After hearing news of what likely constituted a recipe for a pretty bad day, Val half-expected the weather ward to crack open and the ground to split and swallow her whole. Stowed away inside the medical aid tent, however, the response to Jesal’s announcement was a blank quietness, punctuated by moving feet outside. It served as a reminder for her feet to get moving as well, rift rupture and all.
She hurried to throw on her coat and snapped her tool belt in place quickly after, sliding the coldsteel saber into its rightful place at her hip. Caro, massaging the kinks out of her neck thanks to resting on a stool, vacated the area, and Val hopped off her makeshift bed to follow.
As the tent’s flap fell away, a subtle panic trickled into her veins. Thirty-something tarps crowded the area in a series of disorganized rows, each one manned by fretting teammates. Two questions cropped up at a mere glance at the situation. How in the hell were they going to manage evacuation with the injured?
Why in the hell was no one evacuating the injured?
Finished zipping the door they made in their exit uncomplaining, Jesal froze as he witnessed her face going on livid. “Some are staying behind as a buffer for them. Luckily, Storm’s Keep was already on the Defender’s Army and CAU’s watch. Help is probably on the way as we speak.”
“We cannot bank on that.” Nightingale pushed off his feet to rise from the wooden lining the pathway. “We’re in the beginnings of a rift rupture—the most dangerous phase. If reinforcements do not arrive before the mass exodus of every living creature in the vicinity hits us, we are finished.”
“I didn’t say that we’re staying behind,” Jesal huffed, sending a pitying glance to the squads nearby who, unfortunately, could not say the same.
“Let’s go the way we came,” Val suggested. “We don’t have time to guess around and hope for the best in a rift as random as this one.”
“Agreed,” Jesal nodded. “We took the easiest way here, and we hardly encountered much of anything.”
“I checked in with a scout yesterday evening,” Otis chimed in, seated a bench over from the Hunter’s previous spot. “He said the rift should be clear weather-wise.”
Caro walked over and gave his shoulder a playful shove. “Good thinking! Don’t worry about Kane in our next debrief. I’ll put in a good word for you.”
Otis huffed in amusement. “Much appreciated.”
A pained smile split Jesal’s lips. “I guess that settles it.”
On that note, Hammer Squad rallied from their seats without a word. Val clasped her teammates in a team huddle, dwarfed by standing between Caro and Otis, and held each other’s gazes for a heartbeat. It was almost astonishing how normal seeing their eyes were now, and how easily she placed their feelings based on the lines in their expressions. Five weeks ago, these faces, aside from her childhood friend, meant next to nothing to her. If even one of them were not here tomorrow…
Otis raised one boot until his leg created a ninety-degree angle, and then stomped on the ground with an absurd amount of force. He was met with five blank—and somewhat worried—stares.
His neck flushed. “I-It’s something we do back home. It looks better when there’s a lot more sand, but basically… When one person stomps, everyone else follows. It’s supposed to create a big sand cloud, implying that whatever stands before us is…” He covered his eyes with a broad hand, unable to continue.
Caro’s arm left Val’s back and, instead, she gently pried a finger off his face, revealing the gold of his irises. “We’re listening.”
He glanced around the team huddle and, likely taking in the prodding smiles and two raised eyebrows—courtesy of Nightingale and Lenson, of course—for what they were, welled up the courage to finish. “Whatever stands before us is beneath the sole of our feet. That makes them…” he stopped, this time at a loss on how to construe the Desni meaning to his Ciazen teammates.
“Someone beatable,” Val inferred.
Otis' nose scrunched up. Translation: not quite.
“Someone about to get stomped on,” Caro grinned, the gaming terminology, for once, not lost on Val.
The Bulwark shook his head so vehemently, laughter bubbled out of everyone’s mouth.
“Someone,” Lenson began, and the wicked manner her lips tilted ever-so-slightly up was terrifying. “Who's scared of us.”
Otis settled for an ardent nod, beaming at the Support. Exactly that, he seemed to say. In the face of what they may or may not encounter outside the ward, a heavy silence hung in the group, broken by Jesal’s sigh.
“Don’t worry,” he said, deflecting their looks with a wave of a hand. “Just mentally jotting down my second reminder not to mess with you ladies.”
“Speaking of them,” Nightingale turned to Caro. “What are you busy muttering over there?”
She held up a hand, murmuring words too quickly or softly for anyone to pick up. “Sand Creation.”
A spell? Sand materialized out of nowhere, pooling at the bottom of their feet. Yes, they realized that this was quite possibly a waste of energy, and yup—they probably should be well on their way by now.
Nevertheless, the urge and the need to do what came next felt second to none. Heads turned as six loud stomps thundered across the hushed vicinity. Their baffled gazes met an explosion of sand shooting upwards. When the dust fell away, six faces carved of hard determination remained.
----------------------------------------
Outside the injured-inclined space was a flurry of movement, commands were barked to teammates over the commotion, and directions were shouted to the ignorant few. Expecting even a semblance of an orderly response from the waypoint full of adventurers Val was vastly astounded to find groups departing by their lonesomes, not taking a second glance at one another.
Then, it hit her. This wasn’t a base in Darkshaft, run by its own miniature government. As of right now, she resided in a waypoint, full stop. The general, unwritten rules amongst adventurers still held strong: one’s concern remained with their safety, their squad’s survival, and the party’s loot. It ceased there. We’re by ourselves here.
In a way, the rift cores served as the glue and the engine simultaneously, and their disappearance ensured a swift migration of every beast, elemental, and creature in the vicinity. A wave was about to hit any moment, and they had to get ahead of it, or else they’d find themself alone amid too many aether creatures to count.
Thankfully, they already reached the east gate, and the ancient-looking Striker gave them the go-ahead. “We forge,” he offered.
“We fight,” Val finished and nodded her last goodbyes as she left her final moments of peace. The instant she reentered Storm's Keep, her cloak fought to free itself from her frame against the untempered winds. At least, as Otis had relayed earlier on, the dreadful rain stopped pouring from the sky.
That didn’t help much with the water already on the ground, making the trail hard to traverse through. The six broke out into a run regardless, with no time to consider the slickness of the ground. Val kept her eyes peeled and her Vague View activated at all times, nodding at Nightingale. The Hunter lifted a hand in farewell and took a hard left into the forest, disappearing altogether.
The pace didn’t slow down one bit. His job was to scout out the area, theirs was to make it at the meetup point—Garrison’s Hold. Time might have been of the essence, but knowledge and reconnaissance would allow them to use their minutes wisely. Besides, if anyone could catch up to them, it would be him, a prodigy at the Traversal Discipline and movement-based techniques.
Trees whizzed by, dark-grey clouds hung high above, and an eerie calm ensconced the area, a harsh juxtaposition to her first day inside the tumultuous rift. Val’s heartbeat, steady as ever despite the upbeat jog, spiked as two skeletal branches curved backwards. Sure enough, a cloaked figure warbled into existence.
Nightingale assumed his prior position seamlessly and bobbed his head, tugging down his dark-grey scarf. “There’s a mob making their way over. Mainly beasts, several elementals, and a couple of chimeras.”
“Damn it all,” Caro cursed, putting a voice to the shared sentiment.
“Rough count?” Lenson asked.
“I would say forty-five.” Nightingale bounded over the puddles riddling the path, turning to glance at his backline. “They’re about five minutes out and gaining on us.”
“It’s going to be close…” Jesal scrubbed at his forehead. “Should we head back?”
“Once we make it past the bridge and keep a low profile, we’ll be in the clear,” Nightingale said. “Garrison’s Hold is a minute away. We should see it to the end.”
“Never thought I’d say this but,” Caro nodded. “Seconded.”
Val inspected the trail behind, calibrating the timeline for the return road trip. “At this point, it's more of a risk heading back.”
“Then we move forward,” Jesal said.
With that sorted out, Val set her attention on the path ahead. The trees thinned out over a minute, and the path began to yawn wide. She steadied herself as she felt the ground decline, leaving behind lengthy footprints as her combat boots struggled to find purchase in the wet mud.
Before long, the roar of turbulent waters outmatched the strong gusts in clamour, and Garrison’s Hold—in all its glory—came into view. So much blue, she noticed, squinting against the onslaught of colour obscuring her vision. She mistook it for water-inclined elemental traces until she noticed the gradient of pure aether. Thousands and thousands of aether strands concentrated somewhere in the middle of the stone bridge, funnelling out a single spot.
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She shook herself out of a daze, cutting off the energy flow to her eyes. Fortunately, the haze traded out for a clearer world, allowing her to make out a loitering squad. Unfortunately, the group that beat them to the bridge wasn’t the friendly kind.
“Shield up!” Lenson called out and pointed a few feet ahead of Caro. By now, no one questioned the diviner. With little time to prepare a spell, Otis had no choice except to dawn the shield on his back. The frontline fell behind his large stature not a moment too late. A red bolt ripped through the air, striking him dead-center.
His arms recoiled at the force and an “Oof” left him in a wheeze. Val’s nose stung at the pungent ozone masking the seemingly-permanent smell of earth after rain. Still, she stole a peek, and her eyebrows pinched together.
“What the actual fuck.” Caro clenched onto her greataxe’s shaft, a vein pulsed along the side of her head. “Did they not get the memo? The rift‘s just ruptured and they’re picking a fight?”
“I’m sure they realize as such, seeing as they’re the ones on the bridge, evacuating,” Nightingale said, the blue glare in his eyes evidence of a magical technique. “What on Spiravale are they holding? It’s generating an obscene amount of energy, and it seems to be coming from the bridge itself.”
All of a sudden, Aster’s fact from the day before didn’t seem so fun.
“They’re retrieving the power crystal,” Val murmured. Once the realization set in, she caught sight of a purple orb—the swirls inside were mesmerizing and undoubtedly a string of energy-based runes—and her blood ran cold. One glance at the charged waters beneath, and she shivered. Garrison’s Hold will fall without it… but that’s what they want. They’re locking us on this side with the incoming beast wave.
“They’re what?” Otis hollered, struggling to hear anything as boulders crashed against his barricade. He’d erected his tried-and-true jade barrier seconds before an earth Support, of all things, showered them in enlarged rocks. He took a step back to steady himself for every two spells that hit him.
“They’re destabilizing the bridge!” Val yelled.
“Go,” Caro insisted. “You and Gale are the fastest. Go!”
“Noted,” Nightingale muttered indignantly, crouching low before he exploded outwards in a blur of movement. Aether filled her muscles, and her calves thrummed. Mud splashed as she kicked off to follow after him, not far off his trail.
There wasn’t much grassland to traverse; the river must’ve eroded the undergrowth over time in the decades past, leaving a depressed center where the bridge connected either side. Regardless, Storm’s Keep was primarily woodlands-esque, and that meant thick forestry bordered the lean flatlands.
Three-quarters of the way to the Garrison’s Hold, she noted the red glare in the lightning mage’s eyes and stiffened. “Nightingale!” Val hastily dislodged the E-shield at her back. “To me!”
In the time the steel pole began to crackle with her energy, he slinked into her space beside her. Water bled out the tool and formed a dome-like shield, scarcely in time for the red snap of energy crashing into it. Her ears stung at the crackling whip, but she held firm and gritted her teeth. “We can’t step an inch within that bridge when they have the power crystal.”
If they braved the spells and attacked up close, who was to stop the hostile squad from abandoning the power crystal altogether and throwing it into the river? Then both parties fell to their highly-electrocuted ends, and none remained the winner. I’m not about to watch them walk away with it though… That was as much of an option as going for a swim inside the charged rapids.
“Dim Feet,” Nightingale muttered, and she didn't need to guess it was a spell. Before her eyes, the shadows of the perpetrators gained a mind of their own, reaching out of its 2-dimensional world to hold their boots close in a cold embrace.
The lightning mage stumbled to the ground in shock and the crouched forms of the teammates stowing away the power crystal fidgeted against their wispy restraints. That left the sole woman of the group, the brown-haired earth mage, to glare at them merely meters away. Even so, Val couldn’t help wondering…
“Was that the Traversal Discipline or the Alteration ki—“
“Efron,” the Hunter growled in half-annoyance, half-exasperation, and—in another poorly-timed realization—she nearly found it… endearing? The same amount endearing she found the mischievous, yet knowing sparkles in Jesal’s gaze, or Otis’ boisterous laugh and perpetual straw hat, Caro’s wicked glee, and Lenson’s quiet regard.
She would leave here with all of them intact. She willed it so.
Or, she had thought she did when she may have willed the opposite.
Three recognizable shouts rang out from behind—loud enough to carry amid the crashing waters—and shattered Val’s conviction on the task at hand. She risked a glance backward and gasped.
Caro's left leg remained mangled in an ice elemental’s sneaky vice, and her upper body looked worse for wear. An arm sagged at her side, and enough blood oozed out of her wounds, it dyed the ice gathering beneath red. Val couldn’t begin to understand how the elemental had arrived ahead of the wave and why it decided here of all places.
She returned her attention to the purple orb, and an explicative left her unbidden. The highest priority for aether creatures remained energy, and in place of the stolen rift core, they must’ve turned to track the power crystal. Regardless of whether its removal left them bereft of an escape route, or its presence continued to attract aether creatures, the power crystal spelled doom. Damned if we do, cursed if we don’t.
“Let them have the crystal,” Val spoke.
Nightingale seemed to come to the same conclusion on his own, seeing as his dark spell withered away only microseconds after. He wrenched her grip open and dropped an orange pair of… sponge? Upon closer inspection, she deemed them earplugs, and that just made her far more confused than she was a mere moment ago.
”You okay?” she thought to ask, keeping an eye on the retracing backs of those cowards and snap the E-shield onto her back. As expected, the stone blocks shivered in place, persistent in trying to maintain shape and yet faltering against the intense wind. One piece went flying, and that was the first and only crack needed to break the dam. Watching what might’ve been their last chance to escape crumble, she asked herself the same question. Are we okay?
“There is a wave of things coming our way. I intend to survive it. Wear these when I give you the signal.”
And then he was gone, quicker than a disappearing shadow, presumably informing the others. She stowed the equipment away and raced across the muddy plains.
Caro naturally had detached herself from Otis once they’d split formation, him in preparation for an attack on both sides, her at the first opportunity to back up their engagement. Neither expected an elemental to emerge—Val presumed in surprise, and perhaps even from the water-laden ground—and for the bridge to collapse thereafter, leaving Otis distraughtly nailed to his post in case the fifty-something things, as Nightingale monikered the aether creatures, overwhelmed them.
The backline, in the face of a fight far too tangled, couldn’t hope of throwing a spell. Val was under the same conditions—Metal Spike wouldn’t do, especially as it stood an equal chance to skewer her friend. Instead, her eyes burned a heavy blue as she leaned into Vague View with fervour, eager to find the creature’s fatal weakness.
It’s core.
The elemental didn’t appear higher than two-starred—thank the saints—as it did not possess a humanoid form. Consequently, Caro fought with an animated blob of ice, half of its body’s manpower keeping her leg frozen tight, the other failing to dodge the Striker’s attacks. Yet, even as she cut it in half and its body shattered, it coalesced back into its original form.
A solid, glowing circle the size of a large gumball sat inside the elemental’s body, shifting positions in response to Caro’s retorts. There were reasons elementals and their counterparts—spectrals—were feared amongst adventurers, and its lack of a vulnerable vitals save for one, moving spot was at the top of the list.
Once within range, Val’s blade struck the top of its nebulous body, digging through its solid structure to hit something… delicate. The sound of shattering glass followed, and the elemental melted faster than an ice cube on a beach.
In the absence of both something to defend herself from and keep her feet fixed to the ground, Caro collapsed. Val managed to snake a hand around her waist and threw the Striker’s forearm over her shoulder. With a grunt, she kept her upright by her lonesome, careening to the side. “Don’t scare me like that, Cee.”
Val could feel her friend rolling her eyes. “Sorry, mom. I was busy, I don’t know, not dying?”
“Can you stand?” she asked, having no time to revel in the momentary peace. She felt the girl put pressure on her legs, but before long, her body went slack.
Caro shook her head. “What’s the strongest healing scroll you got on you?”
“G3.” Val’s eyes darted to her mangled leg, limp arm, to the torso that bore more crimson than should be necessary on her armour. “I only have one, though.”
Not to talk of the fact that two of the three wounds were buried beneath her armour, requiring a slice of their limited time to peel it off before slapping on the scrolls. More aether creatures than they’d ever face would be crashing through the forest any moment now, and they’d have no way to put a stop to them inside their limited space. There’s a way out of this.
Val knew it in her bones. She pressed her eyes shut, flipping through every piece of information she devoured in the past, and the present. She memorized the makeup of the area yesterday for circumstances such as these—so what was it that she failed to remember?
Garrison’s Hold. Lightning rods. Bridges—plural.
That’s it, she thought, belatedly remembering she’d distinctly spotted two bridges on the mini-map. Sure enough, the narrow counterpart was literally two minutes away, a perfect place to construct a Plan B.
She gestured the team to her position, and they corralled the pair in a snappy manner. “Check your HUDs. There’s another bridge a couple minutes north. Once we get there and set up, we can fight the wave one creature at a time.”
“There’s a small problem,” Jesal said through a grimace. “We’ve got maybe fifty seconds ahead of them, and the frontline needs to be in pristine condition to hold them off on the move. That—” he gestured to Caro “—is obviously not the case.”
“I can secure fifteen more seconds,” Nightingale offered, not caring to explain. “Nevertheless, the same problem remains.”
Their attention converged on Caro. She looked down, clicked her tongue, shook her head in disbelief, and glanced up. Her mouth opened—
“No,” Val answered before the choice could be voiced. “We’re not leaving you behind.”
“No, we are not,” Otis concurred, and the golden rings of his eyes flared. The pads of his thumb took on a cozy yellow hue, and he pressed them against a graze on his hands.
It disappeared. Remedied, yet through no other external except through his own.
“You’re a…” Val allowed herself a brief instance to blink. Once. Twice. Thrice. “You’re a healer.”
“No time to explain,” he lifted Caro off her shoulders like she were no lighter than a feather, and she shifted weight to lean on him, wincing. “I still need a place to focus, and that place seems to be two minutes away.”
“You’re going on ahead?” Jesal massaged the back of his neck. “Who’s going to defend us, then?”
Otis moved to pat Val's shoulder, and yet she didn’t believe she quite felt it. “He is.”
He?
Her neck snapped around, and she ceased breathing at what—or who, for that matter—she perceived millimeters away from her nose. Eyes wide enough to rival a child in wondrous shock, she lifted a hand to stifle a squeal of delight.
On the edge of anxiety and adrenaline and perhaps being right, Jesal threw his head back and laughed. “We found out rather quickly, didn’t we Val.”
Thinking of their conversation yesterday, a soft chuckle escaped her. I suppose we did.