You delve further into the forest, darting ardently between its trees. With your katana circling you defensively, you head towards the Stone Crags up ahead. Or more specifically, you head towards their leader - the psionic Crag.
Your heart thunders in your chest as you advance, trepidation filling your every step. You do your best to tamp down the fear inside you so that you can face these things with a clearer heart and mind. It’s funny considering that you’re no longer a stranger to these kinds of conflicts, whether it's armed militants or hungry Crags or powerful psions facing off against you. Every single confrontation frightens you deeply.
Still, you find it much easier to deal with now. It’s simply that your command over your own emotions allows you to wrangle them with ease, to make them do what you want rather than the other way around.
You are the master of your psyche, not the other way around.
It isn’t just your self control, of course. It’s your ability to harness your powers with greater discipline and heightened focus. What’s more, you decide to take a page from the Shadow Sweeper and engage these Crags with the same tactic it did in your dream.
You funnel your energies into your Temperance, allowing you to regulate your body with a more deft hand, and stopping it from shaking with adrenaline. You then pour equal amounts of energy into your ESP, and weave the powers together to create a new Combination power - Fortify. As a result, you feel your physical and mental self swell and harden significantly, empowered by your own psionic energies.
Not that you stop there. You also pour power into your Foresight and Scan and maintain them at similar levels. This allows you to literally peer in every direction all at the same time, eliminating many blind spots plaguing you. Doing so leaves you with few weaknesses to be exploited, though you’re certain you still have plenty you’re not even aware of.
In essence, you’re empowering yourself just like the Sweeper did, and apply a specific amount of psionic energy to a number of your powers all at once. Doing so completely elevates your being on numerous levels, making you feel truly powerful and potent, more than any other time in your life. Whatever fears you may have seem to melt away the more you energize yourself in this way.
Kaja would be proud.
Once you find yourself brimming with energy and burgeoning with power, you let loose your excesses into the Network itself. Whatever energies you have spills through easily, empowering Noir and Nance with equal fervor. You sense their psyches also swell as a result.
Even the non-psions in the Subnetworks are affected greatly. Their physical selves seem to be greatly energized, and their morale increases significantly. Everyone becomes incredibly potent in their own individual way, not just hardier and more alert.
Every one of you in the Networks gets the sense that you’re capable of taking on the world, and that nothing can stop you. Whatever fears and anxieties you all have about their rock-like opponents also seems to melt away - though they never fully disappear.
You stop short of forming an Orchestra however, as you can only do that if your full focus is on supporting everyone. It would certainly be the play if you were to hang back and focus on everyone. However, now that you’re forced to fight up front now, you have no hope of doing any such thing.
Splitting your mind between offense and support at the same time would only cause problems, and you would all likely end up dead as a result.
Still, you feel the hearts and minds of everyone in the Network strengthen and solidify considerably, just as yours does. It binds all of you together as a whole, allowing you to radiate a sense of insurmountability about you. None of you have any doubts about the fight in front of you, and that sheer confidence ripples outward in waves.
It’s more than enough to cause the psionic Crag to reel back in fear, which the others in its group do as well. It then takes a couple of steps back the closer you get to it, but stops backing up when you stop as well.
Though you hope that the challenge you present causes it to turn around, it hardly budges from its spot. The other three certainly move around, however. They begin to circle and flank you, slowly at first. Not that you’re necessarily worried about them - you can sense their every move through your Fortify as well as through the Network.
Thanks to all of the powers swirling around you, you easily sense the ground rumbling, the brush rustling, the twigs snapping, the Crags chittering, their energies swirling and shifting and moving and flanking.
A Scan reveals that the psionic Crag itself has its own Network running - a powerful and highly secure one at that. It has clearly added the other three non-psionic Crags to it, and is guiding their actions through it. In fact, you can just about sense the energies of an Orchestra woven into their Network.
You find that its Orchestra is far finer and more complex than anything you could create, and is beyond your knowledge. You can hardly disseminate how it seems to be built, despite how close you are to it. The Crags are born as part of a hive mind, after all. So an Orchestra must come naturally to them.
More than that, you recognize that the psionic Crag has erected significant defenses within the Network, protecting all their psyches from intrusion and attack.
The psionic Crag backs up onto its middle and rear legs, then flicks at you with its meaty front legs. Although the move looks defensive in nature, you sense that it’s attempting to bait you into an attack. Waves of Foresight emanate from it shortly afterward, making it clear that it wants to counter whatever move you make.
A glance at the shards building your future just about confirms this. You attack with foolhardy resolve in one of the shards, which ends in you getting crushed by heavy granite legs. For obvious reasons, you avoid following that shard and meeting that fate.
However, you grin as you welcome the invitation and you dash forward with your katana by your side. Harnessing a large amount of Telekinetic energy, you swing the blade around aggressively, as though you’re about to cut the psionic Crag in half.
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As you’ve predicted, it hardens its stance and turtles up, then folds its front legs tightly like a massive shield. At the same time, the Crag to your right leaps forward in an attempt to attack you from the flank. A spike of Temperance through the Network helps it close the distance between the two of you, giving it an opportunity to attack.
One of its heavy granite legs swings downward, in an attempt to crush you with its might.
Thanks to your own Foresight, you’re able to leap out of the way just in time. You roll to the side as you feel the impact of its leg hit the ground. It’s enough to rattle you deep inside, and more than enough to embed the leg partially into the dirt.
But you counter it quickly and whip your katana underneath it, then spin it outward at an angle as fast as you can. As you do so, the edge bites into the leg that’s dug into the ground, right where its main joint is extended. It cuts all the way through the weaker, thinner stone chitin on the inside, and separates the foreleg from the rest of the Crag with a decisive slice.
Black blood spurts out of the wound as the Crag shrilly shrieks from pain. It backs up quickly in an attempt to get away from you, as you Telekinetically swing the katana at it a few more times. You sense its panic rise, which causes it to stumble as it retreats. It loses every speck of its offensive momentum and is completely unbalanced as a result of your counter.
And because Frank and his team are attuned to you through the Network, they immediately follow up with their own attacks. Frank himself gives them the order, and the four of them take measured shots at the Crag.
Their bolt action rifles erupt with fiery violence, filling the area with a thunderous noise. The blasts are loud enough to chase away any other critters still lingering, and even causes the Crags’ fear to rise ever so slightly higher.
Their heavy rounds strike the stumbling, wounded Crag with ease - two hit the same middle leg, right at the joint as well. They rip right through it, and cause the joint to burst open fiercely. A third round impacts the Crag between its head and thorax, punching through the thinner chitin and embedding itself deep inside.
More blood spills out as a result of the hits, splashing the ground with dark black gore. Along with it comes the pungent scent of sulfur rising up into the air.
The fourth round misses its mark due to the Crag now flailing in pain. It smashes squarely into its thick stone armor, causing a small cloud of granite dust to puff up at the point of impact. The round itself leaves a rather large divot in the stone, though nowhere near enough to penetrate.
As Frank and his team reload their weapons, you press the Crag further to keep it on the defensive. First, you strike it with a simple Telekinetic punch - much like a hammer, but a bit larger. It smashes it from the side as it stumbles, overwhelming its severed limbs easily. Though your TK strike does no damage, it's more than enough to keep it off balance.
Another powerful TK punch flips the already-unbalanced Crag onto its side helplessly. The thing hits the ground with a heavy THUMP, causing a small quake to shake the area around it. Its legs flail outward frantically as it attempts to right itself and get back on its feet, to no avail. It’s wounded, off balance, and in pain.
More than that, you follow up your Telekinetic jab with a heavy Surge. Instead of focusing on a single emotion to inject into it, you pour in a barrage of random emotions and thoughts. Although your attack is severely blunted by the psionic Crag’s defenses, you’re still able to punch through and confound it to some degree.
Instead of completely disabling it like you intend, you sense its mind mix and swirl as your bombardment plasters it just for a few moments. The sensation spikes through its mind quickly, but begins to fade shortly afterwards.
Although it recovers quicker than you expect, it hardly matters. You don’t need to cripple it forever, just long enough for Frank and his team to do their work. They’re able to load new cartridges into their rifles, take aim squarely, and fire decisively long before the Crag can fully recover and get back up.
Their rifles erupt once again with raucous violence, the sound of which visibly shakes every Crag around you.
Their rounds strike the fallen Crag’s underside, right where its six legs meet at the bottom of its thorax. It’s there that its granite chitin appears to be the weakest, considering that all their rounds punch through with ease. They leave jagged gaping holes where they strike, allowing blackened guts and blood to spill through in their wake.
The Crag itself shrieks again, though not for long. Its legs squirm and extend for a brief moment, then curl inward as it dies. The shriek turns into a long and winding whine that peters out as the seconds pass. At the same time, you sense its life energies ebb significantly before vanishing completely by the end.
The Crags’ Network also diminishes to some degree, weakened by the loss of one of its members. Although you note that the dead Crag isn’t psionic in the slightest, its loss makes a significant dent on their Network’s defenses.
Although the difference is far from enough for you to pierce through it with a potent Interrupt, it’s certainly enough for you to chip away more of it. A part of you thinks you probably don’t need to do that at all. If you’ve learned anything from Mayor Lisa, you should try to strike in a way your opponent doesn’t expect, completely obviating their defenses.
You quickly duck out of the way as one of the other Crags takes a swipe at you, which reminds you that you’re still in the middle of a fight and that it’s far from over. You don’t exactly have the luxury of thinking up the ultimate strategy here - not with these two at your back.
If not for your Fortified self, you would have been crushed long ago.
Press the attack! you tell everyone through the Network. Keep ‘em off balance!
Frank and Nance’s teams quickly do as you request, and turn their weapons on the two other Crags. Half their rounds are able to punch through and wound them while the other half bounce off their hard granite shells. There’s simply too much movement and motion for them to hit very accurately, and the only reason they’re able to hit as much as they do is because of the buffs the Network is providing them.
Still, it’s enough for you to maintain your focus on the psionic Crag - you don’t exactly have the capacity to strategize against the two nipping at your heels at the same time. You have to let the teams handle them while you take care of their leader.
Since it’s using up its energies on maintaining the Orchestra, you know you have to take the fight straight to it. By doing so, you’ll make the remaining two Crags less of a problem overall.
The psionic Crag is still turtled up with its forelegs pressed in tightly. It backs away or to the side as you advance, determined to keep you at bay. It also flings potent Surges at you as it does so, but you easily counter each one with equally powerful Devours.
Their energies are nullified the moment they strike yours, which makes the Crag slightly more frantic and panicked with every step it takes.
As with the dead Crag, you counter with numerous Telekinetic jabs. Though most are dulled by the Crag’s own Telekinetic defenses, some slip through and smack it around. It stumbles here and there when they do land, unbalancing it further each time.
Though you do no damage to it, you also keep it on the defensive - long enough for Frank and Nance’s teams to take apart the remaining two Crags with every shot they take. They punch through whatever weak chitin they can and leave cracks and holes wherever they can.
More black blood spills across the forest floor, further intensifying that sickly, rotten sulfuric smell everywhere around you.