolts being fired from the treetops.
Looking up, he saw them—the winged, beaked zephyrs, who were the sky pirates living on the distant Storm Ridge and trading with the port city of Termulain. He saw one of the bird-people open its beak to hiss a savagely victorious, rasping cry as they raised their short crossbow in his direction once again.
Finn rolled out the way, the bolt sweeping overhead, and rose with one fluid motion into a sprint toward the base of the tree where the shooter was holed up.
“In the trees! Look up!” Tobias shouted with a sudden boom as he summoned his treasure into his hands. He smashed the great slab of rock into the ground and sent a surge of living green energy up into one of the tree branches, snapping it and sending one the zephyr flying.
That was what those dark shapes in the sky were—zephyr ships! Finn snarled as watched the zephyr hop from the tree and fly deeper into the forest. But what are the zephyr doing out here? They’re sky pirates. Slavers. Not a war-band!
“Not just in the trees!” Rosa shouted as she spun around, sweeping with her staff in a wide arc and sending a wave of blue hurricane energy crashing into two zephyr who were run-flying along the ground. The magical blow flung them back.
Finn realized in a moment that those thuds must have been these bird-people dropping from their ship. “Oh, no…” Finn looked up just in time to see a large black shadow eclipse their clearing, cutting off the stars beyond like some angry god pulling a blanket over hope.
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“They’re all around us! Toward Malvas!” Finn shouted, knowing that if they scattered after their enemy into the woods, they would surely get picked off and kidnapped, shot by poison darts and carried off like they had before.
Poison darts!
A wave of dizziness rushed over him.
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> You have been affected by Monk’s Poison. -25% to all activities until the poison effects wear off.
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Dammit! Not again!
Finn gasped and struggled to reach the nearest tree. He sheltered underneath it as the airship sailed overhead. He dared a look to see where the others were and saw a flash of green energy at the other side of the clearing as Tobias fought two more zephyrs.
“Tobias! Make for Malvas! Everyone make for Malvas!” Finn hollered, even as a wave of sickness and pain in his head washed over him.
A zephyr shrieked as it ran toward him, swinging a scimitar.
One zephyr, even if it was from an Older Zone and was at least Level 15 or more, was an easy kill for Finn—even in his poisoned state. He dropped his shoulder as the creature swung, flicking the Pyrrhic Blade to his other hand as he added a few points of Strength.
The shimmering red blade cut through the zephyr with ease, even as Finn staggered after the sweep. There was another shriek, and another winged pirate ran at him. Finn managed to backhand the scimitar out of the way and out of the zephyr’s clawed hands. On the return stroke, he cut them down too.
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> You have defeated a Level 16 Zephyr Slaver. Experience added.
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> You have defeated a Level 16 Zephyr Slaver. Experience added.
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As soon as the second bird-person was down, Finn saw a greater threat. There was a line of four more stalking into the clearing. In their hands, they each had their nasty, black crossbows.
“Bring him down!” one shrieked.
Nope. Finn tried to throw himself back behind the tree, but he was still affected by the Monk’s Poison. He tripped, ending up sprawled out neither beside nor behind the tree. Two bolts surged harmlessly past, but Finn wasn’t so lucky with the other two.
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> You have been struck by a Zephyr Bolt for 26 points of damage.
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> You have been struck by a Zephyr Bolt for 26 points of damage.
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> You have been affected by Monk’s Poison. -50% to all abilities.
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> Total Poison Effect: -75% until the effects wear off.
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Finn felt waves of tiredness and pain roll through him. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let the zephyrs capture him again?!
“Finn!”
He turned his head and blearily saw that Sister Alharrow had transformed into her wolf form, her face elongating into a long, gray-haired snout and her arms extending, rippling with silver fur and ending in vicious talons as she fought off two more zephyrs. She was trying to pull Tobias back from the firing line.
The firing line which…is reloading… Finn thought sluggishly.
He had a minute or two, maybe no more than that, to do something to save himself and his friends.
But what could he do at -75% to all abilities? He could probably still kill them in one-on-one combat but taking on an entire airship?!
Taking on an entire airship.
The thought was absurd and clearly insane, and Finn was probably only thinking about it because he was half-delusional from the poison.
But it would sure prove a distraction, right?
Finn didn’t have the skills or the ability to bring down an entire airship—not by himself, and certainly not when poisoned.
Then again, he had something up his sleeve, didn’t he? Or rather, something in his Celestial Inventory.
The Hearthstone of Blackwood. As Realm Founder, it was always in his possession unless he purposefully gave it up, and it acted as a storehouse for Mana equal to his own level.
Mana that I can put into my own magic…
As the zephyr warriors reloaded their crossbows and brought them back up to surely bring down Finn the Realm Founder, the Troll-slayer, Finn swept his Pyrrhic Blade upward in a gleaming crimson arc, spilling flames behind it.
All of his own Mana had come back from his fight against the ogre. He had no idea how much damage it would require to punch a hole through a wooden galleon currently flying through the damn air, but he guessed it would be a lot.
“Fire bless me!” he hissed as he used the Fire-Bolt ability of the Pyrrhic.
A flaming ball of rage burst from the blade, sweeping upward as Finn committed a further 100 of his own Mana into the blast to increase the power, and then 600 Mana from the Hearthstone.
Blackwood is going to be pretty unprotected until it recharges, he thought. But then again, if he died here, someone else would just claim the Hearthstone anyway and Blackwood would likely be doomed. He just had to hope that Blackwood would be fine tonight, but either way, it was done now and couldn’t be taken back.
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> You have hit the Air Galleon for 1000 points of damage.
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There was a deafening boom as flames engulfed the bottom of the galleon, and the grounded zephyrs shrieked. Black smoke billowed everywhere, and there was this terrible grinding sound…
Finn saw the ruddy, burning hull start to tilt and roll as it began to fall, and that was about the time he realized another aspect he hadn’t thought through. What that thing crashed, it was going to be big.
“Finn, you damn beautiful idiot!” Rosa shouted as the black smoke was pushed back by a wall of blue force. Rosa appeared a moment later with a slower, slightly confused-looking Sister Alharrow at her side. “Get up! Here, we have to run!” Rosa grabbed one of Finn’s arms and one of Sister Alharrow’s, rushing them away from the forest clearing where the ship was going to crash. Tobias emerged from the woods running toward them.
They all ran, and Finn felt sick with weakness. He was barely holding himself up, but he felt the quake and saw the splash of light in the dark trees.
The air galleon had crashed, and Finn’s vision lit up with more updates and advancements than he’d seen since the second battle for Blackwood.
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> You have defeated a Level 30 Zephyr Air Galleon! Experience awarded.
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> You have defeated a Level 15 Zephyr Warrior. Experience awarded.
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> You have defeated a Level 15 Zephyr Warrior. Experience awarded.
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> You have defeated a Level 15 Zephyr Warrior. Experience awarded.
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> You have defeated a Level 19 Zephyr Captain. Experience awarded.
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> You have defeated a Level 17 Zephyr Navigator. Experience awarded.
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The updates kept coming, and with them, the inevitable flare of purple lightning surged up from the ground and across his body.
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> Congratulations! You have reached Level 25.
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> Congratulations! You have reached Level 26.
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Finn couldn’t believe the surge within his body as new power pathways and capabilities opened to him, along with a lot more points to spend on his personal stats.
Despite all this, he didn’t even think about all this new power he had acquired. All he thought about was the fact they had just defeated one zephyr airship out of what could have been ten or twenty.
Somehow, this Trollish War Boss Durzog from Termulain had united his people and the zephyrs, and he had a fleet heading for Malvas at the same time as Finn and his friend.