My Elemental Aegis flares green while getting obliterated as I’m sent spinning into the air out of control at high speed despite my Strength fighting against the force. Before I can even orient myself, I trigger another Elemental Aegis and Greatest Need. I strain and connect with all the remaining humans here, hoping none have been lost, and lock onto Jeff to bring us all right next to him. We appear high in the air beside him flying on his Griffin, bent over its neck and diving toward what I now see is Hvitserkur who has joined the fight, somehow traveling through the ground.
“No!” I yell at Jeff as I freefall down toward the ground with the dozen or so remaining with me, mostly the Sentinels. Alana is in full fire form and blazes a streak through the sky while Finn transforms into a sleek black dragon and Coumba rockets toward my still open Portal in a suit of power armor. I dive toward Jeff and find Jon right beside me, his wings folded in as he dives like a hawk onto his prey.
“The Portal!” I send, but all three of us ignore my message; running has never been our strong suit.
Hvitserkur’s massive form turns and he flings his arms wide then slams his hands together with surprising agility. Massive boulders float around him and begin spinning at high speed as above us a huge boom sounds. I glance up to see the spaceship blasted apart into dozens of pieces by the massive chunks of rock blasted out of the ground when Hvitserkur emerged.
I turn my attention back to Hvitserkur again as we close and hit him with everything we have. My Danger Sense screams at me from all around so I trigger Greatest Need and instantly appear beside Jeff, then rocket past him, my Swords extended to full length as one of the car sized chunks of rock spinning around Hvitserkur slams against me and explodes on my Elemental Aegis with a green flare. I’m catapulted to my left and slam into the rocky ground at full speed, but I fight to orient myself and with Acceleration my reflexes and Strength are just enough for me to grind my feet into the stone and leap straight at Hvitserkur, now inside his cloud of spinning death.
“No! Jon!” Jeff screams inside my head as I flash past the massive Rock Troll’s right hand, his claws extended, to slice through his thigh. My Swords for the first time encounter something they can’t cut straight through and I watch as the deep cut I inflict heals over almost as fast as my sword passes through it. My view is shattered as I’m somehow slammed by Hvitserkur’s left elbow and blasted away. Chunks of rock crack into me as I pass through his spinning barrier and I’m tossed uncontrollably again, mostly unhurt but disoriented. I hit the ground and skip like a stone several times over a short distance before I find my feet and spring instantly back up toward Hvitserkur.
My rage becomes insane as I dart back toward the Rock Troll and see Jon’s broken form, crushed by a collision of massive boulders. His wings are ripped apart and I can only see one arm and a foot sticking out of the rocks that have destroyed him. A last flame of hope that he might still be alive disappears as my angle changes and I see his head smashed open, his skull removed and only the lower part of his jaw remaining.
Humanity’s Avenging Angel and the core of the Sentinels, utterly destroyed by this Level 500 invader. Rage surges through me and I yell at the top of my lungs as I charge Hvitserkur’s swirling barrier of rock again, completely consumed by thoughts of revenge, of lashing out. I ignore my Danger Sense, ignore my Foresight, thrust everything aside except the sight of Jon’s broken body.
“Bronwic!” sends Jeff, but I ignore it and brace myself to smash through the tornado of rock, only for my momentum to be obliterated from above by a bus sized hunk of solid rock traveling at high speed. My flesh is ripped and my bones crack, but remain unbroken, as I’m driven into the rocky ground and grated apart by the intense pressure. More massive blows crush me and the pressure piles on as more and more rock strikes the slab on me. Unstoppable forces grind and crush me like I would use a mortar and pestle, ripping me apart. My regeneration fights the destruction as my Survivor Title kicks in to give me additional damage reduction. Pain overwhelms me as the tremendous forces build and build, then suddenly the ground under me reshapes itself to swallow me up and collapse on me from all sides like a trash compactor.
I’m completely locked in a crushing rocky grave, my flesh torn and my bones creaking. My skull feels like it will collapse any split second and I desperately reach out with Greatest Need, somehow finding Jeff. I trigger it and appear once again in mid air, unable to move. There are no muscles left on my bones to move me and the pain is blinding. I feel myself falling, then caught, or maybe I’ve hit the ground, as my regeneration fights to save me.
Health: 810/10550 Stamina: 12150/15825 Constitution: 1055
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Skill Modifier: 5.32 Current Ambient Mana Level (AML): 14 +30 (Gift of Gaia)
Physical regeneration rate: 84189 /min --> 1403 /sec
I groan in a haze as my body knits itself back together and I feel my eyes reform in their sockets, then I open them to see Jeff yelling at me. Another second and my ears are repaired enough to hear him, my body still on fire and unable to move.
“We need to get out of here, Bronwic!”
Another second and I can stir weakly, and I’m aware we’re flying on Jeff’s Griffin at high speed. A boulder flashes past us as we bank aggressively and down to my right.
“Jon! We’ve got to…” I croak weakly as I regain my strength. In seconds and I’ll be back in the fight, crazy as that is.
“Jon’s fucking dead, Bronwic. You need to get us all out of here!” Jeff yells at me.
A few more heartbeats and my mind is clear, I’m sitting on the Griffin with Jeff, and my emotions are in turmoil. I stare down at the place where I know Jon lays, crushed and broken. He’s near the swirling maul of death that is a Level 500 Rock Troll. I leap off the Griffin and plummet toward the ground as we dive to avoid a collision of three more massive boulders Hvitserkur controls somehow. Sharp stone spikes rising up from the ground now surround him.
I check my minimap and see there are still half a dozen of us here, close to Hvitserkur, who are fighting smaller groups of Rock Trolls that now surround them in a thick swarm. Further afield the other groups I brought here and our ships are trying to evacuate everyone. I trigger Fury of the Clan a few times, mostly ineffectually, to keep Hvitserkur’s attention as I land and take off at a dead sprint, randomly dodging every half second while I trigger Greatest Need and form a connection to everyone here, then trigger the second part and appear right next to the Reaper Brodie Smith, who has made it the furthest away. The shadows all around us pull and grab and the powerfully built Rock Trolls, slowing them down as Brodie’s scythe rips through them while he melts in and out of the shadows so fast it’s almost like he’s teleporting.
The rest of the people here, including Jeff, aren’t caught unaware and within a few seconds all the Trolls around us are obliterated, rocky bodies basted apart and strewn across the ground, soaked in green blood.
My Danger Sense never lets up informing me where Hvitserkur is and a loud rumble comes from that direction as the building-sized Rock Troll pounds at us, his legs churning and the ground beneath him catapulting him forward like he’s on some kind of gargantuan moving walkway. Massive spinning boulders he’s ripped out of the ground spin around him and a cluster of them streaks toward us at high speed.
I create the biggest Portal back to Dublin I can to both shield us a bit and give us an escape route. There’s no hesitation from anyone in the group, even Jeff, as they dive through to the other side. I leave the Portal open as we emerge on the other side, battered in every sense of the word.
“What made us think we could take on that fucking thing?” Jeff asks out loud to nobody in particular. I’m wondering the same thing and why I got this going in the first place.
“We’ve never seen anything like that,” says Brodie as he stares back through the Portal at Hvitserkur who has come to a rumbling halt, his glowering gaze fixed on us. It’s sometimes a pain that Omnipresent can only transport humans, but for situations like this it’s a feature I’d never trade.
“Bronwic,” snarls Coumba, who has somehow made it through. “It’s Bronwic. I should have known this would happen. I don’t know why I thought it would be different this time to when I left the Sentinels. Always pushing, always throwing everyone around him into danger. Now Jon is dead, Bronwic. Are you happy yet? How many more of our greatest champions do you want to send to their graves?”
I stand where I am, staring at Hvitserkur and vibrating in fury. I let her finish because the same things are echoing through my mind, and more. But there are still more people left in Iceland, people I Portaled there after asking them to come. People who humanity needs. I close the Portal to Hvitserkur and trigger Omnipresent, then open another Portal and race through.
“Bronwic!” I hear Jeff call before I close the Portal off behind me and emerge in the middle of Freyja’s group who are fighting hard against a swarm of Rock Trolls. Anger and shame and so much more race through me as I trigger Fury of the Clan and Guilty as Charged as fast as my Stamina will let me, laying waste to the Rock Trolls around us. Everyone orients on me in surprise and a second later I’ve regenerated enough Stamina to open a Portal back to Dublin for them, which I open without a word.
The group pours through to safety and Jeff’s massive form emerges from the other side, his armor glowing and two swords out with all his Skills blazing in readiness.
“Where to next?” he asks, giving me a level stare through his helm.
“You want to end up like Jon?” I snarl at him. As the words leave my mouth I know they’re not the right ones to say and I don’t give a shit. I’m too mad, too wrapped up in what’s happened. I wait for a fight I don’t have time for but… Jeff laughs.
“I’m tougher to kill than a tardigrade Bronwic. Let’s go.”
Jeff and I have been through a hell of a lot together and if he truly wants to stay, I’d be an idiot to turn his help away. I close the Portal back to Dublin and trigger Omnipresent again to locate all the remaining humans on Iceland.
“Moving in 5. We’ll start at the worst conflict,” I tell him, then decide on the next best place to go and trigger a Portal to salvage what we can.