Alex squinted his eyes against the brilliant light of the desert sun shimmering through a heat haze above his head. The air smelled of hot desert sands, cinnamon, cardamon, and priceless spiritual treasures in the form of desert flowers he could just barely see beneath the shade of a distant palm tree, squinting his eyes against a magnificent vista of endless sandy dunes and the brilliant blue sky.
Ya Ling, beside him, shivered with wonder, eyes twinkling with the same exhilaration and sense of coming home that Alex knew was probably on his features whenever he was surrounded by lush green forest, preferably free of predators trying to kill him.
“Alex, I can feel it!” She gazed down upon the desert sands, lifting up a handful of brilliant sandy-white crystals so unlike the soft ochre colors of her own desert, captivated by the streams of tiny grains flowing through her hands like water. “It’s not any sort of construct, artifice, or dream.” She shook her hand with wonder, perhaps even reverence. “This desert is every bit as real as our own.”
“Alright! Bulwark front and center! Support stay behind, Nili, you scout!” Sunlay barked, before turning to Alex and Ya Ling, frowning thoughtfully.
“What are your gifts, girl? So I know best where to put you.”
Ya Ling blinked in surprise, then flashed a cheeky grin. “Skirmisher and scout. Because the desert’s secrets are now my own.”
Nili frowned, gazing at her curiously, as Sunlay smirked. “Really.”
Ya Ling grinned as a whirling disk of sand blowing at flesh shredding speeds suddenly formed by her side as she calmly unsheathed a broad-bladed jian shaped such that it was a straight-bladed dao in all but name. A perfect accompaniment to her shield, Alex thought with a proud smile, awed by how far his friend had already come in her training as she assumed a balanced stance, blade at the ready as she winked.
“Really.”
“Wind and Sand. And she has an extremely strong affinity for both,” Zichen said definitively, the wujen’s voice now that of a sensual woman in her prime, the bitter brittle voice of before gone like a dream.
She flashed Ya Ling an approving smile. “Perfect for the delve we face.”
Sunlay gave a pleased nod. “Excellent. You can serve front line by our side.” She then gave Alex a hard look as he spent several moments closing his eyes, taking this moment of what he feared would be the briefest respite as he sensed death honing in on them, reaffirming the connections that would mean the difference between life and death.
“Assuming my second won’t be thrown off with you serving in the front line?”
Alex snapped open his eyes and calmly regarded the now exceedingly young-looking noblewoman who stepped back in surprise when four pairs of eye regarded her in unison, Alex taking a moment to process four points of view simultaneously even as his gestalt mind raced at unfathomable speeds.
His smile was mirrored by his three Ruidian companions. As one, they all turned to gaze Ya Ling’s way in unison. “Why don’t you show her what you can do?”
Ya Ling blanched. “Alex, you’re voices… you’re all speaking at once!”
Alex nodded. “What we’re doing is necessary. If you open yourself to the desert, I think you’ll understand why.”
Ya Ling stilled, eyes widening as she turned towards the distant palm tree, horror in her gaze. “The desert sands… abominations are heading this way!”
Sunlay’s eyes widened as Nili cursed.
“Details!” Nili snapped as Zichen and Anjen’s hand filled with flame and swirling razor sharp steel blossoms.
“Massive sand worms are heading this way!” Ya Ling screamed. At which point the now shaking sands erupted with an awful vibration, a roar that made Alex’s teeth vibrate as the nearby sand abruptly exploded, revealing a massive serpent as large as a python now leaping through the air, opening a mouth like a lamprey’s, filled with spiraling, inward facing teeth. The horrible thing of inky blackness swam through the desert sands as effortlessly as the ocean, possessing no eyes, scales, or markings save for that horrible maw of spiraling serrated teeth.
It was a sight so horrible that it immediately grabbed everyone’s attention for a perilous moment as alarm bells abruptly screamed in Alex’s mind.
Feint above, strike from below.
The thoughts blazed through Alex’s mind in the same instant as he sensed Ya Ling’s peril.
“Burn and Ward!” Alex screamed in his mind, acting even as he thought, taking full advantage of the superhuman speed his Perception and Bronze Tier Quickness allowed, Linnea lashing out and blasting the leaping lamprey-like sand worm with a spiraling blast of liquid flame that seared right into the open mouth of the abomination about to clamp down on a stunned Sunlay’s face. Just as Alex simultaneously darted forward, his fangtian ji windmilling through the air to cleave through the sandy dune beneath their feet in an explosion of sand as he struck the abomination about to swallow Ya Ling from below.
Crimson Corkscrew has critically struck target!
Internal organs have been ignited.
Experience earned!
Crimson Corkscrew mastery has gone up one full rank!
You have successfully shoved party member: Ya Ling free of ambush!
Wind Blade has critically struck Desert Lamprey.
You have decapitated your target.
Experience earned!
You have successfully summoned Ice Ward.
You have successfully summoned Winter’s Gale.
Is everyone alright?” Alex cried out in four-part harmony as he scanned the desert sands, his still budding desert senses picking up an additional half dozen furiously tunneling abominations heading their way, his rough sense of their location heightened as Linnea’s own infravision brought their targets to brilliant life.
He managed to catch Sunlay’s shocked gaze, realizing only an instant had passed, the shocked woman even now being spattered by steaming gore as Linnea’s obliterated desert lamprey fell to the ground.
“Oh, I hope that didn’t destroy the beast core,” Linnea said with a sigh that was all her own before sinking back into their gestalt once more. Alex winced in sympathy, her pang now his own as he didn’t hesitate to gather up the scorched prize and the decapitated head of the second ambusher as well, before exchanging glances with Ya Ling.
“I think it’s time to become one with the sands,” he said with a wry smile.
Nili’s panicked gaze met his own before skittering to Sunlay. “I sensed nothing, my lady.”
Her cheeks flushed with shame. “There is no Shadow in play here at all. Just the bright desert light and worms buried in the...”
Her words cut off as Ya Ling vanished in a puff of sand before springing to her side.
Nili’s alarmed eyes widened, reflexively clenching the hilt of her blade, visibly resisting striking out at Ya Ling as her better senses somehow understood their had to be a reason, just a heartbeat before a massive inky trifold lamprey maw clamped onto her foot and chomped right through.
The kitsune’s eyes widened in terror, her crimson lifeblood now spurting on the sands.
“Alex!” Ya Ling’s panicked voice washed over him, because as capable as she was of flowing in the sand, she had no way to protect anyone else.
Yet Alex had no time to respond. Not with near half a dozen sand worms about to erupt at once.
All he could do was fully embrace his gestalt as a panicked Quing Da gathered Sunlay back in his arms before racing for the entrance… only to stumble with a cry when yet another sandworm boiled forth from the desert sands, clamping on the furious, panicked man’s ankle, blood spurting in the desert air.
Before the creature was cleaved in twain, Alex roaring and striking with the blade of his fangtian ji now surrounded by a storm of Wind, Water, and Steel, swirling about at whirlwind speeds, cleaving right through the inky black flesh of his prey in a flash of lightning and an explosion of gore.
“Get back to the gate! We need to retreat!” Quin Da cried, eyes widening with horror matching Alex’s own when the shimmering obsidian gate was suddenly lost in an explosion of sand as the most massive desert worm yet sprung on top of it, as if eager to consume it, to no avail. It was no more real to the creature than shadow… but it was more than enough to block their exit.
Zichen then cried out in dismay, the wujen’s once more youthful features filled with such vibrant hope but minutes before were now twisted with terror as she stumbled back just in time to avoid having her feet be torn off by yet another sand worm as the sand boiled with death beneath their feet.
A worm that was shredded an instant later in an absolute maelstrom of steel shrapnel and ice from Lieberman, Hanz, and Anjen, the male wujen now hovering protectively over a panicked Zichen.
It was then that Alex, or the combined gestalt that he was, thought of the obvious solution, what they should have done a full twenty seconds before.
“Freeze the desert sand in a platform of solid ice! We all race for it!”
As fast as he thought it, Lieberman and Fitz risked their lives ignoring the peril rapidly closing in on their own feet. Alex could sense the fifteen by fifteen foot disk of thick frigid ice and frozen sand slowly forming, and didn’t hesitate to spring forth and cleave the sand with furious chops, desperate to buy his friend’s time.
His heart pounded with horror and dismay. Even with his limited affinity with the sand, he could move across it as effortlessly as he could concrete, but he had no movement affinities within these sands.
He could rely on nothing but his own natural Quickness as he desperately raced forward, catching sight of the massive worm that had just exploded through the desert sands, having smelled the kitsune’s precious lifeblood. Ya Ling desperately helping her and the powerfully-built Qing Da stay upright. And even if the kitsune girl had lucked out unbelievably, losing just the tip of her shoe and perhaps a toe, Alex sensing luck and shadow magics resonating through the air, it still wasn’t enough to stop the sweet stench of lifeblood spurting from the man holding her so protectively from permeating the air, or the monstrous worm it had summoned, now erupting underneath their feet.
“Run!” Alex screamed in his mind. Ya Ling, who hadn’t hesitated to race to the couple’s side and bear an injured Qing Da’s weight, was now too petrified to move before the horror they faced, for all that she was the sand.
The doomed kitsune looked back his way with a bitter, hopeless smile.
“Why do your tales always have such bitter endings, Eternal Disciple?” Nili said with eyes that had seen far too much as Ya Ling finally snapped out of her daze and tried desperately to urge her teammates forward, only surrendering to the sand’s call and fleeing just as the shadow of death came for them all.
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The awful question in Nili’s eyes seared through Alex’s soul as his fangtian ji screamed with a storm of elements that blazed like the sun, echoing the howl of the whirling accretion disk about his soul. Now compressing with such intensity that a pulsar’s flash echoed with the howling resolve roaring through him.
“Because everyone I’ve ever loved or cherished falls to the laughter of my enemies. Because I’m always too damned slow to save them!”
Yet he remembered what it was like to race about at such terrifying speeds that not even the bitter hate of his enemies could dodge his strikes. Not even death in the form of an eternal serpent could stop his blows. A speed he REFUSED to forget, pushing his body in ways he remembered doing all too well, less than two months ago.
A lifetime ago.
Just a single push away.
Alex’s eyes widened with fierce resolve as he gazed into the eyes of a kitsune girl mirroring the eyes of so many loved ones he had loved and lost as he shattered the precepts of Bronze and claimed the kitsune girl and the man willing to die by her side just an eyeblink before the massive maw of oblivion could burst from the sands to snap the doomed couple in two.
You have transcended Fate’s bindings as the event horizon of your soul grows ever closer to ascension!
Strength is now Bronze Rank 4!
Quickness is now Bronze Rank 3!
Alex allowed the words to wash over him, having absolutely no time to pay heed to anything save the monster who’s attention he had claimed, now leaping through the sands to obliterate that which had dared to claim its prey.
A monster far greater than the paltry defense his gestalt had managed to create.
“The ice platform is ready, battle-leader!” Linnea crowed triumphantly in his mind. “But it sure as hell can’t take on that thing!”
Alex, instantly sensing where the ice disk was, tossed the stunned couple within a dozen feet of their only defense before racing away for all he was worth while flaring the full furious might of his killing aura, doing his damnedest to entice every predator still stalking the sands his way.
“Bring them to the ice disk!” Alex yelled, grateful to sense Ya Ling reforming just in time to aid the couple the last double handful of feet, reaching shelter along with everyone else, Alex fiercely pleased to sense through gestalt infravision that the vicious swarm of worms had been heightened to a frenzy, now racing toward him from the rear even as he charged for death ahead. In that moment, saturated with the experience he had earned from the lesser worms slain, he sent a quick surge of potency Nili and Quing Da’s way.
It was a shot in the dark, counting on Ruidian heritages shared, and he was surprised and gratified to hear them both crying out with the pain of punctured calf and snipped toe instantly sealing themselves into what might be ugly puckered scars, but would at least allow them to get back on their feet and fight once more.
Then Alex was darting past death blasting through the sands to claim him, having time for no further thought as he weaved and dodged as fast as he could, desperate just to survive as he leaped free of exploding sand as a giant inky black desert lamprey, or sand worm perhaps, roared its monstrous fury.
A fury that was echoed in Alex’s heart. Yet so too he felt a fierce sense of joy as so many disparate observations and thoughts flowed together into a battlefield epiphany like no other, his body filled with so much monstrous energy and sweet, sweet potency, drinking in the rift’s Dark Qi roaring like a tidal flood.
Caressed by the potency of multiple greater beast kills, Alex had never felt so focused, so alive, so one with his environment as he did at that very moment, leaping and twisting aside as death pounded through the sand, as if eager to taste his flesh above all else.
Time seemed to slow as Alex’s limbs tingled with fiercest potency, now one with the desert all around him. The serpent-like beast that was such a piss-poor echo of Shui Jun circled in the sands for another strike.
Alex flashed a fierce smile, sensing the howling winds high over head that were now swirling about his fangtian ji like never before.
Alex could taste it, the pressure of a storm, like his own pent up ascension, cracking at the seems as his chosen weapon erupted in a storm of Water, Steel, and Lightning, even as his own flesh continued to tremble with potency he only recalled overwhelming him once before as he flipped back with impossible grace as the sand exploded under his feet, before lashing out with a strike of his own, his fangtian ji striking the lamprey maw in an explosion of lightning and gore.
You have successfully weaved past death yet again with speed and grace far beyond what you should be capable of!
Quickness is now Bronze Rank 4.
Finesse is now Bronze Rank 2!
You have Critically struck Ancient Desert Worm with Storm Strike!
Storm Strike is now Rank 7! You have become one with the storm!
Your opponent has been temporarily stunned!
“Now! Strike it now!” Alex screamed In the party interface as the momentarily dazed Wyrm was suddenly bombarded by storms of flesh cleaving Sand and barrages of Metal shrapnel. Exploding blasts of superheated plasma, and seven foot long shards of deadly ice ice.
And punctuating the barrage of furious death raining down upon the creature’s inky black carapace were repeated flashes of near-blinding lighting, causing the monster to flinch, spasm and twitch helplessly as a furiously grinning Alex did his best to stun-lock their monstrous foe.
A foe that, if Alex lost his momentum for even a second, could simply ignore Alex and leap across the sands to smash into the icy disk inured to the ambush attacks of lesser worms, a maneuver which would doom all his friends save perhaps Ya Ling… and Alex would be crippled by the death of newfound friends and the gestalt that was now just an extension of himself.
“Like hell I will!” Alex roared, face twisting in a furious snarl as the creature writhed and twisted, coming so close to crushing him… would have crushed him, if his battle reflexes in the form of Quickness and Finesse hadn’t ascended mid combat. Which didn’t feel alarming or disorienting at all. Merely like he was finally awakening from a dream where he had been floundering in quicksand for painful long months and now, finally, step by desperate weaving step, in the glorious crucible of battle, he was at last breaking free.
Finally coming into his true self once more.
“Alex!”
A single desperate cry.
A shiver of dread crawled down his spine as exultation turned to anxious dread.
Because the second giant worm that had clearly grown board trying to consume the gate it couldn’t even touch now turned its focus to far more lively prey.
“Look out!”
Alex’s instincts shrieked sudden desperate warning, but it was almost too late.
For all that he had reveled in his deadly dance with the monstrous desert worm before him as he honed his soul against the crucible of peril to the most extreme degree possible, he had known damn well that he could afford only one mistake.
A single heartbeat’s distraction had almost cost him everything.
Quickness check made!
Barely!
As it was, the titanic creature could strike as fast as the smaller lamprey.
Faster, even.
And as the shocking flash of pain brought him back to his sense made clear, the desert sands now alive with the sharp crimson tang of his own blood… he too was just a single mistake away from either ascension… or death.
“Alex!”
His mistake had cost him a boot, his other boot immediately going into storage as he desperately leaped and twisted out of the way of the now infuriated titan, clearly eager to devour him and consume whatever potency it could rip free from Alex’s body.
Yet only flesh and a sliver of muscle scraped off with utter agony had that creature been able to claim, Alex’s prismatic bones too strong for the creature to truly sink its serrated teeth into… or the fight would have already been lost.
Still, it was a frantic handful of seconds before he could do anything more than desperately leap and dart away, taking full advantage of inspiration’s surge as he hopped and skipped and tumbled about like mad, every second stretching to infinity as his limbs trembled with the sudden surge of spiritual energy roaring through his frame.
The sands vibrated atonally as his ears rang with the sound of his own distant super cable reaching inconceivable speeds as he continued to hone himself in the crucible of peril, sending ever more of the accretion disk that was the trapped potency torn free of countless foes into the singularity that was his soul.
You have successfully directed Prismatic Fox Restoration into injured left heel.
Healing is now complete!
You have managed to weave and dart past a Greater Silver tier beast far beyond your means, with a grace that should be utterly beyond you, yet somehow isn’t!
Finesse is now Bronze Rank 3!
Alex didn’t let up his pace. He didn’t dare, not for a second, Potency Mastery and the intense flood of spiritual energy in this super-saturated Rift was all that allowed him to fill the sky and his monstrous opponent with massive bolts of lightning… but fill them he did.
The sweet glory that was his own ascension was the farthest thing from his mind, however. All that mattered was dodging death time after time as he desperately pivoted past his enemy’s attacks and maneuvered to deliver deadly rebuttals of his own.
His powerful thews snapped forward, half-moon axe heads delivering devastating wounds spraying blood before explosions of lightning blew those gashes wide open, scoring the massive spirit beast with lightning to sear it inside and out. Yet even as Alex lost himself in the glorious haze of battle, moving faster and striking more furiously with every passing moment, he was still filled with terror for his friends, sensing their imminent peril.
The air cut with Ya Ling’s desperate cry. Alex allowed himself only an instant to commune with his gestalt, to see the deadly peril of the second massive spirit beast preparing to leap from the sand to smash open the ice disk protecting his friends. Sunlay and the others were desperately striking out and cutting down the swarm of lesser worms springing from the sands that were attempting to overwhelm them. The double blasts of steel shrapnel and fire from the pair of wujens were at least keeping the majority at bay even as Quing Da and Nili made short bloody work of any that slipped through, their potency-sealed injuries hardly hindering them at all.
As for Sunlay herself, she was an angel in silk and steel, her blade flashing with the essence of sharpness as she guarded everyone’s flank, her blade moving at speeds worthy of any young Silver as she did her best to keep their life raft of ice in hostile sands clear of the monstrous wave so clearly intending on sweeping them all away.
Yet even she flinched and wilted before the sudden emergence of the second giant sand worm suddenly before them, and Alex could think of only one mad play that could possibly work.
Willpower check made! You resist terror!
Find Weakness check successful!
Soul Sight check made!
The heavily wounded giant worm that Alex had been honing himself against reared itself once more and prepared to strike.
Alex flashed a mirthless smile, knowing he could do nothing for his friends unless he somehow survived the threat before him, even now rearing to plunge its giant maw right for Alex as it plunged for the sands once more.
Just as Alex knew it would, gathering all the information he could in the perilous moments before revealing an ace he had kept hidden until just that moment, leaping for the air even as his scorched and bleeding opponent crashed into the sands one final time, Alex soaring high above it, feeling the swirling winds and brooding clouds above infuse his fangtian ji with all the howling fury of the storm, just as he plunged straight down, lashing out with his weapon to deliver a final bolt thick and black with the power of oblivion itself as he cried out desperately for the sake of his imperiled friends.
Yet even he was sent flying back, stunned by the power of what he had unleashed, his foe consumed by black streaks of oblivion searing through pristine Silver Tier flesh as effortlessly as fire through parchment.
Now!
And that was when Alex sensed his foe’s ultimate weakness, directing a massive bolt of black lightning crackling right for the pulsating heart of spiritual energy he could see so clearly in the spirit beast whose dance he had mastered so well.
You have critically struck your foe!
FATALITY!
Greater Silver-tier Sand Worm has been slain!
Experience earned!
Breakthrough made! You have found your foe’s weakness! You have struck your foe’s core with all the force and fury of oblivion!
Enhanced Storm Strike is now rank 8!
Enhanced Storm Strike has evolved into Doom Strike.
You may now channel Dark Lightning through your foes!
Note! There is a price to pay for a technique that can obliterate even the deadliest spirit beast’s core!
Alex howled with a fierce surge of joy and agony, burns covering his form as he dared to channel arts in ways he never had before. He exulted in the steaming mountain of smoking flesh even as he charged, howling, for the second titan of a beast, just seconds away from crashing into his delving companions.
Nine precious souls gazing at the heavens in panic, dismay, and absolute despair.
The hopeless howl of frustration he heard from Ya Ling’s lips, felt echoing in Linnea’s heart, filled Alex with a towering fury that made the agony of smoking limbs and charred skin nothing as he dared channel what was now his deadliest art a second time.
Embracing an element he had thought lost to him, the province of his bones alone.
Yet as the interface messages screaming across his mind’s eye made absolutely clear, there was a way to channel it after all, even if there was a price to be paid as well.