Morgan Mackenzie was soaring above the clouds. Practice and leveling had improved [Windcutter]'s efficiency, allowing her to fly higher and faster while spending less mana. Her struggles to stay aloft while contending with hostile creatures had pushed her to new breakthroughs, as well: she could now imbue her feathers with elemental properties, enhancing them in new and interesting ways.
Fire was easiest for her, naturally, and the results spoke for themselves against wintry enemies like [Ice Wights] and [Harpies]; lightning was almost as effective, though the mana cost it exacted was far higher. Earth weighed down her wings, leading her to fall from the sky until she relinquished her hold; potentially useful, but highly situational. Water, however, froze almost instantly at her current altitude, and ice was redundant twice over: it had nearly the same effect on her flight profile as Earth.
She couldn't afford to waste too much time experimenting, though; worry gnawed at the back of her mind, spurring her onward over top of one final mountain range and out from under the last formation of clouds above her. The ground beneath her transitioned into rolling foothills to the south, blanketed in vegetation in place of stone. Here, she began to see the first evidence of the skyship's passing: shattered trees and the pockmarks of dirt-filled craters described a raggedy trail down towards the plains.
Ahead of her, a shallow depression filled with bones and debris lay nestled within a rough semicircle of somewhat more pronounced peaks; clearly the vacant nest of some large avian predator. Just beyond, something had hit the ground with terrific force, carving an angry furrow into the earth and throwing up a wave of debris to either side before terminating in a pit filled with glittering viscera.
Must be the chimaera they killed, thought Morgan. Indeed, the familiar traces of Althenea's mana were scattered across the terrain like so much gossamer, still pulsing with the lingering remnants of her lethal intent. Further ahead, something stood out to her [Mana Sight], shining against the backdrop of stone: the beacon with Dana's original broadcast, dutifully repeating its message. She adjusted her course, and as she did so, she noticed a pall of death mana lingering just out of sight.
After another few minutes, Morgan [Soar]ed over one final ridge, and the wreckage of the ship came into view, still mostly intact even after its crash. Small figures buzzed about on the ground, growing more agitated as she approached. Magic began to well up throughout the group, and several figures dove for cover amidst the ramshackle fortifications dug into the hills. She banked towards a knot of dwarves and beastkin, apparently engaged in a heated argument near one of the ship's cannons, the remainder of which had been removed from the wreck and secured to stone outcroppings nearby. They turned to face her, about to spring into motion, but a familiar-looking Ursaran flung out his arm and stopped the dwarves before they could bring the cannon to bear.
"Ho!" he shouted, waving at her. "They headed for the city; said to meet them there!" He pointed over the nearby ridge, then returned to his discussion with the dwarves.
With an answering wave, Morgan swooped around the wreckage and clawed for altitude, rising back above the trees. Even before crossing the ridge, the death mana she had sensed doubled in potency, along with the remnants of an even more powerful work of magic she couldn't quite identify at this distance, a complicated latticework of energy.
It was the scarred valley floor and what lay physically upon it, however, that drew the bulk of her attention: the skeleton of some massive, quadrupedal beast sprawled across the field, as large as anything she'd faced before. Desiccated meat and entrails still clung to the bones, all clouded in a heady miasma of wind and storm and rot and decay and death. Morgan's gorge rose in her throat, and Lulu wurbled in outraged disgust, but a sick sort of curiosity compelled her to draw closer.
The earth was churned up and turned over in a massive wound a mile wide and twice as long, as if some titanic farmer had taken to it the tools of his trade…or as if something or some things buried underneath had dragged themselves out of their grave, plaguing the earth above. A miniscule patch of ground near the skeleton's enormous skull, barely a handful of paces across, had been spared from the chaos, and it was here that Morgan approached.
As dead as it appeared to be, Morgan reeled back from the empty, penetrating gaze of its eye sockets, as if the monster could, at any moment, return to some semblance of life. Lulu gathered herself and leaped off the sorceress' shoulder, immediately setting about cleaning the skeleton of the incomprehensible filth assaulting both of their senses. Alarmed, Morgan descended to snatch it back, but the skeleton remained quiescent. Uneasily, she glanced around, but couldn't sense anything that might threaten it.
Leaving the loofah to its work, Morgan heated the air beneath her, gliding upward on the resulting thermal and banking towards the magical structure. Through [Mana Sight], she saw millions of tiny hexagon-shaped panels, drifting and floating this way and that like a shoal of so many fish, dancing in complicated patterns that seemed to just barely evade her comprehension. There seemed to be multiple layers of panels, as well, sliding across each other as if under the control of some overarching intelligence. Beyond, the image of a city warped and wavered like it was behind so much stained glass.
It was still possible for her to identify it as a city, though; she saw buildings, streets, and lanterns on posts eerily reminiscent of cities on Earth. Rising higher, she took notice of distinct sections of the city: blocks of what were clearly residential structures separated from more industrial sections by cultivated, shaped woodlands. At the edge of her perception, thousands of little pinpoint sources of mana wended their way through and among the buildings like so many ants.
A large portion of those ants were congregating together in a dilapidated, run-down section at the eastern side of the city, and she circled the barrier to get a better view. Amongst the buildings, high-energy mana projectiles chased the mana pinpoints, casting rays like tracers into the mass.
Dana! she thought with alarm, probing at the barrier. The hexagonal scales grouped up under her magical touch and laid flat, like armor.
On the streets below, the slower, more powerful fire from Althenea's pistol form lanced out alongside Dana's more rapid-fire shots. Between the two of them, Dana and Terisa were holding their own against the oncoming magical constructs, but they couldn't see the situation from Morgan's perspective: hundreds of them had been funneled into a kill-zone by the rubble of a destroyed building – that must have been Dana's doing – thousands more were still streaming towards them from the city center.
She picked at the barrier, probing it with [Mana Sight] and hurling spells against it; every attempt splashed harmlessly off the barrier's structure. She approached the barrier to land on it, only for the barrier to flash brightly, an intense tingling and buzzing preceding a sudden drain on both her mana and stamina. Reeling back, she felt amateurish, blindly groping at this ancient masterwork of magical effort.
Of the spells she had tried so far, [Plasma Glaive] had had the greatest effect; even pushed to its limit with [Spell Surge], however, this wasn't saying much. The scales flexed and deformed slightly, but sprang back into position after the energy dispersed. Watching her effort with [Mana Sight], however, gave her some insight: the energy had to be spread out among the plates, each one moving slightly away from its neighbors as it spread through the cracks, almost like water soaking into soil. She hovered in the air, frantically scanning the barrier and her repertoire of skills.
Her thought process was cut short when she saw a magnesium-bright flare of magic appear from deep in the ruined area, quickly accelerating towards Dana and Terisa's position. It looked similar to the other constructs in the city, but far brighter and more intricate. Its power swelled until it was a blob more than a point, so bright that it threw the area around it into shadow. Unwilling to let her friends face this new threat alone, she snapped her wings out and flew high in the air, turning back around and staring down at the barrier below.
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"This is a bad idea," she muttered, fishing a fist-sized chunk of crystal from her storage and draining it completely in an instant, violet and azure traces crawling across her body as it disintegrated and fell to dust. She activated [Windcutter] and dove, the barrier approaching at frightening speed.
Over the jangling warning of her deepest instincts, she triggered [Spell Surge] in the moments before impact.
Her world disappeared in a flash of light and a roar of sound.
==========================
The Horse Knight rushed to save the new creatures that so resembled the master. The metal skin worn by the smaller one still emitted the same type of signal it had sensed many days before. Its strange weapons spat bright sparks of intensely focused mana, and at velocities the golem's sensors could barely track. The damage each individual bolt inflicted to stone and steel was impressive enough, easily able to defeat the golems' armor. As a mass, though, thrown forth from the smaller figure's strange weapon, they shredded the maintenance drones as they swarmed forward.
The tall one was not idle either, nor was the shifted soul the Horse Knight sensed in that one's hands. More concentrated, more powerful bolts of mana flew from that one, unerringly finding the weak points in the frames of the medium construction units to leave them crippled and immobile. The handful of heavy construction units might have posed a problem, but the soul in the hands of the tall one simply shifted forms, growing longer and heavier, and roared burning death made from spinning metal that simply punched through the large golems as if their shells were made of paper. What came out the other side of the tall one's targets tended to destroy large swaths of the small and medium drones. If maintenance and construction drones were all that they had to deal with, the two could probably hold their own.
It wasn't all they had to deal with.
They were the most numerous of the construct types in the city, and they were slow, unarmed, and for the most part unarmored save for the bare minimum necessary to protect them from weather, erosion, and basic job hazards. However, the sound and magic disturbing the otherwise-sepulchral streets had caused the city's true guardians to rouse from their slumber.
While the construction and maintenance units were built to put things together and keep them together, these guardians were built to take things apart.
It raced through alleyways and around buildings, beginning to shift into its combat form as it leaped over an aqueduct. The clippity-clop of its hooves became the thundering slams of heated steel on snow-covered paving stones; its weight shot up as armor plates extruded themselves from enchanted storage inscriptions, sheathing it in an interlocking second skin. It disabled the limiter on its power core, its output doubling, then tripling as red-and-orange lightning surged out from between its armor, crackling and snapping around its body.
Through its connection to the city's network, it could sense the guardian forms bearing down on the two organics, as well as the multitude of maintenance forms still fast approaching. As it went, the Horse Knight began running predictive analyses on everything within range, trying to determine the best course of action. Its Adaptive Determination Matrix was working flawlessly, but the degraded nature of the city-wide communications network meant that it struggled to synthesize the data. Such was the spotty nature of the connection that the golem almost missed the cause of every servitor unit freezing in place.
That cause became unmistakably clear as a powerful surge of intensely concentrated, nearly-pure mana slammed into the barrier covering the city. The barrier hissed and spat sparks, a miniature violet sun birthed above the city in an instant as the arcane engines beneath the city walls fed nearly limitless amounts of power into the spellwork, and the Horse Knight was briefly rendered blind before its optical sensors compensated.
The shield visibly flexed, but held strong.
The mana nexus pulsed once, flaring with greater luminance for a moment, and then again. It drew back and seemed to draw into itself, pulsing a third time before smashing into the barrier again, even harder.
The world became light, and with a peculiar shattering sound of centuries-old spellwork failing, the barrier exploded.
=================
Terisa Aras pelted through a gap between two piles of commingled rubble and shattered golem pieces, her new skill [Rapid Reload] letting her slip another round into Althenea's chamber and slide her bolt closed with preternatural speed. The first pair of maintenance drones that had appeared when the footbridge collapsed had been easy enough for her and Dana to deal with, but that noise had brought five more to their position. Five had become dozens, and when dozens had become hundreds, the huntress witnessed Dana's newly-equipped weapon speak like thunder before the engineer tossed several munitions through the ground-floor windows of a stone tower standing over the intersection of the cobbled street. Terisa's higher stats had barely allowed her to keep up as the other woman raced around the corner, shifting to fire into the coming horde as she turned.
Dana shouted "Fire in the hole!" and Terisa covered her ears, a massive double-WHUMP heralding the tower's collapse into and across the street, shaking the ground underneath them. This bought them a reprieve from the smaller ones, but two of the larger construction golems lumbered around the estate to their rear. Althenea's rifle form was able to punch through the center of one of the golems and destroy its core, but Dana's "minigun" rounds merely bounced off the thicker steel skin of the constructs. With some inventive swearing, the engineer let the spinning barrels slow as her shoulder-mounted weapon slid into position with a quiet whirr and a click. It roared, and the second golem fell immediately after.
"We've got bigger ones incoming," panted Dana as the two women ran, putting distance between themselves and the fallen building. It would not slow the drones for very long. "Something dropped one of my dragonfly bots, and it has to be on its way."
"The combat models must have been dormant when not needed," replied Terisa, once again reloading Althenea's rifle form. "At least they're all heading this way and not towards the others. Once Biggles wakes up, they'll be along for support."
Dana stopped, her gaze snapping to the southeast, towards the center of the ruined district. "The original signal's getting stronger, and it's starting to move," she said tersely. "There's also tons of movement from the north and west; lots of little mana sources."
"Do you think this mysterious signal of yours is friendly?" Terisa asked, shifting her weight.
"Not gonna count on it, but I won't shoot first. We'll have to see–CONTACT!" she shouted, her smaller weapon appearing in her hand to fire off several rounds in succession. Terisa turned as well, sending empowered [Mana Shot] bursts at the pack of crawling automatons that rushed around the corner.
The two women sprinted between the nearest two buildings, Dana abandoning her armor's bipedal form in favor of six blurring legs of steel. "Smoke out!" she declared, dropping a hissing cylinder as she followed the huntress into the alley. Moments later, it started spewing thick gray smoke near the thoroughfare.
The path dead-ended at the wall of a building, but Terisa leaped for the second-story window without breaking strike, committing enough stamina to the jump to catch the upper ledge with her hand, stepping into the room. Likewise, Dana simply swarmed up the wall and inside with a spider's grace.
As they caught their breath, Terisa felt the ambient mana shift and convulse, wracked by a great tremor. The golems stumbled into the alley, having been temporarily disoriented by the smoke, almost as if they, too, had felt the shift. Dana didn't seem to have sensed the magical change, but her suit had taken up the slack, glaring red and orange lights flashing stridently beneath the crystalline faceplate.
Thunderous impacts echoed outside as something massive approached, and both women could hear the sounds of tearing metal, as well as the tortured screech of steel dragging on stone. The golems in the alleyway turned towards the noise, rushing after this new stimulus – and then every single one froze in place.
The mana twisted and surged again, and this time, Dana could feel it; so too the one that followed after. On the third pulse, Terisa's senses were entirely occluded by a searingly-bright wave. Her advanced levels and stats allowed her to recover in a split-second, her vision clearing up just in time to see the dome blanketing the city turn solid, where before it had been covered in small scales.
The sky became fire then, snow and gravel and loose stones bouncing upward as the ambient temperature melted the ice covering the streets. Foreshocks rumbled through the city, and then the world exploded.
More accurately, the barrier did, failing at a single point and rippling outward, chunks of condensed mana raining down and disappearing into thin air before hitting the ground. As the spell failure cascaded across the barrier, a burning tangle of wings and flesh punched through the building next to their shelter, the collapsing building punctuating the aftershocks rolling through the streets. Smoldering feathers fell like ashen snow.