Two of the hulking, massive Golems crash into me; there’s not enough room for more to engage. Their rune-covered hands and legs strike, each time their runes flare with blue light and multiply the blows to contain incredible force that disrupts my internal organs and shakes my bones. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. I leverage all my Strength to hold my ground but it’s not nearly enough as I’m blasted back against the wall. I expect it to shatter but it doesn’t, perhaps reinforced with the crazy amount of Mana that’s saturating everything. All my Skills are activated and my regeneration is so high the damage is healed as fast as I take it, but that doesn’t stop the pain from coursing through me and the feeling of being ripped apart and stitched back together.
Ten times a second and more I trigger Fury of the Clan and it still doesn’t dent my Stamina. The damage slides off the creatures again and my Skill feels wild, unstable. I up the cadence, feeding the instability, as three Golems surround me while my back is to the wall. More are lined up behind them and the Mana Constructs slip through them to strike at me with hundreds of tendrils.
I sweep my Swords back and forth without much hope but they slice through the tendrils with the ease I’ve come to expect. The tendrils that do reach me send shockwaves through my body that cause my muscles to seize up before they’re released by my regenerative healing a split second later. Golem fists rocket out and I dodge as well as I can in the confined space, using my Swords to deflect the worst of the blows. Each time my Swords make contact with the Golems, the runes flare and my Swords penetrate only a few inches before being repelled.
Desperate, I flex my Affinity and create Edges between me and the Golems and trigger Wall of the Clan. The Skill bucks and twists, warped by the Mana, and I’m struck again by a Golem fist through the Edges before the Wall snaps into place, severing the Golem arm and giving me some respite in a spall, protected space as the creatures press against it. Bright flashes of their Skills bloom across my Wall as it wavers and I take a breath for a few heartbeats.
The time I hope to find doesn’t eventuate as the ethereal Mana Constructs reshape themselves, flowing through the air in a chaotic dance to slide past my Edges and form sharp points that spear into and through my Wall, disrupting it. I reduce my Swords back to their smallest size to hopefully stabilize them and lash out at the Mana Constructs, a dozen blows a second taking chunks out of them that fall to the floor, all while I’m pouring more and more focus into Fury of the Clan.
My Stamina starts to slowly drain as I increase the cadence I’m triggering Fury higher and higher while my Wall starts to break down. Golem fists start to punch through the holes created by the Mana Constructs, trying to strike me. The strain on my body and mind is tremendous, but I can’t think of another option so I focus all my effort on it and stop defending myself with my Swords from my attackers.
Spears from the Mana Constructs hit me and burrow slowly into my body and explosions of pure Mana blast me while my regeneration pulls on the AMLs and even the essence of the Mana Constructs to rebuild me just as fast as I’m injured. My Wall finally wavers and collapses as I pump more and more Stamina into Fury of the Clan, triggering it faster and faster. The entire area seems unstable but I’m filling the surroundings with so much damaging energy that it starts to disrupt the Mana Constructs and slam into the Golems, pushing them back as their protective runes flare with light. I fire out raw Force Projections ahead of me and trigger Critical Strikes as fast as I can.
The press of creatures around me and the punishment I’m taking from them and my own Skills feels like it’s ripping me apart. I focus intently, putting everything else aside except for forming Edges in front of me and triggering all my damage producing Skills as fast as I can. Mana flows through my body like a raging torrent, converted into my physical Regeneration and then my Skills that in turn supercharge the air with damaging energy.
My Perception shuts down my senses, overwhelmed, as reality starts to waver and dimensional tears start to appear wherever I’ve left an Edge. I’m smashed back into the corridor wall by a series of blows that I don’t even try to stop. Instead, I turtle up to protect myself and fish myself even further. Unstable energy crackles all around us as blasts of pure energy ricochet around like machine gun fire from a hundred guns combined with shrapnel from a thousand grenades.
Unable to handle it anymore, I yell at the top of my lungs to the Universe, to fury, to pain, and to a desperate need to survive as I pour everything I have into it, a primal scream to defy the overwhelming tide of enemies and attacks. I'm losing ground, my body pushed to its limits. The constant regeneration, fueled by the insane AMLs, is a double-edged sword, keeping me alive but pushing my body and mind to the brink. It's like being caught in a raging inferno with no escape.
As the Mana surges around us, threatening to tear apart reality and consume me entirely, all of a sudden the pain coming from outside stops. My internal pain still rages and I realize there are no more targets for my Furies, nothing left on my minimap. I release my focus on triggering my Skills and it’s like my blood vessels and organs, swelled and strained, have collapsed. I writhe on the ground in pain, expecting and waiting for the cool healing to take hold, but it doesn’t. The high ambient Mana burns me, almost in the same way warm water feels scalding when you’re badly sunburned.
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I open my eyes and see the destruction that’s everywhere. Obsidian Golems and Mana Construct parts are scattered, blown up and melted. All around the Edges I still have active, space warps and ripples as it tries to open Wormholes and push dangerous new threats into our world to consume our Mana. I release my Edges with a groan, hardly able to think, and the Wormholes slowly close as if they’re reluctant to leave.
Somehow, I’m barely alive.
I’ve stared into the abyss and miraculously lived through it.
All I can concentrate on is my ragged breath and trembling body as the pain still courses through me.
I don’t know how long I lay on the ground.
Minutes? Hours? Days?
Eventually I feel like I can move and recognize the sensation I’ve felt pressing on me from up ahead. Mana radiating from something. It feels like it’s burning my soul from that direction as it hits me with surges of intensity. With a groan I move to a kneeling position and then stand up. I want nothing more than to retreat from this whole situation and the source of the intense pain. Instead, I stagger down the corridor toward it. I fall twice within the first ten meters and both times I grit my teeth and regain my feet, groping around with my arms to try to find something to keep me upright. Each time I crash into the smashed walls of the corridor and it sends chunks of metal and stone flying.
I steady myself and try to focus, but it’s like trying to walk in a straight line while being blind drunk. The corridor curves around to my left and down sharply enough I end up tumbling down, clearing a path through the rubble with my body as I slide. Each time I regain my feet and continue on. Every few steps the intensity of the pain increases until it reaches a fever pitch at the end of the corridor, where I stop and gape through the haze of pain.
A notification opens automatically, bypassing all the ones still just sitting there blinking at me furiously. As I open the notification it wavers badly and doesn’t stabilize, but there’s enough there I can read it.
!! Warning !! Uncontrolled Dark Mana detected!! Evacuate immediately!!
!! Planetary level destructive forces are imminent !!
In front of me the corridor opens up into an enormous spherical cavern. The insides of the walls are covered in runes and alien technology. I’m not thinking straight but I can only guess this is the Mana Sink and containment unit. In the middle of the cavern, taking up almost the whole space, is a sphere of dense, swirling shades of dark blue Mana that must be at least a hundred meters in diameter. The color gets darker closest to the core, where it’s almost black. It feels like standing next to the sun. I release Gift of Gaia and try to crank up all my passive Skills to reduce the Mana thrumming inside me, but as soon as I try it feels like my body reaches new heights of burning, searing pain.
Current Ambient Mana Level (AML): 480
How is that even possible? Am I somehow standing right next to the Mana equivalent of a nuclear bomb? What kind of a fucked up experiment gone wrong is this?
I put my hand on the wall of the corridor to steady myself as the pain spikes to an even greater level and the massive sphere starts to pulse.
What can I do? This isn’t a problem I can punch away.
In a haze of pain I can only think of one thing to try - get rid of it.
I trigger the first part of Omnipresent and convulse as Mana rages through me in a torrent. I pray and beg for unconsciousness but it doesn’t come and I use the pain to focus my mind in desperation, pulling on my Affinity as strongly as I possibly can to help. The Skill wavers and refuses to lock in so I push harder, with everything I can. My insides and mind feel like they’re going to explode when I find what I’m looking for - a small human skirmish on a spaceship, far from Earth in the middle of space.
Pushing with everything I can and bending my will to push my Affinity farther than I ever have before in desperation, I manifest the Portal as large as I can just outside the spaceship, pointing out into space, and the other end as close to the core of the ball of Mana as I can get it.
I crash to my knees with my head, heart, and soul on fire as the Portal bucks wildly and wavers a million times a second as Mana from the sphere, disrupted, pours through the Portal like water rushing through a hose to equalize the pressure. In my trembling mind’s eye I can see the mana venting in huge plumes out into space.
The pace of it accelerates as I strain and strain at the breaking point to keep the Portal open. I force it wider, and wider still. Every inch gives it more chance to drain enough to keep the Earth from being destroyed. I struggle to hold on and focus my mind on Robb, Jon, Logan, Carter, Millie, Benjamin, Tatiana, Uncle Ant, and everyone else I care about. I hold the masses of innocent people I’ve tried to protect in my mind as I’m unable to even hold myself up and my face slams into the ground, almost unnoticed.
I open my burning eyes and stare at the sphere of Mana. It’s smaller, a bit smaller, and no longer a perfect sphere as the core is slowly, slowly moving toward the Portal I have open. I can’t hold on but I have to all at the same time. I can feel everything shutting down. With one last desperate push I put everything I can, everything I have, into expanding the Portal as big as it can go, bigger than the core of the Mana sphere, and I yell into the blinding light as something inside me snaps and the world around me goes brilliant white.
And then dark.