Erash, Level 90 High Priestess of Origin’s Flame
The wind pushed in on her charm continually, almost furious at the audacity of the creatures who continued to defy its authority over the sky. Only her deep connection with nature kept the cost of such a simple spell from ballooning out of control. However, even with her careful conservation of Mana, maintaining the windshield, her glamour, and the spatial link simultaneously had burned through her Well, requiring her to use two of her three Mana potions before they even arrived at the Contested Lands.
A third potion might not even fully refill her Well, and a fourth if she had one, would probably result in Mana burn. Yet despite that cost, Erash was still grateful for the unanticipated flight ability the dragon processed. The pace they had set was far beyond their wildest predictions.
She doubted Jonathan noticed, but the dragon was actually slipping through the sky, using a magic akin to her own people's ability to walk the Ways. It gave them the ability to slip from point to point on the Land, allowing one step to take them hundreds of paces, as physical space became malleable before their movements. When this trait was paired with the call of the Wild Hunt… her people became some of the most feared hunters on the plane.
At first, their pace had worried her, as both parties approached each other from almost opposite directions. The gap between them closed at an impossible rate and her heart had frozen in her chest when she heard the horn sounding in the midst of the battle with the arachnids. But soon enough, Brokenridge had taken off again, eager for another conquest, and his speed had proven too great even for the Wild Hunt moving away from them at an angle, in pursuit of their next target.
In that second battle, the dragon’s arrogance had almost cost its life, as it had attempted to toy with the metal beings who had meddled with energies beyond their capability to truly control, obtaining great power, but at great cost. It was not just the typical foolishness of exchanging agency for the tainted power of Corruption. The fools had been refining the very essence of the land, and processing it in such a way as to attempt to harness it outside of the system-sanctioned path of advancement. In the end, the dragon had triumphed, thanks mostly to that wily human, who had once again defied Erash’s expectations at every turn.
She had been on the verge of intervening and revealing herself several times in that battle. But in each case, he had somehow made it through, dodging certain death with a dependability that bordered on ridiculous.
Newly empowered, the dragon had risen from his temporary defeat, making use of the absolutely broken synergy between his modified draconic magic and Tilly’s looting capability. Such things were vanishingly rare, and Erash understood well the dragon's eagerness to make as much use of this rapid advancement as he could.
Such synergies seemed to be developing around her new Faction with a frequency that screamed of interference in the affairs of mortals to an unheard-of degree. Yes, Divine beings had been known to take on pet projects now and again, raising new champions to push forward their cause on the plane, but such things were terribly costly from a celestial perspective and spoke to just how powerful their Patron was…
Her fingernails bit into her palm as she struggled to unclench her fist. How Origin could be so present in these intricate details and yet so distant to the deaths of so many… the paradox had almost driven her mad with fury. Her interactions with Him had redefined everything she knew about the hierarchy of the Divine Concepts… and yet she still could not understand His motives. What did He stand to gain from these subtle interferences? Why had He waited so long to assert himself in the Plane’s power struggle? And above all else… Why was He not doing more?
Her stomach still twisted in knots as she recalled the vision of what was coming. When it had first been revealed to her, she had almost abandoned her class, which would have broken her power, and cut her off from her Mana Well. Yet, hers was not the only world crumbling. Factions everywhere faced unprecedented crossroads, as Corruption made its play for Nephesh. Some precious few had come through its initial scheme’s stronger, but many others had been shattered irreversibly.
Two days ago, when the taint of her father… or what he had become, had invaded her domain, her panic had bloomed into a full breakdown as her already frayed worldview was shattered.
Her mother and aunt were likely dead, their supporters in the Faction, either suborned or destroyed… And here she was, in league with a narrow-minded dragon, and a human with a knack for doing the impossible. She had heard the whispers of those who came to the temple, some, many even, thought of him as much more than a divine champion. She had seen enough of his raw panic and desperate decision making to know that he was not some deity in disguise, but she could not deny that there was something about him. Some indefinable solidness that seemed to radiate out, and firm everything around him.
If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel his arms around her again, giving her the spark she needed to hope, even as all seemed lost. Yes, she had been awed by the dragon’s power, it was unlike anything she had witnessed in her time on the plane. But she knew her father, and power would not be enough… He knew such a fight was coming, and would never set himself up to oppose such a creature fairly.
No, if they were going to stand any chance of beating her father and what was left of her people, it would be by approaching such a conflict from a completely unexpected angle. So, even though it was stretching her to her limit, she continued to uphold the most complex glamor she could, hoping to reserve herself for the perfect moment. Not that it had been easy staying hidden, while still attached to her rapid moving charges. She had been forced to do some very creative spellwork, shifting her Link several times, before finally orienting it on Jonathan himself holding a lateral position forty paces out.
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When the energies the Golemic Faction had attempted to harness had turned against them she had almost lost her connection as Brokenridge shifted to a rapid retreat. Even with another activation of his ability the blast had nearly knocked them from the sky. She had been forced to drop her glamour and tap one of her few remaining treasures to keep from being overcome. The Oaken Pendant, a heirloom her mother had given her years ago. It was a gift their people had received from the Ancient Grove Faction an Epoch before she was born, when both powers were young.
Its comfortingly dense formation of glowing script had sprung into being around her, woven into a bark-like pattern in an imitation of one of the Dryad’s most powerful abilities. It had absorbed the majority of the destructive wave of force, before going dormant, and it would take months for it to build up enough energy to be useful again.
Brokenridge had taken minimal damage, his fire-aspected nature, and thick natural protections allowing him to reorient from the blast before losing too much altitude. Shortly after, Jonathan Tillman had awoken from his brief bout of unconsciousness. The confounding human had taken the blast without any protection at all. When the furious energies had cleared enough for her to see him hanging limply in the dragon's arms, she had urgently activated Diagnosis. But, the read-out had only revealed a twenty percent loss of health and a few temporary Debuffs.
She shook her head, watching the man as he came to. She had bet everything on this man and followed him tucked away from detection between folds of light and sound.
If anyone could surprise her Father… it was going to be him.
…
Jonathan Tillman, Level 38 Son of Flame
Tilly’s head was pounding.
A few minutes had cleared several of the worse Debuffs, but the countdown until Concussed cleared was still going. As it fogged his mind he wondered sleepily how the system displayed time to other races, considering it mostly stuck with earth terms for him. The thought chased its own tale through his thoughts, eluding conclusion as Tilly’s eyes drooped and the Dragon’s claws danced in his still blurred vision.
Then it all snapped back into focus, pulling him into the present with a force that brought its own kind of whiplash. Brokenridge’s grip was far from gentle, with little to no thought given towards Tilly, awkward positioning between the huge digits.
‘Kindle?’ he sent, holding his breath as he reached for the sensation that marked her presence and found it to be incredibly distant.
‘I have found an unprecedented opportunity here, bonded, and I am benefiting greatly from this environment, allowing me to mature to a state I have not achieved in many cycles. Echoes of my past selves tell me that I am close to something, something that could make the difference in the greater fight… I believe I need to stay, and take everything I can from this place… but you must not die before we are rejoined.’ she added sternly, before sending him a brief glimpse of a molten hellscape. Rivers of liquified metal carved new channels through the arid landscape of what had once been a Faction stronghold. He could feel the power rushing into her from her surroundings as she dived in and out of the molten rivers, which poured continuously into the huge crater the detonation had left behind.
Tilly didn’t bother to hide his relieved smile at her well-being, ‘How long do you think it will take?’
‘Perhaps a day or two… I am loath to leave you to fight alone, but my heart tells me this is only the beginning, and you will need much more from me than a few simple heat manifestations if we are to survive what is to come.”
Tilly didn’t love the idea of going into the next few days without her, but at the same time, he couldn’t deny that a small part of him was grateful she was enjoying herself and would be out of harm's way for a little while…
‘Get everything you can from there, and then find us. I promise I will make it through and be waiting for you.’ he replied, sending as much conviction as he could muster along their bond.
Even with her absence and the items he had used, Tilly wasn’t complaining. All things considered, they had come out farther ahead than he feared, if not as well as he had hoped. He snaked his left arm down to his belt and felt along his waist, checking each of the five clips.
The health potion had already started to reform, and Tilly hoped it would be fully restored in another hour or two. Tilly’s makeshift fantasy grenade, packed with iron filings, was hanging ready from his right hip, but Doom Duckie, and Saga’s Smelling Salts were both completely absent, leaving only his fifth item waiting in reserve. It had been the least useful in some sense, but as soon as it had come up for auction, an idea had started to form that had pushed Tilly to grab it, despite the limited space on his belt.
The two supreme Quality items would reform eventually, but Tilly doubted it would be before they reached the Contested Lands, especially with how fast Brokenridge was moving. That, plus the burning itch that had slowly been growing in intensity from the mark on his chest solidified just how little time they had until the fight with Oberon came…
He blew out a long breath against the everpresent howl of the wind, which was only slightly broken by his new position in the Brokenridge’s claws. He still had no idea how he was going to keep the dragon from charging straight into a fight with whatever currently held the Council Peaks. He had a half-baked plan of how to help when the time came, using the final item on his belt as an unexpected trump, but they had to take out the entire Wild Hunt first.
If they let Oberon catch them in the middle of a fight, he was sure it would spell the end for all three of thm. Their only chance was to turn and take the Hunt by surprise. And to do that, he had to get Brokenridge to stop…
just as soon as he finished coming up with a plan that would give them a chance at surviving.
He had made it through the last two fights, regaining his superlative Abilities. That meant he could take one extremely powerful hit and had two other options for retaliation. One after he swapped his stats, and the other if he used the Temporal Beetle to reset his bracelets and give him another stat to swap.
The mark on his chest itched furiously, reminding him that he had heard the horns call right before the Faction ending blast, revealing that the fey had been very close to catching up. Part of him hoped that such a destructive force might have caught the fey’s forces by surprise, maybe even thinning their numbers, but he was not foolish enough to plan on it. Whatever happened, he had to be ready to face all of them, a force of Corrupted mythical creatures that Erash had guessed would number in the hundreds.
Shifting uncomfortably in Brokenridge’s unyielding grip, Tilly struggled to come up with an argument that would press on the dragon’s prickly sense of pride enough to get him to fight while simultaneously pulling on his greed in a compelling enough manner to convince him to do so before taking on the Council Peaks.
Ahead of them, Tilly caught sight of their destination through eyes squinting against the wind’s fury. Six peaks interrupted the seemingly endless flat wasteland, rising straight into the air like a giant’s fingers, grasping at the sky. In their midst, one peak dwarfed the others standing a third again taller than the others… Tilly didn’t need to guess where the dragon throne resided.
The dragon slowed at the sight, just as Tilly’s notification icon started blinking at the top of his HUD.