Chapter 29 - The ICB: Laning Phase

The nexus chamber was eerie as Palinus emerged from the pillar.

A red glow filled the room pulsing slowly from the nexus crystal. Its light splashing pink against the empty albumstone pillars and emphasising the slowly escalating rhythm. A crystalline hum bouncing around the room’s high ceilings and walls.

A crackling noise from the pillar beside him roused Palinus from his thoughts.

“Blood and fire. That was a bad idea.”

It wasn’t like Seline to swear. She burst from the pillar and stomped over to Palinus to help him out.

“What was Rufi thinking?” She griped.

“Probably not much.” Palinus joked to disarm the tension. “It was a good idea though, and he flanked their lines perfectly. I’m not sure we would have been able to get through the shield wall otherwise.”

As Vesuvia joined them from her pillar Seline let out a huff.

“He at least could have told us what he was doing.” She continued to complain.

“Classic Silly,” Vesuvia quipped, before stage whispering with a wink, “She likes to be in control.”

“As if he could resist trying out the ars, like a child with a new toy.’ Bruchts joined the conversation around the nexus crystal. “I managed to help him up and we pushed into the tower… but we got split up.”

“That’s not good.” Palinus commented.

“No. He ran up the stairs rather than with me to the rift… I think he meant to do it. The idiot.” Bruchts scratched his chin. “I guess we are waiting for the cooldown on that ars and hoping that he doesn’t get knocked out or captured before he can use it again.”

The team sat for a while digesting the news and hoping. As the seconds passed interminably they started to lose that hope.

“Well, I guess we will have to fight with a man down.” Seline slapped her thigh. “V, you sub in for the 2v1 and just bait the tower di-”

“WHAT A RUSH!” Rufian yelled as he emerged from his pillar.

Four sighs acknowledged his triumphant return.

“I held the stairs for a while.” he didn’t notice the response as he launched into his story. “It was the longest 40 seconds of my life! The internal guards all followed me up the stairs, throwing javelins and trying to get around my guard. So I jumped off the tower!”

He interpreted the sounds of disbelief as enthusiasm.

“Their shield wall had reformed and broke my fall. I thought the ars would make it hurt less… maybe it did, but it still hurt a lot.”

He flexed his right hand and winced as he balled it into a fist.

“So I knocked over their line again and sauntered into the rift.”

Rufian chuckled as he finished his story.

“What?” The glow of his epic tale faded quickly as he didn’t get the response he was looking for. “I jumped off a tower! Why aren’t you impressed?”

The incredulous stares of the team finally broke. They laughed as the tension passed, they had made it in.

“Good job Rufi, but you should have told us what you were doing.” Seline offered begrudgingly.

“...and you could have run through with me.” Bruchts added, “that was an unnecessary risk.”

“Finneeeee. Sorry for being so amazing I guess.” Rufian stated petulantly.

The pulsing nexus was beginning to build its urgency and the team quickly shifted gears to focus on the task at hand.

In this rift they expected a nearly insurmountable challenge and Selien quickly broke down the enemy’s likely formation, they were the clear favourites with that came a confidence which might be exploitable: they were likely to run the same classes and laning assignments as they always did.

In the top lane they would face Agrippa, an enormous warrior who carried an equally enormous shield. He would be charging from behind the shield and controlling the battle with a shield wall that was remarkably wide and sturdy. He carried a short sword almost as an afterthought.

In the middle lane was the enigmatic Bakano. A deep dark purple mage known for control spells, damage over time and debuffs with conditional burst damage.

In the bottom lane would be Vel. He was a stereotypical red mage with his own insidious twist, rather than focusing on burst his ars had a debuff that ignited on follow up attacks and ars which stacked into substantial damage that ignited targets from the inside with an extremely hot white flame.

Arruns is their roaming fighter, a monster of a young man who carried an axe that was nearly as tall as he was. While Vel was the star of the 111s Arruns was always mentioned in the next breath with his sweeping axe attacks that would leave savage bleeds.

While Arruns and Vel where known to work together they didn’t share a lane.

The bottom lane support role was filled by Marnus.

“Are you going to be ok V?” Seline asked as they discussed the bottom lane matchup.

“Yeah… Yeah, I’m fine…” Vesuvia responded absently.

“What’s her problem?” Rufian asked.

“Mar-”

“Marnus is my cousin.” Vesuvia stepped in for Seline’s response, “and he is an arse.”

“He is the golden child as the ‘proper’ medicus while V is-”

“Who wants to be a medicus? It is so borrriinnggg.” Vesuvia brushed it off, “I want to win… and rub his smug face in the ground.”

“…and maybe punch it a bit” she added.

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There were several options for their laning assignments, they hadn’t worked out their optimal setup yet and their team had a lot of flexibility with their class choices.

As they ran down the lane just behind the first wave of minions they ran with the conviction that they were going into difficult battles with a straight disadvantage in stats, but with the advantage of knowledge and the opportunity to choose counters.

Each of the lanes carried risk, and they could lose in a few moments of indecision or poor positioning. As Palinus reached the middle lane tower he gulped, as they had predicted Bakano stood waiting for him.

The mage wore a loose, flowing robe with splashes of white on mostly black fabric. The robe bunched up around their neck, covered their face and head leaving only dark eyes visible with a jutting fringe of black greasy hair.

The sharp eyes studied Palinus intensely for a moment before dismissing him and looking away with their finger to their ear to team talk.

“I’ve got a kid with a stick.” Bakano didn’t bother to speak softly, they spoke with an odd voice and perfect Erulean with an accent Palinus couldn’t pick. The mages disdain for him was palpable.

“Ha ha ha, of course.” Bakano laughed mirthlessly at a response they must have gotten.

As soon as the minions met in the middle of the lane the mage lifted their wand and began attacking as fast as they could.

The ferocity took Palinus aback for a moment.

He had expected there to be a few rounds of feeling each other out and getting a sense of their range and abilities before they committed to action, but the mage he faced was trying to mow minions down as if they had personally offended their family.

“Uh, it seems like they are in a hurry.” Brucht’s voice came through the team chat.

“Yeah, I think they must be racing so they can capture the tower and limit the damage to their century standing under it in the overworld.” Seline’s explanation made sense, and it played into their plans.

As the dark mage stood behind his minions and blasted with his wand, Palinus was intimidated by the nebulous black bolts of energy, they oozed through the air and splashed like viscous black blots against their targets.

There had been rumours of Bakano making a pact with some eldritch underworld beast to artificially enhance their attunement, or the more sinister rumour that they were the bastard of a woman having relations with a nexus beast. Seeing the attunement in person he began to understand the source of the rumours, the energy was foreign and the mage’s whole persona fed that sense of otherworldliness.

Without a wand to maintain the distance, Palinus would need to get closer to deploy his whip. He could still keep a distance of a bit more than five meters and strike effectively but he was conscious of maintaining as much distance as possible as he knew that Bakano had likely taken their snaring ars as their first selection.

Palinus edged forward and began to strike out with the whip. He stood behind the minions which had fully engaged with each other.

His opponent had already destroyed his first target, a melee minion, and rather than continuing sequentially down the line of minions he moved closer to the group of minions.

Noticing the movement, Palinus stepped back a bit and prepared to retreat. He didn’t think the dark mage could kill him outright with their snare alone, but if there was support in the bushes beside the lane they would likely be able to dive him as he retreated and kill his avatar.

A bolt of black energy hit Palinus on the shoulder, it stung like a biting acid and clung to his flesh leaving his skin chafed and pitted. He was surprised as he turned and took several steps away that there wasn’t a follow up.

Rather than a second strike against Palinus his enemy had targeted the ranged minions and was swiftly dismantling them.

The strategy was a strong, yet arrogant one. The dark mage was zoning Palinus, reminding him that he was at risk if he attempted to attack minions past the front line. It meant that the minions that died and the essentia that they dropped in the middle of the lane practically belonged to Bakano and there was nothing that Palinus could do without risking his health points and therefore life.

“Their zoning strategy is intensely frustrating.” Palinus commented to the team.

“Yeah, this sucks.” Vesuvia agreed sullenly. “It’s like they don’t even care about the damage we are doing in trade down here.”

“I’d take that right now. I am just being straight up bullied.” Bruchts voice was even flatter than normal.

None of the lanes sounded like they were easy, despite choosing the matchups in each of them.

“Never fear, I am on my way in a bit. 3rd wave Pal Pal.” Rufian was confident as always but his words dropped like a stone in Palinus’s stomach. The second wave was already in sight and would be joining the melee in moments, the third wave was excruciatingly soon.

Bakano had cleared the first wave already and their minions were streaming towards Palinus near his tower. He needed to make a difficult decision, if he allowed the enemy minions to dive towards the tower a second wave would join and be obliterated quickly. This would force a lane reset making the third wave fight back in the neutral middle ground where Palinus would have no advantage.

Trying to disguise what he was doing, Palinus began to backpedal slightly away from the tower. He kept up his attacks trying to eek out as much essentia as he could as he pulled the enemy melee minions into position.

He was taking attacks as he was struck by the lead melee minion, several bolts of bone from ranged minions and Bakano had not hesitated to blast him with their wand.

The hits had taken down past a third of Palinus’s health and he was grateful when the second wave of minions joined the fight. He tried not to let the satisfaction reach his face as he detected the dark mage staring intensely at him as if trying to decipher his intentions. The enigmatic mage’s eyes flickered towards the brush beside the lane.

With the minions battling just outside the range of his tower Palinus was feeling satisfied with himself. He was much safer from attack and would have been happy to patiently wait for the minions to kill each other and pick up their scattered essentia, but it seemed like Bakano had other plans.

The mage didn’t stop firing. Systematically blasting the minions apart.

In a panic and trying to preserve the status quo, Palinus tried to keep up with the damage to prevent the enemy minions from progressing under the tower.

He swung the whip as quickly as he could.

Lashing it repeatedly at the same minion he felt a sense of satisfaction and rightness to the sensation of the rope of dark red essentia flailing against the minion. The pure essentia striking the odd pink flesh with a crack and a sizzle.

In pure damage he slightly beat Bakano, he also struck faster and stacked up combination damage on the minion he targeted quickly, but he was coming from behind. As he managed to whittle down the melee minions he tried to manoeuvre out to strike at the ranged minions, but found that his opponent was quick to switch targets and make his avatar’s hp suffer for putting himself in the firing range.

The full two waves of ranged minions and the wand of the dark mage proved too much damage and to Palinus’s frustration his melee minions were taken out and the enemy minions marched under his turret, ruining his efforts to stall their efforts to die valiantly against his tower.

As the second wave was dismantled handily there was some small glimmer of hope. The third wave had arrived and Palinus’s minions were stalled for a few moments.

The third wave was reset, but it was going to be setting its battle line towards Palinus’s tower. As Palinus followed behind the wave of minions he confirmed he had his Saturnine Veil ars ready to go.

Palinus 401/605 | Level 0

Smoke Mage - Wandslinger / Smoke Mage / Mage

He winced slightly as he saw his health points. It would be ok, they were just going to scare Bakano off the lane for bit. He reassured himself that he didn’t want or need to dive the tower.

The stage was set, now he just needed Rufian to appear.

Something to Palinus’s right caught Bakano’s attention and he panicked that the mage must have detected Rufian too soon.

Rushing a step forward to maximise the attack opportunity Palinus tried to get in range.

Out of the brush a giant figure emerged.

Panic seized Palinus as he saw Arruns axe dragging along beside him. It looked impossibly big and vicious as if it already glistened with blood.

The rushed step forward became a stumble as Palinus tried to turn and run.

A swiftly channeled ars tangled his already uncoordinated movement as thick black tentacles emerged from the ground, rooting Palinus in place.